Why Should I Trust You?

Brinda Adhikari, Tom Johnson, Maggie Bartlett, Dr. Mark Abdelmalek
  • 4.4 (133)
  • News Commentary
  • Updated Weekly

Why Should I Trust You? is a bold, unfiltered, weekly look at the collapse of public trust in science, medicine, public health, and AI. Every Thursday, we dig into what's behind that breakdown and whether there is common ground beneath our division.  Described as "truly excellent" in The New York Times, WSITY has drawn attention across America's divides, from being mentioned on Joe Rogan's podcast to NPR. We host conversations that cross political and cultural lines, bringing people together with the experts they no longer trust. Hosted by Brinda Adhikari (former EP of The Problem with Jon Stewart), Tom Johnson (former EP of The Circus, former TV news journalist), Dr. Maggie Bartlett (virologist and assistant research professor, University of Texas Medical Branch), and Dr. Mark Abdelmalek (skin cancer surgeon and medical journalist).

  1. 1d ago

    Why Is There So Much Cancer In Iowa? A Conversation w Chris Jones, Democratic Ag Candidate & MAHA Supporter Courtney Hunt

    As the midterms approach, a distinctive issue is animating races up and down the ballot in Iowa: rising cancer rates and growing concerns about the safety of the state’s drinking water. Iowa has one of the highest cancer rates in the nation, and voters are asking hard questions about the state’s water, soil, and agricultural practices. With Election Day almost here, water has emerged as one of the top issues Iowa voters cite in polling. This week, we’re joined by retired water scientist and Democratic candidate for Iowa agriculture secretary Chris Jones, and Iowa mom and MAHA supporter Courtney Hunt. We explore whether voters are ready to demand change, and what that could mean for Iowa’s farmers, who are already facing mounting economic pressures. Hosts: Brinda Adhikari Tom Johnson Maggie Bartlett Guests: Chris Jones, Democratic candidate for Secretary of Agriculture in Iowa, retired water scientist Courtney Hunt: social worker; Iowa resident; former Kennedy campaign volunteer; MAHA supporter Information about our live taping at WashU Bursky School of Public Health, Oct 27th, 5pET. Live stream link:  https://wustl.zoom.us/j/93933475249?pwd=E9uuw64sJakba6OW3CCCTfPI4ROZ9v.1 More about the event: https://publichealth.washu.edu/event/live-podcast-taping-of-why-should-i-trust-you/ Thanks for listening! If you like us, please leave a review, rate us, and please subscribe!  Got questions? Comments? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at questions@whyshoulditrustyou.net

  2. Oct 15

    What's Actually Behind Our National Rage Over Data Centers? A Conversation w Community Organizers & Researchers

    With the midterms just three weeks away, communities across the country are pushing back against the construction of new AI data centers. In a deeply divided America, opposition to these massive facilities is emerging across party lines: seven in ten Americans say they oppose an AI data center being built near them. Today, we bring together Midwestern residents on the front lines of this fight, along with researchers examining the electricity demands and potential health impacts of these facilities. AI data centers promise jobs and investment, but they also raise very real questions about who bears the costs, who reaps the benefits, and who gets to decide what's best for a community.  We often hear that resistance to the centers is really about worry over AI. In our discussion, we discuss how much of that is true and how much of this is about anger over elected officials seen as siding with corporations over people.  Hosts: Brinda Adhikari Tom Johnson Maggie Bartlett Dr. Mark Abdelmalek Guests: Stuart Day is a community organizer with Ohio Valley Allies and host of the Exposure podcast, covering environmental and industrial issues in the Ohio Valley. Drew Kassel is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas at Austin studying energy systems and the electricity demands of data centers. Montre Moore is a Milwaukee community advocate involved in local debates over data center development and its effects on residents. Vina Colley is a longtime environmental activist in Piketon, Ohio, where a massive AI data center campus is proposed near the former Portsmouth uranium enrichment plant. Natalie Armstrong, is a PhD candidate in environmental health and engineering at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, looking at the environmental & public health impacts of data centers. Thanks for listening! If you like us, please leave a review, rate us, and please subscribe!  Got questions? Comments? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at questions@whyshoulditrustyou.net

  3. Oct 12

    Special Ep: Our Conversation w Senate Candidate Abdul El-Sayed: On Challenging Trump & RFK Jr. While Reaching Their Supporters

    Our guest is Abdul El-Sayed, a Democratic candidate for the Senate in Michigan, one of the key races in the battle for control of the Senate. A physician and former public health director, El-Sayed is making health a centerpiece of his campaign. Along with advocating for Medicare for All, he’s unveiled a new agenda targeting pesticides, polluters, and microplastics, while expanding access to healthier food, issues that overlap with goals of the MAHA movement. So can a progressive Democrat find common ground and build trust with MAHA voters? And how does he address concerns among some Democrats and traditional public health advocates who view the movement, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and the Trump administration as undermining trust in vaccines, scientific research, and public health itself? At a time when trust in politicians and institutions is deeply strained, how can El-Sayed convince voters that his agenda can make health care more affordable and help build a healthier country? Hosts: Brinda Adhikari Tom Johnson Maggie Bartlett Dr. Mark Abdelmalek Guest: Abdul El-Sayed, Democratic candidate running for Senate in Michigan Thanks for listening! If you like us, please leave a review, rate us, and please subscribe!  Got questions? Comments? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at questions@whyshoulditrustyou.net

