Unlikely Threads

17. A dog fights alone on an Afghan battlefield. Another waitsnine years for an owner who will never return. One saves the World Cup. Another becomes the first animal to orbit the Earth. And one extraordinary collie jumps behind enemy lines with the SAS. In this episode of Unlikely Threads , Clive and Andrew uncover the remarkable stories behind some of history's most famous dogs. From Victori...

You walk into a jeweller and spend $10,000 on a diamondring. Twenty minutes later, you change your mind and try to sell it back. Suddenly it's worth only a fraction of what you paid. Why? In this fascinating episode of Unlikely Threads , Clive Hartley and Andrew Wisdom pull on one of the world's most glitteringloose threads and discover that the value of diamonds may have far less to do wi...

A seventeen-year-old Jewish refugee walks into the GermanEmbassy in Paris carrying a pistol and a grievance. Minutes later, five shots ring out, a German diplomat lies mortally wounded, and one of the most consequential events before the Second World War is set in motion. In this episode of Unlikely Threads, Clive and Andrewunravel the extraordinary true story of Herschel Grynszpan, a desperate te...

​ In January 1962 — one month after Tanzanian independence —three girls at a mission boarding school started laughing uncontrollably. Then screaming. Then crying. Then running. The epidemic spread to fourteen schools and a thousand people over eighteen months. The doctors found nothing. Thegovernment said it was children being dramatic. The Western scientists called it fascinating and went home. N...

13. What do 800 million rabbits, 19 million feral cats, and 200million cane toads have in common? They were all solutions. This is the story of the Europeans who arrived in Australia, looked at an ancient and extraordinary continent, and decided — with the best intentions, and the full backing of science and government — that it needed to be fixed. If you enjoy this episode please support us and e...

12. They came for a cause. They stayed for a war. In this secondpart of Unlikely Threads , the story moves from belief to battlefield as the International Brigades are thrown into the brutal reality of the Spanish Civil War. What began as a fight against fascism soon becomes something far more chaotic, dangerous—and complicated. From the Jarama valley to the streets of Barcelona, Clive and Andrew...

11. What if the Second World War didn’t begin in 1939—but threeyears earlier, in Spain? In this episode of Unlikely Threads , we follow the extraordinary stories of the men and women who travelled from more than sixty countries to fight fascism in its infancy. Some came for politics, others for adventure, sport, or romance —but all found themselves in a brutal conflict that would foretell the horr...

10. In the second part of the story Andrew and Clive look at how six different sports were born from a single argument. We look at the origins of Australian football, and why a Harvard campus that was slightly too small changed the rules of American football forever. Join Andrew and Clive as they explore the origins of the World Game and of other Codes, that would find that title provocative! If y...

9. One pub. One meeting. One vote about whether it should be legal to kick your opponent in the shins. The men who won that vote in 1863 invented soccer. The men who lost it and walked out invented rugby.  Join Andrew and Clive as they explore the origins of the World Game and of other Codes, that would find that remark as provocative! If you enjoy this episode please support us and encourage us t...

In the second part of A Tale of Two Women we ask a different question: what happens when privilege, ambition, and curiosity carry you to the edge of the known world? Katherine Routledge’s journey begins in comfort and security, but it quickly transforms into something far more uncertain as she sets sail aboard her custom-built schooner—the Mana —towards the remote and mysterious Easter Island. Wha...

This episode of Unlikely Threads – A Tale of Two Women begins with a question: how does a young woman from a modest background in Russian‑occupied Poland end up at Oxford in 1911—and then push beyond it, into one of the harshest environments on Earth? Maria Czaplicka’s story unfolds as a journey of determination, intellect, and extraordinary resilience, as she breaks through the rigid barriers of...

What if the greatest composers in history weren’t refined geniuses in candlelit rooms—but obsessive, scandal‑ridden, unpredictable, tragic figures living on the edge of brilliance and collapse? This episode of Unlikely Threads Andrew and Clive pulls back the velvet curtain and plunges you into a world where genius and madness are never far apart. What begins as a harmless search for a single “inte...

Inspired by the story of David Stirling and the origins ofthe SAS (listen to episode 3), Andrew tumbles into the strange world of Second World War invention, a time where serious people proposed armed bats, pigeon-guided missiles, fakearmies, exploding dogs and aircraft carriers made of ice. Somehow, many of these ideas received funding, testing and official approval. As Clive Hartley and Andrew W...

This episode of Unlikely Threads begins with a simplechildhood memory: a boy passing a statue in the Lancashire town of Colne. Without realising its significance it sparks a journey into the hidden history of a seemingly ordinary place. Through the lens of the 1878 book The Annals of Colne , the podcast uncovers a rich, often surprising story that mirrorsthe wider sweep of English history. Blendin...

This episode of Unlikely Threads asks a key question:was David Stirling—the man credited with founding the SAS—a brilliant visionary or simply a master of his own myth? Sparked by a modern TV series and two sharply conflicting biographies, the story unravels the gap between legend andreality, inviting you to decide for yourself. The episode traces the fragile beginnings of the SAS, where risky exp...

How would you go about selling the Eiffel Tower? More importantly, who on earth would believe you? In this episode of Unlikely Threads , Andrew Wisdom and Clive Hartley descend into the gilded world of Victor Lustig: elegant con man, psychological magician, and possibly the only person in history audacious enough to attempt selling the Eiffel Tower for scrap metal… twice. Along the way: corrupt of...

Murder in colonial Kenya during WW2 is our setting for this episode of Unlikely Threads. It is story of British colonial society behaving badly and lifestyle influenced by Altitude, Alcohol and Adultery.