In Bed With The Right

For this episode, you can lean on us, and you can afford the ticket, because we're heading back to Suffragette City! Moira walks a stupefied Adrian through the story of jiu-jitsu's surprising popularity in the West in the Edwardian era, and how eventually suffragettes used it to kick absolute ass. (If you'd like to see some of the images of suffragettes kicking absolute ass discussed in the episode, we've collected them here.)

This week on In Bed with the Right, we're 19th-Centurymaxxing again! Moira takes Adrian on a wild ride through the origins and strange early history of bodybuilding. This one has everything: Eugenics! Swolitude! Prussians! World Fairs! Gymnastics!

In honor of spooky season, Moira and Adrian once again did homework assigned by the podcast's Patreon-supporters, analyzing two two classic horror films and what they say about gender, sexuality and gender conservatism in their era. This year's Patreon picks were 1987's The Lost Boys and 1996's Scream. These two actually have a lot in common: central California! The youths! A prohibition of female sexuality subverted! The long 1980s! Come for the House Hunters view of Woodsboro real estate, stay for the serial killer history of Santa Cruz, CA!
ONE NOTE: Adrian misspoke in the episode and identified Woodsboro in Scream with Santa Rosa, CA, but it was of course filmed in Sonoma, CA (with one house in Healdsburg thrown in). Apologies to the true Wine Country Heads out there!

On October 25, 2026 Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defeated Flavio Bolsonaro in the second round of Brazil's presidential election after trailing his opponent in the first round. In this episode, political philosopher Rodrigo Nunes (whose recent book Anatomy of Disintegration uses Bolsonarismo as a lens to analyze the international far right) helps Moira and Adrian understand the election results and in particular Lula's come-from-behind win. The episode explores the origins of Bolsonarismo, the gender dynamics that helped it break through, and its likely future.

"Tolkien is turning in his grave", Elon Musk tweeted on September 5, 2022 having watched (i.e. not watched) the first episode of Amazon's new series The Rings of Power. Whether it's a new Galadriel-centered TV-show, the Peter Jackson trilogies or just people writing fantasy a little differently: right wingers are very happy to claim J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) as their own, their own reactionary impulses as fealty to his legacy, and his magnum opus, The Lord of the Rings (1954) as a source of right wing shibboleths. As guest Michael Lutz (part of the Ranged Touch network of podcasts) explains, that view manages to be both not entirely inaccurate and somehow completely misguided. Moira and Adrian ask Michael: What role does Tolkien's Middle Earth play in nurturing reactionary impulses within sci-fi/fantasy fandom? (If you'd like to hear more of Michael's analysis of The Lord of the Rings, head over to Shelved by Genre, where Michael, Cameron Kunzelman, and Austin Walker read their way through all of Tolkien!)