Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast No One Saw It Coming

In 1766, a "man" named Jean boarded a French naval ship as a botanist's valet. But Jean was hiding a secret. For years, that secret sailed around the world with them, until one day it was revealed that Jean was actually a woman and was sailing illegally.

Dr Glynis Ridley (English Professor, University of Louisville, and Author, The Discovery of Jeanne Baret) tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) the story of Jeanne Baret; the first woman to circumnavigate the globe and her huge botanical legacy that history almost forgot. 

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A castle sits in the streets of American suburbia and from the outside it looks bizarre. But what’s on the inside is even weirder... 

A dog named Cerberus, a basement nightclub with poles and cages, and a room full of princess costumes. 

Jon Ronson (Author, The Castle) speaks to Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) about what he found when he went looking for the man inside the castle, and what unravelled from there: a peep inside the manosphere and the men who are either lashing out, shutting down or building fantasy kingdoms of their own. 

So how did we get here, and did anyone see it coming? 

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From the mid-1800s, more than 62,000 Pacific Islanders were kidnapped, tricked or coerced into labour on Queensland's sugar and cotton plantations.

Ryan Butta (Author, Blackbirding) and Emelda Davis, whose grandfather was taken from Vanuatu as a boy, tell Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) how Australia avoided the word "slavery" by disguising the trade in euphemism.

 It was called 'blackbirding' and it came to an end thanks to what is arguably the most racist piece of Australian legislation.

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A ransacked bakery. A wildly inflated bill. A demand so absurd it should have been laughed out of the room. Instead it triggered warships. 

In 1838, France used a pastry chef's grievance to justify a blockade, a siege, and an assault on Mexico. But was the baker's claim ever really the reason? Or just the excuse the French government had been waiting for? 

Food historian and author Seren Charrington-Hollins tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) about how a bakery grievance and unpaid debts led to a war that history barely remembers by its real name. 

This is the fourth and final episode in the special series This Stupid War. Listen to the full series in the No One Saw It Coming podcast feed on ABC listen (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts.

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A pig trots over an invisible border, wandering into a potato farmer's garden. It's not the first time it's trespassed but it is the last. 

The farmer takes his gun off the wall and shoots it dead. But what he doesn't realise was that by pulling that trigger, he set off one of the tensest military stand-offs in history. 

Mike Vouri (former Historian for San Juan Island National Historic Park) takes Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) to San Juan Island where the US and Great Britain came dangerously close to war... all over a pig.

This is the third episode in the special series This Stupid War. Listen to the full series in the No One Saw It Coming podcast feed on ABC listen (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts.

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It’s called The Football War and raged for just 100 hours. It’s a catchy name for a conflict supposedly sparked by a World Cup qualifier game. 

But behind the catchy title, and away from the football pitch lies a deeper, darker history about politics, poverty, power and a war that claimed thousands of lives.

Fionntan O’Hara from the London School of Economics tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) the story of how the battle on the pitch became a real war between El Salvador and Honduras and what led up to that football game.

This is the second episode in the special series This Stupid War. Listen to the full series in the No One Saw It Coming podcast feed on ABC listen (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts.

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In 1932 Australia sent soldiers with machine guns to stop 20,000 emus rampaging through wheat fields. 

What followed was a national embarrassment and earned the emus a reputation as the victors of one of history's strangest wars.

Associate Professor Ruth Morgan (Environmental historian, Australian National University) tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) the wild story of the Emu War: what happens when a country goes to war with a flightless bird but realises the true enemy is something much larger and more formidable... 

This is the first episode in the special series This Stupid War. Listen to the full series in the No One Saw It Coming podcast feed on ABC listen (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Their faces are everywhere: on calendars, incense packets, and soap packaging. But how did the Hindu deities' faces go beyond temples and shrines? 

In nineteenth-century India, Ravi Varma dared to paint the gods in a way no one had before. What followed was a cultural revolution that carried his vision into homes across India and around the world.

Tarun Nagesh, Curatorial Manager of Asian and Pacific Art at the Queensland Art Gallery, tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) the story of how one man gave Hindu gods their modern faces. 

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You think you know Pompeii. A city wiped out. People frozen in time. A disaster that stopped time. But how much of that story is actually true?

Ancient historian and writer Dr Jess Venner (The Lost Voices of Pompeii) sits down with Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) to blow away centuries of misconceptions, bust myths surrounding one of history's most famous disasters, and bring to life the everyday people lost in the story of Pompeii and its final moments. 

