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Firewall with Bradley Tusk

Firewall

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.

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Yesterday · 49 min
"We Warned You"
That's what the framers would say if they popped out of a time machine and saw our politics today, argues John Opdycke. From the start, they cautioned against political parties. Forty-one percent of the country now identifies as independent, yet closed primaries in states like New York lock them out of the elections that actually decide who governs. Opdycke, who runs a group called Open Primaries, talks to Bradley about the effect nonpartisan primaries have had in California, why he's suing to overturn closed primaries in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Oregon, and how the DSA and New York's entrenched party establishment — despite hating each other — both benefit from keeping turnout low. The fight isn't ideological, he and Bradley agree, it's all about power. 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.
Tuesday · 47 min
Data Centers Are a Political Kickball
But are Americans really upset about them — or something much larger? The data-center fury, Bradley argues in today's episode and in his recent Substack, reflects humankind’s inability to cope with the ever accelerating pace of technological change. Plus, why Mayor Mamdani's penchant for taking political gambles will eventually cost him, a happy-ending story of how a lost dog brought out the best in New Yorkers, and a summer's worth of food, travel and cultural recommendations. 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.
August 21 · 51 min
Fear Is Not Going To Save Us From AI [REPOST]
But a concrete economic plan for extreme job losses just might. In this repost from an episode first released in June, Daniel Schreiber, CEO of Lemonade and founder of the MOSAIC AI Policy Institute, joins Bradley to make a surprisingly hopeful case. The enormous wealth generated by AI can be captured and redistributed in a way that leaves almost everyone better off, he argues, without raising taxes, punishing innovation, or trusting politicians with a slush fund. "Poverty should end in the era of abundance," says Schreiber. "It should simply end." 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.
August 13 · 37 min
What You Can Learn from a Great Spy Novel
Bradley talks to Michael Idov, author of The Cormorant Hunt, about how his own life — coming to the US from Latvia at age 16, running a café on the Lower East Side into the ground, getting discovered by Nora Ephron and moving to Moscow as editor of GQ Russia — feeds his fiction, as well as the passage from his novel that turned Bradley into a superfan: "The left-right distinction, he kept having to remind himself, no longer applied. The only existential standoff now was between the people who wanted to replace institutions with better institutions and the people who wanted to replace institutions with themselves." 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.
August 11 · 56 min
21 Reasons for Hope
If you write out a list of bad things happening in the world right now, it's easy to feel the apocalypse closing in on us. To counteract that kind of negative thinking, Bradley makes a list of the most important things about the world that are improving, including breakthroughs in medicine and gene editing, falling murder and opioid death rates, record US charitable giving, clean energy advances, and steep declines in global extreme poverty and child mortality. All in all, Bradley believes, there is more than enough encouraging news to keep hope alive. 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.
August 6 · 35 min
"The Most Dangerous Thing You Can Do is Nothing"
What can be done to preserve the value of learning in the age of AI? Bradley sits down with Adam Chilton, the dean of University of Chicago Law School, to discuss his vision for fortifying legal education. Chilton argues that critical thinking and judgment, the muscles built by Socratic teaching, are the skills AI can't easily replace. But at the same time, students need training in applying AI in the workplace. "We cannot put the toothpaste back in the tube," says Chilton, "nor can you prohibit your students from having access to them." 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.
August 4 · 50 min
“Finally, I Feel Peace”
Bradley returns from a week-long stay at the Hoffman Institute, an intensive personal-development program that he calls “the single most helpful experience I’ve ever had.” He explains how it reframed his understanding of childhood patterns, self-criticism, and emotional healing, including a cathartic exercise that drew out an important lesson. "We literally drew a picture of our dark side on a poster board," he says, "and then took a shoe and beat the sh-t out of the poster for 45 minutes. Destroying the drawing illustrates that our dark side is a creation of our own minds and patterns, which means we can change them." 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.
