Firewall with Bradley Tusk

Updated: 02 Oct 2025 • 509 episodes
firewall.media

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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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 others — hogged the headlines. Bradley talks to Mahler about the clash of epic egos, as well as shifting social conditions. How exactly did homelessness and unt

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30 Sep 2025 • EN

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 Mamdani is going to be the next mayor because progressives spent years laying the groundwork for a candidate like him. If the city's business and real-estate inte

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25 Sep 2025 • EN

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 the First Deputy Mayor to bolster an Adams administration shaken by key departures but also looking to run through the tape. He explains how social media and hyper

46 min
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23 Sep 2025 • EN

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 American presidents and decides how each one would respond to an incoming nuclear attack from an unknown source. Plus, he writes a speech that Bibi Netanyahu cou

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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 car that combined the efficiency of a motorcycle with the safety of a regular car? Lit Motors was born. Bradley talks to Danny about his vision for a two-wheel veh

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16 Sep 2025 • EN

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 degradation of everyday life that gives rise to such tragedies and think about what each one of us can do to ease the chaos. More locally, Bradley also discusses t

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