No One Saw It Coming

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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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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