Why Should I Trust You?
Bold, unfiltered, and uncompromisingly honest, Why Should I Trust You? is a weekly podcast that looks at the breakdown in trust for science and public health. It drops every Thursday, with occasional additional special episodes sprinkled in.
Hosted by Brinda Adhikari, the former executive producer of “The Problem with Jon Stewart” and a former TV news journalist; Tom Johnson, the former executive producer of “The Circus,” and also a former TV news journalist; Dr. Maggie Bartlett, a virologist and assistant research professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health; and Dr. Mark Abdelmalek a skin cancer surgeon, a medical journalist and a dermatologist practicing in Philadelphia - each week we try to figure out what is behind this staggering collapse in trust and see if we can rebuild towards trust again.
Why Should I Trust You?
The Heat Is Killing Us. So Why Are We Beefing About Air Conditioning? We Chat w Noah Smith, Thomas Chatterton Williams & David Wallace-Wells
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What if one of the biggest public health debates of the next decade isn't about vaccines, Ozempic, or chronic disease? What if it's about air conditioning? The world’s temperatures are getting dangerously warmer. Europe is the world's fastest-warming continent with estimates that this summer the heat contributed to 10,000–14,000 deaths over just a few weeks. The United States suffers deadly heat waves too. But Europe experiences much higher heat-wave related death tolls. One major difference people are pointing to? Air conditioning. Americans have a LOT more of it than Europeans do.
Defenders of Europe's lower use of air conditioning argue that simply installing more AC isn't the answer. Critics say: this has gone too far. Too many people are dying. Just get air conditioning already.
But beneath this debate are some very big questions: What do we owe one another in a warming world? What does adaptation look like? And who bears the costs when our solutions create new problems?
Hosts:
Brinda Adhikari
Tom Johnson (off)
Maggie Bartlett
Dr. Mark Abdelmalek (off)
Guests:
Noah Smith, economist, publisher of Noahopinion substack.
Thomas Chatterton Williams, staff writer The Atlantic,, author of Summer of Our Discontent and Self Portrait in Black and White.
David Wallace Wells, writer/columnist, The New York Times. Author The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming.
Related articles by our guests:
Europe's Resistance to Air Conditioning is Driving It Insane: Noah Smith
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/europes-resistance-to-ac-is-driving
The Overlooked Reason Why Europe Doesn't Have AC: Thomas Chatterton Williams
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/06/europe-heat-wave-air-conditioning/687729/
We Need to Retrofit the Planet. The Heat Wave Proves It: David Wallace Wells
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/01/opinion/heat-wave-europe-america.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
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Got questions? Comments? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at questions@whyshoulditrustyou.net
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