Walk-Ins Welcome with Bridget Phetasy

Ryan Long, comedian and filmmaker, connects with Bridget from New York and they discuss his move from Canada five months before the pandemic hit, why NYC is a sadboy town, the challenges of being a self-starter and your own boss, the outrage economy, why good editors are so hard to find, and why Canada is dead to him. In the middle of their conversation Bridget receives breaking news of the lockdo...

Adrienne Iapalucci is a stand-up comic, podcast host, and Bridget’s “spirit human.” She and Bridget discuss how their dysfunctional childhoods are probably what led them to stand-up in the first place and what keeps them grinding long after most normal people would quit. They talk addiction, the stand-up scene in NYC vs LA, their shared belief that things will always get worse, and why they both d...

W. Keith Campbell is a nationally recognized expert on narcissism, society and generational change. He and Bridget discuss social media and narcissism, whether everyone with a big platform is inherently a narcissist, why Keith thinks Kylie Jenner is a genius, how technology always leads to status inversions where the wisdom of age gets crushed by youth’s expertise in tech, and why narcissism is es...

Harleen Kaur is a former NASA space engineer and current CEO and founder of Ground News, the world’s first news comparison platform. Ground News aggregates news stories from around the world, shows you how they are being covered by different media outlets, and helps you identify the media bias on the different coverage. Harleen founded the company to solve a problem she herself had, when it came t...

Johann Hari (Chasing the Scream, Lost Connections) sits down with Bridget to discuss the rise in depression, anxiety and addiction in society, particularly during Covid, and what that means about their underlying causes. Through extensive traveling and research for his books, Johann has explored the idea that the roots of all three are not just biological, but also psychological and social, and th...

Desi-Rae is a sociopolitical commentator, crypto enthusiast, and artist who started her talk show Just Thinking Out Loud, after she realized she felt conflicted about honestly speaking her mind. Originally from Jamaica, she offers her perspective on US politics, how you used to be able to disagree with someone and still be friends with them, why she hates identity politics, and how people were alw...

Tori Perrotti, aka “Target Tori,” talks with Bridget about her experience going viral, cyber-bullying, cancel culture, and the amazing positive support she received that inspired her to found the Pause. Be Kind platform. They discuss what they’ve each learned in the service industry, being an only child vs. the oldest of five, trade stories about being bullied in high school and how those experien...

Cydnee Black uploaded her first makeup tutorial to YouTube in 2013, at that time, she was one of the few African Americans doing makeup tutorials. She now has over 1 million subscribers and is considered an “influencer” even though she despises that term. She has since transitioned into researching moments in history that interest her and creating informational videos about topics such as the Clar...

Corey DeAngelis is the director of School Choice at Reason Foundation and the Executive Director at Educational Freedom Institute. Corey and Bridget discuss school choice, which would mean allowing a tax payer’s education dollars to follow their child to wherever they’re getting their education – public school, private school, or charter school – rather than automatically being paid to their local...

Doug Schoen (author & campaign consultant) drops in to discuss his most recent book The End of Democracy?: Russia and China on the Rise, America in Retreat. He and Bridget have a frank conversation about the fact that we are so divided in this country we are failing to pay attention to the larger threats of Russian and Chinese influence in the world. They cover how a lack of common purpose and...

Karol Markowicz (New York Post, Spectator USA, Time) and Bridget discuss the effect of the pandemic in NYC, how nobody in California seems to be able to connect policies they hate and the people they’re voting for, why large portions of immigrant communities love Trump, looking back and seeing their own blindspots going into 2016, and the best and worst case scenarios for how the 2020 election mig...

Bridget & Maggie reminisce about 100 episodes of Walk-Ins Welcome. What they love, what they’ve learned, favorite episodes, and they marvel at their unprecedented consistency. They explore Bridget’s gift of gab and her genuine love for talking to people (inherited from their grandmother), discuss the need for a Hero’s Journey and how lost we can become without one, and plan for the future and...

