The Backstory with Patty Steele

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Latest Episodes:

The Backstory: Eliza Hamilton: Cheating husband, family deaths, and triumph Jun 07, 2024

Show notes

Hamilton the musical tells us the story of Alexander Hamilton, a brilliant guy who had a fiery temperament and a cheating heart. Imagine being his wife and raising eight fatherless kids, resurrecting her dead husband’s reputation, and being a tireless champion of widows and orphans. Plus, before her death at 97, Eliza Hamilton also became the toast of NYC and Washington. What a life!

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The Backstory: The mysterious death of Edgar Allan Poe Jun 04, 2024

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Politics is a nasty business. But it always has been. And it may have played a role in the death of a literary genius. You know the Edgar Allan Poe story called The Tell-Tale Heart, about the heart of a murder victim that never stops beating? Maybe Poe is still trying to tell us something 175 years after his mysterious death.

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The Backstory: The history of jokes May 31, 2024

Show notes

We all love to laugh, no matter when, where, or how we’ve lived. Amazingly, there are a handful of topics that have given us the giggles for at least 5,000 years. And a lot of them involve 6th-grade humor.

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The Backstory: James Brown: Drugs, toilets, and guns May 28, 2024

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James Brown, the godfather of soul, had some anger issues. In fact, he went to prison after threatening agents at an insurance seminar with a gun because he thought they used his private bathroom.

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The Backstory: Bloody politics May 24, 2024

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Think politics today are the most angry and violent they’ve ever been? What about the days when senators and congressmen came to work armed with guns and knives? Or the murder of one congressman by another just because they had an ideological disagreement? That’s when politics were bloody.

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The Backstory: Radiant heat & working toilets 2,000 years ago May 21, 2024

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We think the world just keeps evolving. But what happens when a civilization like Rome collapses and all that technology disappears?

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The Backstory: Meeting your children…from a past life May 17, 2024

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Imagine meeting your children…and they're way older than you! But you've been obsessed since your earliest memory with the idea that you were the mother of eight kids. But you died, leaving them orphaned. And your guilt was palpable, even as a three-year-old! You may not believe in reincarnation, but it’s hard to ignore Jenny Cockell’s story.

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The Backstory: What in the heck did I just say?!?! May 14, 2024

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We use words and phrases every day, and usually never question why we say what we say. Why do we say “she’s on a wild goose chase” or “we laughed our heads off”? The surprising origin of ordinary phrases.

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The Backstory: Paradise lost May 10, 2024

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You’d think being a princess (and ultimately the queen) of the Hawaiian islands would be an uncomplicated dream life. But the last queen of the kingdom of Hawaii dealt with an unfaithful husband, racism, death threats, and being placed under house arrest for over a year as her kingdom was overthrown by a coup and annexed to America.

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The Backstory: The #%$@ history of cursing May 07, 2024

Show notes

Swearing, cursing, cussing, giving somebody the finger…they’re kind of ubiquitous these days, but they’ve been around for thousands of years. And now researchers say that yelling out your favorite four-letter word can even lower your blood pressure. But where in the &^%* did it all start and how has it evolved?

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