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David Wallace-Wells

Opinion Writer and Magazine Columnist, NEW YORK TIMES CO -CL A

Search every verified David Wallace-Wells interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. David Wallace-Wells, an opinion writer for the New York Times and columnist for the Times magazine, has recently appeared on several podcasts to discuss technology, climate change, and public health policy. On the Hard Fork podcast, he discussed Anthropic's private meetings with religious scholars, expressing that he felt alienated from the company's operating worldview, particularly when a rabbi challenged the idea that conscious AI models could constitute "slave plantations." He also appeared on The Opinions podcast to discuss SSRIs, where he said he believes the MAHA movement is "using a bludgeon instrument" against prescribers, while acknowledging that the drugs can be misused and that therapy should be more available. On the Bulwark Daily podcast, Wallace-Wells discussed public opposition to data centers, citing polling that over 75% of Americans oppose their construction in local communities, and described this as a potential "collision course" for the tech industry. He also addressed immigration enforcement, noting that deportations are likely to set a new record this year, and discussed climate change, stating that adaptation will be "the project of a generation" as the planet has already warmed beyond conditions seen in all of human history.

Recent appearances

  • Why Anthropic Is So Interested in Religion | Hard Fork

    October 09, 2026 · 📺 Hard Fork

    As Anthropic prepares for a blockbuster IPO, the company has also been on a mission to instill morality into its A.I. models — which has involved a series of private meetings with religious scholars from across the world. Today, our host Max Read to talks to the Times religion correspondent Elizabeth Dias, the tech reporter Erin Griffith and the opinion writer David Wallace-Wells about the new belief systems taking shape in Silicon Valley, their differences with the Vatican and what it would actually mean for humanity if A.I. systems are conscious. Additional Reading: Religious Scholars Met…

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  • Why We Can’t Stop Arguing About S.S.R.I.s | 'The Opinions' Podcast

    September 16, 2026 · 📺 New York Times Opinion and 2 more

    Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the MAHA movement are hoping to curtail the use of S.S.R.I.s — a class of drugs commonly prescribed for anxiety, depression and a host of other psychiatric issues. How should patients think about starting and staying on S.S.R.I.s today? In this episode, the Opinion writer David Wallace-Wells and the contributor Dr. Rachael Bedard talk with the psychiatrist and professor Dr. Anthony Rostain about what we know — and don’t know — about S.S.R.I.s and how doctors and patients should navigate the uncertainty. 00:00 — Are We Overprescribing S.S.R.I.s? 02:45 — The 1980s Dru…

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  • Stephen Miller Is Finally Getting the Crackdown He Wanted (w/ David Wallace-Wells) | Bulwark Daily

    August 20, 2026 · 📺 The Bulwark

    Mark the summer of 2026 as the moment when a unlikely supermajority of Americans came together on one issue: their opposition to data centers. This new, big, messy coalition spans the political spectrum and is rooted in a fear that the sociopaths of Silicon Valley will determine the future of our lives, our communities, and our economic prospects. And (most) politicians have noticed which way the wind is blowing. Plus: Carbon emissions are getting better but the planet is still getting warmer, the coming El Niño may be the strongest ever, and ICE arrests are dramatically up because Stephen Mil…

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  • A Conversation w Katelyn Jetelina & David Wallace-Wells: On Anthony Fauci & the National Covid Re...

    July 30, 2026 · 📺 Why Should I Trust You?

    Few figures in America are as polarizing as Dr. Anthony Fauci. To some, he is the veteran scientist who helped steer the nation through the COVID-19 pandemic. To others, he is the face of government overreach who suppressed the lab leak theory to avoid accountability for research funding decisions they believe contributed to the pandemic. This week, those worlds collided in a Senate hearing room as the retired former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was subpoenaed to testify before an inquiry led by his longtime critic, Republican Senator Rand Paul. Fauci…

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  • The Silicon Valley Health Trend Making Doctors Nervous | 'The Opinions' Podcast

    July 29, 2026 · 📺 The Opinions Podcast and 2 more

    Americans have spent billions of dollars tracking themselves: their steps, their blood oxygen saturation, their sleep cycles, their glucose levels. Is any of this data making us healthier? That’s the question the Opinion writer David Wallace-Wells poses to Dr. Rachael Bedard, an Opinion contributor and primary care doctor. In this episode, they explore what tracking ourselves, versus the population at large, can teach us and our doctors, and whether artificial intelligence might one day make sense of all of this data. 00:00 The Tech vs. Doctor Debate: Is More Health Data Always Good? 02:01 W…

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  • Record Heat Waves Are Preview of Our Future on a Warming Planet: Climate Writer David Wallace-Wells

    July 06, 2026 · 📺 Democracy Now!

