The Backstory with Patty Steele

Watching the state of Georgia and their botched attempt to execute murderer Christa Pike this past week has been pretty cringy. Only about 1% of murderers put to death in the U.S. are female. It brought to mind one of America’s most prolific female serial killers, Aileen Wuornos. She admitted to killing at least 7 men, before she was executed in 2002. Her life was depicted in the 2003 movie Monster. But . . how did the little...

Death . . the word makes us uneasy but we’re all sort of intrigued by it, thus our love of true crime, horror, mysteries, and graveyards. Death is the one thing we all have to face that we simply can’t rationally explain. Going back thousands of years it was the same for all humans. How do we celebrate a life . . . and dispose of the body?

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We’re sort of living in a time when finger pointing has become a huge spectator sport. Accuse somebody you don’t like or agree with of something, and you can destroy their life. But human beings have a long history of vicious finger pointing. Case in point, the Salem witch trials of 1692.

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A lot of people want sex . . but they don’t always want babies. That’s been the story of human sexuality for thousands of years. But the pill has only been around for about 65 years. So . . what did folks do to enjoy sex while minimizing the chance of procreation? Think poison plants, animal dung, lemon cups, and even Lysol. Not all of it paints a pretty picture!

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Born rich, titled, and impossibly handsome . . a British lord’s life falls apart and he chooses murder. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. The 7th Earl of Lucan, disappeared over 50 years ago after murdering his children’s nanny, having mistaken her for his ex wife. Did his aristocratic friends help him vanish into a new life? This story may remind you of the Netflix sh...

We try to imagine what everyday life was like for folks living a few hundred years ago or even longer. But sometimes, we forget to take into account the simplest things . . like brushing your teeth or replacing them if you ran into issues. What did they use before toothpaste or worse yet, implants? It’s not a pretty picture and it will probably make you grit your teeth. 

When there’s an outbreak of some sort, like the flu or COVID, we all wonder if we’re going to get it. But some of us are more compelled to think we’ve actually got it when people around us show symptoms. Now, imagine being overcome with the urge to keep moving your body, as if you have bugs in your veins. There were outbreaks of dancing mania throughout medieval times. It sounds f...

25 years ago the 9/11 terrorist attacks killed almost 3000 people. It was a horrific moment in our history but as in so many cases, heroes were born in the midst of tragedy. Beverly Eckert was speaking to her husband on his cell when she heard the South Tower collapse on top of him. She advocated for 9/11 families . . until she died in another tragedy less than 8 years later.

Imagine trying to describe our technology to someone from 1926. Now imagine trying to defend our tech to someone from 2126! Most importantly, how is this evolution impacting our brains and our bodies?

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Imagine walking out your front door and not being able to see where you’re stepping because the air is so thick with yellow, greasy smog. This happened in London for 5 days back in 1952 and it killed 12,000 people!

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As we watch the royal family feud in the UK escalate, we’re reminded of our own sibling rivalries. Of course, theirs plays out in the media for our questionable entertainment. But William and Harry are just the latest in a long line of royal family battles that frequently turned violent. 

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You don’t have to be crazy about cats to be at least a little bit fascinated with them, hissing, murder mittens, and all. Great writers like Hemingway, Twain, and Dickens as well as folks like Lincoln, Churchill, Einstein, and Nightingale adored them. As did music icons like Freddie Mercury and John Lennon. They all felt cats gave them one thing . . peace.

Believing in yourself is key to success. One of the best examples of that is Steven Spielberg. At the age of 18 he sneaked onto the Universal Studios lot and literally created a job for himself while nobody was looking. Eventually they noticed him, paid him, and he never left.

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The angelic sounds of choirs from 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries often featured the angelic voices of boy sopranos. But sometimes those angelic voices came from full grown male bodies. They were the castrati, little boys castrated so they’d grow up with powerful soprano voices. Where did they come from and why was this done? Just one castrati left a voice recording

Love a good pirate story? This is a real life story of the most successful pirate in history. Black Bart Roberts was a gentleman who reluctantly became a pirate . . but who ultimately was a cold blooded killer as he plundered 400 ships in just 3 years, 10 times as many as Blackbeard! He was finally killed in battle at just 39 and it was the death knell for the Golden Age of Piracy.

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