HistorySociety & Culture

The Dead Can't Sue

ABC Australia

Serious academics. Dead subjects. A bit of gossip.

Is it appropriate for historians to gossip about the dead? Associate Professors Alecia Simmonds and Leigh Boucher aren't afraid to find out. In The Dead Can't Sue, they poke around in the entrails of Australian history, dishing up the best dirt and juiciest scoops on our nation's dead.

Each week, you'll join us for the best dinner party conversations you've ever overheard, as Alecia and Leigh bring you their unfiltered takes.

There'll be big names you'll get to know in new ways, as well as names you've never heard of, with jaw-dropping stories. Rebels, divas, convicts, heroes, scoundrels and everything in between.

Play

Open in

15 episodes
weekly
Avg 36 min
English

Episodes 15

Newest Oldest Longest

All15 Unplayed15 In progress0 Played0

Monday · 39 min
Faith Bandler: Exposing CSR & Australia’s slave trade, aka 'Blackbirding' (part 2)
Referendum won, tick. Next up, Faith has a new fight on her hands: one that includes exposing the sugar giants who profited from her father’s abduction and unpaid labour. Watch out. But first, she must return to the island paradise where her father grew up: Ambrym. What she finds there will spur her on for decades of fighting. Alecia and Leigh get fired up as they retrace Faith’s staggering journey for justice and connect Australia’s 1800s slave history to farming practices still in operatio
September 14 · 41 min
Faith Bandler: The ‘gentle’ activist with an ASIO file who changed the constitution (part 1)
Faith Bandler was the daughter of a slave, who became the face of the 1967 referendum and a celebrity in the process. And she did it all while keeping house and raising kids. Few know her name now, yet Alecia argues that Faith is just as important to the fight for racial justice in Australia as Martin Luther King was to the USA. Despite many people’s assumptions, Faith was not a First Nations Australian. So how did a South Sea Islander woman, with Indian and Scottish heritage, become the fac
September 7 · 39 min
Nellie Melba: How a facelift downed our diva (part 2)
To rise to stardom, our OG diva needed a rebrand, so she trades her given name - Helen (not exactly giving superstar, no offence to all the Helens) - and takes on Nellie Melba. In the second part of her story, Nellie becomes the Kylie Minogue of her time, charming the masses in London's best theatres and touring the world drumming up support for the war effort (with some suspicious accidents along the way). But beneath the glamour, Nellie is in a domestic war of her own. Leigh and Alecia tr
August 31 · 37 min
Nellie Melba: How the prima donna dodged her sh*tty husband to find fame and fortune (part 1)
Opera star Dame Nellie Melba is the face of our $100 note, and the inspiration for the famous Peach Melba dessert. In short she’s an icon – one of Australia’s original divas. But how did she go from young Melbourne tomboy to domestic abuse survivor and then global superstar? Leigh dives deep on Nellie’s life of tragedy and drama, worthy of its own opera, and proves to Alecia this diva is a little saltier than the sweet pudding named in her honour. Plus, we explore the origins of long service
August 24 · 44 min
Miles Franklin: Our feminist hero flirts with fascism (part 2)
While the blokes were off on the frontlines of WWI, Miles Franklin used writing as her weapon for changing the world. But was our much-loved matriarch of Australian literature a tad fascist? In the second part of Miles Franklin's story, we see her go from bush girl to political animal. Starting with Miles’s globe-trotting feminist and labour activist days, to her flirtations with not one but two millionaire brothers, it’s a wild ride. Warning: This episode discusses sexual assault. SOURCES
August 17 · 40 min
Miles Franklin: The flirty bush girl behind My Brilliant Career (part 1)
Miles Franklin’s name is inseparable from Australian literature. She’s a late 1800s bush girl who told a bold story of marriage rejection (My Brilliant Career) that went global. And it continues to captivate audiences today (see: the new Netflix adaptation by the same name). Everyone read the book as semi-autobiographical, with its protagonist, Sybylla, standing in for a young, flirty Miles. But how much more is there to Miles Franklin’s story beyond this juicy novel? On this first part of
August 10 · 38 min
Harold Holt: The tragic demise of a people-pleasing PM (part 2)
