Episodes

  • Broken Blossom: the story of Alice Parkinson

    Broken Blossom: the story of Alice Parkinson
    Oct 10 2016
    "Four shots, and then another one" - that's how the story of Alice Parkinson begins as the 25 year old waitress guned down her fiancé, Bert West, in the middle of a street in Napier. So why did thousands of New Zealanders sign a petition demanding her release?
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    19 mins
  • Bad cop: the story of John Cullen

    Bad cop: the story of John Cullen
    Oct 17 2016
    In 1916 John Cullen led a small army of police deep into the forests of Te Urewera to arrest the Tuhoe prophet Rua Kenana - his crime? Preaching that his followers shouldn't sign up to fight in the First World War. But the raid is a complete disaster. Cullen oversees the shooting of two men in cold blood and the whole case against Rua unravels due to a huge legal blunder.
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    17 mins
  • Faith Fraud: the story of Arthur Worthington

    Faith Fraud: the story of Arthur Worthington
    Oct 30 2016
    Arthur Worthington was a con artist who travelled the USA, marrying rich women then abandoning them and stealing all their money. With private detectives hot on his tail, he jumped on a ship bound for Christchurch where he set up his own religion and his own church.
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    21 mins
  • Warrior Chief: the story of Hongi Hika

    Warrior Chief: the story of Hongi Hika
    Nov 6 2016
    Hongi Hika is a man with a difficult legacy. He's one of the greatest figures in New Zealand history, but he's also often held responsible for starting the Musket Wars.
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    21 mins
  • Eugenics: the story of a really bad idea

    Eugenics: the story of a really bad idea
    Nov 13 2016
    Did you know that after WWI New Zealand established an official eugenics board? We tend to think of eugenics as being something the Nazis invented but really it was embraced all around the world in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In this episode of Black Sheep historian and disability researcher Hilary Stace traces the history of New Zealand's eugenicists.
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    22 mins
  • War profiteer: the story of Thomas Russell

    War profiteer: the story of Thomas Russell
    Nov 20 2016
    The worst kind of villain in New Zealand history was... an Auckland property speculator.
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    19 mins
  • Grave Robber: the story of Andreas Reischek

    Grave Robber: the story of Andreas Reischek
    Nov 27 2016
    In the 1880s Austrian naturalist and ethnographer Andreas Reischek stole four mummified Māori corpses and smuggled them out of the country so they could be displayed at a museum in Vienna. He also shot hundreds of native New Zealand birds to preserve them "for science".
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    21 mins
  • Epidemic: the story of Robert Logan

    Epidemic: the story of Robert Logan
    Sep 3 2017
    Can you imagine if 20 per cent of the people you know suddenly died? How would you feel if the people in charge blocked doctors from helping them? For Samoans in 1918 this wasn't a hypothetical question.
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    27 mins