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 4, Rachel charts the rise of the trust shift we've experienced in our own lifetimes: Distributed Trust. The kind of trust that used to be centralised in institutions, which is often hierarchical, and controlled, is now being distributed through networks and platforms. For better or worse, this shift is facilitating the sharing of trust across vast networks of people, on a scale that wasn’t possible before.

Featuring Rikke Rosenlund, founder of Borrow My Doggy: an online platform that connects local owners with people who want to look after a dog.

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

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