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 S...

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...

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 'blackbirdi...

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 Charringt...

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) take...

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...

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. Dr Ruth Morgan 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...

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 Paci...

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 ev...

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 befo...

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 histori...

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...

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 Golde...

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 Australi...

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...

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...

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 Indigeno...

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 str...

*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 (Flic...

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 t...

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 sto...

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 r...

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 Sto...

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...

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...