The Kitchen Sisters Present

A 1981 interview with Jeanne Wakatsuki, author of Farewell to Manzanar, about growing up in a Japanese Concentration Camp in the Mojave desert during World War II, and how her experiences resonate with what is going on in our country today.

A group of 34 Black Women in Oakland creatively address and combat issues of eviction, gentrification, inadequate health care and sex trafficking of Black women and girls through pop up processions, rituals, exhibits, all night song circles on the streets and in galleries throughout the community.

A deep dive into the creative and growing world of Black-Owned pet businesses—Lick You Silly, Harlem's Doggie Day Spa, Smart Bitch Dog Training and more.

In January 1973, following the Christmas bombing of Vietnam, conductor Leonard Bernstein gathered an impromptu orchestra and choir to perform an "anti-inaugural concert" protesting Richard Nixon's official inaugural concert and his escalation of the Vietnam War.

Phyllis Birkby became a significant figure in extending the lesbian women's movement to architecture during the 1970s

Tupperware, which gave generations of women a chance to make their own money outside the home, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in September. We revisit a story from the early years of The Kitchen Sisters about the iconic plasticware brand.

The story of the 6-year-old girls who first integrated the New Orleans public schools in 1960 and the US Deputy Marshalls who protected them.

A deep dive into the legendary Burning Man Archives. How do you archive an event when one of its driving principles is "leave no trace"?

Henri Langlois, the controversial, eccentric, founder of one of the world’s great film archives, the Cinémathèque Française.

Celebrating Linda Ronstadt — her iconic catalog of work, her commitment to social justice and her 78th birthday.

The first continuously paved highway linking east and west, Route 66, "The Main Street of America," came to represent America’s mobility and freedom, inspiring countless stories, songs, and even a TV show.

The 1977 transformational exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum focusing on the under-told stories of American women architects, which laid the groundwork for social change, scholarship, and recognition of women working in architecture.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina the Sisters of St. Joseph convent in New Orleans was under eight feet of water. A year later, on a clear blue day, the building was struck by lightning. The Sisters prayed for a sign, and in walked David Waggonner with a vision.

A tribute to music producer Knox Phillips, Memphis Music Ambassador, son of Sam Phillips creator of Sun Records, and Keeper of his Family's legacy. During more than 50 years in the industry, Knox produced records by Jerry Lee Lewis, Willie Nelson and John Prine and many more.

In 1898, the United States Department of Agriculture created a special department of men, called “Agriculture Explorers” to travel the globe in search of new food crops to bring back and grow in the U.S.

Niloufer Ichaporia King—a kitchen botanist, a one-of-a-kind cook, a Parsi from Bombay living in San Francisco, and author of "My Bombay Kitchen," prepares an elaborate ceremonial meal for Parsi New Year, the first day of spring.

Trailblazers, codebreakers, skyscraper visionaries. Julia Morgan, Natalie de Blois, Amaza Lee Meredith—women who changed the skyline and the built environment that surrounds us today.

Cooking for the founding fathers—the story of Hercules and Hemings, the enslaved chefs of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. And an interview with Zephyr Wright, President Lyndon Johnson's cook who worked for the family for 27 years.

A collection of stories in honor of the Black Mardi Gras Indian tradition, its rituals and deep-rooted significance to New Orleans culture, featuring Jelly Roll Morton, Tootie Montana and more.

The lives and work of architects Sarah Harkness and Jean Bodman Fletcher and the post WWII utopian vision of the Architects Collaborative (TAC).

For five years Davia's father, Lenny Nelson, asked her to go to Rattlesden, England, to visit the Air Force base where he was stationed during WWII and to find an old photograph hanging in the town pub honoring his 8th Air Force squadron.

In honor of her 193rd birthday, we revisit the secret, steamy myth laden world of Emily Dickinson through her kitchen.

Lou Reed, musician, rock icon, poet, leader of the legendary Velvet Underground, was obsessed with tai chi — the practice, the community, the health and spiritual benefits — and had been writing a book about this ancient martial art that was unfinished when he died in 2013. Lou’s wife, the artist and musician Laurie Anderson, turned to three of Lou's friends to help her finish the project. By the time the book, The Art of the Straight Line: My Tai Chi by Lou Reed, hit the stands in the spring of 2023, they had spoken with nearly 100 people and created a riveting portrait of Lou’s spiritual, medical and musical life, beckoning readers to enter the world of tai chi.

In this season of Kimchi making, stories of South Korea’s ancient food tradition and the country’s work to foster connections between nations through “gastrodiplomacy.”

Architect, industrial designer, suffragette, Anna Wagner Keichline made breakthroughs in housing and kitchen design and held 7 patents for her inventions.

We hear from Bartholomew Jones, co-founder of CxffeeBlack, a "multimedia coffee educational company" based in Memphis, Tennessee

After struggling through the pandemic and a ransomware attack, students and faculty at a rural predominantly Black college were faced with a sudden turn of events—the loss of their school.

Wim Venders, who premiered two beautiful new films at Cannes Film Festival this year, talks about his life and inspirations in this a piece produced for The Keepers series.

The almost forgotten story of Lena Richard, an African American Creole chef, cookbook writer, TV host, catering business owner, frozen food entrepreneur, cooking school teacher — a "force of nature" in New Orleans and across the food industry of the 1930s and 40s.

In celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Hip Hop we visit the Hip Hop Archive and Research Center at Harvard and Hip Hop Collection at Cornell University

A little known hidden kitchen in the desert mountains of Los Alamos where Edith Warner and her Tea Room provided respite for the men and women creating the world's first weapons of mass destruction.

In a rare 1981 interview, filmmaker Jon Else talks with The Kitchen Sisters about the making of his Academy Award nominated documentary about J. Robert Oppenheimer and the making of the atomic bomb.

Young people from around the globe gather together at the International Congress of Youth Voices to share ideas and change the world.

Amaza Lee Meredith designed a subdivision and vacation destination for African Americans in Sag Harbor in 1947. She lived with her life-long partner, in an openly gay relationship, in the house she designed on the Virginia State University Campus where both women taught.

The story of Prince and his sound technician, Susan Rogers, who engineered some of his best known works in the early 1980s including Purple Rain and Sign o' the Times.

A tribute to Chris Strachwitz—founder of Arhoolie Records, producer, ethnomusicologist, song catcher— who passed on May 5, 2023.

Ada Louise Huxtable, architectural critic for the New York Times and later the Wall Street Journal, set out to separate the dull from the great. A few architects tried to argue with her. They never won.

In celebration of the life and work of Tony Schwartz, one of the great audio pioneers, sound recordists and collectors of the 20th Century.

