No One Saw It Coming

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.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 had a premature baby in America in the 1900s, chances were they would not survive. That is, until Martin Couney came along...In a bizarre attraction in Coney Island, 'Dr Couney' took the children that medicine deemed 'not worth saving' and displayed them to the public in rows of cutting-edge incubators. Over the years, he saved thousands of babies' lives. But the strangest thing was, Martin Couney wasn't a real doctor... Journalist Claire Prentice tells Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole) the incredible true story she unearthed while covering a presidential election, and the miracle babies she eventually met in real life. 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 the event that's seen as the trigger for World War One, but it didn't happen quite the way the history books let on... Australian author Paul Ham tells Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole, Mastermind) what really happened on the 28th of June 1914, when the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne Archduke Franz Ferdinand visited the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo. Far from a meticulously planned and executed assassination, the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand might not have happened at all, were it not for one fateful wrong turn that put him right in the path of the man who would murder him. And the deaths of millions could have been avoided altogether without the desperate need for colonial powers to defend their empires. 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 the trial everyone in Darwin is talking about. In February 2022, a helicopter on a crocodile egg collection mission crashed in remote Arnhem Land, killing the egg collector and paralysing the pilot.Now, Croc Wrangler Matt Wright is on trial: not for the crash, but for what allegedly he did after. Charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice, prosecutors say he tried to interfere with the investigation, fearing he'd be blamed for the crash. Matt Wright has pled not guilty and denies all the allegations.The Case Of is your eyes and ears inside the courtroom, as host Stephen Stockwell and reporter Olivana Lathouris bring you updates from the trial. The Case Of is the follow-up to the hit podcast Mushroom Case Daily, and all episodes of that show will remain available in the back catalogue of The Case Of.

When you picture someone wearing high heels, what do you imagine? I'm guessing it's not horseriding archers on a Persian battlefield... But it turns out the high heel was indeed invented for men, as a brutally effective tool of war. And it was only because of colonialism, and later capitalism, that this iconic footwear made it to Europe and became embedded in women's fashion. Shoe historian Elizabeth Semmelhack tells Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole, Mastermind) how high heels have been at the centre of power struggles - both male and female - for centuries. It's an epic saga that will forever change the way you think about fashion, gender and your shoes.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 the most glamorous job girls could get during WW2... until it turned fatal. In an emotional episode of No One Saw It Coming, author Kate Moore tells Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole, Mastermind) the harrowing true story of the Radium Girls, a group of dial painters who had no idea the job they loved was slowly killing them. When the world turned their back on the Radium Girls, they fought a David and Goliath battle against the company that sentenced them to death - and won. Their heroic fight changed labour laws forever, and their legacy continues to resonate in the field of science 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

Today trade unions are an integral part of the political landscape, at least in countries like Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada. But this hasn’t always been the case… In the 19th century, during the Industrial Revolution, there was a real fear that the social and political upheaval of the French Revolution might be replicated in England and as a result trade unions or ‘friendly societies’ were viewed with suspicion. In the 1830’s this came to a head in the small town of Tolpuddle in Dorset, where six poor farm labourers met under a tree to form the ‘Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers’, to protest wage cuts. They were arrested, tried and sentenced to transportation to Australia on the basis of a legal technicality. The cause of George Loveless and the Tolpuddle Martyrs became a symbol of the struggle for workers’ rights and contributed to the growth of trade unions and the labour movement in Britain and around the world. Tom De Wit is the Curator of the Tolpuddle Martyrs Museum and he joins Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole, Mastermind) from Tolpuddle to share this incredible story.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 thought reality TV began in the ‘90s or early 2000s with MTV’s The Real World or Big Brother, think again… According to Pulitzer-Prize winning critic and New Yorker staff writer Emily Nussbaum, the genre actually pre-dates television altogether, beginning with audience participation shows on radio in the 1940’s. But she tells host Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole, Mastermind) that it’s really thanks to a guy named Allen Funt that we have shows like Survivor, The Kardashians, and MasterChef today. His weird obsession with making secret recordings of people eventually turned into a hit TV show called Candid Camera and laid the foundations for a phenomenon that would not only change television, but would affect us as a society, to the point where a reality TV star now sits in the Oval Office (yes, Donald Trump). Binge all the episodes of No One Saw It Coming now on the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. And check out Emily’s book on the history of reality TV: Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV. Get in touch:Got a story for us? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at noonesawitcoming@abc.net.au

