The Backstory with Patty Steele

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Latest Episodes:

The Backstory: Yasuke: The only black samurai Mar 14, 2025

Show notes

There is so much fascination and mystery in the history of feudal Japan. The true story of the only black samurai in Japanese history will be brought to life in the coming week with the release of Assassin’s Creed: Shadows. But who was he, how did he become a samurai and what happened to him?

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The Backstory: Losing your head over royalty Mar 11, 2025

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The Boleyn sisters were red-hot English socialites in the early 1500s. Their rise and fall, one as the mistress of King Henry the Eighth and one as his queen, was shocking even by the standards of the time. Why did a bishop call one of them the “most infamous whore of all”? How did they catch the king? And how did they lose him, along with one of their heads?

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The Backstory: Graffiti was Pompeii’s Instagram Mar 07, 2025

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The destruction of Pompeii in 79 AD by the volcanic eruption of Mt. Vesuvius was complete. But the people who lived there left behind personal stories. Graffiti was their social media.

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The Backstory: The guy that connected us all Mar 04, 2025

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Imagine a world with no internet. Head back 30 years or so and you’ll see how the world wide web changed everything about how we communicate, learn, bank, socialize, and entertain ourselves. And we have one kind of geeky guy to thank.

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The Backstory: Kate Chase: From the belle of Washington to egg lady Feb 28, 2025

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Kate Chase was the 20-year-old queen bee of Washington society at the onset of the Civil War. She had the ear of Abe Lincoln and the hatred of his jealous wife Mary Todd Lincoln. Kate married rich but then fell for another powerful man…until they were caught. And that changed everything.

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The Backstory: Stealing Frank Sinatra Jr. Feb 25, 2025

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It’s hard to imagine how a couple of 21-year-old kids could think up a scheme to snatch the son of one of the most famous entertainers in the world, much less carry it out. This is the crazy story of the kidnapping of Frank Sinatra Jr.

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The Backstory: Stealing George Washington’s head Feb 21, 2025

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George Washington’s 293rd birthday is this weekend, and his death in 1799 was a shock to the brand-new United States of America. Everybody loved him and a lot of people wanted a piece of him…literally. That led to the plot to steal George Washington’s head.

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The Backstory: Lucky Luciano: From mob boss to war hero Feb 18, 2025

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How does a guy go from running with gangs on the Lower East Side to reinventing the mafia to going to prison as a convicted felon…to finally working with the U.S. government to protect NYC’s waterfront during World War II?

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The Backstory: My bloody valentine! Feb 14, 2025

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Emotional attachment is thousands of years old, but it actually started off with apes! For humans, Valentine’s Day started off as a blood-soaked pagan fertility festival loaded with alcohol, nudity, and blood! On the flip side, the romance element is a pretty recent invention. You can thank the Victorians for that. Plus, find out who sent the first Valentine!

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The Backstory: Did Shakespeare steal the Romeo and Juliet story? Feb 11, 2025

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It’s called the most famous love story of all time: William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. But was it a true story or did it come completely from Shakespeare’s brilliant creative mind? Maybe neither.

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