No One Saw It Coming

From the mid-1800s, more than 62,000 Pacific Islanders were kidnapped, tricked or coerced into labour on Queensland's sugar and cotton plantations.

Ryan Butta (Author, Blackbirding) and Emelda Davis, whose grandfather was taken from Vanuatu as a boy, tell Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) how Australia avoided the word "slavery" by disguising the trade in euphemism.

 It was called 'blackbirding' and it came to an end thanks to what is arguably the most racist piece of Australian legislation.

Binge all the episodes of No One Saw It Coming now on ABC listen (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts.

Get in touch:

Got a story for us? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]

A ransacked bakery. A wildly inflated bill. A demand so absurd it should have been laughed out of the room. Instead it triggered warships. 

In 1838, France used a pastry chef's grievance to justify a blockade, a siege, and an assault on Mexico. But was the baker's claim ever really the reason? Or just the excuse the French government had been waiting for? 

Food historian and author Seren Charrington-Hollins tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) about how a bakery grievance and unpaid debts led to a war that history barely remembers by its real name. 

This is the fourth and final episode in the special series This Stupid War. Listen to the full series in the No One Saw It Coming podcast feed on ABC listen (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts.

Get in touch:

Got a story for us? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]

A pig trots over an invisible border, wandering into a potato farmer's garden. It's not the first time it's trespassed but it is the last. 

The farmer takes his gun off the wall and shoots it dead. But what he doesn't realise was that by pulling that trigger, he set off one of the tensest military stand-offs in history. 

Mike Vouri (former Historian for San Juan Island National Historic Park) takes Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) to San Juan Island where the US and Great Britain came dangerously close to war... all over a pig.

This is the third episode in the special series This Stupid War. Listen to the full series in the No One Saw It Coming podcast feed on ABC listen (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts.

Get in touch:

Got a story for us? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]

It’s called The Football War and raged for just 100 hours. It’s a catchy name for a conflict supposedly sparked by a World Cup qualifier game. 

But behind the catchy title, and away from the football pitch lies a deeper, darker history about politics, poverty, power and a war that claimed thousands of lives.

Fionntan O’Hara from the London School of Economics tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) the story of how the battle on the pitch became a real war between El Salvador and Honduras and what led up to that football game.

This is the second episode in the special series This Stupid War. Listen to the full series in the No One Saw It Coming podcast feed on ABC listen (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts.

Get in touch:

Got a story for us? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]

In 1932 Australia sent soldiers with machine guns to stop 20,000 emus rampaging through wheat fields. 

What followed was a national embarrassment and earned the emus a reputation as the victors of one of history's strangest wars.

Dr Ruth Morgan tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) the wild story of the Emu War: what happens when a country goes to war with a flightless bird but realises the true enemy is something much larger and more formidable... 

This is the first episode in the special series This Stupid War. Listen to the full series in the No One Saw It Coming podcast feed on ABC listen (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts.

Get in touch:

Got a story for us? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]

Their faces are everywhere: on calendars, incense packets, and soap packaging. But how did the Hindu deities' faces go beyond temples and shrines? 

In nineteenth-century India, Ravi Varma dared to paint the gods in a way no one had before. What followed was a cultural revolution that carried his vision into homes across India and around the world.

Tarun Nagesh, Curatorial Manager of Asian and Pacific Art at the Queensland Art Gallery, tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) the story of how one man gave Hindu gods their modern faces. 

Binge all the episodes of No One Saw It Coming now on ABC listen (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts.

Get in touch:

Got a story for us? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]

You think you know Pompeii. A city wiped out. People frozen in time. A disaster that stopped time. But how much of that story is actually true?

Ancient historian and writer Dr Jess Venner (The Lost Voices of Pompeii) sits down with Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) to blow away centuries of misconceptions, bust myths surrounding one of history's most famous disasters, and bring to life the everyday people lost in the story of Pompeii and its final moments. 

Binge all the episodes of No One Saw It Coming now on ABC listen (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts.

Get in touch:

Got a story for us? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]

Marcus Garvey is known as a civil rights activist and leader of the Pan-Africanism movement. But there’s a part of his story you may not know about. 

Social historian Darrel Blake tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) the lesser known chapter in Marcus Garvey’s life - about how he established a shipping company but ended up creating a symbol of black liberation and empowerment, but not before condemning his reputation, being called a fraud and sabotaging a black empire. 

Binge all the episodes of No One Saw It Coming now on ABC listen (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts.

Get in touch:

Got a story for us? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]

Imagine driving from Beijing, through the Gobi Desert, Mongolia, and across Russia into Europe. The roads are terrible, you don't have petrol stations and you have pack animals carrying supplies. Oh, and it's a race so step on it.

In 1907 this was the challenge set by a French newspaper. A race around the world to prove the automobile was not some fad technology. 

Kassia St Clair, cultural historian and author (The Race To The Future) tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) the wild story about a race around the world that put lives and technology on the line and got mostly forgotten about since. 

Binge all the episodes of No One Saw It Coming now on ABC listen (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts.

Get in touch:

Got a story for us? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]

What do you get when you combine fashion, race and a world war? 

From the jazz clubs and dance halls of the 1940s to an infamous city riot in Los Angeles, the zoot suit was made to draw attention. But sometimes, that wasn't such a good thing.

Monica L. Miller (Chair and Professor of Africana Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University) tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) the story of the zoot suit; how it put a target on its wearer's back and how it's evolved to this day. 

Binge all the episodes of No One Saw It Coming now on ABC listen (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts.

Get in touch:

Got a story for us? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]