Black Sheep

The shady, controversial and sometimes downright villainous characters of NZ history. Join William Ray as he explores history through the lens of Kiwi dirtbags in NZ's most awarded podcast.

Presented and produced by William Ray

The words "Black Sheep" are displayed in a vintage font above a black sheep with a creepy red eye.

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Epidemic: the story of Robert Logan

Season 2 / Episode 1
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.
Colonel Robert Logan CB ADC, Administrator of Samoa.

Nazi Hoax: the story of Syd Ross

Season 2 / Episode 2
Nazi "assassins", mischievous con-artists and power hungry spies... Black Sheep investigates how a pair of hoaxers convinced the government that New Zealand had been infiltrated by Nazi agents.
Nazi rally

Radical: the story of Arthur Desmond

Season 2 / Episode 4
Meet the New Zealand author of a book beloved by Neo-Nazi's, Satanists and White Supremacists. Bizarrely Arthur Desmond started off as a hard-core labour activist and supporter of Maori rights, but he then went "so far to the left that dropped off the edge."
A cartoon from The Observer of Desmond being evicted from the office he used to publish the Tribune in 1880.

Unjust: the story of James Prendergast

Season 2 / Episode 6
In 1877 Chief Justice James Prendergast ruled the Treaty of Waitangi was "a simple nullity", in part because it was signed by "simple barbarians" and "savages". Those words have seen him condemned as an arch-villain of NZ history, but was he really?
James Prendergast, New Zealand's third chief justice

Outlaw: the story of Richard Burgess

Season 2 / Episode 7
Richard Burgess may be New Zealand's most prolific serial killer. In the 1860s he and his outlaw gang roved the West Coast, robbing and murdering dozens of people. The full number of victims is still unknown.
Richard Burgess poster by Massey University student Kane Wills

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