No One Saw It Coming

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.

The fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 is one of the most famous events of modern history. And with it came a wave of momentous events - the reunification of East and West Germany, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the end of the Cold War. 

But the way it came about is stranger than fiction. The images of people swarming the wall and chipping away at it all came down to a small slip at a routine press conference.

Dr Katrin Schreiter is a Senior Lecturer in German and History at Kings College London and she has a deeply personal connection to this story. She tells Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole) that while powerful men have been credited with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the true heroes were everyday men and women. 

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This episode was first published in May 2025.

It’s arguably the most famous painting in the world. But back in 1911, the Mona Lisa wasn’t an international icon. So what made the painting so famous it would attract millions of visitors to The Louvre every year? 

This is the unbelievable true story of an art heist - one of the 20th century's most audacious art thefts that would turn a masterpiece into a legend.

Art historian Mary McGillivray tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) about one of art history’s most sensational crimes and its patriotic perpetrator.

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Got a story for us? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected] This episode was first published in April 2025. 

It was meant to be Scotland’s saving grace - a bold plan to build a colony and dominate global trade. 

But disease, starvation, and frankly just bad planning was their undoing... and the failed outpost paved the way for a union with their biggest rival.

Archaeologist Mark Horton tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) about the story of the Darien Scheme and how the failed venture bankrupted Scotland, deepened economic despair, and indirectly paved the way for the 1707 Act of Union with England, arguably changing the course of British history.

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She was called the most beautiful woman in the world and was seen as an exotic Hollywood star in the 1930s. But Hedy Lamarr was more than that. She was also an inventor. 

During WWII she patented a technology to sink German U-boats. It was ignored and shelved, only to be picked up decades later to and be used every day on our phones and computers.

Ruth Barton, Emeritus Professor of Film from Trinity College Dublin, tells Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole) about how Hedy Lamarr invented the foundations of wi-fi and why it took decades for it to be a part of her legacy.

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When you combine Russian ballet, French aristocracy, and a little bit of Walt Disney you get a recipe for a riot and one of the most important musical moments in history.

Host of Radio National’s The Music Show, Andrew Ford, sits down at the piano and tells Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole) about why Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring was so confronting that it caused a riot in 1913 and how it went on to change music forever.

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As the Second World War raged in the Pacific, there was a team of codebreakers in Australia working around the clock intercepting and deciphering Japanese messages. 

It was Australia’s own Bletchley Park, but the team were young, female and worked in a shed. And they called themselves The Garage Girls.

Author Alli Sinclair tells Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole) the story of these codebreakers and how they secured the Allies’ victory in the Pacific, only to be lost in history... until now. 

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