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TrustTalk - It's all about Trust

Severin

Trust is the invisible force that shapes our world, and at TrustTalk, we're committed to exploring its many dimensions. Join us as we engage with thought leaders from all walks of life to discuss the role of trust in every aspect of our world. From personal relationships to business, technology, society, and beyond, we explore the wonders of this essential human emotion. It's a journey you won't want to miss.

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20 episodes
fortnightly
Avg 23 min
English

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#143
Wednesday · 26 min
Trusted Brands: Voice, Volume, Vulnerability
If you build or look after a brand, this is a practical half-hour on the one thing every marketing budget quietly rests on: earning trust and keeping it. Before you read a single word on a website or pick a product off the shelf, you've already...
#142
August 7 · 23 min
Being Right Never Earns Trust
Most people think an institution earns trust by being right. Katherine McComas thinks it earns trust by asking, and after a career studying what happens when science and power arrive in a community's own backyard, she has the cases to prove it. We...
#141
July 24 · 28 min
Trusting, Line by Line
Most people think trust is something you either have or you don't. Ann Merrit Rikke Nielsen, assistant professor at the University of Copenhagen and vice director of Centre for Interaction Research and Communication Design (CIRCD,) thinks it is...
#140
July 9 · 22 min
How Medicine Earns Trust
What does it actually take for a hospital, a research institution, or a public health agency to deserve the trust of the communities it serves? Consuelo H. Wilkins has spent her career asking that question — not as a philosopher, but as a physician...
#139
June 25 · 29 min
Trusted Philantrophy
Most people think philanthropy is about money. John Loudon, Executive Director of the COmON Foundation and one of the best-known philanthropists in conservation and nature preservation, with a career spanning three decades across Europe and Africa,...
#138
June 17 · 29 min
Understanding the Trust-Law Dynamic: Insights on Legitimacy
In this replay of a 2023 interview, Severin de Wit speaks with Tom Tyler, professor of law and psychology at Yale and founding director of the Justice Collaboratory. A psychologist teaching in a law school — a rare combination — Tyler argues that...
#137
June 3 · 29 min
Why Trust Matters
In this replay of a 2023 interview, Severin de Wit speaks with Economist Benjamin Ho - Professor of Economics at Vassar College and author of Why Trust Matters: An Economist's Guide to the Ties That Bind Us. What if trust isn't just a feeling, but...
#136
May 19 · 21 min
The Trust We Assume, the Consent We Feel
Imagine standing in a busy train station, asking strangers to answer a few questions. How many people would you need to approach before five say yes? In a now-classic study, Vanessa Bohns predicted twenty. The actual number was ten. People were almost...
#135
May 6 · 23 min
San Francisco: Where Progress Meets Distrust
We tend to think of trust as something that grows where people agree. Where neighbors share values, where voters share a party, where a city sees itself as forward-looking and inclusive. The more common ground, the more trust. That, at least, is the...
#134
April 23 · 20 min
Trust Me, I'm Emotional
We tend to distrust people who lead with their emotions. In business, in politics, in negotiation. Someone who gets angry, who shows empathy, who wears their feelings openly is seen as a liability. Not quite serious. Possibly dangerous. Our guest...
#133
April 8 · 19 min
Why Wikipedia Runs on Trust
Wikipedia serves 11 billion pages a month and almost nobody questions it anymore. But how did millions of anonymous strangers, unpaid and from every culture, manage to build the world's largest encyclopedia together and keep it honest? The answer,...
#132
March 26 · 24 min
Leading with Trust
Every day, millions of people trust retailers to decide what ends up on their table. But that trust extends far beyond the products themselves. It touches supply chains, leadership decisions, sustainability, and the values that guide a company, often...
#131
March 4 · 27 min
When We Only Trust People Like Us
David Bersoff, Head of Research at the Edelman Trust Institute, has spent decades measuring trust across the globe. His most striking finding right now isn't that trust is collapsing, it's that our trust circles are shrinking. We've reached a point...
#130
February 19 · 21 min
Reasoning Runs on Trust
When we disagree with someone, it's tempting to assume the problem is simple: they're irrational, biased, or misinformed. But what if human reasoning doesn't work the way we think it does? What if reasoning isn't primarily about finding the truth on...
#129
February 4 · 23 min
When Power Replaces Trust
When the United States openly pressured Denmark over Greenland, the immediate dispute faded fast. The damage to trust did not. This episode looks beyond Greenland to a bigger question: what happens when the world’s most powerful country starts...
#128
January 22 · 20 min
When Participation Builds Trust
Trust is often talked about as if it were bad weather, something that just happens to us, beyond anyone’s control. But what if trust doesn’t disappear by accident, and what if its erosion has very concrete causes? In this episode, Ruben Beijl,...
#127
January 9 · 26 min
Denmark’s Secret: Trust Is Cheaper Than Control
My guest today, Gert Tinggaard Svendsen challenges one of the most common myths about high-trust societies: that trust is cultural or “in the DNA.” In Denmark, he argues, trust is built, not inherited. It grows from institutions, incentives, and...
#126
Dec 24, 2025 · 10 min
A Season for Trust
On Christmas Eve, Santa Claus joins TrustTalk to discuss trust, doubt, and why listening to ourselves and to others matters as we look ahead to a new year, referring to Rudyard Kipling’s poem "If" on how to be confident without ignoring the doubts of...
#125
Dec 16, 2025 · 23 min
Trust in Wartime: Choosing Authority When the State Fails
Our guest, Mara Revkin, a leading scholar of governance and justice in conflict zones, talks about how civilians make trust decisions when the state collapses and armed groups take control. Drawing on fieldwork and survey research in places such as...
#124
Nov 30, 2025 · 23 min
From Boeing to Financial Times: Real-World Lessons in Trust Leadership
Trust isn’t tested in calm moments; it’s exposed when leaders face uncertainty, conflicting demands, and real human consequences. This episode traces that reality across multiple organizations and industries. We look at Boeing, where leaders...

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