Podcast
Firewall with Bradley Tusk
Hosted by Firewall · EN
Politics, technology and the pursuit of happiness. Twice a week, Bradley Tusk, New York-based political strategist and venture investor, covers the collision between new ideas and the real world. His operating thesis is that you can't understand tech today without understanding politics, too. Recorded at P&T Knitwear, his bookstore / podcast studio, 180 Orchard Street, New York City.
87episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Is Business Waking Up from Its 30-Year Nap?
Mar 1901:07:32Summary readyOne big reason that the Left has grown so powerful in the city, Bradley argues, is that the Partnership for New York — the group that should have been fighting for centrist, pro-business interests — never showed any inclination to play politics. That could be changing now that Steve Fulop, former three-term mayor of Jersey City, has taken over as the Partnership's CEO Fulop joins Firewall for a spirited debate on what it will take for business to punch its weight in political matters and reinvigorate the pro-growth agenda.Discussed on today's episode:What Steve Fulop Needs to do to Make the Partnership for New York City Relevant and Effective Again by Bradley Tusk, November 5, 2025This episode was taped at P&T Knitwear at 180 Orchard Street — New York City’s only free podcast recording studio.Send us an email with your thoughts on today’s episode: info@firewall.media.Subscribe to Bradley's weekly newsletter and follow Bradley on Linkedin + Substack + YouTube.
SummaryAm I Too Hard On The Left?
Mar 1700:43:35Summary readyProgressives make life hard on the rest of us, Bradley argues, by claiming to champion the poorest Americans while supporting policies that reflect their own biases and selfishness. But his ultimate conclusion is that far-left behavior, for all its flaws, is fundamentally and recognizably human — driven by a mix of self-interest, genuine idealism and the universal desire to belong to something meaningful.This episode was taped at P&T Knitwear at 180 Orchard Street — New York City’s only free podcast recording studio.Send us an email with your thoughts on today’s episode: info@firewall.media.Subscribe to Bradley's weekly newsletter and follow Bradley on Linkedin + Substack + YouTube.
SummaryThe Art of the Sneak Attack
Mar 1200:53:57Summary readyEven when your issue won't win votes, there are ways to make your political opponents pay. Bradley sits down with his friend and partner, Tusk Strategies CEO Chris Coffey, to break down how the firm helped a climate group go after Rep. Chip Roy in a Texas Republican primary. Running ads on Truth Social and Rumble, they attacked him for not being MAGA enough — a strategy that produced a roughly 20-point swing and forced him into a runoff without mentioning climate change once. Bradley and Chris also dig into New York City's budget crisis, the upcoming 2026 congressional primaries in New York, and what it will take for Mayor Mamdani to succeed in a job that demands pragmatism over purity.This episode was taped at P&T Knitwear at 180 Orchard Street — New York City’s only free podcast recording studio.Send us an email with your thoughts on today’s episode: info@firewall.media.Subscribe to Bradley's weekly newsletter and follow Bradley on Linkedin + Substack + YouTube.
SummaryThe Plague of Zero-Sum People
Mar 1000:44:23Summary readyWhy do a small minority of selfish, fear-mongering people wield so much power over the rest of us? Bradley argues that most of us want essentially the same things: meaningful work, healthy families, a little fun, and some peace. The problem isn't human nature — it's broken systems that reward the loudest and most divisive voice. He also weighs in on whether Trump's instincts are well suited to the Middle East, why the AI companies fundamentally misread their political situation, and what makes Los Angeles his ideal "composite city."This episode was taped at P&T Knitwear at 180 Orchard Street — New York City’s only free podcast recording studio.Send us an email with your thoughts on today’s episode: info@firewall.media.Subscribe to Bradley's weekly newsletter and follow Bradley on Linkedin + Substack + YouTube.
SummaryMan with a Scan
Mar 500:34:39Summary readyDoes fixing America's $5 trillion healthcare crisis start with taking a single picture? Bradley sits down with Andrew Lacy, founder and CEO of Prenuvo, to explore how full-body MRI scans are shifting healthcare from reactive to proactive — and why that shift could be the most important change in medicine today. They discuss Lacy's 80/20 approach to personal longevity (sleep first, everything else follows), his vision of patient-driven healthcare spending and why AI promises to make world-class diagnostics accessible to everyone.Firewall listeners can go to prenuvo.com/firewall to get $300 off a scan from Prenuvo.This episode was taped at P&T Knitwear at 180 Orchard Street — New York City’s only free podcast recording studio.Send us an email with your thoughts on today’s episode: info@firewall.media.Subscribe to Bradley's weekly newsletter and follow Bradley on Linkedin + Substack + YouTube.