What does a volcano in Iceland have to do with the religious and political struggles going on across the world today? Well it turns out, a LOT… Back in 536AD, the skies turned dark and the world cooled. It was all thanks to a massive volcanic eruption in Iceland, that no one even knew had happened. It led to a mysterious plague, which swept through the Roman and Persian Empires. In the great Byzantine city of Constantinople, it was said that 10,000 people were dying every day. Between plague and war, the world’s two ‘superpowers’ were too distracted to notice that something major was happening on the Arabian peninsula. The Prophet Mohammed had united the tribes and, when he died, his followers started pushing north. Instead of encountering resistance, they were able to take huge swathes of the Roman Empire and completely destroy the Persian Empire.Richard Fidler, host of ABC Conversations and the author of The Book of Roads and Kingdoms, tells Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole, Mastermind) the incredible true story of how the language of Arabic and religion of Islam spread across the world, thanks (in part) to a natural disaster and climate change.Get in touch:Got a story for us? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at noonesawitcoming@abc.net.au

What if the reason being on a treadmill feels like such a punishment is actually by design!?Back in the 1800’s the British Empire started installing ‘tread-mills’ in prisons as a way to both punish criminals and make them more productive. In fact, it was so soul-crushing that the poet Oscar Wilde wrote about its horrors from prison and is thought to have died as a result of the hours he spent on it.Writer Dan Koeppel, known also for running across Australia’s Nullarbor Plain and writing an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, tells host Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole, Mastermind) the strange saga of how the treadmill went from a Victorian torture device to a piece of fitness equipment found in gyms and homes across the world. Really, it’s a story about capitalism - the rise in the need for equipment to offset our unhealthy lifestyles, marketed as an aspirational wellness tool.Binge all the episodes of No One Saw It Coming now on the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. And check out Dan’s great article for The New York Times’ Wirecutter HERE. Get in touch:Got a story for us? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at noonesawitcoming@abc.net.au

You can probably picture that iconic moment, when Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon. But what if his ‘one small step for man’ was actually thanks to a group of unlikely women? In the 1960’s when President JFK accelerated the space race, NASA needed someone to design a spacesuit capable of putting man on the moon. When the big defense contractors failed to meet the challenge, NASA had no choice but to work with the only company up to the job: Playtex - manufacturers of women’s girdles and bras. The UK’s best selling historian under 40 Kassia St Clair tells host Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole, Mastermind) the incredible true story of the unsung heroes of the space race: the seamstresses who painstakingly sewed the Apollo 11 spacesuits. 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

What if Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo weren’t really the best artists of the Renaissance, they were just the subject of some really good PR? In this episode of No One Saw it Coming, TikToker and Art Historian Mary McGillivray tells host Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole, Mastermind) the story of a salty Italian gossip writer called Giorgio Vasari, whose writing still influences the way we think about art, and she asks us to question everything we think we know about what makes historic art and artists 'good'. This episode will make you question if the Renaissance, a period when art, literature and philosophy flourished, and the so-called cultural and intellectual rebirth in Europe, was just the product of some really good marketing. 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

Try to stop famine, or save your own life? This was the impossible choice facing the Russian scientists behind the world's first seed bank during World War 2, when the Soviet city of Leningrad came under siege by the Nazis. Food was so scarce at the time that throughout the city people were forced to eat wallpaper, boiled leather, even their own pets, to stay alive. But this set of Russian botanists, with their vaults full of seeds and hidden garden of plants, refused to eat them even as they starved to death. Their sacrifice ultimately saved species of plants and crops that plant breeders have since relied on to feed the world.In this episode of No One Saw it Coming, podcast host Marc Fennell speaks to award-winning writer and games critic Simon Parkin about the decision that botanist Nikolai Vavilov and his team made, that would go on to change millions of lives and the food we eat today.If you’ve binged all the episodes of No One Saw It Coming, listen to Marc’s other award-winning history podcast Stuff The British Stole, 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 probably know the names of famous freestyle swimmers - whether it’s Michael Phelps, Katie Ledecky, Ian Thorpe or Dawn Fraser. But do you know where the ‘freestyle’ swimming stroke actually comes from? It turns out it all started at a swimming carnival at Sydney’s Bronte Beach back in 1901…In this episode of No One Saw It Coming, Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole, Mastermind) goes on a journey to discover the incredible story of Alick Wickham, a young Solomon Islander who had no idea of the impact he would make on the swimming world. Along the way he meets sports historian Gary Osmond and a relative of Alick Wickham, journalist Dorothy Wickham.This is a story of success against the odds, during the era of Australia’s racist White Australia policy, and of the importance of remembering and acknowledging the true Pacific roots of the world’s most popular swimming style. You can learn more about the Roviana Lagoon Festival HERE. Get in touch:Got a story for us? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at noonesawitcoming@abc.net.au

