No One Saw It Coming

Before 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 alleged fraud and eventually, a killer.
But in between scandals and aliases, he conducted a strange experiment that would change the way we see the world. 
Marta Braun is a renowned expert in 19th century stop-motion photography, and she tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) the story of Eadweard Muybridge and how his photographs of a horse race stopped time, helped the world understand motion, and created the moving image. 
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As 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 Britain’s grip on Ireland began to weaken, pushing a revolution to boiling point. 
Dr William Murphy, Professor in Modern Irish History at Dublin City University, tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) the story of Irish independence and how food, pride and prison would reshape the future of Ireland and the British Empire.
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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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Got a story for us? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]
This episode was first published in September 2025