Performances, pop-up processions, rituals, all-night song circles, in the storefronts, galleries, warehouses, and streets of Oakland. For almost a decade House/Full of Black Women have been creatively addressing and combating issues of eviction, gentrification, sex trafficking of Black women and girls that are plaguing their community.

Visionary industrial designer and artist Ray Eames worked together with her husband, Charles Eames, making significant and ground breaking contributions to modern architecture, furniture, and design..

W.E.B. DuBois' "Black Reconstruction in America" challenges the dominant historical and racist interpretation of the Civil War and Reconstruction Era that was (and in many cases still is) prevalent in both popular and academic circles.

A breakthrough radio documentary created in the 1980s by Judi Moore Smith featuring interviews with Black ministers across the country, recordings of their creative preaching styles, and an exploration of the interplay of church, ritual and theater.

Dr. Marcia Chatelain talks about her Pulitzer Prize winning book, “Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America,” and the history of the complicated relationship between fast food and the Black community.

After serving 27 years of a 54 years to life sentence in prison, Curtis Carroll, aka Wall Street, "The Stock Wizard of San Quentin," has been released on parole. We hear his story and talk to him about what’s next.

San Francisco sound artist Bill Fontana creates a new work giving voice to the silenced bells of Notre Dame.

The Kitchen Sisters talk to Alexis Madrigal of KQED's Forum about their 40 audio archive that has recently been acquired by The Library of Congress.

Edmond Richardson is marrying the love of his life in an unlikely place: San Quentin State Prison. And you are invited to the wedding..

We journey to White Earth Reservation, out onto Big Rice Lake in a canoe, to see how one tribe is supporting itself and changing the diet of its people through community kitchen projects. And we talk with the founder of White Earth Land Recovery Project, Ojibwe leader, Winona LaDuke.

A look at the impact of country music in Kenya, dating back to the 1920s and 30s when locals first heard Jimmie Rodgers on early country western 78 records.

Manny Yekutiel has created a gathering space in San Francisco for people to watch presidential debates, meet people working on the front lines of social change, and discuss issues with policy makers in person. From community forums debating the new trash can designs in San Francisco to political candidates for the Senate and the presidency, Manny’s is a community meeting and learning place in the heart of San Francisco.

The legendary Linda Ronstadt has a new book out. Feels Like Home: A Song for the Sonoran Borderlands — a historical, musical, edible memoir that spans the story of five generations of Linda’s Mexican American German family, from the Sonoran desert in Mexico to the Ronstadt family hardware store in Tucson to the road that led Linda to LA and musical stardom. Intimate and epic, "this is little Linda, Mexican Linda, cowgirl Linda, desert Linda."

In the late 1950s, Dave and Iola Brubeck wrote a jazz musical for Louis Armstrong—a rallying cry for integration, cultural exchange and social justice.

Amah Mutsun Tribal leaders, Big State Parks historians, and mountain residents who lost their homes, share their stories and perspectives about what was lost and what has been revealed in the devastating 2020 CZU Lightning Complex Fires in the Santa Cruz mountains.

The stories of young Afghan women journalists, musicians and activists, now living in the US, who fled their country in fear for their lives when the Taliban took over their nation in August 2021.

A blind oud player from humble beginnings, Sheikh Imam’s destiny changed drastically when he met a dissident poet called Ahmed Fouad Negm, and they formed a duo. Together, they would go on start a new era in Egyptian popular music. Their songs would shake regimes, travel the world on cassette tapes, and transcend their own time to become part of the soundtrack to Egypt’s revolution decades later.

The story of a small Filipino nightclub in San Francisco that transformed into one the most influential punk venues attracting bands like The Avengers, The GoGos, Patti Smith and so many others—pushing punk rock out onto the global stage.

The story of an astonishing group of young Afghan women journalists, musicians and activists, now living in the US, who fled their country in fear for their lives when the Taliban took over their nation in August 2021..

For three days in June, 1967, the sleepy fairgrounds in Monterey, CA rocked with Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Who, Ravi Shankar, Otis Redding, Hugh Masekela and so many other legendary greats at the first Monterey Pop Festival — a watershed event in the history of rock and roll.

A hidden Gold Rush kitchen—when food was scarce and men died for eggs. We travel out to the forbidding Farallon Islands, 27 miles outside San Francisco’s Golden Gate, home to the largest seabird colony in the United States, where during the 1850s Gold Rush egg hunters gathered over 3 million eggs, nearly stripping the island bare.

Pioneering architect Florence Knoll revolutionized office design bringing modernist design to office interiors. She was the force behind the seamless integration of furniture, space, textile, art, and graphic design into a perfect brand concept: Total Design.

Hillary Rodham Clinton and her former close aide Huma Abedin talk about their recent books and more in an interview with Davia Nelson of The Kitchen Sisters.

Helen Fong, one of the few women practicing architecture in the US in the 1950s, is best known for her “Googie” California coffee shop architectural style—Pann’s Coffee Shop, Denny's, Bob's Big Boy— those bold, iconic, futuristic restaurants of the 1950s and 60s created to catch the eye of America’s fast growing car culture.

Often called the Rosa Parks of Architecture, Norma Sklarek was one of the first African American women architects in the US, and the first Black woman to establish and manage an architectural firm.

The story behind the powerful global exhibition of photographs, videos, and immersive imagery focusing on the climate crisis and what actions can be taken now on display in Washington DC through April 22, 2022.

Natalie de Blois (1921–2013), a pioneering woman architect, contributed to some of the most iconic modernist works for corporate America, all while raising four children. She was one of the leaders in the Chicago Women in Architecture advocacy group.

“I go on the road looking for trouble and whenever I find some, I stop. I suppose that’s why they call me “The Bloodhound of Breakdown.  But then, my business is trouble." We go out on patrol with The Road Ranger, "The Scourge of the Tow Hook and the Long Delay," in one of the first stories produced by The Kitchen Sisters.

Why is that cheap rotisserie chicken, sold everywhere in markets and grocery outlets, so cheap? The Kitchen Sisters Present the first episode of What You’re Eating, a brand new podcast from FoodPrint.org.

The story of America's first Black union, The Brotherhood of the Sleeping Car Porters, how it laid the groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s, and C.L. Dellums' impact on challenging racial discrimination throughout California.

The Wooster Group in downtown NYC has been at the forefront of experimental theater for some 40 years. Clay Hapaz, the Group's official archivist has the job of chronicling and preserving a collection devoted to process, improvisation, the dense layering of ideas and texts and sound and image. How do you catalog something in a constant state of flux? Voices you’ll hear include Clay Hapaz, Kate Valk, Frances McDormand, Hilton Als, Peter Sellars, Spalding Gray and Elizabeth LeCompte.