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Marcus Garvey is known as a civil rights activist and leader of the Pan-Africanism movement. But there’s a part of his story you may not know about. 

Social historian Darrel Blake tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) the lesser known chapter in Marcus Garvey’s life - about how he established a shipping company but ended up creating a symbol of black liberation and empowerment, but not before condemning his reputation, being called a fraud and sabotaging a black empire. 

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Imagine driving from Beijing, through the Gobi Desert, Mongolia, and across Russia into Europe. The roads are terrible, you don't have petrol stations and you have pack animals carrying supplies. Oh, and it's a race so step on it.

In 1907 this was the challenge set by a French newspaper. A race around the world to prove the automobile was not some fad technology. 

Kassia St Clair, cultural historian and author (The Race To The Future) tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) the wild story about a race around the world that put lives and technology on the line and got mostly forgotten about since. 

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What do you get when you combine fashion, race and a world war? 

From the jazz clubs and dance halls of the 1940s to an infamous city riot in Los Angeles, the zoot suit was made to draw attention. But sometimes, that wasn't such a good thing.

Monica L. Miller (Chair and Professor of Africana Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University) tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) the story of the zoot suit; how it put a target on its wearer's back and how it's evolved to this day. 

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A well-placed lie can bring down a whole government. Hard to believe, but in Prague in 1989 that’s exactly what happened.

In amongst a heaving student protest, a body was carried away. That body became a flashpoint for Czechoslovakians to say enough is enough, and call for the end of the communist regime. But who was that dead person, really? 

Richard Fidler (Host, Conversations, Author, The Golden Maze) tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) an epic tale set in a magical city full of twists and turns where you'll have to sort truth from lies. 

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She stands tall with her head tilted towards you. She’s wearing an incredible gown made of the most beautiful fabric. This is a society woman living in Vienna at the turn of the 20th century. 

But she will see things that will shock and disturb her. Her world will be turned upside down, and she’ll travel to the other side of the world to keep her family safe, only to be rejected by one of Australia's most important institutions.

Cultural historian and curator Professor Tim Bonyhady (Author, Good Living Street) tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) the epic family tale behind this artwork that was smuggled out amid war and destruction, and came to reside in Sydney in an apartment full of treasures.

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In the late 1500s a man sails across the North Sea. He’s battered by wind and wave. The sea seems angry, almost furious at him. He thinks it must be more than just a bad storm. It must be supernatural. 

This man is James VI, the King of Scotland and son of Queen Mary of Scots. The tempest instils in him a paranoia and hatred that sparks one of the earliest witch trials in British history. 

Author Kate Forsyth (The Changeling) sits down with Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) and tells him how the epic tale of the Scottish witch hunts began with a coerced queen’s signature that set into motion a reign of terror that continued for over a century and still reaches into our lives today.

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Getting a letter these days is pretty special, especially when it’s from an 11-year-old listener. Ellie wrote us a letter asking about the nursery rhyme Ring a Ring o' Roses, wondering if it really is about the plague. 

Amelia Huw Morgan, Senior lecturer in illustration in Cardiff School of Art and Design, sits down with Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) to explain the deeper story behind the nursery rhyme, how it came to be connected to the plague and the woman who made the nursery rhyme popular with children and families for generations. 

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D-Day was the biggest land and water invasion in history and would go on to be a huge turning point in WWII. And it all depended on a plant.

Specifically a leaf from a tree that grows on the east coast of Australia, that would treat seasick soldiers and allow them to fight.

Dr Chris Kavelin joins Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) to tell the incredible, and little known, story of how Indigenous Australian knowledge would shape WWII and make sure D-Day actually happened. 

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In a Dublin supermarket in 1984, a young woman makes a split-second decision. 

She refuses to sell two grapefruits. Her job is on the line, and there’s a recession raging across the country. But she’s doing it for the human rights of people thousands of kilometres away, that she’s never even met. 

Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) is joined by Mary Manning to hear the story of how a union strike took her on a wild and unforgettable adventure, where she ended up meeting world icons and changing the law. 

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*CONTENT WARNING* This episode explores mature themes such as sex and masturbation.

When the wooden object was unearthed, the archaeologists were stumped. What was this thing? It looked like a club and was found among bits of cloth so they thought it was a darning tool.

But it was another kind of tool. One that would raise eyebrows and cause some people to blush.

