Walk-Ins Welcome with Bridget Phetasy

Kate Compton Barr, a North Carolina state senate candidate, deliberately ran a campaign she knew wouldn't win to highlight gerrymandering issues. She and Bridget discuss how politicians strategically redraw voting districts to maintain power, techniques like "packing" and "cracking," and why it’s one of the most extreme problems facing our country right now. They cover her...

Accidental urban warfare expert, John Spencer, joins Bridget for a discussion about navigating the concrete jungle of modern combat. He shares his evolution from a 25-year active duty service member, to analyzing hypothetical US military operations in mega-cities, teaching strategy and tactics at West Point, to finally setting up a research center called the Modern War Institute, and becoming an u...

Brooke Urick, author of Wink, Wink, Nudge, Nudge: Sexual Exploits and Secrets from Inside a Sugar Daddy Website , joins Bridget to discuss the seductive lies of sugar daddy websites, the murky world of "soft prostitution," and how these platforms prey on young women. They cover the long term repercussions of being on OnlyFans, what porn and online gambling are doing to young men, pushing...

Sarah Rose Siskind returns to Walk-Ins Welcome for a fascinating chat about AI, exploring its strengths, quirks, and why it sparks insecurity in so many. She and Bridget unpack humanity’s love-hate dance with robots, wrestling with the paradox at its core: Will robots become too human? Why aren’t they human enough? They dive into AI’s struggle to nail comedy (despite being a comedian’s secret weap...

Coleman Hughes returns to the podcast for a wide ranging conversation with Bridget about his new teaching position at University of Austin, their mission to rescue free speech from the clutches of woke academia, what a healthy version of DEI might look like, and the course he's teaching about the legacy of slavery and what aspects of American society today are part of the long-term consequenc...

Editor at Large of Reason magazine, Nick Gillespie returns to the podcast discuss the current state of libertarianism, why he feels it’s moving into a revival, Trump’s tariff tantrums, what’s wrong with the deportations, the problem with Europe, pondering how California lost Hollywood and Silicon Valley and what it will take to recover, and whether or not bitcoin can fix money. He and Bridget cove...

Bridget sits down with Meghan McCain to discuss her new show Meghan McCain’s Happy Hour with 2Way, which provides live feedback from the audience and keeps her in touch with what the normies are actually worrying about. They address concerns that popular independent podcasters have been co-opted by the right wing, mirroring the way left wing media has historically been influenced. They also cover...

Bridget sits down with Lisa Selin Davis, author of Tomboy, who confesses to soft-pedaling some truths about the trans movement and activism in that book. Now, she’s working on a new project, unraveling the threads she was nudged to ignore and diving headfirst into the hot-button issues she was once told to dodge. They discuss the youth gender culture war, the absurdity of automatically labeling a...

Bridget sits down with Conn Carroll, author of Sex and the Citizen: How the Assault on Marriage Is Destroying Democracy , for a discussion about the history and purpose of marriage, why it's a fundamental part of what makes us human, monogamy vs. polygamy, how dating apps turn certain men into digital sultans, and how the decline of "I do" threatens everything from fertility rates t...

Fellow brunch hater, Mary Katherine Ham, returns to discuss Trump’s win on the heels of debating whether or not she and Bridget would vote for him in the lead up to the election, and their respective “Awww, f*ck it” last minute decisions. They cover the true nature of RFK Jr.’s influence in swinging votes for Trump, why COVID lockdowns and policies were the last straw for many people, red-pilled y...

James Lindsay returns to the podcast for a fascinating conversation about the “woke right” which is essentially a resurrected version of the alt-right with a hipster twist. He and Bridget discuss the consequences of academia’s grievance culture spilling into society and the resulting self-censorship, how people felt freed by Trump’s election in realizing they weren’t alone, what to do when the mob...

Buckle up for a wild ride through the digital apocalypse with Katherine Dee, where influencers are dying, AI’s churning out slop, and Substack’s the artisanal Etsy of writing in a world drowning in fluff. From the collapse of legacy media to TikTok as "digital fentanyl," she’s got the scoop on how we’re all losing our humanity to screens—yet craving real connection so bad we’re anthropom...