July 24 · 1 hr 6 min
Live at P&T: Where Are Democracy’s Lifeboats?
Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig joined Bradley for a live event last month at P&T Knitwear, co-hosted by Teddy Himler of Optimist Ventures, about the two most fundamental threats to American democracy and what to do about them. Lessig, founder of EqualCitizens.US and author of numerous books on copyright, technology, and political corruption, makes a surprisingly hopeful case that Super PACs can and will be ended without overturning Citizens United. Bradley makes his argument for mobile voting as the only scalable fix for low-turnout primaries that boost extremists in both parties. The two agree on a particular culprit — an engagement-based media economy that profits from turning Americans into "ignorant people who hate each other." Lessig offers the Titanic as a useful metaphor: If there's "a gash in the hull," don't waste your time clearing ice off the deck. This is a full-blown emergency and we need lifeboats. 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.
July 21 · 52 min
The Secret to Writing Is Editing
Bradley shares his ten rules for writing well, starting with the most important: get it down fast and spend almost all your time editing. Plus: why the annual outrage over admissions to New York's most selective public schools keeps missing the point; how Governor Hochul's data center moratorium will play out, and what Bradley is doing on his non-vacation in the Canadian Rockies. 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.
July 16 · 54 min
The Vibe Jive
Was MAGA's cultural dominance ever real, or was it always partly a joint hallucination of self-aggrandizing Republicans and self-lacerating liberals? David Wallace-Wells, opinion columnist for the New York Times, joins Bradley to argue that the vibe shift, to the extent it ever existed, has reversed itself. Trump's approval ratings are in freefall, his celebration of the nation's 250th birthday was a farce and the war against Iran is turning into a quagmire. But can Democrats seize the advantage? "When I look around and I'm like, you know, I find some of these leaders appealing rhetorically, politically," says Wallace-Wells. "But I'm like, what is the program they're proposing here? If it comes to pass that the Democrats even have a trifecta — what even would they try to 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. Subscribe to Bradley's weekly newsletter and follow Bradley on Linkedin + Substack.
July 14 · 46 min
The Case for Grace
What if the secret to happiness is as simple as learning to extend a little more grace? Bradley argues that every unnecessary judgment — of your own behavior, of other people's choices, of all the ways the world fails to meet your standards — creates small negative emotions that accumulate into a dark psychic cloud. Showing grace dispels that cloud. Plus, Bradley sketches out the highly unlikely but increasingly plausible sequence of events that topples the Trump administration and also explains how he fell in love with Stockholm on a recent trip abroad. 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.
July 9 · 17 min
LIVE FROM P&T: The Astonishing Depolarizing Power of Dogs
In this special taping in front of a live audience on the Lower East Side, Bradley hosts his niece Ellie Gottheimer, daughter of Rep. Josh Gottheimer, and Larra Mullin, daughter of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, to discuss their new children's book Shmoo & Ozzie Go to Washington, which imparts an important message about bipartisanship and democracy — through the story of two dogs. 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.
July 7 · 43 min
The Riddle of Knowing What You Don't Know
Fresh from celebrating his mother's 80th birthday in Paris, Bradley reflects on what makes the city so breathtakingly beautiful while also declaring it mightily overrated as a food city. Then he tackles one of the trickiest conundrums in business and life. Drawing lessons from business, politics and parenting, he argues that while not knowing what you don't know is obviously dangerous, knowing what you don't know and deferring to the wrong experts can often be just as costly. 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.
July 2 · 32 min
Micah Wins!
Before he decided to run for Congress, Micah Lasher was a proud member of the Matzoh Ballers political consultant text chain. For the duration of the campaign, he had to disconnect. But now he's back with the Ballers — and headed to Congress. He joins Bradley to discuss how he won what may well be the most expensive congressional primary in American history, with $50 million spent across all sides. They talk about why OpenAI's decision to pour money into defeating his opponent Alex Bores backfired spectacularly, how the sophisticated voters of CD-12 recoiled at the avalanche of outside spending and what he can get done as a freshman member of Congress with virtually no power. Micah's top three legislative priorities: housing, childcare and a first-job guarantee for young people as part of a national service program. Plus, he intends to support Hakeem Jeffries as Speaker, should Democrats take back the House. "If you think the Democrats in the House are going to follow the example of the Republicans and weaken the speaker such that moving together with unity becomes very hard," Micah says, "that's going to be to our great detriment." 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.