Sex historian Dr Kate Lister (Flick: The Story of Female Pleasure) charts the history of female pleasure with Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole), unearthing sex toys from archaeological digs to nunneries.

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On the face of it, it’s just a box. It has wooden slats, a peaked roof and glass panels. But inside this box is something that will breathe, grow, and impact lives around the world, for better or worse. 

Dr Luke Keogh (author, The Wardian Case: How a Simple Box Moved Plants and Changed the World) tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) the story of how a box designed to grow plants became a tool for imperial horticulture and rewrote the future of the British Empire. 

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If you were asked where the plague came from you’d probably say rats. Or fleas. And you’d say it swept across Europe killing up to half of the population.

But where exactly did it start and how did it get to Europe in the first place?

Medieval historian Dr Eleanor Janega sits down with Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) and debunks the biggest myths about the black death and tells the real story behind one of the worst pandemics the world has ever seen.

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It started with two turntables and a microphone and became a worldwide movement. Today, Hip hop is one of the biggest music genres in the world - and it all started at a teenager’s back to school party in the Bronx.

Jeff Chang (hip hop journalist and author) tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) the story of how one girl’s party to raise money for new clothes led to a musical and cultural revolution.

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In the week before Christmas 1894, a man in the South Australian parliament rolls the dice.

He makes a gamble that he thinks will pay off. It’s incredibly risky because if his gamble goes wrong, he gives half the population something he really doesn’t want to give them.

Professor Clare Wright OAM (Historian and author of the best-selling Democracy Trilogy) tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) the remarkable story of how a double bluff by a conservative politician ended up empowering South Australian women and making world history. 

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After the Second World War, relations between America, Britain and the Soviets were frosty and as the Cold War rivalry intensified, they were watching each other with intense side-eye. And it turns out, listening as well.

Matt Bevan (If You’re Listening) tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) the story of how a gift from the Soviets to the Americans was used as a trojan horse to listen in on conversations, and it was made by a man whose name is now famous but for a very different reason.

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The Met Gala’s 2026 theme is Costume Art. But rewind almost 100 years ago, and the fight was to get costumes to be called art at all. 

And if a handful of very determined women hadn’t pushed to change that, the Met Gala probably doesn’t exist.

Dr. Elizabeth Lundén is a Kluge Research Fellow at the Library of Congress and she sits down with host Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) to unpack the sliding doors story behind the biggest night in fashion.

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When he got on the train to London, he thought he got away with it. He thought he got away with murder. But little did he know that something was racing alongside the train, pulsing deep underground, that would change his life forever. 

Writer and cultural historian Kassia St Clair tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) how a horrific crime changed the way people living in the 1800s viewed the telegraph machine. 

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It’s 1926 and two men are working in a lab trying to create antifreeze. Instead, they make a thick, black goo that stinks out the lab and blocks the sink. 

ABC Science reporter Fiona Pepper tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) about how this black gunk would go on to be used in cars, rockets and spaceships. And ultimately, would be responsible for one of the deadliest space missions in history.

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Long before steam trains, before factories, before the Industrial Revolution, someone figured out how to turn steam into motion. And he did it almost two thousand years ago in Ancient Alexandria, and the device he built wasn’t meant to power anything. It was a toy. A party trick.

Dr Tatiana Bur, Lecturer in Classics at the Australian National University, tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) the story of how one man’s spinning little gadget went on to power the modern world.

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It was one of the deadliest diseases known to humankind. And just 50 years ago it was officially eradicated. But there’s someone missing from the story of smallpox.

A woman whose work was mocked. Who was branded a bad mother. And who helped bring inoculation to the West.

Author Jo Willett tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) about how an 18th-century noblewoman ignited a moral panic, split the scientific establishment and helped spark a medical revolution.

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If you looked at it, you wouldn’t bat an eyelid, but this red wine had something in it that today could land you in jail.

It was drunk and endorsed by presidents, royalty and even popes and made its maker a millionaire. 

Dr Tim Madge tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) the story of Vin Mariani, the cocaine-infused wine that was endorsed by royalty, presidents and popes and how it became the precursor to a product that millions of people around the world - including children - drink every day. 

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Before cinema, before Hollywood, before we even understood how to make pictures move, there was a man constantly reinventing himself. He was a bookseller, a photographer, an alleged fraud and eventually, a killer.