When we saw the Cleveland Clinic's full page ad reading "HELP" we thought it was time to reprise this story about the Amish community collaborating with the outside world to combat Covid-19 and keep people safe.

She rose every day at dusk and rehearsed, performed, ate and drank until dawn. Then slept all day, woke up and began to create and unravel again as the sun went down. With stories from some of France’s great musicians —Charles Aznavour, Francis Lai, Georges Moustaki, Henri Contet.

Stories of secret, underground, below the radar cooking — how people come together through food — from the duPont Columbia and James Beard Award winning NPR series, Hidden Kitchens.

One hundred twenty five years after he was convicted for sitting down in a whites-only train car, Homer Plessy may be pardoned. In 1896, his landmark case, Plessy v. Ferguson, went before the Supreme Court which ruled to uphold "separate but equal" segregation which remained in effect until 1954. Homer Plessy's pardon is being instigated by one of his descendants and the great-great granddaughter of the convicting Judge Ferguson. The two have teamed up to form the Plessy AND Ferguson Foundation fighting for justice and social change.

Arctic Ice, Extreme Weather, the Reckoning at Standing Rock —a journey into the deep, rich world of photographer, Camille Seaman.  

The almost forgotten story of Julia Morgan, the first woman architect to be licensed in California and the architect of more than 700 buildings including the famed Hearst Castle in San Simeon.

The Braveheart Women’s Society, a group of Yankton Sioux grandmothers and tribal elders, have re-established an almost forgotten coming of age ritual for young girls—the Isnati, a four day traditional ceremony on the banks of the Missouri River in South Dakota.

Betty Reid Soskin, the nation's oldest serving Park Ranger, works at the Rosie the Riveter Home Front World War II National Historical Park in Richmond, CA. As a Black woman who worked in the segregated war effort, her perspective helps reveal a fuller, richer understanding of the World War II years on the Homefront as experienced by women and people of color.

The Peabody Award winning Sonic Memorial —an intimate and historic documentary commemorating the life and history of the World Trade Center and its neighborhood through audio artifacts, rare recordings, voicemail messages and interviews—narrated by author Paul Auster.

In the aftermath of the devastating 2020 CZU August Lightning Complex fires in the Santa Cruz Mountains, The Kitchen Sisters turned their microphones on the region, looking for what was lost and what has been found since lightning struck.

We travel the history of Route 66 from its beginnings as “The Main Street of America,” through the “Road of Flight” in the 1930s, to the “Ghost Road” of the 1980s, as the interstates bypass the businesses and road side attractions of another era. Stories of the first continuously paved highway linking east and west, the hit song "Get Your Kicks on Route 66," the TV show, Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath and so much more.

The dramatic stories of three pioneering river activists and archivists—Ken Sleight, Katie Lee, and Mark Dubois and the damming of wild rivers in the west. Ken Sleight's archive at Pack Creek Ranch in Utah chronicling over a half century of river guiding and environmental activism was consumed by fire in early June.

The story of Gert McMullin "Mother" of The AIDS Memorial Quilt; the history of the Gay Rights Movement in San Francisco; and Gert's continued work sewing on the frontline— creating PPE for Covid-19 healthcare workers with fabric gathered for the AIDS quilt.

Fifty years ago, a group of some of the top musicians from the United States - Ike and Tina Turner, Wilson Pickett, the Staple Singers, Santana and more -– boarded a plane bound for Ghana to perform in a musical celebration planned in part for the annual celebration of Ghana’s independence. It was also an invitation to a “homecoming” for many of these noted African-American artists to return to Africa.

A look at The Genius Generation, a new podcast featuring innovative kids, tweens and teens who are using their smarts and ingenuity to invent the change they want to see. And an interview with host Danni Washington, a young science communicator, dedicated to inspiring and educating youth about all things science.

In 1955, the US government sent Dave Brubeck, Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington overseas to promote democracy. Also, an interview with Dave Brubeck's sons Dan and Chris.

Lick You Silly Dog Treats, Trill Paws ID tags, The Dog Father of Harlem's Doggie Day Care Spa — a journey into the creative and growing world of Black-Owned Pet Businesses.

Francis Ford Coppola talks about homelessness, life, friendship, neighborhoods, and his ideas about the future as he tells the remarkable story of North Beach Citizens, the volunteer organization he spearheaded twenty years ago to help grapple with the lives and needs of homeless and unhoused people living in his neighborhood in San Francisco.

The voices and stories of Vietnamese manicurists working in salons in the US. In honor of Women's History Month and of Asian American women wherever they live, whatever their work. And in memory of the women who lost their lives in Atlanta.

The impact of Shonen Knife, the 1980s all-girl punk band from Osaka—a story of cultural exchange through the cassette tape and how it led to the group opening for Nirvana, one of the biggest musical acts of the 90s.

In this lushly produced soundscape, Lawrence talks about his youth, reads his poetry, and muses with his friend Erik Bauersfeld about life, death and art. Produced in collaboration with sound designer Jim McKee who recorded Lawrence and chronicled his life and work for over 20 years.

Hosted by Alfre Woodard—stories of Black pioneers, seekers and entrepreneurs - self-made men and self-taught women, neighborhood heroes and visionaries. People who said "yes we can" and then did. A compilation of stories produced by The Kitchen Sisters.

Academy Award winning Frances McDormand talks about her latest film Nomadland coming to Hulu and select theaters and drive ins starting February 19, 2020. A story about people uprooted from their old jobs and neighborhoods now living in DIY customized vans, migrating for work with the seasons.

In January 1973, following the Christmas bombing of Vietnam, conductor Leonard Bernstein gathered an impromptu orchestra and choir to perform an "anti-inaugural concert" protesting Richard Nixon's official inaugural concert and his escalation of the Vietnam War.

A mushroom farmer, food activist, business entrepreneur, foster mother to more than a dozen girls— Chido Govera is a kitchen visionary in Zimbabwe—a pioneer in the cultivation of mushrooms throughout Africa and the world.

It was April 2020. The pandemic was really starting to roar. PPE was scarce and supply chains were already breaking down. Every hospital was scrambling to find enough masks, gowns and face shields. It was already every state, every institution for itself. A headline caught our eye: “Abe Make a Sewing Frolic” — In Ohio The Amish Take on the Coronavirus. This isolated, centuries-old, self-reliant community was rising to the occasion and collaborating with the world outside to fill the PPE needs of the Cleveland Clinic and beyond. In the attempt to record this story in Amish country in the midst of social distancing and the ever deepening pandemic, a new collaboration was born — artist Laurie Anderson, Ohio-born designer Stacy Hoover and producer Evan Jacoby all joined with The Kitchen Sisters to bring these voices to air.

