No One Saw It Coming

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.Get in touch:Got a story for us? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at noonesawitcoming@abc.net.au 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.Binge all the episodes of No One Saw It Coming now on the ABC listen app (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 noonesawitcoming@abc.net.au

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.Binge all the episodes of No One Saw It Coming now on the ABC listen app (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 noonesawitcoming@abc.net.au

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.Binge all the episodes of No One Saw It Coming now on the ABC listen app (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 noonesawitcoming@abc.net.au

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. Binge all the episodes of No One Saw It Coming now on the ABC listen app (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 noonesawitcoming@abc.net.au

From moons to mind bending maths and revolutions, the story of how we got the modern calendar is messy. Matthew Champion, Associate Professor in History at the University of Melbourne, takes Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole) through time to understand the many iterations of calendars and why the one we use today can still be improved.Binge all the episodes of No One Saw It Coming now on the ABC listen app (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 noonesawitcoming@abc.net.au

You see it on Christmas cards, in shop windows and at your local church. The nativity scene is everywhere at this time of year. But the scene you know of Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus in the manger, with some animals around is actually thanks to some mistranslations and a popular saint in the Middle Ages who wanted to imprint the story of the birth of Christ into people’s memory. Art historian Mary McGillivray tells Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole) about the first nativity play and why its tableau has lasted over 800 years.Binge all the episodes of No One Saw It Coming now on the ABC listen app (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 noonesawitcoming@abc.net.au

There’s one man you can thank - or curse - for your hand cramp after writing all your Christmas cards. Sir Henry Cole was a ‘dumpy’ Englishman who had too many jobs and not enough time to write back to his friends and family so he created the first Christmas card in 1843. It caused quite the stir, and not exactly in the way he expected. Author and all-things-Christmas expert Ace Collins tells Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole) how the Christmas holiday evolved in Victorian England and why the first Christmas card took the country - and the world - by storm.Binge all the episodes of No One Saw It Coming now on the ABC listen app (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 noonesawitcoming@abc.net.au

It started as a deadly toxin and became a billion-dollar beauty secret. So how exactly did a poison become the world’s most popular cosmetic fix? It’s all to do with one man who took a plunge and used it to treat eye spasms, and another who saw its potential in the pursuit of perfection. Author and former ophthalmologist Dr Eugene Helveston tells Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole) the story of Botox, tracing it back to deadly sausages in the 18th century to being injected into faces 300 years later. Binge all the episodes of No One Saw It Coming now on the ABC listen app (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 noonesawitcoming@abc.net.au

Over a hundred years ago, some divers jumped into the Mediterranean to look for sponges. Instead, they found ancient treasures. Artefacts, statues, jewellery. And a corroded piece of bronze. Little did they know that lump of metal would be the most valuable of the lot. Ancient Greek cultural historian Dr Tatiana Bur from the Australian National University tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) the story of the Antikythera mechanism. From how it was salvaged from the ocean floor, to being called the world’s first computer and how it’s transformed our understanding of ancient civilisations and technology. Binge all the episodes of No One Saw It Coming now on the ABC listen app (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 noonesawitcoming@abc.net.au

She entered the royal palace as a concubine and became the first and only female emperor of China. She was power hungry, a total operator and if you asked her enemies, a blood thirsty murderer. And her secret weapon to legitimise her rule wasn't just an unwavering belief in herself, but in Buddha. Historian and author William Dalrymple (Empire, The Golden Road) tells Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole) the extraordinary story of Wu Zetian, how she rose to power and paved the way for China having the world's largest Buddhist population. Binge all the episodes of No One Saw It Coming now on the ABC listen app (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 noonesawitcoming@abc.net.au

It was a colour once reserved for emperors and the elite. But a lab mishap soon changed purple forever. Cultural historian and author of the book The Secret Lives of Colour, Kassia St Clair tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) the story of how a London teenager’s failed experiment transformed how fabric dyes were made, how we dressed and how power was perceived.Binge all the episodes of No One Saw It Coming now on the ABC listen app (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 noonesawitcoming@abc.net.au If you'd like to hear more from Kassia St Clair, listen to her tell the story of The Lingerie Makers who put Neil Armstrong on the Moon.