David French (The Dispatch, Time) stops in to talk about his latest book Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation. He and Bridget cover how he sources his news, the liberation of shedding the partisan mindset and meeting in the wasteland of the center, the rise of journavism, being expelled from your tribe, taking precautions against being “swatted” by online troll...

Colin Quinn (stand-up comic, actor, writer, Saturday Night Live alum) stops in to talk about his book Overstated – A Coast-to-Coast Roast of All 50 States, and he and Bridget manage to cover, the election, why Bridget should be a criminal profiler and write a book about U-Haul rentals, Colin’s plans for modern-day Constitutional Conventions, the fact that everybody’s crazy now and nobody seems to...

Felecia Killings is the founder and visionary of the Conscious Conservative Movement which wants to empower people who are looking to expand the authentic conservative space, and to go back to the principles of conservatism and spiritual understanding. She and Bridget delve into the complex topic of Black Conservatism, what it looks like today, why Felecia was primarily getting attacked by black c...

In some sense the United States was an innovation, a bold experiment that turned into a spectacular success. According to Bret Weinstein, this success is proof of concept, and the system devised has been wildly successful at producing well-being, though unfairly distributed to certain population groups. The solution is not to un-invent the system, it’s to figure out how to correct the unfairness....

Katie Herzog (podcast host Blocked and Reported) and Bridget have a hilarious conversation that covers everything from Katie’s multiple drunken bicycle accidents, to Bridget’s being put on male-restriction when she was in rehab for heroin. They talk addiction, alcoholism, their first exposure to gender pronouns, teaching yoga in Sri Lanka, The Babes of NPR, and how your darkest moments can lead to...

Ben Shapiro (editor-in-chief for The Daily Wire, host of The Ben Shapiro Show) and Bridget discuss going viral for stupid reasons, how Republicans don’t fight on a cultural level and Democrats do, their impressions of Hamilton, why the book White Fragility is biggest load of horsesh*t in the history of the world, why you should never cross Beyoncé fans, and what led him to write his latest book Ho...

Buck Angel is a 58 year-old trans man who is speaking out against the mob mentality that has taken over the trans community. He and Bridget discuss his life before his transition, how he was essentially a human “guinea pig” in the early days of his transition, the long road and struggle for acceptance, and how the trans movement of today has developed something of a “cult-like” ideology where if y...

Allie Beth Stuckey stops in to talk about her book, You’re Not Enough (& That’s Okay) – Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love. She and Bridget have a frank conversation about God, Christianity, and why she believes that the idea you have to love yourself in order to love other people is a fallacy infecting people’s minds. They discuss the tough road through college, the partying, the unhealt...

Joe List, standup comedian and podcast host, stops by for a chat about what he loves about podcasts, how Bruce Springsteen played a role in shaping his life, and the fact that he chose to go into standup because all the adults around him when he was a kid seemed extremely unhappy about their jobs, so he decided not to have one. He and Bridget cover imposter syndrome, hypochondria, anxiety, and the...

John Wood Jr. comes by to talk about Braver Angels, the largest grassroots bipartisan organization in America, focused on the work of political de-polarization. Along the way he and Bridget have a fascinating conversation about his experience being raised by a mother who’s a liberal black Democrat from inner city LA and father who’s a conservative white Republican from Tennessee, and how his white...

Yascha Mounk is the founder of Persuasion, an online community and publication for people who believe in the importance of the social practice of persuasion, and are determined to defend free speech and free inquiry against all its enemies. They seek to persuade people who disagree with them, rather than to mock or troll them. He and Bridget discuss the rise of the populism, why status anxiety is...

Thomas Chatterton Williams (Losing My Cool, Self-Portrait In Black and White) talks with Bridget from France and discusses the view of America from another country, the European response to Covid-19 vs. the US’s, and why the Unites States plays a central role in the imagination of the whole world. Thomas explains how he wound up “accidentally” writing a memoir about the difference between the blac...

Chloé Valdary (The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic) returns to discuss her new course Theory of Enchantment an innovative social-emotional, learning course that teaches character development, resilience and love. Her background in international diplomacy and conflict resolution led her to want to create a framework that teaches people how to love each other. The aspirational...