For 26 years, Richard Edelman has measured the world's trust levels through the Edelman Trust Barometer. In this final episode of our trust series, he joins Andrew Keen to diagnose a new and troubling phase: insularity.

After years of polarization, grievance, and activism, societies are hardening into self-contained camps, "turtles in shells", as Edelman puts it, trusting only those who share their values, media and worldview. Governments are faltering, media credibility is shrinking, and a widening mass class divide is fueling pessimism about the future. Yet amid AI disruption, nationalism, and economic anxiety, Edelman argues that trust can still be rebuilt, from the bottom up. Employers, local institutions, and "poly-national" businesses may hold the key. The question is whether democracies can restore optimism before insularity becomes permanent. Is trust the missing ingredient in democratic, or its final casualty?

In this episode of How to Fix Democracy, host Andrew Keen explores America's deepening crisis of trust, both social and political. Joined by Frederick Riley of Weave at the Aspen Institute and Dr, Michael Neblo of the Ohio State University, the conversation examines rising isolation, collapsing confidence in institutions, and the growing divide across communities. From neighborhood-level connection to large-scale democratic reform, they discuss practical, evidence-based ways to restore trust, and why small, everyday actions may be the key to saving democracy.

In this episode of How to Fix Democracy, host Andrew Keen sits down with Cynthia Miller-Idriss - scholar of extremism, founder of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL), and author of Man Up: The New Misogyny and the Rise of Violent Extremism. Together they eplore one of democracy's most fragile foundations: trust.

From gender polarization and the rise of the "manosphere", to the declining institutional confidence, to why young men are increasingly vulnerable to online radicalization, Miller-Idriss explains how mistrust is reshaping politics, culture, and everyday relationships. She also discussed what might work to rebuild trust - from community level engagement to national service models - and why belonging, meaning and purpose might be the most powerful antidotes to extremism.

A wide-ranging, urgent conversation about loneliness, democracy and whether America can restore trust before it is too late. Miller-Idriss offers a note of cautios optimism: most people, she argues, don't actually want to live this way.