Do you trust that our public health officials are telling you the truth? This question, for me, lead to the Truth and Trust Project. I for one find myself very skeptical these days. As many who’ve listened to the DTH podcast for long know, I’ve been highly critical of the government’s response to the pandemic from the very beginning. How does someone like me have a conversation with someone who had direct influence on the government’s response to the pandemic? Not so long ago, I would say that the conversation would never happen, because my attitude would not have allowed it.
The Truth and Trust Project may be one of the most important endeavors of my life. Several times over the past several months, I asked the question, “if you could ask Dr. Francis Collins or Dr. Tony Fauci a question, what would that question be?”. For that question, I received nothing but negative responses. The most common response was some variation of, “I wouldn’t waste my time, they wouldn’t listen anyway”… I asked the question because I am currently involved in a Braver Angels initiative called the “Truth and Trust Project” with Dr. Francis Collins and myself as partners.
The only way we can expect as a country to rebuild Truth and Trust is to have conversations with those whom we disagree. The only way to get results from those conversations is to actually LISTEN to those with whom we disagree and look for the humility and humanity in their position. In this episode, Part 2 of 2, Francis and I continue our discussion on the loss of Truth and Trust during the age of the Covid-19 pandemic.
