The third wave of feminism crashed into western countries during the early 1990s. Three distinct events between 1991 and 1993 have been credited with leading this new movement: the controversial testimony of Anita Hill against her former boss and supreme court nominee Clarence Thomas, an article by Rebecca Walters which covered that whole incident and a group of bad-ass women with instruments and a whole lot of anger trapped inside known as Riot Grrrls. Thanks a lot to our guest host...

Stuff What You Tell Me comes out of one of the most remarkable countries on earth: The Netherlands. This underrated, little swamp has, for well over a millennium, punched far above its weight in terms of influencing global culture, language, philosophy, commerce, religion and cheese. Its history is one that, we felt, needed to be recognised in a way that can be appreciated by a modern, podcast-listening audience. So, with great joy, let us introduce 'The History of the Netherlands' podcast In...

On 5 February, 1943, thirteen of the twenty-three defendants from the First Parool Trial were given paper and pens and told to write farewell letters to their families. Hours later, they were executed by firing squad. But the ringleader of the group, Frans Goedhart, was able to win a temporary reprieve and over the next few months undertook various attempts to escape from Vught concentration camp. But would luck be on his side?Read more:...

After the botched arrest of Arie Addicks in September 1941, the Addicks group was firmly in the sights of the authorities. Over the course of four months, a series of arrests would take place across the Netherlands, from the streets of Amsterdam to a freezing beach in Scheveningen, which would end with twenty-three people being charged with crimes against the state. But would these freedom fighters survive some of the Netherlands’ most infamous concentration camps?More information:...

After the invasion of the Netherlands in May 1940, a group of men from a disbanded socialist youth group called the AJC, came together to fight back against the new Nazi regime. The young members of the so-called “Addicks Group” joined forces with journalist and activist Frans Goedhart and became active in creating and distributing the illegal anti-Nazi newspaper Het Parool. But their activities would soon put themselves and their loved ones in mortal peril.Read more:...

In this episode, we explore the second wave of feminism. Although gains were made around the world for women during the 1910s and 20s, fast forward twenty years, and another global conflict, and by the 1950s women in the West had been pushed back into the household; their roles in the expectations of society confined to the whims and demands of men. By the end of that decade, a low rumble of discontent had begun amongst women in the US. In the 1960s that rumble grew into a roar, as women...

On a summer's night in July, 1985 a ship called the Rainbow Warrior lay moored at Marsden Wharf in Auckland, New Zealand. Just before midnight, it suddenly exploded. The bomb which blew it up had been expertly attached to the hull by trained military divers. The attack was aimed at the heart of the international anti-nuclear movement, and it was conducted by the foreign intelligence agency of one nation, and committed on the soil (or water) of one of their allies. The sinking of the Rainbow...

Despite over half a century of abolitionist activity, including subversive activism, dissent, debate, protest and attempts at electoral process, by the end of the 1850s the demise of slavery seemed to some to still be as far from becoming reality as ever.Enter John Brown. Whereas the division over the issue of slavery had riven the young federal society of the US apart, John Brown never wavered, questioned or acted against the defining principle of his life: slavery was an abomination that...

In the second "Coup de Pod" episode in Stuff What You Tell Me history, the show is finally taken over by someone capable. Awesome storyteller Dominique Reviglio takes us down the path of the history of women's rebellion; on a journey through the millennia of both oppression and rebellion, before exploring the militant Suffragette movement that erupted in Britain in the first decades of the 20th century.

The passing of the Kansas-Nebraska act in 1854 opened up a new battlefront in the United States between those for and against the institution of slavery. Senator Stephen A. Douglas, who sponsored the bill, supported the notion of popular sovereignty; that the people who lived in a certain territory could decide by themselves whether or not to allow slavery. In so doing, he began a race between rebellious free-staters and resistant pro-slavery partisans to claim Kansas as their own, which lead...

In antebellum United States , chattel slavery was deeply embedded. It was an integral part of the socio-economic systems of the various states and thus protected by the constitution. The 'Railroad Rebels' didn't care. They knew that slavery was wrong. They were the ones who suffered from it, the ones who escaped from it; they were those who harboured fugitives, and who helped them move from servitude to liberty; people of all colours and classes who flouted the law on a daily basis, because...

