In Bed With The Right

Episode 127 -- Bari Weiss, Part 2

In the second half of our two-part series on one of In Bed with the Right's bêtes noires, Adrian and Moira chart the resistible rise of Bari Weiss's from her time on the canceled-person circuit to the pinnacle of American news media. Topics covered: the rise of the Free Press and the decline of the free press; how a certain kind of Silicon Valley creep fell in love with what Bari was selling; how she rode the "vibe shift" among tech elites to maximum profit; and why the Trump-era may well prove her undoing. Some of our sources for this episode: On Bari's reign of terror at CBS: Clare Malone, "Inside Bari Weiss's Hostile Takeover of CBS [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/01/26/inside-bari-weisss-hostile-takeover-of-cbs-news]" Radley Balko's takedown of the Free Press piece about George Floyd: "The Retconning of George Floyd [https://radleybalko.substack.com/p/the-retconning-of-george-floyd]" If you read German, and want to know more about the tech elite's "vibe shift" around 2020, you can check out Adrian's new book [https://www.amazon.de/Was-Valley-herrschen-nennt-suhrkamp/dp/3518128698/]! (Or you can wait until September 10 to get the English version!)

Episode 126 -- Bari Weiss, Part 1

It's the first half of our (possibly? hopefully?) two-part series on In Bed with the Right final boss, Bari Weiss: reactionary centrist extraordinaire, #MeToo backlasher and the woman who parlayed a grifty "cancel culture" Substack into running pretty much 90% of the news you're still allowed to air on TV. This first episode deals with her origin story, up to her high-profile exit from the New York Times. CONTENT NOTE: Yes, we know we're mispronouncing her name. It's really hard to get out of the habit, but we promise promise promise to get better at it before Part 2! We meant (in this one very specific instance) no disrespect.

Episode 124 -- Wuthering Heights

Last week, Adrian and Moira went to the movies and watched director Emerald Fennell's version [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32897959/] of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (trailer here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fLCdIYShEQ]). In this episode they explore the gender politics of the novel, of this adaptation and what it says about the fate of romance fiction in the 2020s. Here are some of the texts we refer to in the discussion or used in preparing for it: Elizabeth Hardwick, "Working Girls: The Brontës [https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1972/05/04/working-girls-the-brontes/]" Georges Bataille, "Literature and Evil [https://archive.org/details/literatureevil0000bata]" Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, "The Madwoman in the Attic [https://archive.org/details/TheMadwomanInTheAttic]"

Episode 123 [PATREON PREVIEW] -- The Botstein Files

One of the men whose presence in the Epstein Files has been making a lot of news [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/09/us/bard-leon-botstein-jeffrey-epstein-relationship.html]is Bard College's forever president Leon Botstein. While there is no suggestion that Botstein participated in any of Epstein's crimes, his relationship with Epstein [https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2026/02/23/bard-opens-investigation-botstein-ties-epstein] was longstanding and close. Revelations about their interactions have brought to the forefront several symptomatic issues about how colleges handle sexual assault, campus anti-rape activists, and their young charges more generally. In this episode, Moira, herself a graduate of Bard (Class of 2012, baby!) walks Adrian through what the Epstein/Botstein friendship can tell us about the last 50 years of anti-feminist politics. Here is a non-exhaustive list of articles we refer to in the episode: -- Botstein's 1999 op-ed "Let Teenagers Try Adulthood" can be found here [https://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/17/opinion/let-teen-agers-try-adulthood.html] -- Botstein's book Jefferson's Children can be found here [https://www.amazon.com/Jeffersons-Children-Education-Promise-American/dp/0385475551] -- Sarah Gerard's Carrie Carolyn Coco: My Friend, Her Murder, and an Obsession with the Unthinkable can be purchased here [https://www.amazon.com/Carrie-Carolyn-Coco-Obsession-Unthinkable-ebook/dp/B0CFGF5TFC/] -- Reporting on the various lawsuits and Title IX investigations against Bard and its president can be found here [https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bard-college-campus-sexual-assault_n_5661c356e4b072e9d1c5d615] (2015 case), here [https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bard-college-under-investigation-title-ix_n_5696d2c1e4b0ce4964233500] (2016 case), here [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/21/arts/music/bard-college-music-student-sues.html] (2020 case), here [https://yaledailynews.com/articles/law-school-clinic-represents-former-bard-professor-in-high-stakes-civil-rights-lawsuit] (2022 case)

Episode 122 -- Tech's Vibe Shift and AI Discourse

A few months ago, as part of the research for his forthcoming book What Tech Calls Governing, Adrian took a drive down Highway 101 from San Francisco to Palo Alto and back. This episode is about what the billboards along that stretch of highway tell us about Silicon Valley, about our tech elites, and about how technology is remaking society (it's not in the way you think). If you'd like to buy Adrian's book, it's available for pre-order in the German edition [https://www.thalia.de/shop/home/artikeldetails/A1077089781] only for now. If you'd like to check out the work of Wendy Liu, whose column that Adrian and Moira refer to in the episode (and who did the drive with Adrian), you can find that here [https://bayareacurrent.com/tag/tech-billboard-decoder/] and here [https://abolishsiliconvalley.com/].