04.05.2026 • 20 Min.

What happens when trust collapses at every layer of our world? When companies replace thousands with AI, when politicians are serving their personal interests, and the AI race runs faster than the questions it should answer first? In this episode I look at why trust as the spine of our society is broken. Why even the right kind of leaders are subject to the pressures that make trust collapse. And why the answer to bringing trust back may not start where most listeners expect. I tell the story of the people who walked away from OpenAI in 2021 to build something different, ask what their decision tells us about the kind of leadership that builds trust, and make the case that the leadership we are getting is the cumulative effect of millions of trust choices we are making every day. Can we bring trust back, especially in the age of AI? The episode answers that question but the answer requires more from us than from the leaders we want to follow.