  4. Oct 8

    Institutions Are Losing the Battle for Attention. Here’s How to Get Back in the Arena: A Conversation w Researcher Renée DiResta

    Researcher and author Renée DiResta has spent years studying how influence works online, including the power dynamics that determine which voices get heard and which ones have influence. In a new report she co-authored, DiResta not only digs into the transformation from old media to new, but also examines how institutions need to rethink their approach to communication. Which brings us to a bigger question: What happens when institutional authority itself is no longer enough to earn people’s attention or trust? The old system, in which institutions such as universities, government agencies, think tanks, and nonprofits could rely on mainstream media gatekeepers to relay their insights and messages, has been upended. Today, as influence and attention have shifted toward individual creators, online communities, and influencers, those same institutions (along with their expertise) must find ways to enter these new arenas or risk becoming irrelevant. In this episode, DiResta wrestles with how institutions can make headway and rebuild trust in this new world while staying true to their core missions. Hosts: Brinda Adhikari Tom Johnson Maggie Bartlett Dr. Mark Abdelmalek (off) Guest: Renée DiResta is an associate research professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, where she studies influence, propaganda, online information systems and institutional resilience. She previously served as research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory and is the author of Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality. Her latest work, co-authored for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, examines how institutions must adapt to a radically changed media environment—and rethink how they earn attention, influence and legitimacy. Link to the report: https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2026/08/nonprofit-organizations-how-to-engage-social-media-new-media-strategy Thanks for listening! If you like us, please leave a review, rate us, and please subscribe!  Got questions? Comments? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at questions@whyshoulditrustyou.net

  5. Oct 2

    Special Ep: Who Gets to Decide What Science Gets Funded? Inside the Fight Over NIH: A Conversation w Sudip Parikh & Michael Green

    Today we ask: When it comes to spending taxpayer dollars on scientific research, how much should elected politicians decide what gets funded,  and how much should be decided by scientists and those who lead our health agencies?  Where should the line be between supporting the best scientific questions and the ones that our elected leaders think are best? Hosts: Brinda Adhikari Tom Johnson Maggie Bartlett Dr. Mark Abdelmalek Guests: Sudip Parikh, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Executive Publisher of the Science family of journals. 2001 to 2009, he served as science advisor to the Republican leadership on the Senate Appropriations Committee, where he was responsible for negotiating budgets for the NIH and several of the other health agencies. Michael Green, a population health researcher and a postdoctoral fellow at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. His work includes examining how people's experiences of unfair treatment in health care affect their health. Michael is one of the researchers who filed a class-action lawsuit this month alleging the NIH is using keyword searches to flag grants for things like DEI and gender, and to cut or force changes to those grants.  Thanks for listening! If you like us, please leave a review, rate us, and please subscribe!  Got questions? Comments? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at questions@whyshoulditrustyou.net

  6. Oct 1

    Measles Is Spreading: Beyond the Fighting, What's Helping People On the Ground? We Talk w a Midwife, a Doctor, a Public Health Leader & a Journalist

    This year is shaping up to be the worst in three decades for measles cases. The biggest case count is in Pennsylvania, home to the country’s largest outbreak right now. At its center is Lancaster County and its large Amish community. As you're likely aware, the outbreak has also become a political fight, with Governor Josh Shapiro and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. publicly clashing, even over how many deaths to count. So what is that fight obscuring about what’s actually happening on the ground? And, widening out, what does this year’s rise in measles across the country portend? And finally, how can public health reach low-vaccination populations and help protect them during outbreaks like these? Today, we hear from Roberta Devers, a traditional midwife and Kennedy supporter caring for Amish families at the heart of the outbreak who now believes everyone who can should be vaccinated; The Atlantic’s Tom Bartlett, who has been reporting from the Amish community and spoke with a family whose infant died; immunologist Michael Mina, who has worked with vaccine-hesitant families; and Katherine Wells, the Lubbock public health director who led the response to last year’s Texas outbreak. What can we learn when we get past politics and listen to the people working on the front lines of these outbreaks? Hosts: Brinda Adhikari Tom Johnson Maggie Bartlett Dr. Mark Abdelmalek Guests: Tom Bartlett, staff writer The Atlantic; has interviewed parents of children who have died from or with measles.  Roberta Devers, home birth midwife, serves Lancaster County Amish families Katherine Wells, director Lubbock, Texas Health Department Dr. Michael Mina, physician, epidemiologist, immunologist, trains healthcare providers who work with vaccine hesitant populations, Chief Medical Officer, Invivyd. Reading: "The Measles-Stricken Mother Who Lost Her Newborn Son" by Tom Bartlett https://www.theatlantic.com/health/2026/08/pennsylvania-measles-infant-death-family/688469/?gift=_5-xEWgGoCTqSjqIeVMUqmJTBAkpC8ldBZ3MpQ9PSu4 Thanks for listening! If you like us, please leave a review, rate us, and please subscribe!  Got questions? Comments? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at questions@whyshoulditrustyou.net