June 30 · 41 min
Anxiety Defines Our Politics
Why do voters keep rewarding candidates with no realistic plan for fixing anything? Bradley argues that the far left's triumph in last week's New York primaries wasn't really about Israel or AI or the 1% — it was about tapping into anxiety rather than offering workable solutions. Then he turns his attention to Zohran Mamdani, who is riding a wave of historic approval ratings as he hits the six-month mark of his mayoralty. Bradley sees his early tenure as "a tale of two mayors," one as a successful politician, the other as a failing leader. "If you confuse his governing with Instagram likes," Bradley says, "that's a serious misunderstanding of the job." He closes with his ten favorite books of the first half of 2026, including a Stanford scandal exposed by a student journalist and a comedic novel imagining Trump running for a third term against a wrestler-mystic. 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.
June 24 · 28 min
"A Tough Night for the Normies"
Israel dominated the heart and minds of voters in New York this week. Chris Coffey, CEO of Tusk Strategies, joins Bradley to break down a "brutal" primary night for establishment Democrats. They dig into why calling the far left anti-semitic keeps backfiring as an electoral strategy, how long Mamdani's vibes-based popularity will survive contact with reality, and where the pattern of electing extreme candidates leads. If voters keep rewarding rhetoric over results, Bradley says bluntly, "this country's not going to survive." 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.
June 23 · 47 min
The Democrats Now Have All They Need
What's the putdown that Donald Trump loves to dish but can't take? Loser. Bradley lays out a two-prong strategy for Democrats, hitting the broader GOP on the Iran war as a self-inflicted disaster while attacking Trump mercilessly as the architect of one of America's most humiliating defeats in history. Plus, a breakdown of why Mayor Mamdani keeps choosing ideology over the real interests of New Yorkers, the secrets to saving time and what New York City neighborhood should be your next dining destination. 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.
June 18 · 56 min
The Improbability of Adam Ottavino
What does it take for the son of an actor from Park Slope to make it all the way to the major leagues? Adam Ottavino — who pitched for both the Mets and Yankees over a 15 year career — joins Bradley to talk about growing up in Brooklyn, the terror of retirement and why he thinks the sport is headed for a labor showdown that the players might not be ready for. Plus, a little about the Knicks, because what else are people talking about? Be sure to follow Adam on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@adamottavinozero 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.
June 16 · 47 min
Togetherness
What is the best reason to be a sports fan? For Bradley, it's all about sharing the experience with friends and loved ones. That's what makes the Knicks' first NBA championship in more than 50 years so deeply satisfying. "If the one thing in life that matters most is having relationships with unconditional love and support," he says, "sports helps make that happen for so many of us." Plus, why the smartest move for the forgotten Nets is to pack up and head west, what made his first-ever soccer game — the World Cup match between Brazil and Morocco at the World Cup — genuinely memorable despite not quite understanding the rules, and a recommendation for Rasputin Swims the Potomac, Ben Fountain's rollicking political satire. 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.
June 11 · 50 min
Fear Is Not Going to Save Us From AI
But a concrete economic plan for extreme job losses just might. Daniel Schreiber, CEO of Lemonade and founder of the MOSAIC AI Policy Institute, joins Bradley to make a surprisingly hopeful case. The enormous wealth generated by AI can be captured and redistributed in a way that leaves almost everyone better off, he argues, without raising taxes, punishing innovation, or trusting politicians with a slush fund. "Poverty should end in the era of abundance," says Schreiber. "It should simply end." 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.

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