The Backstory with Patty Steele iHeartPodcasts

Belle Cora went from minister’s daughter, to prostitute, to San Francisco’s richest madam, to wife of a man hung for the murder of someone who insulted her—all that before her death at 34.  
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An angry mob vandalizes a new home and then burns it to the ground. A young family barely escapes. Now 85 years later, after a lifetime of public service, the oldest daughter, now 97, moves back to that same piece of land, where another new home has been built as a gift from the community. It’s the full-circle life story of the Grandmother of Juneteenth, America’s second Independence Day. 
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We all have to regularly be somewhere on time. But what did people do before cell phone alarms or even alarm clocks? Animals, body cues, and knocker-uppers were just a few of the methods.
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Did you know that as recently as the Victorian era, somebody could have you committed to an insane asylum just because you disobeyed a husband, were too opinionated, were caught masturbating, and so much more? The treatment ranged from being chained to a wall, beaten...and more. And no one had to prove your insanity! This is the story of how one woman, post-lock-up, changed the status quo.
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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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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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