In Bed With The Right

Latest Episodes:

Episode 76: Depp v. Heard with Kat Tenbarge May 13, 2025

Show notes

In this episode, Moira and Adrian are joined by journalist Kat Tenbarge for a look back at the media spectacle that was actor Johnny Depp's April/May 2022 defamation suit against his ex-wife, actress Amber Heard. The conversation touches on #MeToo backlash, what counts as evidence in the social media age, content creation and YouTube commenting, and why some women find online misogyny persuasive.

Episode 74: The Trustees (with Lauren Lassabe Shepherd) May 06, 2025

Show notes

Have you been enjoying stories about all-powerful student activist groups shutting down vigorous debate on college campuses? Of the insidious cabals of Performance Studies professors thwarting the progress of science? Well, wait till you get a load of the people who actually run the show. In this episode, Moira and Adrian are joined by Lauren Lassabe Shepherd (of the American Campuspodcast) to discuss the trustees, their role in university governance, why we tended not to hear much about them ... and why suddenly, in 2025, we very much do!

Books, articles and podcasts discussed in this episode:

Lauren Lassabe Shepherd, Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars(2023)

William F. Buckley, God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of 'Academic Freedom' (1951)

Richard White, Who Killed Jane Stanford? A Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits and the Birth of a University (2022)

Matt Seybold, The Gilded Network (Podcast, 2025)

Nathan Heller, "Will Harvard Bend or Break" (The New Yorker, 2025)

Episode 73 -- Roy Cohn with Matt Sitman (Part 2) Apr 29, 2025

Show notes

The second part of Moira and Adrian's long conversation with Matt Sitman of Know Your Enemy on Roy Cohn -- lawyer to various deplorables, closet case and mentor to a young Donald Trump. This part deals with Cohn's return to New York, his work for the mob, the Church, and the drugs.

Here are the books and documentaries we discuss in this first half:

-- Nicholas von Hoffman, Citizen Cohn: The Life and Times of Roy Cohn (1988)

-- Ivy Meeropol (dir.), Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn (2019)

-- Matt Tyrnauer (dir.), Where's My Roy Cohn? (2019)

Episode 71 -- Roy Cohn with Matt Sitman (Part 1) Apr 22, 2025

Show notes

Moira and Adrian are joined by Matt Sitman of Know Your Enemy to discuss the life of Roy Cohn -- lawyer, closet case and ratfucker extraordinaire. This first part deals with Cohn's childhood, the Rosenberg trial, and his time with Sen. McCarthy.

Here are the books and documentaries we discuss in this first half:

-- Nicholas von Hoffman, Citizen Cohn: The Life and Times of Roy Cohn (1988)

-- Ivy Meeropol (dir.), Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn (2019)

-- Matt Tyrnauer (dir.), Where's My Roy Cohn? (2019)

-- Christopher M. Elias, Gossip Men: J. Edgar Hoover, Joe McCarthy, Roy Cohn, and the Politics of Insinuation (2021)

-- Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet (1990)

Episode 70 -- Project 1933, Part II: March 15 to April 15 Apr 17, 2025

Show notes

For this episode of In Bed with the Right, Adrian and Moira return to the year 1933. They continue the story of how Hitler seized power, what it did to society, what it felt like to live through it, and -- as always -- what role gender and sexuality played in events. Reminder: We're going month by month for these episodes. This second installment covers March 15 to April 15.

Episode 68 -- Republican Makeup with Jessica DeFino Apr 08, 2025

Show notes

When it comes to the protagonists of MAGA world, they -- like Roxette circa 1990 -- have THE LOOK. You know the one: hair that rises and crests like a mountain range, lips that are strangely beige and eyes that really show off how dead the person is on the inside. How did this style come to define the modern conservative aesthetic? What are its influences? What are its messages? Jessica DeFino (of The Review of Beauty fame) stops by In Bed with the Right to help Moira and a very lost Adrian make some sense of these and other questions.

Episode 67 -- Project 1933, Part I: January to March 15 Apr 01, 2025

Show notes

Germany 1933 is having a bit of a moment. Which made us at In Bed with the Right decide to explore that year in detail. In this series, Adrian and Moira tell the story of how Hitler seized power, what it did to society, what it felt like to live through it, and -- as always -- what role gender and sexuality played in events. We will be going month by month for these episodes, but this first installment cheats a little bit and covers January 1 to March 15.

Episode 65 -- "So Long, Pamela Paul" with Michael Hobbes and Peter Shamshiri Mar 25, 2025

Show notes

Michael Hobbes and Peter Shamshiri of If Books Could Kill visit In Bed with the Right to talk about the life, times and very, very milquetoast opinions of Pamela Paul, who recently departed from her perch as the New York Times columnist Bluesky loves to hate. Paul emblematizes many aspects of public discourse over the last 5-10 years -- from the emergence of "reactionary centrism" to the renewed freakouts over campus speech, from the panic over trans kids to Gen X's drift to the right. Also this one has an airhorn.

Episode 64: Whither the Preachers? With Kristin Kobes Du Mez Mar 18, 2025

Show notes

Moira and Adrian welcome historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez (Jesus and John Wayne) to talk about what happens to conservative "preacher" masculinity in the age of swaggering, crass and often libertine sexuality.

Episode 62: AI Slop and the New Fascist Aesthetic with Roland Meyer Mar 11, 2025

Show notes

Why have our new right-wing overlords taken such a shine to chintzy, shiny AI slop? What is persuasive about these phony, artless, slightly desperate images? How do they originate, and how do they circulate? For this episode, Moira and Adrian are joined by Roland Meyer, who is a professor of digital cultures and arts at the University of Zurich and the University of the Arts in Zurich, Switzerland. If you're trying to picture the kinds of image they're discussing, it might be helpful to check out Roland's huge thread on Bluesky. And if you're trying to follow along with our discussion of specific images, we have collected a bunch of the examples we discuss in the episode here.

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