Frances McDormand talks about the making of her extraordinary new film Nomadland directed by Chole Zhao and based on the non fiction book by Jessica Bruder about and her experiences in the van-dwelling community. With clips from author Jessica Bruder, director Chloe Zhao, van-dwelling guru Bob Wells, and clips from the film.

Angelo Garro – a Sicilian blacksmith living in a forge in San Francisco with a passion for hunting, foraging, opera, cooking, pickling, curing salamis, making wine and generously tending and feeding his friends and community. A Thanksgiving gift.

In 1966, a young Marine, Michael A. Baronowski, took a reel-to-reel tape recorder with him into the Vietnam War recording his life in foxholes, in combat and sending these audio letters home to his family. Then he was killed in action. Thirty-four years later Baronowski’s friend shared those tapes with producer Jay Allison as part of the Peabody award winning Lost & Found Sound series on NPR.

Winona LaDuke is a force to be reckoned with and she’s in it for the long haul. Ojibwe leader, two-time Vice Presidential candidate for the Green Party, food activist, rural development economist, hemp farmer, Harvard graduate, first born daughter—she's a visionary and a fighter.

Sometimes we find the story, sometimes the story finds us. Such is the case with this tale of two Keepers from the Pacific Northwest, the official/unofficial archivists for Pearl Jam. Caroline Losneck, a radio producer in Maine heard our Keepers series about activist archivists and rogue librarians and said to herself, “Hey wait a minute, what about that mythic vault in Seattle I’ve been hearing about for years filled to the brim with 30 years of Pearl Jam, who's keeping that?”

We go to New Orleans for a kind of biblical reckoning. A story of science and prayer, with a cast of improbable partners—environmental architects and nuns—coming together to create a vision of "living with water" in New Orleans. Mirabeau Water Garden, one of the largest urban wetlands in the country designed to inspire, educate and save its neighborhood from flooding.

The Peabody Award winning, intimate and historic documentary commemorating the life and history of the World Trade Center and its surrounding neighborhood, through audio artifacts, rare recordings, voicemail messages and interviews.

Picture this: 131 youth activists and visionaries, 13 to 26 years old, from 37 countries—students, writers, poets, marchers, community leaders all gathered in San Juan, Puerto Rico in August 2019 to plan and ignite change in the world.

In homage to the people of Lebanon The Kitchen Sisters Present a journey through the hidden kitchens of Lebanon with kitchen activist and restaurateur Kamal Mouzawak, a man with a vision of re-building and uniting this war-ravaged nation through its traditions, its culture and its food. We visit farmer’s markets, restaurants and guest houses known as Souk el Tayeb that he and his kitchen community have created.

In honor of the many people who work in nail salons across the country who are struggling to keep their businesses from going under during these long closures, The Kitchen Sisters Present French Manicure —Tales from Vietnamese Nail Shops in America.

Louis Jones, Field Archivist at Ruether Library, Wayne State University—the largest labor archive in North America—takes us through the collection with stories of the UAW, Cesar Chavez, Utah Phillips, A. Philip Randolph and the Civil Rights Movement, the 1967 Detroit uprising, and how archivists are examining and re-imagining their roles in the midst of Covid-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Gert McMullin, The "Mother of the AIDS Memorial Quilt" memorializing those who died in the AIDS pandemic, is now sewing masks for nurses and health care workers made from fabric left over from the making of the AIDS Quilt. The Story of Gert, the Quilt, activist Cleve Jones, Harvey Milk, The White Night Riots and the Gay Rights Movement in San Francisco.

November 14, 1960, New Orleans. Three six-year-old girls, flanked by Federal Marshals, walked through screaming crowds and policemen on horseback as they approached their new school for the first time—McDonogh No. 19. Leona Tate thought it must be Mardi Gras. Gail thought they were going to kill her. The story of integrating the New Orleans Public schools in 1960, four years after Brown v. Board of Education was passed.

Eel Pie Island, a tiny bit of land in the River Thames with a flamboyant history involving King Henry the VIII, Charles Dickens, The Rolling Stones, Pete Townshend, Rod Stewart, Anjelica Huston, Trad Jazz, Rock and Roll, and eel pie—a disappearing London delicacy.

An intimate, inspiring conversation with Mexican chef and cookbook author, Pati Jinich, host of the James Beard Award winning PBS series Pati's Mexican Table and resident chef at the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington D.C.

Al Gore is back and he’s got a new slide show. Al Gore, Alice Waters, farmers, chefs, scientists, entrepreneurs, policy makers —a riveting series of conversations and discussions from Al Gore's 2019 Climate Summit about the role food and regenerative agriculture can play in solving the climate crisis.

April 1993: A small village in Sicily makes lavish preparations for the first visit of baseball legend Joe DiMaggio to the town where his parents were born and raised. But he never comes.

Prince's epic Vault in Minneapolis, Henri Langlois' legendary Cinémathéque in Paris, The Dark Side of the Dewey Decimal System and more stories from The Keepers - Part Two - a special episode hosted by Frances McDormand.

The Hiphop Archive at Harvard, the Pack Horse Librarians of Eastern Kentucky, the Lenny Bruce Archive—these stories and more in this special episode of The Keepers with host Frances McDormand.

Lou Reed—music icon, poet, photographer, Tai Chi master, vital force in the cultural life and underworld of New York City. The story of his archive and how it came to the New York Public Library — from his days with The Velvet Underground, through his solo career and last recordings. With Laurie Anderson, archivists Don Fleming and Jonathan Hiam, producers Tony Visconti and Hal Willner, drone wizard Stewart Hurwood, rare archival recordings and more.

In celebration of truckers everywhere and of Radiotopia’s new show Over the Road, The Kitchen Sisters visit some of their favorite Texas pitstops: Carl's Corner Truck Stop in Carl's Corner, Texas where Willie Nelson introduced BioWillie in 2004; Fuel City, downtown Dallas, with its long horn cattle, oil well, bikini clad "pool models and famous Texas tacos; and Willie Nelson, Kinky Friedman, Joe Nick Potaski, truckers, chefs and more.

When Sam Phillips sold Elvis’ contract in 1955 he used the money to start an all-girl radio station in Memphis, TN. Set against the backdrop of the civil rights movement, the women's movement, Vietnam and the death of Martin Luther King, the story of WHER follows the women who pioneered in broadcasting as they head into one of the most volatile and dramatic times in the nation's history.

Theaster Gates, Keeper of Greater Grand Crossing his neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, resurrects old dilapidated neighborhood buildings, transforming them into living archives, institutes of music, culture, film and gathering, preserving and renewing neighborhoods that have been ignored, overlooked and underserved.

For five years Davia's father, Lenny Nelson, asked her to go to Rattlesden, England, to visit the Air Force base where he was stationed during WWII and to find an old photograph hanging in the town pub honoring his 8th Air Force squadron.

