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 tool for imperial horticulture and rewrote the future of the British Empire. 

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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 story behind one of the worst pandemics the world has ever seen.

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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 revolution.

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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 Stole) the remarkable story of how a double bluff by a conservative politician ended up empowering South Australian women and making world history. 

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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 conversations, and it was made by a man whose name is now famous but for a very different reason.

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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 sliding doors story behind the biggest night in fashion.

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When he got on the train to London, he thought he got away with it. He thought he got away with murder. But little did he know that something was racing alongside the train, pulsing deep underground, that would change his life forever. 

Writer and cultural historian Kassia St Clair tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) how a horrific crime changed the way people living in the 1800s viewed the telegraph machine. 

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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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