This week we travel to Australia for a game of Marn Grook, to discuss origin stories; perhaps the archetypal troubled sportsman - and horrific massacres.

Trigger warnings: Murder, suicide, colonialism, and to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people listening to this episode - I discuss some of your origin legends as best I can, and play a brief excerpt of a speech from an Aboriginal elder.

Sources Include:

Australia’s Most Unbelievable True Stories by Jim Haynes This University of Newcastle Article on Aboriginal massacres, quoting studies by Professor Lyndall Ryan This NSW State Library piece on The ‘First Fleet’ This article on Edward Wills First Contact by Anita Heiss This piece on the Dreamtime.

The deplorable (alleged) Neo-Nazi interruption of tribal elder Mark Brown, care of the Guardian Speeches from Penny Wong and Anthony Albanese on election night 2025, care of SBS News.

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The American actress Ilda Orme knew a thing or two about being cancelled, a long, long time before social media put the cancel button in the hands of the public at large. Her cancellers, she suspected were two hateful former in-laws and a theatre manager in their pocket.

Her cancellation was nearly literal - culminating in an assassination attempt.

What does one do when cancelled? If you’re Ilda Orme, you seek revenge in the most public way possible.

Trigger warnings: Gun violence and false accusations leading to incarceration.

Note: This fortnight’s episode is a little shorter than usual in the hope that doing a quick firebreak episode will get me back on a two-weekly schedule. Next fortnight should be back to around half an hour again.

Sources Include:

The Battered Body Beneath The Flagstones and Other Victorian Scandals by Michelle Morgan

The Madness of Ilda Orme by Dr Nell Darby

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On, or around 11th June 323 BC Alexander the Great died in Babylon. While there are mysteries surrounding his passing - did an Indian holy man prophesy his passing a year prior while self immolating in Alexander’s presence? Was he poisoned? Did somebody entomb him while still alive? - He is just a cameo in this Tale.

This week we travel to Athens - then chafing under the Macedonian yoke - as they make a bid for freedom.

Trigger warning: some swearing, talk of three suicides. We discuss the fall of two mighty empires and one despot.

Sources Include:

Ghost On The Throne by James Romm A History of Greece To 322 BC by N.G.L Hammond

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Please leave Tales a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.

Tales of History and Imagination has ‘X-it-ed’ from Musk’s hellsite, sorry Twitter folk. But I can be found on…

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