History Lab

Darlinghurst has always been a magnet and a haven for exiles and misfits. With writer and Darlo-phile Sunil Badami as guide, this audio story celebrates a handful of local characters and eccentrics, reflecting on the material conditions that enable unconventional people to thrive.     Image: Hare Krishna, Kings Cross 1970-71 (Photographer: Rennie Ellis © Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive...

If you listen after rain, you can still hear the rush of water that used to flow from the sandstone ridge at the apex of Darlinghurst down to the harbour. This audio story goes in search of the creeks and cascades that sustained life and industry for Gadigal people, colonists and Chinese market gardeners, before being covered over by the concrete and tarmac of the modern city.    Image:...

Welcome to a special History Lab series, Listen to Darlinghurst . In this mini episode, History Lab host Anna Clark and Listen to Darlinghurst producer Catherine Freyne introduce the series, which runs from Episodes 18 to 23 on the History Lab feed.  Image: Darlinghurst Rd 1954 by Mark Strizic (State Library of Victoria)   Credits   Producer: Catherine Freyne  Sound engineer: J...

After Jimmy’s trial, what happened to his brother Joe? Joe has mostly been forgotten by history, and his presence in the archives is little more than a whisper. From coronial records, family tales and a visit to a country pub, it becomes clear that Joe fell foul of the frontier, in life and death. And yet, more questions remain: Was Joe Governor, an outlaw, killed lawfully? How do his ancestral re...

How does the law deal with an outlaw? Jimmy Governor is captured and his legal case becomes a lightning rod for justice in the new federation. But how did Australia’s most-wanted murderer get one of the best lawyers in the colony? A prison experiment begins with a diary and we find out how the present mimics the past.

This is the tale of a prison colony trying to become a country and the murder case that stood in its way, but this is not a true crime podcast. Jimmy and Joe Governor, two brothers from Wiradjuri and Wonnarua country, were the last proclaimed outlaws in Australia - wanted dead or alive. 120 years later we examine what has survived and what we can still learn from the Governor brothers' story. To f...

The Last Outlaws is the latest audio series to be released by Impact Studios, an audio production house embedded in the University of Technology Sydney. The trilogy podcast is based on UTS Law Professor Katherine Biber’s tenacious and careful research of Jimmy and Joe Governor, Australia’s last proclaimed outlaws. The Governor brothers' story has been told in books and film before, but never like...

How will Australian universities fare in a post-pandemic world? It depends on an influential but rarely talked about relationship between the state, its institutions, and the public. Discover more in the first podcast episode of The New Social Contract. Brought to you by the makers of History Lab.

Three days before Spain’s general elections in 2004 a series of bombs exploded on crowded Madrid commuter trains, killing almost 200 people. The Spanish authorities found a plastic bag a few blocks away from one of the bomb sites with a single, incomplete fingerprint. This was the trace linked to a man living 9000 kms away, a US Attorney in Oregon by the name of Brandon Mayfield. We’ve been told t...

When was the last time you were asked to sign something and did you stop to think how the strange squiggly mark you make on a page could be used? The signature is a performative act, crucial to the law’s way of knowing, but it’s also been used as an instrument of power and control. In this episode of History Lab we hear from a boy who was stolen, the man who took him away and the Judge who was ask...

'Making a Fortune' looks at the popularity and persecution of two of the most formidable fortune tellers of Federation Australia. In the first decade of the 20th century, Australians were focused on the future. It was the dawn of a new century, and a newly-formed nation. But during this time, police were cracking down on a booming industry dominated by women—it was a service that society deemed su...

History Lab host Dr Tamson Pietsch hands over the mic to Dr Alecia Simmonds, an interdisciplinary scholar of law and history at the University of Technology Sydney. In this bonus episode they dissect how it is the law ‘knows’ and discuss how both history and the law rely on traces from the past to draw conclusions in the present. If truth is uncertain in historical archives - is it even harder to...

Death, money and family are the key ingredients in any last will and testament. They also make a killer cocktail that unleashes a special force not present in any other part of the law. In this episode of History Lab, we’re looking at how the law determines your last wishes through some truly unusual cases. Whether it's for reasons of urgency, eccentricity or expediency, courts around the world re...

History Lab is back for a third season, fresh from wins at the New York Radio Festival Awards and the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia. In this special four-part series we’ll be exploring the ‘law’s way of knowing’, looking at histories that intersect with the law. From fortune telling to fingerprints, unusual wills and the forensic theory that something is always left behind, join...

History Lab audio makers explore how we've tried to understand the past through sound in season two

In the aftermath of World War One, nations came together in an attempt to ensure war on the same devastating scale could never occur again. The result? The League of Nations: a revolutionary idea to form the world’s first international organisation. But clearly it did not stop the world from going to war. A century later we are still questioning our ability to come together. In this episode, Glend...

Where do jelly babies come from? Mass-produced things are all around us. But they all start with a single object. In this episode, Olivia goes looking for the patternmakers, whose invisible hands are the original creators of much of the stuff we use every day. They see a world no-one else can see. So why are they disappearing? And what will we lose when they are gone? Producer: Olivia Rosenman Col...

In 1817, the Bank of New South Wales opened as the first financial institution in the Australian colonies. But when the first customers arrived for the grand opening, they found someone had already made a deposit. Where did the money come from? Our producers, Jason and Nicole, follow the record trail and discover the uncertain foundations of Australia’s first bank.

Sydney's iconic Opera House plays host to musicians and dancers, actors and singers. But beneath the notes of their voices, another song echoes across the city’s waters. Indigenous Eora fisherwomen passed down their knowledge through their songs while paddling their canoes, a cooking fire at one end and their kids on their shoulders. Historian Anna Clark and host Tamson Pietsch go looking for the...

What does it take to make History Lab? This bonus interlude episode lifts the curtain on all that goes into making history for your ears! Executive Producer Emma Lancaster steps out from behind the headphones and asks you to listen hard as she and host Tamson Pietsch discover that in the gap between historians and journalists, great things can happen. The History Lab final episode for Season One '...

In the middle of a mining town in outback Australia, over 400 kilometres from the closest ocean, stands a monument dedicated to the memory of the Titanic . On the surface the story of Broken Hill’s Titanic Memorial can be seen as a simple tale of memory and humanity, one community expressing their sympathy for another. But on closer inspection, the politics of memory starts to unravel and raises q...

Quietly buried away in Western Sydney’s state archives is a secret history of love. Lists of lingerie, love letters and lockets of hair, are stapled to writs from over 200 years ago. In the 19th century a broken engagement could damn a woman for life. But scorned women had an unexpected way to get square. A now somewhat forgotten law known as ‘breach of promise to marry’ saw women awarded massive...

What happens to evidence after a criminal trial? Tamson goes looking for answers and finds them in the shadow of one of the worst miscarriages of justice in Australian history - the Chamberlain trials. Credits Producer: Olivia Rosenman Collaborating historian: Katherine Biber Host: Tamson Pietsch Executive Producer: Emma Lancaster History Lab is a production of UTS Impact Studios.

History Lab explores the gaps between us and the past. Join us.