The Queen's Beekeeper, The Internet Archive's Free Range Archivist Jason Scott, Israeli Artist/archivist Hadassa Goldvicht, The Other F Word and more first stories from Kitchen Sisters Interns — a deep rich offering from emerging audio producers.

The Kitchen Sisters "Dreaming in Public" about starting Lipstick Traces, a sound and story themed line of lipstick to raise money for public media storytelling.

A conversation with master filmmaker Martin Scorcese about his extraordinary documentary film work. An onstage interview with Rachel Rosen, Director of Programming for the San Francisco Film Society.

November 14, 1960 — Four six-year-old girls, flanked by Federal Marshals, walked through screaming crowds and policemen on horseback as they approached their new schools for the first time. Leona Tate thought it must be Mardi Gras. Gail thought they were going to kill her. The story of integrating the New Orleans Public schools in 1960, four years after Brown v Board of Education.

Award-winning radio and television producer Robert Krulwich talks about storytelling techniques and his early career in media as part of Talking Story, a panel hosted by The Kitchen Sisters at the very first Third Coast International Audio Festival in Chicago in 2001.

Lawrence Weschler, writer and archivist of "the odd, the marvelous, the passionate and slightly askew," talks about pronged ants, horned humans, cabinets of wonder, frozen archives, archives of misery, the history of museums, obsessive collectors and more.

Chris Strachwitz, the founder of Arhoolie Records, is a man possessed — by music, by radio, by recording the vernacular music of America, his adopted home after his family left German in 1947 in the wake of WWII. Chris Strachwitz is a keeper of culture. A cantankerous keeper. He has been awarded the most prestigious honors in music and culture in the US — including a Grammy and the National Medal of Honor … and that doesn’t even begin to describe it.

A conversation with documentary filmmakers Ken and Ric Burns, who both have new films coming to PBS this year. "Country Music" from Ken and "Oliver Sacks: His Own Life" from Ric. Recorded at the 2019 Telluride Film Festival.

An enormous, almost forgotten scale model of San Francisco, hand crafted and painted by WPA artists in 1938, leads us on a journey through the streets and neighborhoods of San Francisco—contemplating the past and envisioning the future of the City with poets, artists, planners, historians and local citizens.

A deep dive into the legendary Burning Man Archives. How do you archive an event when one of it's driving principles is "leave no trace."

An enormous, almost forgotten scale model of San Francisco, hand crafted and painted by WPA artists in 1938, leads us on a journey through the streets and neighborhoods of San Francisco—contemplating the past and envisioning the future of the City with poets, artists, planners, historians and local citizens.

An enormous, almost forgotten scale model of San Francisco, hand crafted and painted by WPA artists in 1938, leads us on a journey through the streets and neighborhoods of San Francisco—contemplating the past and envisioning the future of the City with poets, artists, planners, historians and local citizens.

Nancy Pearl. She’s been called “one of the 10 coolest librarians alive.” She’s the bestselling author of “Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment and Reason,” and a regular commentator about books on NPR’s Morning Edition. And then, of course, there’s the Nancy Pearl Librarian Action Figure with amazing push button shushing action.

David Ferriero, the Archivist of the United States, talks about the history of the National Archives, the adventures of early "Keepers" of our Nation's records, transparency and freedom of information, the Map Thief, Annie Oakley, Fidel Castro and more.

Dieter Koslick, Director of the Berlin International Film Festival for eighteen years, is is one of the film world’s most gregarious, hilarious and controversial Film Festival Directors. He’s put his stamp on this legendary festival and kicked up a lot of dust in the process. A portrait of Dieter, who celebrated his last Festival in 2019, and the Berlinale's dramatic history.

Bob Dylan kept just about everything—a massive private archive filled with thousands and thousands of artifacts. The story of how this secret personal archive found its way to its new permanent, public home...in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

In celebration of National Barbecue Month, which is every month in our book, stories from C.B. "Stubb" Stubblefield, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Nick Patoski, Bee Spears and more.

Producer Scott Carrier, under the protection of a hip hop artist, takes us to the outskirts of San Pedro Sula in Honduras, a city known in 2014 as the Murder Capital of the World.

A conversation with filmmaker Agnés Varda, part of the French New Wave of the 1960s and creator of the Academy Award nominated documentary "Faces Places" with photographer JR. Agnes Varda died on March 29, 2019 at home at age 90.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the famed poet of North Beach San Francisco, creator of City Lights Bookstore, publisher of the beat poets of the 1950s and 60s, champion of free speech and First Amendment rights. Lawrence is turning 100 this year, and we’re celebrating.

As part of our Keepers series we’re featuring an episode of the New York Public Library’s podcast The Librarian Is In. Host Gwen Glazer and Frank Collerius interview Eric Klinenberg, author of Palaces for the People about the power and promise of the public library and its critical role in our democratic society.

Filmmaker Wim Wenders, creator of "Paris, Texas," "Wings of Desire," "Buena Vista Social Club," "Pope Francis: A Man of His Word," "Pina" and many more talks about his early influences — Cinémathèque Française, Henri Langlois, Lotte Eisner — and tells stories of Werner Herzog and the films that have impacted his work.

Bestselling author Linda Spalding talks about how discovering her family's dark history as slave holders inspired her novels A Reckoning and The Purchase.

Melvil Dewey, the father of library science and the inventor of the most popular library classification system in the world, was a known racist and serial sexual harasser. Forced out of the American Library Association, which he co-founded, his 19th century world view and biases are reflected in the classification system that libraries around the world have inherited.

Folklorist and Professor William Ferris, a 2018 Grammy nominee for his "Voices of Mississippi" 3 CD Box set, has committed his life to documenting and expanding the study of the American South. His recordings, photos and films of preachers, quilt makers, blues musicians and more are now online as part of the Southern Folklife Collection at the University of North Carolina.

Paper airplanes, photographs of men in rows, birds nests, gay bar matchbooks, dolls hats —an untraditional take on what warrants our attention. We wander through a curated collection of collections at the Los Angeles Central Library examining the role collections play in telling our stories.

We've got something extra for you today as part of the Radiotopia fundraiser that is happening now. You can join the Radiotopia community and support The Kitchen Sisters Present... and all of your favorite shows in this beautiful network at radiotopia.fm. And while you're doing that, here's a little gift from us. A special Radiotopia "Hear the World Differently" bonus feature from our series, The Keepers: The Free-Range Archivist: Jason Scott.

After a devastating car accident that made his work as a janitor impossible, civil rights activist Eddie McCoy, picked up a scavenged tape recorder and began taping anyone and everyone in his town—from the oldest person on down—piecing together the little known history of the African American community in Oxford, North Carolina, hidden stories of slavery times, sharecropping, the civil rights era and more.

