In this first episode, Mary-Ann Ochota takes us back roughly two thousand years, to a Roman trading site buried beneath a working farm in Yorkshire. Guided by archaeologist Dr Brendon Wilkins, who's spent the last decade excavating the site, she pieces together what life looked like for the traders who passed through, haggling over pottery and silver coins, deciding in the moment whether to trust a stranger.

It's a question that's been with us ever since. How do two people who've never met agree on what something is worth, and how does that tiny act of trust scale up into the systems we rely on today, from the coins in your pocket to the number on your banking app?

To help answer that, Mary-Ann talks to Bruce Schneier, cryptographer and author of Liars and Outliers, about how humanity built trust between strangers on a global scale. Cognitive neuroscientist Professor Sophie Scott also joins to unpack what's going on in our brains every time we decide to trust someone.

It's the first step in a story running from ancient coins to today's digital world, starting with one slippery question: what is money, really?

Trust Forward is a podcast from Sumsub, AI powered trust infrastructure for compliance operations at scale, made in collaboration with This is Distorted. Every story here is really a version of the same problem playing out in a different era. Today it plays out online, in the moment a business has to decide whether to trust a stranger on the other side of a screen. That's the problem Sumsub exists to solve.

Sumsub's Website: sumsub.com

Sumsub's LinkedIn: linkedin.com/sumsub

Sumsub's Instagram: instagram.com/sumsubcom

Sumsub on X: x.com/Sumsubcom

Sumsub's YouTube Channel: youtube.com/@sumsubcom

Mary-Ann Ochota on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/mary-ann-ochota-frgs-9234aa61/

Bruce Schneier: www.schneier.com

Dr Brendon Wilkins on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/brendonwilkins1

Professor Sophie Scott on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sophie-scott-179b6610/

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Resources for this episode can be found here: https://trustforward.sumsub.com/episodes/money-is-a-made-up-thing/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Every time you hand over cash, cross the road, or click "buy," you're taking a small leap of faith that the whole system will hold. These are systems we've quietly built to make life with strangers possible. But trust is fragile, it has to be maintained or it breaks, and throughout history we've repeatedly had to rebuild it.

That's what this series is about: trust, making it and breaking it.

Over six episodes, anthropologist and archaeologist Mary-Ann Ochota talks to some of the world's sharpest minds, from poker players and astrophysicists to mafia experts and cryptographers, tracing how trust has evolved from the invention of money and the Scientific Revolution, through conmen, pirates and spies, to gossip and today's digital world.

Beneath every story sits the same question: how do we build the invisible agreements that hold society together, and how do we decide what, and who, to believe?

Trust Forward is a podcast from Sumsub, AI powered trust infrastructure for compliance operations at scale, made in collaboration with This is Distorted. Every story here is a version of the same problem playing out in a different era. Today it plays out online, in the moment a business decides whether to trust a stranger on the other side of a screen. That's the problem Sumsub exists to solve.

CREDITS

From Sumsub and This Is Distorted

Presented by Mary-Ann Ochota

Written, produced, and sound designed by Anna Staufenberg, This Is Distorted

Assistant Producer is Sian Heron, This Is Distorted

Executive Producer is Alex Jungius, This Is Distorted

Executive Producer is Anna Brusnik, Sumsub

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.