Shows / Firewall with Bradley Tusk
Firewall with Bradley Tusk
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.
Episodes
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
Man with a Scan
Does 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…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
Anthropic Loses the Battle
But 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…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
Where Education Matters Most
Early childhood education has quietly become one of the most successful — and bipartisan — reform movements in the country. Elliot Regenstein, author of…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
The Radical Rest
"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…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
What is a Museum For?
Calling in from Istanbul, Bradley opens with impressions of a historically rich but complicated city — ancient cisterns, street cats, a shady taxi driver, and…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
A Bold Prediction About Prediction Markets
Why 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…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
I Want to Give Up All the Time
Everybody fails, doubts themselves and encounters unexpected obstacles on the path to whatever they're trying to achieve. But the choice to keep going in the…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
The Gen Z State of Mind: "We're Just Trying to Survive"
What happens when an entire generation grows up with nothing but chaos, only to encounter an AI revolution that makes practically every career look iffy?…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
Who Knew AI Was This Terrible at Math?
What do you get when you ask five AI platforms to crunch some numbers and help solve an investment decision for you? A shocking array of basic errors, faulty…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
Live from P&T Knitwear: Of Platforms and Politics
In the 1990s, we were promised that the internet was going to decentralize wealth and power. How did we end up with what feels like the exact opposite of that?…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
How to Stand Up to a Bully
Canada can never fix the asymmetry of its relationship with the US, but as Prime Minister Mark Carney showed last week in Davos, there’s much to be gained from…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
Herding Bots
Are AI workers easier to manage than humans? Bradley sits down with Evan Ratliff, creator of the award-winning podcast series, Shell Game, to talk about the…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
The Manchurian Economy
If you were conspiring to weaken America over the long haul, wouldn’t you start by corroding the institutions that make the U.S. economy uniquely powerful?…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
Live from P&T: A Boyhood Dream Comes True
What do you learn from three decades of working the late shift on sports radio? Steve Somers, the beloved Shmoozer on WFAN and author of a new memoir Me Here…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
The Power Grab
What will trigger the fiercest backlash to the AI boom? Rather than job losses or generative-AI weirdness, says Bradley, it'll be data centers and their…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
How to Not Waste the Healthcare Crisis
Did you know that life expectancy in Brownsville is 11 years shorter than on the Upper East Side? Dr. Ashwin Vasan, former city health commissioner, joins…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
A Weird Thing About Happiness
The more we chase it, the more it slips away. For the first episode of 2026, Bradley explores the hard choices that lead to contentment over the long run…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
Bradley Goes Rogan...
...Well, not quite. But for this year-capping episode, Bradley came armed with a list of 50 big questions to discuss with his friend Alexander Kouts, the…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
The Prosperity Riddle
Daniel Wortel-London, author of The Menace of Prosperity: New York City and the Struggle for Economic Development, 1865–1981, joins Bradley to unpack a century…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
What Was the Weirdest Book You Thoroughly Loved?
For Bradley, it was Blob: A Love Story by Maggie Su. In this episode, he reviews his favorites among the 96 books that he read this year, including the…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
The New Rules of Power in New York
What does Zohran Mamdani’s upset victory look like now that the memes have faded? Drawing on the months of reporting he did for The New Yorker, Staff Writer…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
Forecast: Tech and Politics in 2026
Bradley makes 12 bold predictions about next year, focusing on the tidal wave of AI regulation hitting state legislatures, why electricity prices will soar and…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
What the Hell is a Skillbatical?
What happens when you walk away from a hyper-optimized New York life to immerse yourself in learning one thing? Ravi Gupta explains why he moved to Italy to…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
How the Middle Fell Out of Venture Capital
In venture these days, it pays to be small and scrappy or huge and swimming in fees. Anywhere in between is a hard slog. Bradley walks through the changing VC…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
Taking on the Entrenched
What does it take to unseat a 20-year incumbent? Raj Goyle — fresh off his successful campaign to ban smartphones in New York schools — returns to Firewall to…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
The Superpower of Being Regular
Governor Kathy Hochul’s real edge isn’t charisma or disruption, says Bradley, but a deeply “regular” superpower - backing things like universal school meals…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
Dare to Be Reasonable
Bradley talks to Oliver Libby — venture investor, civic reform advocate, and co-founder of The Resolution Project — about his new book Strong Floor, No…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
A Massive Week for Mobile Voting
While the Mobile Voting Project posted its open-source code to GitHub, where it is available for any jurisdiction to use, the New York Times ran a front-page…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
Betting on New Yorkers: The David Prize
Bradley sits down with two Erikas — Erika Augustine, who runs The David Prize, and Erika Sasson, a winner of said prize — about why $200K, no-strings grants…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
Chuck Schumer Gets It Right
We've grown numb to politicians gaming out everything. But when Senate Democrats chose to end the shutdown, says Bradley, they chose the concerns of real…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
The Mamdani Mayoralty: A Six Part Mini-Magazine On What Comes Next
In this special non-guest Thursday episode, Bradley walks us through his first-ever magazine for Substack: six articles where he analyzes the future Mamdani…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
The Mamdani Breakdown
So what happened last night? In this co-production with Firewall friend Jamie Rubin and his After Hours podcast, Bradley, Jamie, and Chris Coffey (Tusk…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
LIVE FROM P&T: A Visit from an Actual God of New York
In this bonus episode of Firewall, Rev. Al Sharpton, a major figure in Jonathan Mahler's book The Gods of New York: Egotists, Idealists, Opportunists, and the…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
A Brand New Day for Jews
Archie Gottesman traces her path from the comic genius behind Manhattan Mini Storage to JewBelong, where she’s trying to make Judaism feel human, welcoming…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
The Show Must NOT Go On
Not until Democrats finally stop performing politics, says Bradley, will they be able to beat Trump. In a blistering set of takes, he adds: “No Kings”–style…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
The Best Reason for New Yorkers to Vote This Year
Five charter revisions on this year’s ballot could make the city more affordable and make affordable housing more plentiful. Bradley sits down with Alec…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
How Much Would You Bet on This TV Show?