  7. Sep 24

    Experts Say AI Could Kill Us. Why Should We Trust Them? A Conversation w Jennifer Reich, Stephen Witt & Rachael Bedard

    AI’s story feels like it's gotten a lot scarier. Some people in the tech world building AI now say it poses a meaningful risk of catastrophic harm, or even human extinction. Others insist this kind of “doomerism” is wildly exaggerated—that the warnings amount to crying wolf, and that the real danger is slowing down and ceding our advantage to China. What we do know is that the claims are enormous, sometimes even hard to fully believe or trust, the stakes range from disruptive to potentially existential, and nobody knows what comes next. So rather than hearing from the people building the technology or the politicians reacting to the warnings, we gathered voices from the human sciences and professions. We’re joined by Stephen Witt, a journalist who has spent years covering AI; Jennifer Reich, a sociologist who studies how people navigate risk and uncertainty; and Rachael Bedard, a physician and New York Times contributor currently focused on deciphering this AI moment. In an era of collapsed trust, how do we process what we’re hearing from tech giants, naysayers, and politicians? How do we make decisions when the experts themselves disagree about the risks? How much uncertainty—and risk—are we willing to accept? And ultimately, will America’s mistrust of institutions and big business be our armor, or our undoing? Hosts: Brinda Adhikari Tom Johnson Maggie Bartlett Dr. Mark Abdelmalek Guests: Stephen Witt, tech journalist, author of The Thinking Machine, recent opinion piece in the NYT titled "This is Really Bad": https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/11/opinion/ai-safety-threat-technology.htmlhttps://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/757558/the-thinking-machine-by-stephen-witt/ Jennifer Reich, sociologist, author, University of Colorado -- Denver. Author, Calling The Shots: Why Parents Reject Vaccines.: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1803zjf Rachael Bedard, physician, contributing opinion writer to The New York Times, and The New Yorker, The Atlantic and New York.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/12/14/facing-omicron-relapse/ Thanks for listening! If you like us, please leave a review, rate us, and please subscribe!  Got questions? Comments? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at questions@whyshoulditrustyou.net

  8. Sep 17

    RFK Jr.’s Former Campaign Adviser Charles Eisenstein: On MAHA & The Kind of Candidates America Needs

    Charles Eisenstein was a senior adviser and speechwriter to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during his 2024 presidential campaign and an early architect of the ideas that would help shape MAHA. In a wide-ranging interview, Eisenstein talks about his heartbreak over how that campaign evolved and, in the wake of Kennedy’s speech at last week’s Republican midterm convention, how he views the possibility of a Kennedy presidential run in 2028. In that speech, the HHS Secretary said the foundational values of the Democratic Party he grew up in had “found a new home” in the Republican Party. Eisenstein discusses his original vision for Kennedy’s candidacy: leading a movement that would rise above party fights and political divisions. We talk about whether the growing concern over AI could become an issue that finally brings people together across the political divide. What types of candidates does he see succeeding in this moment? And ultimately, does Eisenstein still recognize the movement he helped imagine? Hosts: Brinda Adhikari Tom Johnson Maggie Bartlett Dr. Mark Abdelmalek (seeing patients) Guest: Charles Eisenstein, former speechwriter and senior adviser to Robert F. Kennedy Jr's 2024 Presidential campaign; author, philosopher, strategist. www.charleseisenstein.org Thanks for listening! If you like us, please leave a review, rate us, and please subscribe!  Got questions? Comments? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at questions@whyshoulditrustyou.net

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About

Why Should I Trust You? is a bold, unfiltered, weekly look at the collapse of public trust in science, medicine, public health, and AI. Every Thursday, we dig into what's behind that breakdown and whether there is common ground beneath our division.  Described as "truly excellent" in The New York Times, WSITY has drawn attention across America's divides, from being mentioned on Joe Rogan's podcast to NPR. We host conversations that cross political and cultural lines, bringing people together with the experts they no longer trust. Hosted by Brinda Adhikari (former EP of The Problem with Jon Stewart), Tom Johnson (former EP of The Circus, former TV news journalist), Dr. Maggie Bartlett (virologist and assistant research professor, University of Texas Medical Branch), and Dr. Mark Abdelmalek (skin cancer surgeon and medical journalist).

Information

  • Creator
    Brinda Adhikari, Tom Johnson, Maggie Bartlett, Dr. Mark Abdelmalek
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    121
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Why Should I Trust You?
  • Show Website
    Why Should I Trust You?

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