But in between scandals and aliases, he conducted a strange experiment that would change the way we see the world. 

Marta Braun is a renowned expert in 19th century stop-motion photography, and she tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) the story of Eadweard Muybridge and how his photographs of a horse race stopped time, helped the world understand motion, and created the moving image. 

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As the Irish Revolution raged year after year, there was a space that the British didn’t expect to become places of revolution - prisons.

Jailed rebels became martyrs and Britain’s grip on Ireland began to weaken, pushing a revolution to boiling point. 

Dr William Murphy, Professor in Modern Irish History at Dublin City University, tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) the story of Irish independence and how food, pride and prison would reshape the future of Ireland and the British Empire.

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When you put on a jazz record, what do you hear? Beyond the trumpet and the sax of course... 

Well etched into that vinyl and living in that music is a long story that dates back 300 years to a dusty public square where slaves would sing and dance.

The history of jazz is a long and winding evolution that goes from Congo Square to New Orleans to a Chicago recording studio and beyond.

Dr Matt Sakakeeny is Department Chair and Associate Professor of Music, Ethnomusicology from Tulane University. He sits down with Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) to chart this fascinating history of a music genre that’s gone on to become a cultural force felt around the world. 

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She was put into an insane asylum at the age of 20. Ten days later she was a celebrity and two years later she had cemented a legacy that would last centuries. 

But Nellie Bly was not insane. She faked it all. But why?

Brooke Kroeger, journalist and emeritus professor at NYU, tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) about Nellie Bly’s career-defining investigation, how it inspired generations and made her a household name.

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28 June 1969 was a regular Saturday night at the Stonewall Inn. Until it wasn’t. 

“The bar lights blinked on and off. I'd never seen that happen before so I asked my friend what's going on, and my friend said, oh, just another raid. Well, it turned out not to be just the kind of raid that they were used to.”

While Mark Segal had spent many nights at the unlicensed gay bar, none were like the one that started the Stonewall Riots. The veteran activist and journalist, one of the last living eyewitnesses to the Stonewall uprising, tells host Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole) about what really happened that night and how it sparked the first Pride march and launched the gay rights movement not just in America but around the world.

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This episode was first published in September 2025

‘Would you like fries with that?’ It’s a question you’ve likely been asked countless times. But what if the only reason French fries are so popular throughout the West today is because of a Queen who lost her head during the French Revolution? 

Dr Lauren Samuelsson is an Associate Lecturer at the University of Wollongong where she investigates the history of food, drink, popular culture and gender. She tells Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole) how the history of the humble potato is really a history of empire; a story that can be traced through the jungles of the Americas, to a Prussian prison, through the fields of Ireland, and to a fateful dinner party where Queen Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI were guests and turned the potato from a suspicious root vegetable into a fashion icon and culinary hit. 

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This episode was first published in April 2025.

The fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 is one of the most famous events of modern history. And with it came a wave of momentous events - the reunification of East and West Germany, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the end of the Cold War. 

But the way it came about is stranger than fiction. The images of people swarming the wall and chipping away at it all came down to a small slip at a routine press conference.

Dr Katrin Schreiter is a Senior Lecturer in German and History at Kings College London and she has a deeply personal connection to this story. She tells Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole) that while powerful men have been credited with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the true heroes were everyday men and women. 

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This episode was first published in May 2025.

It’s arguably the most famous painting in the world. But back in 1911, the Mona Lisa wasn’t an international icon. So what made the painting so famous it would attract millions of visitors to The Louvre every year? 

This is the unbelievable true story of an art heist - one of the 20th century's most audacious art thefts that would turn a masterpiece into a legend.

Art historian Mary McGillivray tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) about one of art history’s most sensational crimes and its patriotic perpetrator.

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Got a story for us? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at noonesawitcoming@abc.net.au This episode was first published in April 2025. 

It was meant to be Scotland’s saving grace - a bold plan to build a colony and dominate global trade. 

But disease, starvation, and frankly just bad planning was their undoing... and the failed outpost paved the way for a union with their biggest rival.

Archaeologist Mark Horton tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) about the story of the Darien Scheme and how the failed venture bankrupted Scotland, deepened economic despair, and indirectly paved the way for the 1707 Act of Union with England, arguably changing the course of British history.

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She was called the most beautiful woman in the world and was seen as an exotic Hollywood star in the 1930s. But Hedy Lamarr was more than that. She was also an inventor. 