Yes, the undercurrent tragically killed our 17th Prime Minister, but were his days in office already numbered? Leigh argues that Holt was sinking (politically) before he died. So how did the man whose brief tenure as PM included the 1967 Referendum and the start of dismantling the White Australia Policy lose his audience? We tell you how we think it all went down and give you the final say on the conspiracies that swirl around his disappearance. Plus, charisma bomb Gough Whitlam makes an
August 3 · 41 min
Harold Holt: How a kid called 'Puss' conquered Canberra (part 1)
It's fair to say for a lot of Australians, Harold Holt has become more of a meme than a man, let alone Australia's 17th Prime Minister. Yes, he drowned in mysterious circumstances and it's weird there's a pool named after him, but Leigh is more fixated on the less well-known quirks of our dear Harry. For example, did his pretty privilege charm Canberra? Where did his high school nickname 'puss' come from? How did his ex-girlfriend end up marrying his father? And were Zara Holt's kids — born wh
July 27 · 41 min
William Buckley: How an escaped convict spent 30 years with an Indigenous group
Perhaps you're familiar with the phrase "Buckley's chance!". Well, it's thought that it originates from William Buckley, a man who defied all odds to escape his fate as a convict. Buckley was a brickie from Northern England who ends up being adopted by the Wathaurong people in 1800s Victoria. Leigh investigates the legend of Buckley’s survival, what the Wathaurong had to gain from him, and how things finally came to a head. Psst - he also debunks a few famous convict myths we love to tel
July 20 · 39 min
Chopper: The Christmas card that changed his life (part 2)
Chopper loses his ears but gains an unexpectedly popular literary career, after becoming (sort of) pen pals with crime writer John Silvester. This week, we finish the Chopper tale, figuring out how Chopper managed to reinvent himself from hardened crim to comedian, artist, rapper and… children's book author. Warning: This episode discusses intimate partner violence, racism, transphobia, homophobia and misogyny. SOURCES Shand, Adam (2025). The Real Chopper: The Man Behind the Legend, Inside a
July 13 · 35 min
Chopper: The making of (part 1)
Mark Brandon ‘Chopper’ Read (1954-2013) was a notorious Melbourne underworld figure who admitted to murdering four people, right before he died. But as Alecia and Leigh soon discover, he was also a massive liar. Alecia and Leigh wade through the lies to try to understand how does one become Chopper? How does he get that nickname and that reputation? Featuring failure and mediocrity, many institutions (mental, military, religious and penal), Alecia’s flawless Chopper impression, Dr Freud, a
July 6 · 35 min
Tilly Devine: 'The Worst Woman in Sydney'
Tilly Devine (1900-1970) was a founding mother of Sydney's underbelly, and, as NSW police commissioner Norman Allan simply said: "She was a villain, but who am I to judge her?" Luckily Leigh and Alecia love to judge. Beyond the rivals, razor blades and racketeering, they ask: Was Tilly the original girl (mob) boss? Why did she shoot her fiancé a few months before their wedding? (Yes, the marriage still went ahead.) And while we're here, what drives our national fixation with outlaws like Tilly
July 1 · 37 min
Matthew Flinders: The death of a cat daddy (part 2)
Alecia and Leigh sail into the muddy waters of naval history, exploring the key role Indigenous explorer Bungaree played in Matthew Flinders circumnavigation of Australia. Oh, and Flinders's undying love for his cat, Trim.
June 29 · 32 min
Matthew Flinders: Erotic letter writer (part 1)
Matthew Flinders (1774-1814) is best known as the first white guy to circumnavigate (and name!) Australia. But could he perhaps also have been circumnavigating the towering physique of ship surgeon George Bass? Alecia and Leigh do a literal reading of a seemingly steamy letter, written by Flinders to Bass in 1800, and a (potentially) queer reading of the relationship between these chaps with maps. By the end of this two-parter, you won't look at these men the same way. Sources: The Life of M
June 16 · 1 min
INTRODUCING — The Dead Can't Sue
Alecia Simmonds and Leigh Boucher are historians, which means they are uniquely qualified to gossip about the dead. They're asking big, nosy questions about the lives of the people who shaped or misshaped Australia, like … Who really chopped off Chopper's ears? Why did they name a swimming pool after the Prime Minister who drowned? And, did our very own Dame Nellie Melba have a mean streak? While each person's history is unique, the one thing they have in common is that they are dead, so conve

Showing 1–15 of 15 episodes