Edward Lloyd opened a coffee shop near the River Thames in the 1680s - it became a place where ship owners and money men rubbed shoulders and a trade in marine insurance sprang up.

The coffee-drinking insurers eventually decided to form an association and agree on a set of rules - and so Lloyd's of London was born. It became a key factor in keeping the global sea trade going, but soon branched out into insuring against burglaries, hurricanes and even earthquakes.

Lloyds developed a principle that seems odd today. It ignored the small print and said: "Pay all our policy holders in full, irrespective of the terms of their policies.”

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Hello Business History listeners! We'd like to share an episode from a show you might enjoy. SNAFU with Ed Helms, now in its fourth season, dives into the world’s greatest blunders, the jaw-dropping fiascos and “you can’t make this up” moments that somehow steered history off course.

In this episode: Adam Grant joins Ed to uncover a certain financial fraud deployment that has haunted unsuspecting victims for decades. They head to the top of this pyramid, to unveil the origin of the ultimate form of foul play: The Ponzi Scheme.

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A live mash-up between Business History and Bloomberg's Everybody's Business.

On platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket you can bet on just about anything - from Taylor Swift's album sales to whether President Trump will say a certain word in a speech. Many people worry about these new prediction markets, but the concept is far older than some critics might think.

We go back centuries to Papal conclaves; hear about how counting drinking toasts stood in for political polling; and learn how the US government tried using betting markets to predict terrorist attacks.

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