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.