    Support our work: https://democracynow.org/donate/sm-de... A massive heat dome settled above the eastern half of the United States over the Fourth of July weekend, bringing triple-digit temperatures, disrupting travel and prompting emergency measures for millions of people. At least 25 people died in New Jersey due to extreme heat and humidity, and more than 185 million people — over half of U.S. residents — were under heat alerts over the weekend. This follows a record-shattering European heat wave that's been blamed for thousands of deaths across Spain, France and Germany. Climate scientist…

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  • If There Is a Silver Lining to the War in Iran, It’s This | 'The Opinions' Podcast

    May 09, 2026 · 📺 The Opinions Podcast and 2 more

    On this episode of “The Opinions,” the Opinion writers David Wallace-Wells and Michelle Cottle join the columnist David French to discuss why this “especially messy” war of choice could reshape the global economy and why the biggest effects may still be ahead. “I don’t think that anyone in the Trump administration adequately game-planned for that, which is a huge indictment of them,” argues Wallace-Wells. Plus, amid the turmoil, there may be one unexpected silver lining: an acceleration of the transition to green energy. Read the full transcript here: https://nytimes.com/2026/05/09/opinio...…

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  • Climate Crisis Isn't Over with David Wallace-Wells

    February 03, 2026 · 📺 CANAL STREET DREAMS PODCAST

    Subscribe to the Substack where we're re-releasing an episode of the OG Huang's World every week here: https://basedfob.substack.com/ This week we are joined by esteemed author David Wallace-Wells for a conversation about the state of the climate crisis, writing, media, and how climate became a topic of David’s work. David’s 2017 article The Uninhabitable Earth helped move climate change from the margins into the center of public conversation, influencing how the issue is covered and understood beyond activism. We talk about the moment that led to The Uninhabitable Earth, the overlap between…

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  • Bad Idea #35 "THIS is the Future" Why Forecasts Fail – with David Wallace-Wells

    January 14, 2026 · 📺 WePlanet

    In the season three opener of Saving the World from Bad Ideas, Mark Lynas sits down with David Wallace-Wells, New York Times columnist and author of The Uninhabitable Earth, to tackle a deceptively simple bad idea: the belief that we can predict the future with confidence. David explains how even sophisticated models can be wildly sensitive to small assumptions, drawing on examples from climate economics and the pandemic era, when many expert forecasts failed to anticipate outcomes even a couple of weeks ahead. The conversation moves from climate targets and energy transitions to the psycholo…

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  • Earth’s Energy Imbalance I 2.5°C-3°C by 2100 I Will Technology Solve Climate Crisis I COP30

    December 22, 2025 · 📺 Science Talk

    #energy #climatechange #cop30 In this episode, I speak with journalist and author David Wallace-Wells about what the world still gets wrong about climate change—and what the media isn’t telling us. We discuss how humanity caused unprecedented environmental damage in just a few decades, whether we’re already too late to act, and what happens if we fail to change course. From record-breaking emissions and deadly heatwaves in South Asia to crossing 1.5°C and the risk of heading toward 3°C or even 4°C, David explains why today’s planet is fundamentally different from the one we knew 20 years ago.…

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  • From the Magazine: The Broken Climate Pact

    September 24, 2025 · 📺 New York Times Events

    With David Wallace-Wells, Opinion Writer, Columnist for The New York Times Magazine and Author of “The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming” Filmed live at the 2025 New York Times Climate Forward event FOLLOW WHAT COMES NEXT Subscribe to The New York Times Events channel.    / @newyorktimesevents   Sign up for the Climate Forward Newsletter https://www.nytimes.com/newsletters/c...

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  • David Wallace-Wells on The State of The Climate Crisis and Our Lack of Preparedness

    July 28, 2025 · 📺 The Climate Pod

    This week, David Wallace-Wells is back on the show for a wide-ranging conversation on the climate crisis unfolding in 2025. I was struck by David’s recent essay, “We Can Adapt and Prepare for Floods. But Will We?” in the wake of the horrific flooding in Texas. As David explains, the climate disasters we face today are increasingly unpredictable and widespread, challenging our traditional understanding of what our climate risks are where they can happen. Despite the rising frequency and cost of these disasters, David notes that increasingly it appears that our most commons response is largely…

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Verified interview transcripts

Notable quotes

“I started it with a sort of conventional view of Anthropic as like the humanist company among these AI companies. And what I was struck by in the piece were a few moments in which I felt really alienated from Chris Ola himself and maybe to some extent the sort of operating worldview of the company as a whole. And those were moments when in one case a rabbi challenges him suggesting that if LLMs are actually conscious”

“I think they're coming at this with good intentions, the best of them. I think that they're using a bludgeon instrument to attack people who are otherwise doing what their best they can to help others. So, I'm very cautious right now in what I might even say on a broadcast like this because the way in which the MA report came out made it sound as if there is an epidemic of prescribing stimulants or prescribing SSRIs ”

“I think that adaptation is going to be the project of a generation, maybe even a century. We will be adjusting to an entirely novel global landscape. The planet's already warmer than it's ever been in the entire history of humanity, which means that climate conditions that governed the whole of human history are already behind us. They've been lost and we will be living in the new future. And that means we're going t”

“There was polling that just came out today, I think, or yesterday from Heatmap showing that now 75% of Americans oppose the construction of data centers in their communities. Something like 60 plus percent oppose them strongly. That is more than would oppose the construction of a nuclear power plant. And if you think back to what the opposition to nuclear power did to the buildout of nuclear power decades ago, it loo”

“I think that if this disease killed 1.5 million Americans and 30 million people around the world, that's a much bigger weight of responsibility than any of the questions of mitigation that we took. I do think that mitigation helped save millions of lives, tens of millions probably around the world, probably a couple million in the US, but that's quite small compared to a death toll of the size that we're talking abou”

“I was surprised that he pleaded the fifth and I frankly thought it was pretty cowardly and a kind of a disservice to the country. And I do think that something was revealed that's sort of important and profound, which is the degree to which we are living in so many different realities in our memory and arguments about COVID. You have on the one hand, Republican ideologues who are sort of boiling with grievance still ”

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