SummaryAnthropic Loses the Battle
Mar 200:59:02Summary readyBut in taking a principled stand against the Pentagon and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, it will gain valuable trust with customers, argues Bradley, and that means winning the war. Plus: Jack Dorsey's 4,000-person layoff at Block is a sign of things to come as AI efficiency tools displace white-collar workers — and nobody has a real plan for what comes next; why the addiction claims being made in the lawsuit against Meta are "1,000 percent accurate" but that doesn't mean it's illegal; is Mayor Mamdani governing as a pragmatic big-city leader or showing his progressive stripes; a Chuck Klosterman theory about political movements that Bradley mostly finds fault with; and the case for cautious optimism about the Mets pitching staff.This episode was taped at P&T Knitwear at 180 Orchard Street — New York City’s only free podcast recording studio.Send us an email with your thoughts on today’s episode: info@firewall.media.Subscribe to Bradley's weekly newsletter and follow Bradley on Linkedin + Substack + YouTube.
SummaryWhere Education Matters Most
Feb 2600:41:17Summary readyEarly childhood education has quietly become one of the most successful — and bipartisan — reform movements in the country. Elliot Regenstein, author of Readiness: Preparing State Early Childhood Systems for a Brighter Future, sits down with Bradley to explain how it's working. They dig into why the system is more adaptable than K-12 or higher ed, which states are leading the way, and what the Trump administration's push to dismantle the Department of Education could mean for the most vulnerable kids.This episode was taped at P&T Knitwear at 180 Orchard Street — New York City’s only free podcast recording studio.Send us an email with your thoughts on today’s episode: info@firewall.media.Subscribe to Bradley's weekly newsletter and follow Bradley on Linkedin + Substack + YouTube.
SummaryThe Radical Rest
Feb 2401:14:02Summary ready"We don't need purity," says Bradley. "We don't need saviors." The remaking of our institutions starts from the middle, he argues, which has a lot of untapped power against the extremes on both sides. Bradley contends that media, hollowed out by market forces, has ironically become the most adaptive of our broken institutions, while higher education has saddled a generation with $1.83 trillion in debt to prop up a system that puts the needs of administrators over students. And on religion, he sees the collapse in attendance not as a spiritual failing but as a rational response to institutions that serve the clergy over the congregation. This episode was taped at P&T Knitwear at 180 Orchard Street — New York City’s only free podcast recording studio.Send us an email with your thoughts on today’s episode: info@firewall.media.Subscribe to Bradley's weekly newsletter and follow Bradley on Linkedin + Substack + YouTube.
SummaryWhat is a Museum For?
Feb 1800:49:34Summary readyCalling in from Istanbul, Bradley opens with impressions of a historically rich but complicated city — ancient cisterns, street cats, a shady taxi driver, and bomb-proof doors on a synagogue. Earlier, when he was in Madrid, Bradley took Abby to visit the Prado and the Thyssen, which got him thinking about the uncomfortable economics of museums: tens of billions in art, much of it in storage, underwriting tax breaks for wealthy donors while hungry people go unfed. How should we address these issues? The conversation turns to Marco Rubio's speech at the Munich Security Conference, which Bradley reads as an early audition for 2028, contrasting Rubio's smooth "I'm my own person" approach with Vance's unconvincing Trump imitation. On whether Americans are actually angry at Europe, he is skeptical — ordinary people on both sides seem to like each other fine, he says, and manufactured grievance is just what demagogues do.This episode was taped at P&T Knitwear at 180 Orchard Street — New York City’s only free podcast recording studio.Send us an email with your thoughts on today’s episode: info@firewall.media.Be sure to watch Bradley’s TED Talk on Mobile Voting at https://go.ted.com/bradleytusk.Subscribe to Bradley's weekly newsletter and follow Bradley on Linkedin + Substack + YouTube.
SummaryA Bold Prediction About Prediction Markets
Feb 1200:42:43Summary readyWhy are the biggest names in venture betting big on prediction markets? Aaron Miller, principal at Will Ventures, joins Bradley to talk about the evolution of platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket into a new kind of financial exchange and societal "source of truth." They dig into the states-versus-federal regulatory battle, the surge in American gambling behavior, and then turn to the messy restructuring of college sports. Do our old ideas about it make sense anymore?This episode was taped at P&T Knitwear at 180 Orchard Street — New York City’s only free podcast recording studio.Send us an email with your thoughts on today’s episode: info@firewall.media.Be sure to watch Bradley’s TED Talk on Mobile Voting at https://go.ted.com/bradleytusk.Subscribe to Bradley's weekly newsletter and follow Bradley on Linkedin + Substack + YouTube.
Summary