About this podcast
The bit players, the unexpected twists, the turning point you missed. Join Walkley award-winner Marc Fennell as he uncovers the incredible moments that changed the course of history.
New episodes out Tuesday.
Episodes
The newest 50 of 85 episodes
- How the Eiffel Tower saved Paris · 26 minIn 1889, millions of people visited Paris for the Exposition Universelle (World's Fair) and walked through an impressive 300-metre-tall gate. That gate was the Eiffel Tower and…
- A lone wolf almost killed Hitler · 26 minIn November 1939, a bomb ripped through a crowded Munich beer hall moments after its target walked out the door. The target was Adolf Hitler and he missed death by mere minutes…
- The lost shipwreck that started a navy · 26 minA warship born from panic. A cannon that was never fired. A shipwreck that's been lost for over a century. And one man determined to find it. Dr James Hunter (Manager of…
- Fake names and forbidden love at sea · 26 minIn 1766, a "man" named Jean boarded a French naval ship as a botanist's valet. But Jean was hiding a secret. For years, that secret sailed around the world with them, until one…
- Jon Ronson, the Manosphere and a Castle · 26 minA castle sits in the streets of American suburbia and from the outside it looks bizarre. But what’s on the inside is even weirder... A dog named Cerberus, a basement nightclub…
- Australia's secret slave tradeFrom the mid-1800s, more than 62,000 Pacific Islanders were kidnapped, tricked or coerced into labour on Queensland's sugar and cotton plantations. Ryan Butta (Author…
- The Pastry War: Half-baked diplomacy · 26 minA ransacked bakery. A wildly inflated bill. A demand so absurd it should have been laughed out of the room. Instead it triggered warships. In 1838, France used a pastry chef's…
- The Pig War: Hogging the border · 26 minA pig trots over an invisible border, wandering into a potato farmer's garden. It's not the first time it's trespassed but it is the last. The farmer takes his gun off the wall…
- The mythical football war · 26 minIt’s called The Football War and raged for just 100 hours. It’s a catchy name for a conflict supposedly sparked by a World Cup qualifier game. But behind the catchy title, and…
- Birds 1 - Humans 0 · 26 minIn 1932 Australia sent soldiers with machine guns to stop 20,000 emus rampaging through wheat fields. What followed was a national embarrassment and earned the emus a reputation…
- The man who gave the gods new faces · 26 minTheir faces are everywhere: on calendars, incense packets, and soap packaging. But how did the Hindu deities' faces go beyond temples and shrines? In nineteenth-century India…
- What really happened at Pompeii? · 26 minYou think you know Pompeii. A city wiped out. People frozen in time. A disaster that stopped time. But how much of that story is actually true? Ancient historian and writer Dr…
- Titanic mistakes sunk a black empire · 26 minMarcus Garvey is known as a civil rights activist and leader of the Pan-Africanism movement. But there’s a part of his story you may not know about. Social historian Darrel…
- The prince, the liar, and the race to save cars · 26 minImagine driving from Beijing, through the Gobi Desert, Mongolia, and across Russia into Europe. The roads are terrible, you don't have petrol stations and you have pack animals…
- The suit that sparked a riot · 26 minWhat do you get when you combine fashion, race and a world war? From the jazz clubs and dance halls of the 1940s to an infamous city riot in Los Angeles, the zoot suit was made…
- Richard Fidler: The lie that toppled a regime · 26 minA well-placed lie can bring down a whole government. Hard to believe, but in Prague in 1989 that’s exactly what happened. In amongst a heaving student protest, a body was…
- Escaped the Nazis and lost by Australia · 26 minShe stands tall with her head tilted towards you. She’s wearing an incredible gown made of the most beautiful fabric. This is a society woman living in Vienna at the turn of the…
- The queen behind the witch hunts · 26 minIn the late 1500s a man sails across the North Sea. He’s battered by wind and wave. The sea seems angry, almost furious at him. He thinks it must be more than just a bad storm…
- An 11-year-old sent us on a mission... · 26 minGetting a letter these days is pretty special, especially when it’s from an 11-year-old listener. Ellie wrote us a letter asking about the nursery rhyme Ring a Ring o' Roses…
- The secret Aussie plant that saved D-Day · 26 minD-Day was the biggest land and water invasion in history and would go on to be a huge turning point in WWII. And it all depended on a plant. Specifically a leaf from a tree that…
- Grapefruits vs Apartheid · 26 minIn a Dublin supermarket in 1984, a young woman makes a split-second decision. She refuses to sell two grapefruits. Her job is on the line, and there’s a recession raging across…
- History’s favourite sex toys · 26 min*CONTENT WARNING* This episode explores mature themes such as sex and masturbation. When the wooden object was unearthed, the archaeologists were stumped. What was this thing?…
- The houseplant that changed the British Empire · 26 minOn the face of it, it’s just a box. It has wooden slats, a peaked roof and glass panels. But inside this box is something that will breathe, grow, and impact lives around the…
- Stop blaming rats for the plague · 26 minIf you were asked where the plague came from you’d probably say rats. Or fleas. And you’d say it swept across Europe killing up to half of the population. But where exactly did…
- A teenager’s party created Hip-Hop · 26 minIt started with two turntables and a microphone and became a worldwide movement. Today, Hip hop is one of the biggest music genres in the world - and it all started at a…
- The vote that shocked the worldIn 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…
- Beware gifts from Soviet spiesAfter 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…
- The Met Gala began in a dead woman’s closet · 26 minThe 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…
- The telegram that caught a killer · 26 minWhen 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…
- Clogged sink doomed a space mission · 26 minIt’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…
- Ancient Greek built a steam engine for dinner parties · 26 minLong 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…
- She gave her son smallpox. Her bet paid off. · 26 minIt 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…
- Cocaine wine: The Pope’s energy drink · 26 minIf 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…
- A horse race and a murderer invented cinema · 26 minBefore 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…
- Starving for freedom: The prison death that changed IrelandAs 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…
- Let slaves dance: The secret of New Orleans jazz · 26 minWhen 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…
- She faked insanity. Then became a star. · 26 minShe 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…
- The mafia bar riot that sparked gay pride · 26 min28 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…
- The royal roots of French fries · 26 min‘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…
- Three words brought down the Berlin Wall · 24 minThe 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…
- The art heist that made the Mona Lisa famous · 26 minIt’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…
- The colony that broke Scotland (and made Great Britain)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…
- The Hollywood femme fatale who invented wi-fiShe 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…
- The ballet that caused a riot and changed music · 26 minWhen 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…
- The Forgotten Female Codebreakers of WWII · 26 minAs 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…
- Time is Chaos. The Calendar Tries (And Fails) to Fix That. · 26 minFrom 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…
- The Nativity Scene You Know—And The One You Don’t · 25 minYou 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…
- An 1843 Lifehack Became a Christmas Tradition · 26 minThere’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…
- Poison to Beauty: The Story of Botox · 26 minIt 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…
- The First Computer Was Greek (And Shipwrecked) · 26 minOver 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…
