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?
Don't Just Fact-Check Misinformation. First, Understand The Value It Holds. A Conversation w Researchers Michael Simeone & Kristy Roschke
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Fighting misinformation is seen as one of the defining challenges of our time. The term itself can be polarizing. And what if we're thinking about it all wrong?
In this episode, we speak with researchers Michael Simeone and Kristy Roschke, who recently published a peer-reviewed article in a journal in the Nature portfolio, proposing a new framework for understanding why misinformation spreads. Their central argument is a surprising one: misinformation doesn't spread simply because people are uninformed, uneducated, or unable to distinguish fact from fiction. It spreads because it provides value--a coherent explanation amidst uncertainty and conflicting facts, reinforces identities, strengthens communities, and satisfies emotional and social needs. They also factor in the value misinformation might have for a broader community, a commercial platform, or AI.
Rather than asking, "How did people fall for this?", they encourage us to ask a different question: "What is this information doing for them?"
The conversation challenges common assumptions about health literacy, fact-checking, and who is susceptible to misinformation (answer: all of us). In an era of algorithms, AI, and increasingly personalized realities, Simeone and Roschke argue that understanding misinformation requires us to look beyond individual biases to examine the broader social and technological systems we all help create.
Hosts:
Brinda Adhikari
Tom Johnson
Maggie Bartlett
Dr. Mark Abdelmalek
Guests:
Michael Simeone, co-lead of the Information Competition Lab at Arizona State University’s School for Complex Adaptive Systems and serves on the senior leadership team for the Global Futures Laboratory’s Decision Theater
Kristy Roschke, Associate Research Professor of Communication of Science and Technology; Executive Director of the McGee Applied Research Center for Narrative Studies Vanderbilt University
Source:
Value and Vulnerability: A Framework for Understanding the Complexity of Misinformation Use
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44260-026-00079-x
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