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© 2025 Why Should I Trust You?
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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.
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1Americans today are engaging in a great Rorschach Test over public health–and its results may determine our future. Are radical changes at the CDC and beyond moving us in the right direction for a healthier nation, or dangerously backwards? Are we undoing the very system that has protected us for decades (from infectious disease)? Or upending a system that has made us sicker (chronic disease epidemic)? Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) has succeeded in putting that question front and center. ...
Our guest today, researcher Anna Gilmore, recently went viral with a provocative revelation: just four products cause at least a third of all deaths worldwide. But behind the attention-grabbing headline is her deeper mission--exposing a complex, corporate-driven system that fuels poor diets, worsening health, and our chronic disease crisis. To avoid regulation and keep government subsidies flowing, Anna says industry bankrolls and skews scientific research, while working to convince us that o...
His voice reaches millions of Americans who many in mainstream science and public health just don’t reach these days. He is Dr. Marc Siegel, the senior medical analyst for FOX News who recently argued that President Trump should be given the Nobel Peace Prize for leading Operation Warp Speed – the rapid development of mRNA vaccines that was given to millions during the covid pandemic. The Fox News medical correspondent is outspoken on mRNA technology as the Trump administration cancels promis...
Our guest today is David Kessler, the former FDA commissioner who once devised a strategy to take on Big Tobacco. Now, he’s back with a bold game plan for MAHA and President Trump to challenge the makers of ultra-processed foods. While making food healthier is central to MAHA’s mission, critics say its early wins, like persuading companies to remove certain food dyes, are a positive first step but won’t significantly improve public health. Kessler argues that RFK Jr.’s FDA already has both th...
In this special episode of Why Should I Trust You?, we're taking on the all-important topic of food with members of the Make America Healthy Again movement, along with a panel of seasoned experts in food and nutrition science, including Kevin Hall, the former NIH nutrition scientist. We set out to talk about nutrition, the food industry, and politics--but the conversation quickly took off in directions we never expected. What does the group make of the administration's early "wins" on food ...
Welcome to a special episode of Why Should I Trust You? We’re joined by Neil deGrasse Tyson and Oscar-nominated filmmaker Scott Hamilton Kennedy. There may be no more recognizable figure in science today than Tyson: astronomer, author, public thinker, and the guy who’s done more than just about anyone to make science accessible. Today, our focus is less on the cosmos and more on us humans—and why we’re losing trust in the very science Tyson represents. The pair have released...
Is the CDC finally being fixed—or intentionally dismantled? Wherever you fall on that divide—long-overdue reform or something more alarming—seismic changes are underway at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is implementing dramatic cuts and a reorganization that he says will help focus the CDC on its core mission: fighting communicable diseases. As part of the overhaul, he’s also reshaping the agency’s role in setting vaccine policy for all Ame...
We are joined by Zen Honeycutt, the founder of Moms Across America and a leading voice in the MAHA movement. She’s an outspoken force of nature on a range of issues that she sees as negatively impacting the health of children. There are many directions our conversation could take (and many things to debate), but we focused on a question we hear frequently from our listeners: How is MAHA responding to all the recent developments at the Environmental Protection Agency and the efforts to ...
With the Jeffrey Epstein saga dominating the conversation for weeks now, it feels like we’re roasting in a summer of conspiracy theories. And given how conspiracy and cover-up play a recurring role in the story we’re exploring about the breakdown of trust in public health and medicine, this week felt as good as any to take on the topic. So, what’s fueling today’s conspiracy theories? And -- hold that thought -- do we as a society even LIKE the phrase conspiracy theory any more? Where’s the li...
Kevin Hall is regarded as one of the world’s leading experts on the impact of food on our health. A former NIH scientist, he led some of the most eye-opening studies on the connections between ultra-processed foods and overeating, obesity, and chronic disease (Spoiler alert: It's not pretty.). So when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the Make America Healthy Again movement took the reins at HHS, with gobs of energy and focus on tackling food, you’d think this would be Kevin Hall’s moment. Inst...
