No One Saw It Coming

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.

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Episodes

A Gossip Writer Invented the Renaissance!?

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 ...

Jun 30, 2025•25 min

The Nazi siege and the secret seeds

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 st...

Jun 23, 2025•25 min

Where freestyle swimming really comes from

At the beginning of the 20th century a new swimming stroke started to capture the world's attention. It was known as the 'Aussie crawl'. But what if its origins weren't really Australian at all? Guests: Gary Osmond – Associate Professor, Sports History at the University of Queensland. Dorothy Wickham - Editor/Curator of Melanesian News Network. 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@ab...

Jun 16, 2025•27 min

The Scholarship for World Domination

Bob Hawke, Bill Clinton, Malcolm Turnbull – all were recipients of the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship. But if Cecil Rhodes had gotten his way, they would have been part of a much bigger plan, for world domination. Guest: Dr Jonny Steinberg - Senior Lecturer, Political Science at Yale University

Jun 09, 2025•25 min

Naked Truth about X-Rays

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 didn’t just revolutionise medicine, it ignited a cultural obsession with seeing inside ourselves and remains a powerful example of what can happen when knowledge is shared freely. Guest: Dr. Suzie Sheehy - Accelerator Physicist, Author, and Science Communicator. Author of The Matter of Everything: Twelve Experiments that Changed our World...

Jun 02, 2025•25 min

Absinthe was Framed for Murder

The ‘Green Fairy’ was the party drink of the Belle Époque, featuring in artworks, poetry and literature. But then it was framed for a heinous crime... Guest: Evan Rail - food and drink writer; author of The Absinthe Forger . Get in touch: Got a story for us? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]

May 26, 2025•25 min

The Hidden Origins of Chemotherapy

These days chemotherapy 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 the Second World War, that was immediately covered up? Guest: Jennet Conant - journalist and author of The Great Secret: The Classified World War II Disaster that Launched the War on Cancer. Get in touch: Got a story for us? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]...

May 19, 2025•25 min

America’s Secret Pact with the Mafia

When the US wanted to beat the Nazis, they turned to an unlikely ally: the Mafia. But who really won as a result of this clandestine coalition? Guest: Matthew Black - historian and author of Operation Underworld: How the Mafia and U.S. Government Teamed Up to Win World War II Get in touch: Got a story for us? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]

May 12, 2025•25 min

The Blunder that Broke the Berlin Wall

It's one of the most famous events of modern history, but what if the fall of the Berlin Wall began with a small slip up during a routine press conference? Guest: Dr Katrin Schreiter - Senior Lecturer in German and History, Kings College London. Get in touch: Got a story for us? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]

May 05, 2025

One Giant Hole for Man, One Huge Leap for Neuroscience

Meet Phineas Gage, railroad foreman and all-round good guy. That is, until a giant metal pole shoots through his brain. What happens next will change neuroscience forever. Guest: Sam Kean – author of The Tale of the Duelling Neurosurgeons: The History of The Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery. Get in touch: Got a story for us? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]...

Apr 28, 2025•25 min

Marie Antoinette, mother of French fries?

What if the only reason we have French fries today is because of Marie Antoinette and her mates? Join Marc as he uncovers the wild history of the potato. Guest: Dr Lauren Samuelsson - Food historian and Associate Lecturer, University of Wollongong. Get in touch: Got a story for us? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]

Apr 21, 2025

The Secret Weapon that Changed War

What if one of the mainstays of modern warfare was invented by the Confederates during the American Civil War, to gain an 'ungentlemanly' advantage? Guest: Dr James Hunter - Curator of Naval Heritage and Archaeology at the Australian National Maritime Museum. Get in touch: Got a story for us? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]

Apr 14, 2025

Stealing the Mona Lisa: The Crime That Created a Legend

These days people line up for hours to see Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa. But at one stage there were so few viewers that she was remarkably easy to steal. In fact, for a while, no one even noticed she was gone... This is the story of the sensational crime that turned a portrait into a legend. Guest: Mary McGillivray - art historian and content creator. Get in touch: Got a story for us? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]...

Apr 07, 2025

INTRODUCING — No One Saw It Coming

Mar 27, 2025•3 min

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