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 [email protected] 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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It’s small enough to fit in your pocket and it’s saved countless lives.

The asthma puffer has had a long journey, stretching back thousands of years to various treatments including asthma cigarettes. 

But the asthma puffer as we know it today is all thanks to a young girl’s throwaway comment over breakfast in the 1950s. 

Dr Daniel Duke from Monash University tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) about how the asthma puffer came into existence and how he fits into its long history as well. 

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London, 1854. A mysterious and deadly illness is sweeping through Soho, and people are dropping like flies. The leading theory? “Bad air.” But one doctor isn’t convinced. John Snow begins to trace the outbreak — not through symptoms, but through streets. 

Journalist and author Sandra Hempel tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) the story of how a hand-drawn map, a pub, and a pump sparked the birth of epidemiology — and changed the way we fight disease forever.

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A Changi prisoner of war. A fridge full of urine. A handful of dead guinea pigs. And one of the most important medical breakthroughs of the 20th century.

Greg de Moore, Associate Professor of Psychiatry based at Sydney's Westmead Hospital, tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) about the story of Australian doctor John Cade and his pioneering work in bipolar treatment. 

From the horrors of a Changi prison camp to a backyard shed experiment with lithium, this is the story of how science, serendipity, and sheer human determination transformed modern psychiatry.

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One of the most important scientific discoveries of the last century was the first immortal human cell line, known as “HeLa”. It enabled significant medical breakthroughs, including the development of the polio vaccine, genetic mapping and even COVID-19 vaccines.

But for decades no one knew that the name 'HeLa' stood for Henrietta Lacks, an African American mother who died of an aggressive cervical cancer. It was thanks to Henrietta Lacks that science had been given these miracle cells, and yet, the samples had been taken from her without her knowledge and without her consent. 

Bioethics expert and the James B.Duke Professor of English & African American Studies at Duke University Karla FC Holloway tells Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole) about the woman behind the famous cells, a life that has obscured. And she discusses the role that race and gender played in Henrietta Lacks' story and the injustices that persist in medicine even today.  

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He soared into the sky in a balloon to prove a scientific theory and landed in the world of espionage. 

This is a story about a man with a fabulous moustache who called himself Professor, who was accused of being the devil in the American Civil War and ended up becoming a spy in a big balloon, triggering the creation of the US Air Force. Yes, really. 

Matt Bevan from ABC's If You’re Listening tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) about the early days of aerial espionage, and how he stumbled down a rabbit hole to find this story in the first place. 

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It’s one of the greatest museum heists in Australian history - a theft whose repercussions are still being felt today. And yet, no one really knows about it.

Journalist and author Walter Marsh sits down with Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) and shares the story of a mysterious British gentleman who duped Australian museums and stole thousands of butterflies right under their noses. 

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Yes, Adolf Hitler - the guy who was apparently so 'pure' that he never even drank coffee - was secretly a drug addict. 

Norman Ohler, author of the bestselling book Blitzed, tells Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole) how a strange celebrity wellness doctor named Theodor Morell became Hitler's personal physician and used Hitler as a guinea pig for his experimental drugs. By the end of WW2, the Nazi leader was on opioids, cocaine, perhaps even methamphetamine. 

After listening to this wild tale, you'll never see the Second World War in quite the same way. 

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