There’s that phrase a picture says a thousand words... but what does a picture of child labour say? Curator, educator, and photo-historian Beth Saunders (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) sits down with Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) to tell the story of photographer Lewis Hine and his photographs of children working in places like factories, coal mines and cotton mills in the early 1900s. His powerful photos had a lasting legacy but not in the way he expected. Binge all the episodes of No One Saw It Coming now on the ABC listen app (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 noonesawitcoming@abc.net.au

It’s small enough to fit in your pocket and it’s saved countless lives.The asthma puffer has had a long journey, stretching back thousands of years to various treatments including asthma cigarettes. But the asthma puffer as we know it today is all thanks to a young girl’s throwaway comment over breakfast in the 1950s. Dr Daniel Duke from Monash University tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) about how the asthma puffer came into existence and how he fits into its long history as well. Binge all the episodes of No One Saw It Coming now on the ABC listen app (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 noonesawitcoming@abc.net.au

London, 1854. A mysterious and deadly illness is sweeping through Soho, and people are dropping like flies. The leading theory? “Bad air.” But one doctor isn’t convinced. John Snow begins to trace the outbreak — not through symptoms, but through streets. Journalist and author Sandra Hempel tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) the story of how a hand-drawn map, a pub, and a pump sparked the birth of epidemiology — and changed the way we fight disease forever.Binge all the episodes of No One Saw It Coming now on the ABC listen app (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 noonesawitcoming@abc.net.au

A Changi prisoner of war. A fridge full of urine. A handful of dead guinea pigs. And one of the most important medical breakthroughs of the 20th century.Greg de Moore, Associate Professor of Psychiatry based at Sydney's Westmead Hospital, tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) about the story of Australian doctor John Cade and his pioneering work in bipolar treatment. From the horrors of a Changi prison camp to a backyard shed experiment with lithium, this is the story of how science, serendipity, and sheer human determination transformed modern psychiatry.Binge all the episodes of No One Saw It Coming now on the ABC listen app (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 noonesawitcoming@abc.net.au

One of the most important scientific discoveries of the last century was the first immortal human cell line, known as “HeLa”. It enabled significant medical breakthroughs, including the development of the polio vaccine, genetic mapping and even COVID-19 vaccines.But for decades no one knew that the name 'HeLa' stood for Henrietta Lacks, an African American mother who died of an aggressive cervical cancer. It was thanks to Henrietta Lacks that science had been given these miracle cells, and yet, the samples had been taken from her without her knowledge and without her consent. Bioethics expert and the James B.Duke Professor of English & African American Studies at Duke University Karla FC Holloway tells Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole) about the woman behind the famous cells, a life that has obscured. And she discusses the role that race and gender played in Henrietta Lacks' story and the injustices that persist in medicine even today.  Binge all the episodes of No One Saw It Coming now on the ABC listen app (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 noonesawitcoming@abc.net.au

He soared into the sky in a balloon to prove a scientific theory and landed in the world of espionage. This is a story about a man with a fabulous moustache who called himself Professor, who was accused of being the devil in the American Civil War and ended up becoming a spy in a big balloon, triggering the creation of the US Air Force. Yes, really. Matt Bevan from ABC's If You’re Listening tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) about the early days of aerial espionage, and how he stumbled down a rabbit hole to find this story in the first place. Binge all the episodes of No One Saw It Coming now on the ABC listen app (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 noonesawitcoming@abc.net.au

It’s one of the greatest museum heists in Australian history - a theft whose repercussions are still being felt today. And yet, no one really knows about it.Journalist and author Walter Marsh sits down with Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) and shares the story of a mysterious British gentleman who duped Australian museums and stole thousands of butterflies right under their noses. Binge all the episodes of No One Saw It Coming now on the ABC listen app (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 noonesawitcoming@abc.net.au

Yes, Adolf Hitler - the guy who was apparently so 'pure' that he never even drank coffee - was secretly a drug addict. Norman Ohler, author of the bestselling book Blitzed, tells Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole) how a strange celebrity wellness doctor named Theodor Morell became Hitler's personal physician and used Hitler as a guinea pig for his experimental drugs. By the end of WW2, the Nazi leader was on opioids, cocaine, perhaps even methamphetamine. After listening to this wild tale, you'll never see the Second World War in quite the same way. Binge all the episodes of No One Saw It Coming now on the ABC listen app (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 noonesawitcoming@abc.net.au