Backstory STL is a First Alert 4 podcast dedicated to highlighting local people whose life stories inspired them to make a difference in their community.
Jason Korner is a criminal defense attorney with his own firm in St. Louis County.
14 May 2025
Backstory STL #13: Jerry Naunheim
Jerry Naunheim was a photographer at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for 25 years and covered several historical events locally and abroad.
7 May 2025
Backstory STL #12: John Perkins
This week's guest on Backstory STL is John Perkins. He used crack for decades and struggled to make it by. But through his lows, he found a light. Now, he wants to give back to St. Louis-area youth and be a role model he didn't have.
29 Apr 2025
Backstory STL #11: Ralph Zuke
Ralph Zuke is on a 2,200-mile bike ride from St. Louis to Calgary, Canada, to raise awareness for the eradication of polio.
23 Apr 2025
Backstory STL #10: Julie Smith
Julie Smith is a communications professor at Webster University and author of “Master the Media: How Teaching Media Literacy Can Save Our Plugged-In World.”
16 Apr 2025
Backstory STL #9: Dave Walters
Dave Walters started disseminating news he heard on the Police and Fire scanners, eventually gaining 47,000 followers on Facebook. But after years of posting strictly news, he got personal in sharing a stage 3 cancer diagnosis. Even through that time, he has still managed to post every single day on St. Louis Scanner News.
9 Apr 2025
Backstory STL #8: Bobby Bostic
Bobby Bostic was incarcerated in Missouri for 27 years. After being convicted of an armed robbery he committed at 16, a judge sentenced him to 241 years in prison - effectively a life sentence. But a recent law allowed for people convicted of crimes as juveniles to go up for parole after 15 years. In 2022, he was released from prison and is now a community advocate.
2 Apr 2025
Backstory STL #7: Ed Wheatley
Ed Wheatley is an author whose love for baseball has helped keep a major part of St. Louis history alive. You know about our beloved Cardinals, but what about the St. Louis Browns? Major League Baseball's forgotten team still has a following to this day.
26 Mar 2025
Backstory STL #6: Lindy Drew
This week's guest on Backstory STL is Lindy Drew, co-founder and lead storyteller for Humans of St. Louis.
19 Mar 2025
Backstory STL #5: Erica Williams
Erica Williams is a nonprofit leader making her community healthier through food. She changed her career as a paralegal to start an organization called "A Red Circle."
12 Mar 2025
Backstory STL #4: Chad Baker
My guest this week is a volunteer wish granter for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. He's been granting wishes for about 10 years but his connection to the nonprofit started long before then.
5 Mar 2025
Backstory STL #3: Jeff Hastings
This week’s guest on Backstory STL is Jeff Hastings, a 20-year Air Force veteran who runs the nonprofit “The Flagman’s Mission Continues.”
26 Feb 2025
Backstory STL #2: Patrick Benson
Patrick Benson is a case manager at the Criminal Justice Ministry in St. Louis. He advocates for those involved in the criminal justice system as well as people struggling with substance use.
19 Feb 2025
Backstory STL #1: Pastor Pamela Paul
The inaugural episode of Backstory STL features Pastor Pamela Paul. She started her church, Faith, Hope, and Love, after losing family members to drug overdoses. Her boots-on-the-ground outreach work is about trying to combat overdoses and deaths from drugs like fentanyl.
First Alert 4 featured Paul in a special edition newscast in 2024, "Combating a Crisis: a roundtable on fentanyl."
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
YouTube views
117,557,979
Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025
Podcast Authority Score: 35 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
34
Social presence
0
YouTube
93
Engagement
0
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