No One Saw It Coming

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

This is the story of a gadget lover from Australia who wanted to pirate music and instead created one of the greatest life saving devices in the history of air travel. Janice Witham, journalist and author, tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) about the creation of the black box. It’s now ubiquitous in aviation but at the time, its creator David Warren fought against scepticism and bureaucracy to realise his vision. 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

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

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 WW1... 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