Bob Hawke, Bill Clinton, Malcolm Turnbull – all were recipients of the Rhodes Scholarship, one of the oldest and most prestigious academic scholarships in the world. It was started posthumously by a man named Cecil Rhodes; a man whose legacy has recently been the subject of heated debates and a protest movement to decolonise education known as #RhodesMustFall. The reckoning with Cecil Rhodes has largely focused on his actions as an imperialist and colonialist; a man who claimed large swathes of Africa in the name of the British Empire. But it turns out he had deeper and darker designs to ensure global white supremacy.  Dr Jonny Steinberg, Senior Lecturer in Political Science at Yale University grew up in South Africa and witnessed the legacy of Cecil Rhodes first-hand. He explains to Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole, Mastermind) that Rhodes’ initial plans for the Rhodes Scholarship involved a secret society, and a plan for world domination. Get in touch:Got a story for us? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at noonesawitcoming@abc.net.au

Before selfies, before CT scans, before social media filters and front-facing cameras… there was the X-Ray. Discovered by accident in a 19th-century lab, it went on to become a craze. Displayed as a sideshow attraction, people would x-ray their hands, their bags, their feet, even cuddling their loved one! Suzie Sheehy is an Accelerator Physicist by day and on the side, she writes books like The Matter of Everything: Twelve Experiments that Changed our World. She explains to Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole, Mastermind) how the invention of the x-ray revolutionised medicine, changed the way we think about ourselves and remains a powerful example of what can happen when knowledge is shared freely. 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

Have you ever tried absinthe - that fluorescent green spirit that people used to set on fire in the 90’s?  It’s had a pretty bad reputation over the years. In fact, it was illegal in a lot of countries for almost a century! But back in France during the period known as the Belle Époque, it was the drink associated with great artists and writers like Oscar Wilde, Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh and Edgar Degas. Happy Hour was even known as ‘the Green Hour’. So what happened? Well according to food and beverage writer Evan Rail, everything changed because of a murder. A murder that absinthe was blamed for…Join podcast host Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole, Mastermind) as he unearths the odd facts surrounding this intriguing true crime mystery.Get in touch:Got a story for us? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at noonesawitcoming@abc.net.au

These days chemotherapy or ‘chemo’ is a common treatment for cancer. But did you know that part of the reason it exists today is because of a terrible accident that happened in Italy during World War 2?The Bari bombing was known as the ‘Little Pearl Harbour’ and it saw hundreds of American and British soldiers killed by mustard gas that was being secretly transported to Europe inside an American ship. Despite Winston Churchill’s attempts to cover up what happened, one doctor was determined to find the truth.Journalist Jennet Conant dives deep into the historical records, including records on her own family, and tells host Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole, Mastermind) how one doctor’s shocking discovery contributed to the development of one of the world’s leading cancer drugs. Get in touch:Got a story for us? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at noonesawitcoming@abc.net.au

After the attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941, the United States was on edge. So when it seemed like spies for the Nazis and Mussolini were operating along the harbour in New York, the government decided that something had to be done. So they turned to an unlikely wartime ally: the Italian Mafia. As Podcast host Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole, Mastermind) discovers, the clandestine coalition did help change the outcome of World War 2, but labour and crime historian Matt Black questions who really wins when the US government forms secret deals with mobsters and murderers. Get in touch:Got a story for us? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at noonesawitcoming@abc.net.au

The fall of the Berlin Wall on the 9th of November, 1989, is one of the most famous events of modern history. Not only did it lead to the reunification of East and West Germany, it contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War, and the formation of the global political and economic landscape that we know today. But did you know that this momentous event started with a small slip up during 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 podcast host Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole, Mastermind) that while powerful men have been credited with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the true heroes were everyday men and women. Get in touch:Got a story for us? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at noonesawitcoming@abc.net.au