Deep in the hidden archives of Harvard’s Houghton Library are the butter stained recipes and chocolate wrappers of Emily Dickinson's Hidden Kitchen—a world of black cake, gingerbread, slant rhyme, secret loves, family scandals and poems composed on the backs of coconut cake recipes.

Keepers: people possessed with a passion for preservation, individuals afflicted with a bad case of Archive Fever. The Keepers continues with the story of one such man, Henri Langlois, founder and curator of one of the world’s great film archives, the Cinémathèque Française.

During the Depression, as part of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, the Kentucky WPA hired pack horse librarians, mostly women, to carry books to isolated cabins, rural school houses and homebound coalminers in the poverty stricken Appalachian Mountains.

The first story in our new The Keepers— Archiving the Underground, delves into The Hip Hop Archive at Harvard University and the Cornell Hip Hop Collection with stories from DJs, scholars, students, and hip hop pioneers.

Fish mongers recorded on the streets of Harlem in the 1930s; an 8-year-old girl’s impromptu news cast made on a toy recorder in a San Diego store; Voices of the Dust Bowl gathered on a 50-pound Presto recorder in the migrant labor camps of the 1930s, and more.

97 - Pan American Blues: The Birth of the Grand Ole Opry & "Harmonica Wizard" DeFord Bailey, the show's first African American performer.

The dramatic stories of three pioneering activists, protectors and Keepers of the environment—Ken Sleight, Katie Lee, and Mark Dubois—who fought the damming of wild rivers in the West.

Food not bombs—looking beyond the militarization of space. An American astronaut and Russian Cosmonaut share nightly meals during their six months together on the Space Station. South Korea’s first astronaut practices Kimchi Diplomacy in space feeding the food of home to her Russian comrades in orbit.

The Agave Goddess with 200 breasts; jimadors stripping lethal thorny leaves off agaves; farmers battling cambio climatico (climate change); distillers contemplating mono culture production and the environmental impact of tequila; generations-old tequila makers versus globalization. Stories of tequila from the Tequila Region in Mexico and beyond.

In 1983 Prince hired LA sound technician, Susan Rogers, one of the few women in the industry, to move to Minneapolis and help upgrade his home recording studio as he began work on the album and the movie Purple Rain. Susan, a trained technician with no sound engineering experience became the engineer of Purple Rain, Parade, Sign o’ the Times, and all that Prince recorded for the next four years. For those four years, and almost every year after, Prince recorded at least a song a day and they worked together for 24 hours, 36 hours, 96 hours at a stretch, layering and perfecting his music and his hot funky sound. We interviewed Susan, who is now a Professor at the Berklee School of Music in Boston, for our upcoming NPR series, The Keepers — about activist archivists, rogue librarians, collectors, curators and historians. It was Susan who started Prince’s massive archive during her time with the legendary artist.

In the early 1970’s, radio producer and author Studs Terkel wrote a book called Working. He went around the country with a reel-to-reel tape recorder interviewing people about their jobs. The book became a bestseller and even inspired a Broadway musical. Our colleagues at Radio Diaries were given exclusive access to these recordings and produced this story. As The Kitchen Sisters warm up for our new series “The Keepers,” stories of activist archivists, rogue librarians, historians, collectors, curators —keepers of the culture—we share these stories gathered by the ultimate Keeper —Studs Terkel.

Mimi Chakarova is a filmmaker, photographer, activist, immigrant and single mother. We talk with Mimi about her films Men a Love Story, The Price of Sex, about women throughout Eastern Europe who are pushed into prostitution, and her latest project Still I Rise, premiering online in April 2018.

Jorge Amado, the beloved Brazilian author of Gabriella, Clove and Cinnamon, Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, Tent of Miracles – wrote over 30 books in his lifetime. This documentary features interviews with Jorge Amado, composer Dorival Caymmi, activist Harry Belafonte, along with music and dramatizations of the author's work.

San Francisco beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti turns 99 years old this year. We celebrate with poetry, interviews, and overheard conversations between Ferlinghetti and his close friend Erik Bauersfeld (the voice of Star Wars' Admiral Ackbar) about life, San Francisco beat culture in the 1950s, his fight for First Amendment rights publishing Allen Ginsberg's "Howl," and more.

Two-time Academy Award winning actress Frances McDormand hosts Hidden Kitchens—secret, underground, below the radar cooking—how communities come together through food. Stories of NASCAR cooking, Hunting and Gathering with Sicilian blacksmith Angelo Garro, and more.

A sound portrait of Guillermo Cabrera Infante, the award winning Cuban novelist, screenwriter and critic, a one time leader in the Cuban cultural revolution who fell from favor and was later exiled.

In honor of the Mardi Gras Indian tradition in New Orleans, a collection of stories and interviews featuring Jelly Roll Morton, Bo Dollis of The Wild Magnolias, Tootie Montana and more,

The story of an aging pile of forgotten reel-to-reel tapes discovered on the shelf of a tribal elder on the Fort Mojave Reservation. These tapes of the last Creation Song singer of the tribe recount the legends and origin of the Mojave people. Songs like these are oral maps of the desert region that were instrumental in helping to save the Ward Valley from becoming a nuclear waste dump site.

Levee Stream— a live neighborhood pop-up, Cadillac radio station installation in New Orleans. Presented by Otabenga Jones & Associates and The Kitchen Sisters as part of the exhibit Prospect4 New Orleans. Part block party, part soap box with live music, DJs, conversations with artists, activists, civil rights leaders, neighborhood entrepreneurs and visionaries. All taking place in the back seat of a cut-in-half 1959 pink Cadillac Coup de Ville with giant speakers in the trunk on Bayou Road, one of the oldest roads in the city.

Every culture has its idealized woman, its standard of beauty that is valorized. Everywhere women are altering themselves in small and major ways to achieve the look that is celebrated. In the 1990s, some women in Jamaica, longing to be large, started taking “Chicken Pills,” hormones sold to plump up the breasts and thighs of chickens.

November 14, 1960 — Four six-year-old girls, flanked by Federal Marshals, walked through screaming crowds and policemen on horseback as they approached their new schools for the first time. Leona Tate thought it must be Mardi Gras. Gail thought they were going to kill her. The story of integrating the New Orleans Public schools in 1960, four years after Brown v Board of Education.

A string of sonic prayer flags —voices and sounds from New Orleans and Bayou Road, the oldest street in the city. Local visionaries, neighborhood entrepreneurs, artists, skate boarders, civil rights activists, musicians, teachers, and more. Listening to the sounds and moods of the New Orleans.

