Across five episodes, Rachel Botsman traces the intriguing history of trust.

Rachel looks back on what she sees as the three major chapters of trust in human history. In the broadest terms, these are Local Trust, Institutional Trust, and Distributed Trust. As we’ve moved from one to the next, we've experienced, what she calls, ‘Trust Shifts’.

These shifts have happened because humans took a risk to try something new. To innovate in ways that have shaped our behaviours, for better or worse. Rachel reflects on how each trust shift has profoundly changed the dynamics of our lives; whether that’s how we bank or buy goods, vote, learn, travel, date, and importantly, find and consume information.

In Episode 2, Rachel charts the rise of institutional trust, asking why we trusted institutions in the first place, and how they innovated ways to trust each other on a much larger scale. She tells this through the story of one institution in particular: maritime insurance.

Featuring Christopher Kingston, the Richard S. Volpert Professor of Economics at Amherst College, Massachusetts.

Rachel Botsman is the author of Who Can You Trust? and What's Mine Is Yours. She was Oxford University’s first Trust Fellow who's worked with world leaders, the Bank of England, CEOs and financial regulators.

Producer: Eliza Lomas for BBC Audio, Bristol
Editor: Chris Ledgard Show less