Firewall with Bradley Tusk

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 do...

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 wha...

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...

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-mon...

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 extr...

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 Yo...

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, becau...

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...

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...

But Bradley gives it his best shot. He argues that AI has hit its own "Google 2017 moment" — the point where political winds shift from positivity to poisonous — and that the regulatory environment AI companies enjoy today is probably the most permissive it will ever be. Plus, fresh off binging Sons of Anarchy, he ranks his all-time top 25 TV shows — The Wire is number one, by statute — with apolo...

There is an obvious reason men have drifted to the right, says Justin Cohen: Nobody on the left wants to hear from them. The co-founder of Dads for All joins Bradley to discuss how social isolation, economic anxiety, and political polarization have created both a crisis and an opportunity. Justin's group works through local chapters to bring dads together around areas of shared interest, like spor...

Because that's what Bradley argues retail investors will be banking on if they buy OpenAI stock if it goes public as early as this fall. Taking a careful walk through the numbers, he set it up as a classic conflict between math and mythology. Does a debt-laden company with massive annual losses and hard-core competitors deserve to be instantly admitted to the ranks of giants like Apple, Microsoft...

If government is one of the best career moves a young person can make right now, why does nobody seem to know it? Caitlin Lewis, Executive Director of Work for America , joins Bradley to extol the benefits of working for state and local governments. They're desperate for talent, they pay better than you think and the work makes a difference in people's lives. Not that there aren't problems, like p...

What are the ingredients of a healthy life? Bradley discusses the major changes he made after turning 50, including protein shakes, testosterone therapy, sleep apnea mouth guards, a stay this summer at the Hoffman Institute in the Canadian Rockies and a complete abstinence from ice cream, even though he loves it and would eat it at every meal if he could. "All I can do is just try to do the practi...

Have we been gradually destroying our physical health by sitting still and staring at screens? Manoush Zomorodi, author of the new book Body Electric , joins Bradley to explain how our digital addictions are bad for us in ways that we rarely consider — spiking blood sugar, wrecking posture, and darkening our moods. The fix, she argues, is easily within reach: as little as five minutes of movement...

Yes, we're talking about sandwiches — which, to Bradley, almost constitute a religion. What matters most is not the food itself but the human connections that surround it: the first po'boy that made him fall for New Orleans, the brisket at a Texas wedding that defined a circle of loved ones and the fish sandwich in Bellevue that made him feel like an adult for the first time. Plus, Bradley respond...

Is there any level of American government that is actually doing its job well? Bradley sits down with his Tusk Strategies partner Shontell Plummer to talk through the slow-motion dysfunction of Albany. Why is the state budget late when there are no major issues at stake? How come Governor Hochul and Mayor Mamdani can't get along? What will gerrymandering do to the congressional map? Plus, what's g...

Why is that so hard? Bradley argues that the zero-sum mentality driving our politics and social media has infected our basic daily behavior — the phone zombies blocking subway doors, the gym hogs who won't let you work in, the airplane line-cutters — and that only a shift in social norms, not legislation, can fix it. Plus, Bradley breaks down why Mamdani put pandering to his base ahead of the city...

Are you climbing the right mountain, or just getting really good at the wrong one? Bradley sits down with Judah Taub — Israeli intelligence veteran, cybersecurity investor, and author of How to Move Up When the Only Way is Down — who borrows a concept from machine learning called the "local maximum" to explain why smart people and successful companies so often underperform their potential. Plus, h...

Is the richest, most productive state in America about to shoot itself in the foot? Bradley argues that California's proposed 5% tax on assets over $1.1 billion is a losing bet that will hurt the very people it claims to help. When billionaires leave, he says, jobs will follow. And if the legislature gains the power to lower the threshold whenever it needs cash, today's billionaire tax becomes tom...

Bradley sits down with Matt Wing and Josh Mohrer to talk about Smith & Moses, their newly launched AI venture that ingests every bill introduced in the New York State legislature in real time, summarizes it in plain English, and scores each legislator based on the impact and passage rate of their bills. It's essentially a performance review for Albany, an exciting new way to understand what ou...

With support for Israel eroding faster than most people realize — a recent poll found 70% of American Jews oppose continued military aid — Bradley argues that the greatest existential threat to Israel is not its avowed enemies but the retrenchment of its most reliable ally. He lays out eight concrete ideas for how Jewish organizations could rebuild that support, starting with listening before lect...

Can government catch up to a technology moving faster than any regulatory response ever has? Bradley and his Tusk Ventures partner Bob Greenlee work through two competing taxonomies: Bradley organized his around four areas of real impact (consumer protection, catastrophic risk, job displacement, and AI's potential to make government work better), while Bob's is built around political feasibility —...

Prediction markets, not polling, argues Bradley, will be the defining information source of the 2026 midterms and a change worth celebrating. By incentivizing people to think beyond their own preferences and sharpen their analysis, these markets provide reliable metrics of public opinion and are good for democracy. Plus, how Yale did the right thing with its report on higher education, why basic s...

American democracy is doomed if people can't tolerate disagreement. Bradley sits down with Ed Manzi, founder of Unmuted, who is building something genuinely countercultural: in-person forums for politically curious New Yorkers to listen to each other. They get into mobile voting, why Congress has become a tweet farm, and whether the lesson politicians should take from Trump is the terrifying one....