Thad Vogler, creator of San Francisco's Bar Agricole and Trou Normand, travels the world in search of hand made spirits — rum, scotch, cognac, mescal — and the hidden stories of the people and places behind these spirits.

A walk through Oaxaca's Ethnobotanical Garden with chef and cookbook author Pati Jinich, host of the Emmy and James Beard nominated PBS series Pati's Mexican Table and resident chef at the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington DC.

The Great Galveston Hurricane arrived on a Saturday, September 8, 1900 — almost without warning. Galveston, the grand dame of Texas, a vibrant port city sitting haughtily on a sand bar facing the Gulf, was reduced to a splintered wasteland. Some 6,

Robert King Wilkerson was imprisoned at Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola for 31 years, twenty-nine of those years in solitary confinement. During that time he created a clandestine kitchen in his 6×9 cell where he made pralines.

In 1967, the Esso Trinidad Tripoli Steel Band performed at the Montreal World's Fair and caught the ear of one of the most popular entertainers of the day: Liberace. The flamboyant pianist was so taken by this new,

Stories of creativity and invention— the making of a jar of jam, the making of a fashionable 3-D printed covering for an artificial limb, Muttville-a foster care rescue center for senior dogs, a Karaoke Ice Cream Truck— and more stories from The Making...

Barbecue, burgoo, mopping the mutton, the fellowship of stirring. Stories of conflict, competition and resolution in the backyards and fire pits of our nation.

In the 1930s and 40s, hundreds of Basques were brought to the western United States to do the desolate work that no one else would do—herding sheep. Alone for months at a time with hundreds of sheep the Basque's improvised songs,

For the last five years The Golden State Warriors have been going inside San Quentin, the legendary maximum security California State prison, to take on The San Quentin Warriors, the prison’s notorious basketball team.

Author and journalist, Laila El-Haddad takes us into the hidden world of Gaza through the kitchen. Interweaving history, personal experiences and stories of food, family and recipes, El Haddad paints a vivid picture stories of food,

A hidden Gold Rush kitchen when food was scarce and men died for eggs… We travel out to the forbidding Farallon Islands, 27 miles outside San Francisco’s Golden Gate, home to the largest seabird colony in the United States,

In 1898, the United States Department of Agriculture created a special department of men, called “Agriculture Explorers,” to travel the globe searching for new food crops to bring back for farmers to grow in the U.S.

Cab drivers, children's jump rope rhymes, folk songs, dialects, controversial TV ads, interviews with blacklisted artists and writers during the McCarthy Era—Tony Schwartz, one of the great sound recordists and collectors of the 20th Century.

Stories from The Hidden World of Girls with host Tina Fey: Nigerian writer Chris Abani tells about his English-born mother enlisting him at age 8 to be her translator in Nigeria as she travels door to door through the villages teaching women the Billin...

Niloufer Ichaporia King—a kitchen botanist, a one-of-a-kind cook, a Parsi from Bombay living in San Francisco, and author of "My Bombay Kitchen," prepares an elaborate ceremonial meal for Parsi New Year, the first day of spring.

Sam Phillips — the father of Sun Records, the man who discovered Howlin’ Wolf, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash…, the creator of WHER, The First All Girl Radio Station in the World — talks about his journey,

Kimchi in space. The Kimchi Bus. Korean government-sponsored chefs and restaurants spreading the word of Kimchi around the globe. A story of “Gastrodiplomacy” — the use of food as a diplomatic tool in helping nations resolve conflict and foster connect...

Manga, the ubiquitous Japanese comic books written on just about every subject—sports, music, sex, shooting pool—represent about 40% of all books published in Japan. In recent decades ‘food manga’ has exploded.

We enter the secret, steamy, myth-laden world of Emily Dickinson through her kitchen.

For five years Davia's father, Lenny Nelson, asked her to go to Rattlesden, England, to visit the Air Force base where he was stationed during WWII and to find an old photograph hanging in the town pub honoring his 8th Air Force squadron.

A journey into the mysterious and controversial world of raw milk.

During World War II, in desolate inland internment camps in the US, like Manzanar, Topaz, and Tule Lake some 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans lived for the duration of the war — their traditional food replaced by US government commodities and wa...

A story from the plazas of Portugal, where small ornate kiosks that served traditional snacks and drinks once graced the city and brought people together. Neglected by time and pushed into abandonment by a dictator’s regime that suppressed public conve...

“Nobody can soldier without coffee,” a Union calvary man wrote in 1865. Hidden Kitchens looks at three American wars through the lens of coffee: the Civil War, Vietnam and Afghanistan.

The "Hummus Wars" and the battle for the Guinness World Record title for the world’s largest plate of hummus and the deeper meanings of this Middle Eastern food war. And more Hidden Kitchens stories of war and peace and food from Israel and Ramallah.

A road trip through the hidden kitchens of Lebanon, with kitchen activist, Kamal Mouzawak, a man with a vision of re-building and uniting this war-ravaged nation through its traditions, its culture and its food.

Six generations of Mohawk Indian ironworkers, known for their ability to work high steel, have helped shape New York City’s skyline. Hundreds of Mohawks still commute to Manhattan each week from reservations in Canada to work on the city’s skyscrapers ...

A Hidden Kitchens story about London’s long tradition of urban garden allotments — and the story of Manor Garden Allotments, a 100 year old community, that found itself in the path of London’s 2012 Olympics.

Sometimes it’s the kitchen that’s hidden, sometimes it’s the food itself. Blacksmith Angelo Garro forges and forages, recreating in wrought iron and in cooking the life he left behind in Sicily. The Kitchen Sisters join Angelo along the coast of Northe...

Each fall, the Ojibwe tribes of northern Minnesota harvest wild rice by hand. It's a long process that begins with families in canoes venturing into the tall grasses, where rice is poled and gently brushed with knockers into the bed of the canoe.

Sometimes life without a kitchen leads to the most unexpected hidden kitchen of all—The George Foreman Grill. How immigrants and homeless people without official kitchens use The George Foreman Grill, hidden crock pots,

Many Kitchen Sisters stories are born in taxi cabs. Hidden Kitchens was conceived in the back of a Yellow. Each time The Kitchen Sisters took a cab in San Francisco they noticed the driver was from Brazil, specifically the same town in Brazil,

We travel to the Mississippi Delta into the world of Lebanese immigrants who began arriving in the 1800s soon after the Civil War. Clarksdale — where barbecue and the blues meet traditional Lebanese meatloaf

For over 100 years, young women came at twilight to the Alamo and the plazas of San Antonio with makeshift tables and big pots of chili to cook over open fires. The plazas teemed with people—soldiers, tourists,

C.B. “Stubb” Stubblefield, namesake of the legendary club in Austin, Texas, had a mission to feed the world—especially the people who sang in it. When he started out in Lubbock, he generously fed and supported both black and white musicians,

Stories of mothers and kitchens from playwright Ellen Sebastian Chang, cookbook author Peggy Knickerbocker, designer Cristina Salas-Porras, folklorist and creator/host of American Routes Nick Spitzer, and actress Robin Wright.