Over 300 years, the transatlantic slave trade caused the abuse, suffering and enslavement of an estimated 10-12 million people. This episode takes a look at what some of that experience would have meant for these groups and individuals forcibly removed from their homelands. Specifically, we look at the slave uprising on the Spanish ship Tryal, in 1805, and ask some questions that set us on the path of this series about the abolition of one of the oldest human institutions. What were the...

In the years 69-70 CE, the Batavian people, who inhabited the lower reaches of the Rhine and Waal rivers, that form a part of today's Netherlands, went into open revolt against the Roman Empire. They were led by Claudius (Julius) Civilis, and would ultimately fail. But what he and this rebellion spurred, seventeen hundred years later, would be way beyond anything they could have imagined. This barbarian uprising would come to affect and inspire ideas of rebellion within the lives of the...

Stuff What You Tell Me has been taken over this episode for a coup de Pod. Violently imposed upon and hosted by Geert Sillevis, here we explore the story of the rise and fall of the Portuguese dictatorship in the 20th century. It was an authoritarian rule that embedded itself deeply within the fabric of modern Portugal, and it would take nothing short of daring and decisive rebellion to change it. That rebellion was the Carnation Revolution of 1974.

This Episode looks at the journey of western thought from the perspective of Thomas Kuhn's 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Using a (very) extended metaphor, in which all of humanity is on a raft, setting out to sea from the Bay of Ignorance, in search of the Island of Truth, we look at Kuhn's "paradigm shift" explanation for how we have arrived at what we know today.

In May 1940 German troops occupied Amsterdam, the capital city of the Netherlands and one of the most diverse and liberal cities in Europe. Not only was Amsterdam's large and prosperous Jewish community about to endure 5 years of brutal deportation and execution, but every person in the city would have to face varying hardships. The experience of each person during the occupation would have been determined by the decisions they made; decisions on whether to resist, or abide; to fight against...

In the late 1970s, a band called the Sex Pistols helped kick off one of the great anti-establishment movements of the modern age; punk rock. It was a decade of social unrest and political uncertainty in the United Kingdom, with striking miners, IRA attacks, severe inflation and an IMF bail-out. When there seemed to be no future for the youth of Britain, the Sex Pistols were at the forefront of the new music and fashion movement which defiantly stuck a middle finger up to everything and...

How we tell ourselves about our histories goes a long way to how we form our senses of identity. As societies and as individuals, we work through events and issues, and how we look at them later helps us define who we say we are. But what happens when we cannot agree on our past? Why do we feel the need to fight over statues, and how can we deal with it? This episode is about dealing with this problem - dissonant heritage - and about the on-going pursuit by both indigenous and non-indigenous...

History has come to represent more than just the account of the past. It helps us define who we are, and what we represent. In the 1960s a group of Australian aboriginals went on a strike, demanding not just living conditions, but their recognition as the original custodians of the land. Their strike would force a 'reversal of history', and so send Australia on a path to amend how it saw and defined itself. The path continues to be uneasily trodden to this day.

William Buckley, who would at various times also be known as "The Wild White Man" and "The Anglo-Australian giant", was a man who bore little respect for convention, authority, nor the confines of society. Over the course of his life his experiences would range from fighting in the Napoleonic wars, sailing across the globe, and spending a significant part of his life living in the Australian bush, prior to the settlement of the continent's south-east. After him, the expression "you've got...

What was that crazy story that we just told? How much of it really happened? What does it all mean for our understanding of rebellion and resistance, and for how we perceive the role of defiance in events that have come before us? We explore all of this in the final episode of our series: The Unfortunate Voyage of the Batavia. 

The VOC is back! Three and a half months after Commander Pelsaert abandoned everybody to a life a brutality and thirst, finally those who have managed to survived may just be rescued. But who of the mutineers and the defenders will be able to tell their story first? How will the VOC react to the utter madness that has taken place on these islands? This episode tackles all this and more.

In the history of European military aggression in Australia, this is where it all began. Of the people that remain alive following the doomed voyage of the Batavia, not to mention the shipwreck and then the genocide that followed, they now have to face a civil war.

Upper Merchant Francisco Pelsaert, Captain Arjen Jacobsz and about 40 other people are sailing in a longboat north along the immense coast of Het Zuidland. They're on a rescue mission to the fort at Batavia, 3000kms north of where the ship Batavia has sunk at Houtman's Abrolhos. Unfortunately, they won't be able to rescue as many people as they would like, because Jeronimus Cornelisz is about to go on a rampage of murder, sex slavery, and pretty much every other horrible thing you can think...