It was right in the middle of a Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation session that Bradley had a brainstorm — an idea for a TV drama built around a conniving New…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
LIVE FROM P&T: Growing Up Russ & Daughters
What goes together better than smoked fish and good books? Russ & Daughters, beloved for its lox, herring, bagels and babka, is not only one of the truly great…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
Is Chicago About to Catch Fire?
Bradley gets a Windy City on-the-ground report from friend and colleague Bob Greenlee, which leads to a bleak read on national politics: even if Democrats gain…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
We've Seen This Terrible Movie Before
Matt Stoller, author of the Substack newsletter BIG, joins Bradley to dig into how the rise of AI mirrors the early internet—when regulators failed to check…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
Should You Do Your Own Thing?
The upside of being your own boss is pretty clear, says Bradley, it's your tolerance for the downside that really is the deciding factor. He offers an 8-point…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
Has New York Lost Its Gods?
Jonathan Mahler’s The Gods of New York is a brilliant chronicle of the late 1980s, when a rotating cast of outrageous characters — Trump, Koch, Sharpton, among…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
The Mayor's Endgame
Not much will change with Eric Adams' withdrawal from the New York City mayor's race, but it is a good moment to reflect on how we reached this point. Zohran…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
The Second Tour of Duty
Randy Mastro, who served as Chief of Staff and Deputy Mayor for Operations under Mayor Giuliani, talks to Bradley about his return to City Hall this year as…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
To Blow Up the World ...
...or not to blow up the world, that is the question. Taking off from Kathryn Bigelow new movie A House of Dynamite, Bradley goes down the list of the last 10…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
A Whole New Way to Get Around
When Danny Kim was nearly crushed by the 4,000-pound chassis of a truck he was working on, he had an epiphany. What if he could make an entirely new kind of…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
See Where We Are
The killing of Charlie Kirk has kicked the forces of political polarization into high gear. But it’s worth taking a step back, says Bradley, to consider the…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
How to Invest in Your Own Taste
Jenny Montgomery is a New Yorker on a mission — scouring galleries for art she loves and can afford to buy. Bradley talks to her about the city's art scene…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
The De-Euphemizing of DC
Now that Trump has decided to restore the throwback name of the Department of Defense (now the Department of War), maybe it's time we started calling all…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
How to Find a Rock Star
Here's one thing we know about the Democratic Party right now — they are practically in a death spiral and must do something heroic to have any shot at the…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
A Restaurant That Does Everything Right
What if you could eat at a place where the food was fresh and healthy, prices were geared to what customers could afford and the staff was treated equitably?…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
Shocking News
While all of you were enjoying a Firewall-free week, Bradley was undergoing Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, a therapy designed to mitigate…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
Let's Just Talk About Tennis
Two friends decided to turn their shared passion for tennis and food into — well, they don’t know what it could become, but for now it’s a Substack called The…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
A Tech Vision for Mamdani
If Zohran Mamdani stands any chance of succeeding on his social agenda, he'll need a strong economy. Bradley hand-picks the policies and ideas that the likely…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
The Freaky 90s
What happens when a drugged-out visionary, a few brilliant businessmen and a generation of alt-rock misfits hit the road together? Tom Beaujour — co-author of…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
A Contrarian Brief for Law School
Though he went to law school himself, Bradley used to tell people it was a waste of time and money for anyone who wasn't dead set on practicing law. Now, with…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
Crypto Has Come in From the Cold
Bradley talks with Eric Soufer, partner at Tusk Strategies and head of their advanced technology & crypto practice, about the dramatic shift in the regulatory…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
Are We Self-Destructing?
As an American Jew raised in a household of Holocaust survivors, Bradley has always been unwavering in his support for Israel. But what once felt morally clear…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
Well-Meaning Warriors for the Status Quo
Why and how did progressives give up on actually building a better society? Marc Dunkelman, author of Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress — and How to Bring…
- Firewall with Bradley Tusk
The Provocateur
Why did a Sequoia partner in faraway Silicon Valley feel the need to troll the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor? Bradley breaks down the power…