Person
Every book David Wallace-Wells recommended on podcasts
David Wallace-Wells's podcast appearances reflect a deep engagement with urgent global crises, particularly climate change, historical pandemics, and the psychological impacts of modern digital life. On an episode of The Ezra Klein Show, Wallace-Wells offered distinct book recommendations, starting with Naomi Klein's 'Doppelganger', which he praised as the finest book exploring the psychic distortions of living online during the early years of the pandemic when the external world was abruptly withdrawn. He also recommended Kyle Harper's 'Plagues upon the Earth', highlighting it as an essential historical survey mapping how disease has continually shaped politics, social life, and civilization across human history. Speaking previously on The Joe Rogan Experience, Wallace-Wells discussed Timothy Morton's books 'Hyperobjects' and 'Dark Ecology', using the concept of a hyperobject to explain phenomena like climate change that are fundamentally too massive for human minds to easily comprehend all at once. Furthermore, he brought up historical doomsday literature by citing Paul R. Ehrlich's mid-twentieth-century book 'The Population Bomb' to examine past predictions regarding population growth and agriculture. Across these discussions, Wallace-Wells utilizes works of sociology, history, and environmental philosophy to frame humanity's most complex and overwhelming existential challenges.
Books recommended by David Wallace-Wells
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Doppelganger
Doppelganger by Naomi Klein is a sharp, timely work of nonfiction that uses the author's personal confusion with conspiracy theorist Naomi Wolf to examine the psychic distortions and political fragmentation of the pandemic era.
Recommended“Um, I wanted to start with Naomi Klein's doppelganger, which I think is about the best book about the psychic distortions of our experience living especially online in the first year or two of the pandemic, having so much of our external world um, withdrawn and the sort of, you know, crash course in um, libertarianism, lack of society, living”
Where to get it
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Plagues upon the Earth
Plagues upon the Earth by Kyle Harper is a sweeping historical examination of how infectious diseases, pathogens, and environmental shifts have shaped human civilization, politics, and social structures from antiquity to the modern era.
Recommended“And then I also wanted to recommend um Kyle Harper's Plagues Upon the Earth, which is a history of disease and the way that it has shaped history and politics um social life, civilization for, you know, the whole of um human history.”
Where to get it
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Dark Ecology
Discussed“there's this he's actually an english professor named timothy Morton who wrote a book about climate he calls it a hyper object which is like it's a it's a phenomenon that's so big that we can't actually hold it in our heads at once”
Where to get it
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Hyperobjects
Discussed“there's this he's actually an english professor named timothy Morton who wrote a book about climate he calls it a hyper object which is like it's a it's a phenomenon that's so big that we can't actually hold it in our heads at once”
Where to get it
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The Population Bomb
The Population Bomb by Paul R.
Discussed“there was um there was a really famous book in the middle of the 20th century called the Population Bomb”
Where to get it
Books David Wallace-Wells wrote
Appearances
| Episode | Podcast | Date | Books |
|---|---|---|---|
| MAHA Is a Bad Answer to a Good Question | The Ezra Klein Show | The Ezra Klein Show | 2025-08-22 | 2 |
| #1259 - David Wallace-Wells | The Joe Rogan Experience | 2019-03-06 | 3 |
Other mentions (1: passing, ad reads, own books)
“Tell people with the name of your book one more time please it's called the uninhabitable earth the subtitle is life after warm”