Pushkin.

Welcome to the second of our two-part series focused on the 2025 World Happiness Report.

In the last episode, we talked about the decline of shared meals, but in this episode,

we'll turn to a chapter that focuses on a different decline.

In it, the French economist Jan Algin, Curran Blank, and Claudia Seneca, look at the changes

in social trust, particularly the decreases in trust that so many of us have observed post-pandemic.

The economists find that there's been a huge reduction

in social trust globally, and they argue that these changes in trust have led not just

to a big hit on our collective happiness, but also to increases in what they call anti-system

thinking, with people rejecting traditional political parties and turning to populism.

I wanted to understand how to make sense of these findings and the

implications they're having for well-being worldwide. So to help me out, I decided to turn to one of my

favorite experts on the science of trust. Hi everyone. My name is Rachel Botsman. I've been studying

trust for over 15 years now. And the latest book is called How to Trust and Be Trusted, Intentionally

A Two-Way Title, because that's how trust works. We trust other people, and then we want

others to trust us as well. And you can get it on audible, Spotify, or Pushkin FM. People tell

me that it's really changed the way they trust others and others trust them and that was

the reason for making it and so as a trust expert I'm curious your reaction to the fact that there's an

entire chapter of the world happiness report devoted to trust I mean is that something you think is

long overdue is that something you were surprised by I'm surprised it's taken so long to make that

connection if I'm honest because I mean so long to make that connection, if I'm

honest, because I mean, I've always struggled with the word happiness, but satisfaction and joy

...