During WWII she patented a technology to sink German U-boats. It was ignored and shelved, only to be picked up decades later to and be used every day on our phones and computers.

Ruth Barton, Emeritus Professor of Film from Trinity College Dublin, tells Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole) about how Hedy Lamarr invented the foundations of wi-fi and why it took decades for it to be a part of her legacy.

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When you combine Russian ballet, French aristocracy, and a little bit of Walt Disney you get a recipe for a riot and one of the most important musical moments in history.

Host of Radio National’s The Music Show, Andrew Ford, sits down at the piano and tells Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole) about why Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring was so confronting that it caused a riot in 1913 and how it went on to change music forever.

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As the Second World War raged in the Pacific, there was a team of codebreakers in Australia working around the clock intercepting and deciphering Japanese messages. 

It was Australia’s own Bletchley Park, but the team were young, female and worked in a shed. And they called themselves The Garage Girls.

Author Alli Sinclair tells Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole) the story of these codebreakers and how they secured the Allies’ victory in the Pacific, only to be lost in history... until now. 

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From moons to mind bending maths and revolutions, the story of how we got the modern calendar is messy. 

Matthew Champion, Associate Professor in History at the University of Melbourne, takes Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole) through time to understand the many iterations of calendars and why the one we use today can still be improved.

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You see it on Christmas cards, in shop windows and at your local church. The nativity scene is everywhere at this time of year. 

But the scene you know of Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus in the manger, with some animals around is actually thanks to some mistranslations and a popular saint in the Middle Ages who wanted to imprint the story of the birth of Christ into people’s memory. 

Art historian Mary McGillivray tells Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole) about the first nativity play and why its tableau has lasted over 800 years.

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There’s one man you can thank - or curse - for your hand cramp after writing all your Christmas cards. Sir Henry Cole was a ‘dumpy’ Englishman who had too many jobs and not enough time to write back to his friends and family so he created the first Christmas card in 1843. It caused quite the stir, and not exactly in the way he expected. 

Author and all-things-Christmas expert Ace Collins tells Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole) how the Christmas holiday evolved in Victorian England and why the first Christmas card took the country - and the world - by storm.

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It started as a deadly toxin and became a billion-dollar beauty secret. So how exactly did a poison become the world’s most popular cosmetic fix? 

It’s all to do with one man who took a plunge and used it to treat eye spasms, and another who saw its potential in the pursuit of perfection. 

Author and former ophthalmologist Dr Eugene Helveston tells Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole) the story of Botox, tracing it back to deadly sausages in the 18th century to being injected into faces 300 years later. 

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Over a hundred years ago, some divers jumped into the Mediterranean to look for sponges. Instead, they found ancient treasures. Artefacts, statues, jewellery. And a corroded piece of bronze. Little did they know that lump of metal would be the most valuable of the lot. 

Ancient Greek cultural historian Dr Tatiana Bur from the Australian National University tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) the story of the Antikythera mechanism. From how it was salvaged from the ocean floor, to being called the world’s first computer and how it’s transformed our understanding of ancient civilisations and technology. 

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She entered the royal palace as a concubine and became the first and only female emperor of China. She was power hungry, a total operator and if you asked her enemies, a blood thirsty murderer. And her secret weapon to legitimise her rule wasn't just an unwavering belief in herself, but in Buddha. 

Historian and author William Dalrymple (Empire, The Golden Road) tells Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole) the extraordinary story of Wu Zetian, how she rose to power and paved the way for China having the world's largest Buddhist population. 

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It was a colour once reserved for emperors and the elite. But a lab mishap soon changed purple forever. 

Cultural historian and author of the book The Secret Lives of Colour, Kassia St Clair tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) the story of how a London teenager’s failed experiment transformed how fabric dyes were made, how we dressed and how power was perceived.

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Got a story for us? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at noonesawitcoming@abc.net.au If you'd like to hear more from Kassia St Clair, listen to her tell the story of The Lingerie Makers who put Neil Armstrong on the Moon.

There’s that phrase a picture says a thousand words... but what does a picture of child labour say? 

Curator, educator, and photo-historian Beth Saunders (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) sits down with Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) to tell the story of photographer Lewis Hine and his photographs of children working in places like factories, coal mines and cotton mills in the early 1900s. His powerful photos had a lasting legacy but not in the way he expected. 

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Got a story for us? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at noonesawitcoming@abc.net.au