What happens when you bring a group of MAHA advocates together with journalists and public health communicators and ask: When it comes to the media, who do you trust for your information and why? What about doctors? What about Sec. Kennedy? This week, we found out. The result is an intense, surprising, sometimes funny, often confounding conversation about trust, Big Pharma, censorship, facts, “misinformation” (one voice says, stop using that word, another asks, well, then what do we call it?)...
On today’s episode, we’re joined by Dr. Francis Collins, the former head of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Collins has spent his career pushing the frontiers of science — from discovering genes linked to deadly diseases to leading the historic Human Genome Project. And during COVID, he helped steer the government’s public health response, including the rapid development of the COVID vaccine — work that still puts him in the hot seat with communities who feel science betrayed their tru...
When COVID hit, public health leaders often said, “There was no playbook.” But was that really true? Decades earlier, during the AIDS crisis, America’s public health system went through a trial by fire—learning hard lessons about how to communicate amid uncertainty, adapt to evolving science, and work with communities instead of against them. Flash forward to COVID, and many Americans say they lost trust after experiencing what they saw as a top-down, dismissive approach from public health le...
Why is a little-known CDC advisory committee meeting today making big headlines? Because Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. just fired every single member—replacing them with his own hand-picked team. The committee in question is ACIP, a group of independent experts that guides how vaccines are used by hundreds of millions of Americans. Kennedy called the shake-up a “clean sweep,” claiming the previous committee's work was just a rubber stamp for Big Pharma and couldn’t be trusted. Many in the m...
In today’s episode, what do a group of MAHA, MAGA, and independent moms and dads of children with disabilities think about the changes Republicans in Congress are hashing out right now for Medicaid, as they push to pass President Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill”? If a healthier America is your top priority, this is a red-alert moment. A nonpartisan Congressional estimate finds that the House-passed Medicaid changes would lead to millions of Americans losing health insurance. And just t...
It’s the four letters that changed our lives: M-R-N-A. Hailed as a modern medical miracle that delivered the life-saving COVID vaccine in record time, mRNA now fuels one of the most polarizing debates in public health. Critics see it as a dangerous experiment that has turned deadly, a symbol of Big Pharma overreach, and a culture of corporate capture within our regulatory agencies that places profits over health and safety. Supporters call it our best hope against new viruses and possibly for...
On today's special episode, a raw and unflinching conversation between MAHA advocates from Georgia and a group of veterans from public health. The discussion dives straight into one of the biggest drivers of mistrust in public health today: the COVID vaccine. Is it a life-saving marvel of modern science or a dangerous technology imposed on the public with little regard for liberty and safety? The groups share profound concerns about where we’ve been and where we’re headed when it ...
We’ve heard it—and you’ve probably heard it too: critics of public health say the way health advice is delivered is a big part of why trust is plummeting. The critique goes like this: experts and institutions often take complicated, nuanced data and present it as all-knowing, black-and-white rules—“Vaccines are safe,” “Raw milk is bad,” “Fluoride in drinking water is essential.” But too often, the public hears little explanation, context, or nuance—rarely an acknowledgment of what isn’t known...
Few topics crystallize our current breakdown in trust more than autism. And with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s renewed push to find its cause, autism isn’t just back in the national spotlight—it’s fueling a debate that’s dividing communities. Supporters see Kennedy as a force disrupting the status quo, channeling money and fresh energy into the search for answers. Critics see a stunt that prioritizes personal belief over established science and may ultimately be about eroding trust in vaccines. Eit...
Today, we’re joined by CNN's Jake Tapper, who along with Axios' Alex Thompson, are authors of the new book Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again. Their reporting is sending shockwaves throughout Washington and beyond--its release landing the same week as the news of the former president’s aggressive cancer diagnosis. The result is a seismic reckoning with Biden’s decision to seek re-election despite visible signs of age-related decline. ...
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Thank you for this episode. It was very intresting. I think there need to explore dimensions of trust. I mean, building trust is not possible over a night, a consistent reliable transparent work is needed. On the other hand, it is fragile, especially in case of public health, and could be destroyed by just one inaccurate statement. Another thing I beleive is communicating risk which scientists ignored. Openning a feild for non experts to raise their voices. Thank you once again and keep posting