Professional poker player, physicist, and general badass, Liv Boeree, sits down with Bridget for a fascinating conversation about the mind games of poker, where intuition meets math, how game theory shapes everything from philanthropy to AI ethics, and the paradoxes of AI consciousness. They discuss being pathologically competitive, beating the boys at their own games, how everyone’s an egalitaria...

Bridget sits down with Curtis Yarvin, political theorist and writer formerly known as Mencius Moldbug. They discuss the road that brought Curtis to this point, his debate with Ilya Shapiro, whether capitalism requires democracy, whether oligarchs are more concerned with the outcomes of power rather then power itself, the Arab Spring, debating “isms”, why he believes the most peaceful and stable fo...

Bridget sits down with Jared Klickstein, author of Crooked Smile , to discuss the gritty realities of addiction, homelessness, and the policy failures that have turned them into epidemics. They cover Jared's personal story, being raised by heroin addicts, his own struggle with addiction, surviving a decade on Skid Row, and how he got clean. They dissect the progressive policies that caused ad...

Dive into a whirlwind conversation where Michael Malice and Bridget dissect everything from the dark art of comedy to the cultural chaos of California, all while roasting each other with the finesse of seasoned stand-ups. From diabolical childhood antics to the current political landscape, they cover it all, including anarchy, Gavin Newsom with a sword, and a whole lot of potatoes. They discuss Ma...

Bridget and Matt McDonald, managing editor at The Spectator magazine, dive into the bizarre story of Elon's alleged alt account, the story that revealed the truth, the subsequent censoring of the story on X and the suspension of the journalist's account. They also cover the chaotic world of modern journalism and social media, why the destruction of local journalism is bad for everyone, t...

Spencer Klavan sits down with Bridget to discuss his new book, Light of the Mind, Light of the World: Illuminating Science Through Faith. They talk about faith, science, nihilism, depression, personal growth, the false dichotomy between scientific rationality and religious belief, the fact that many great scientists were theists, and that the modern conflict between science and religion is outdate...

Original Air Date - 9/21/23 Paula Scanlan, former University of Pennsylvania swimmer and team member with transgender athlete Lia Thomas, sits down with Bridget to discuss her experience on the team, her decision to speak up about the controversial issue, and ultimately testifying before Congress. She and Bridget talk about how the university tried to silence the athletes, being unable to express...

This episode was originally published 2/29/24 Abigail Shrier returns to talk about her latest book Bad Therapy: Why The Kids Aren't Growing Up . She and Bridget discuss what led her to write the book, her initial premise, how it changed along the way, why kids today seem to be in a lot of psychological pain, the potential harms of too much therapy, the overuse of the word trauma, how talking...

Bridget sits down with Drea de Matteo, star of The Sopranos, to discuss her personal and political evolution, their mutual gratitude for being part of Gen X, how Drea never intended to become a political activist, how COVID and the lockdowns influenced her thinking and led her to start questioning her preconceptions about the Left and the Right, why it took her until the very last moment to come o...

Bridget sits down with Patrick Ruffini, a Republican pollster and author of Party of the People: Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP . The book explores the transformative political landscape of recent American elections, challenging previous narratives about the Republican Party's demographics and highlighting a significant multi-racial shift in voter preferences, part...

Kara Dansky, a feminist, activist, and author of The Reckoning: How the Democrats and the Left Betrayed Women and Girls , sits down with Bridget to discuss her critique of gender identity politics and its impact on women's rights. Kara argues that the Democratic Party and left-wing activists have betrayed women by embracing gender identity ideology, which she sees as fundamentally misogynisti...

Original Air Date - April 11, 2024 In honor of Tulsi Gabbard's nomination for Director of National Intelligence, we're re-airing her April interview. 4-Term Congresswoman, U.S. Army veteran, and 2020 presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard sits down with Bridget to talk about her new book, For Love of Country: Leave The Democrat Party Behind. She and Bridget discuss making people on both si...

Bridget sits down with radio talk-show host and author, Dana Loesch, for a conversation about growing up Gen X, the freedoms they had that kids don’t have anymore, the role of technology in the development of the nanny state, what the constant ability to check on your kids does to parents, whether we’re training our kids to have no expectation of privacy from a young age, and how Gen Z are already...