Cooking for the founding fathers — the story of Hercules and Hemings — the enslaved chefs of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. And an interview with Zephyr Wright, President Lydon Johnson's cook who worked for the family for 27 years.

Carmen Miranda—Brazil's Ambassador of Samba, the highest paid woman entertainer in the world in the 1940s—her iconic turban piled high with fruit, her rapid fire Portuguese lyrics, her wild lens of samba and rhumba, captured the imagination of the world.

Stories of young Irish Traveller women. Travellers —the people of walking, sometimes called the gypsies of Ireland. Exploring ancient and modern Traveller rituals that cling on the edge of the Celtic Boom.

In the 1950s, a group of Montgomery, Alabama women baked goods to help fund the Montgomery bus boycott. Known as the Club from Nowhere the group was led by Georgia Gilmore, one of the unsung heroes of the civil rights era.

Convict cooking at the Angola Prison Rodeo, Tootie Montana and the legendary Mardi Gras Indians, Tennessee Williams, Two Sisters Cafe, The Court of Two Sisters, an eloquent ode to the Mint Julep and more stories Kitchen Sisters' stories from New Orleans.

39 – One Big Self: The Hidden World of Deborah Luster & C. D. Wright

In 1948, Bill Hawkins became Cleveland’s first black disc jockey. He had a jiving, rhyming style. People gathered on the street to watch him broadcast from a glass booth at the front of his record store. His popularity grew rapidly.

Before the availability of the tape recorder and during the 1950s, when vinyl was scarce, ingenious Russians began recording banned bootlegged jazz, boogie woogie and rock 'n' roll on exposed X-ray film salvaged from hospital waste bins and archives.

"Somewhere in the world there's a Tupperware Party starting every 10 seconds." And we're going to one with The Kitchen Sisters.

We go behind the scenes, into rehearsals, sound checks, and the making of Way to Blue, a tribute to Nick Drake.

Michael Baronowski was a 19-year-old Marine when he landed in Vietnam in 1966. He brought with him a reel-to-reel tape recorder and used it to record audio letters for his family back in Norristown, Pennsylvania. He was killed in action in 1967.

An all-girl radio station in Memphis—set against the backdrop of the civil rights movement, the women's movement, Vietnam, and the death of Martin Luther King—the story of WHER continues following the women who pioneered in broadcasting as they head in...

When Sam Phillips sold Elvis' contract in 1955 he used the money to start an all girl radio station in Memphis, TN. Set in a pink, plush studio in the nations's third Holiday Inn, it was a novelty—but not for long.

April 1993: A small village in Sicily prepares for the first visit of 78-year-old baseball legend Joe DiMaggio to the town where his parents were born and raised. Flags are strung, feasts prepared, nearly the entire annual budget of the town is spent ...

They were called "Construction Guides" — friendly co-eds in mini-skirt uniforms posted at corner kiosks as the World Trade Center was being built (1968-70), to inform an inquiring public and put a pretty face on a controversial issue.

Robert King Wilkerson was in imprisoned at Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola Louisiana for 31 years. Twenty-nine of those years he was in solitary confinement. During that time he created a clandestine kitchen in his 6x9 cell where he made pralines.

Everyone in San Quentin calls him Wall Street. Curtis Carroll aka Wall Street, was illiterate when he came into prison 20 years ago. Today he teaches his fellow prisoners about stocks. Through friends and family on the outside,

The Braveheart Women's Society, a group of Yankton Sioux grandmothers, re-establish an almost forgotten coming of age ritual for young girls—a four day traditional Isnati ceremony on the banks of the Missouri River in South Dakota.

Horses and dolphins and unicorns—creatures that possess the imagination of so many young girls—borderland creatures—gateway animals to other worlds. "They let us be cowgirls and oceanographers and mermaids and princesses, wizardessess."

Willie Nelson and Dallas-born actress Robin Wright, along with some wild and extraordinary tellers, take us across Texas and share some of their hidden kitchen stories. Gas station tacos, ice houses, the birth of the Frito, the birth of 7-Eleven,

Route 66—part 2: Studs Terkel, Eldin Shamblin guitar player for Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys, Woody Gutherie and so many others tell the story of Route 66, The Mother Road—a history of The Main Street of America.

The birth of the Main Street of America

A portrait of life on the homefront during World War II featuring 4 women's stories, rare home recorded letters sent overseas to soldiers, archival audio, music and news broadcasts from the era.

Theresa Sparks, one of San Francisco’s most respected and outspoken transgender activists tells her truth, that she was walking around in the wrong suit for 50 something years.

The Birth of Rice-A-Roni: The San Francisco, Italian, Armenian Treat

America Eats, a WPA project, sent writers like Nelson Algren, Zora Neale Hurston, Eudora Welty, and Stetson Kennedy out to document America's relationship with food during the Great Depression.

After a debilitating accident, Eddie McCoy took his passion for local history and a scavenged cassette recorder from a trash can and began taping his town, from the oldest citizen on down—hidden stories of slavery times, sharecropping,

In 2001, a quarter-century after boxing's celebrated "Thrilla in Manila," Ali and Frazier were once again poised to enter the ring. But this time it was the daughters of the legendary combatants who were scheduled to battle—22 year old Laila Ali and 39...

The Green Street Mortuary Band, made up of mostly Italians playing Christian hymns and dirges, accompanies traditional Chinese funeral processions through the streets of San Francisco's Chinatown. Tubas, gongs,

In the early 1950s, at the same time legendary record producer Sam Phillips was making recordings of the pageants and events happening in Memphis' white community—across town, R.A. Coleman, an African American photographer,

A look into the life of Taylor Negron— actor, comedian, and telephone message hoarder— told through the voicemails on his machine. Taylor died on January 10, 2015. We present this story in his honor.

Before Elvis walked through the door, before Sun Studios put Memphis on the map—Sam Phillips, a young man with a tape recorder, lived by the motto, "We Record Anything, Anywhere, Anytime."

Narrated by Andy Garcia, the story of the men who read to the cigar rollers as they worked in the cigar factories of Ybor City and Tampa in the early 19th century.

Part 3 of Hidden Kitchens World Trifecta with host Frances McDormand: Hidden Kitchens Russia, stories of the role of the kitchen in the downfall of the Soviet Union.

Part 2 of the Hidden Kitchens World Trifecta with host Frances McDormand and special guests Werner Herzog, Gael Garcia Bernal and Stories of Atomic Wine and The Romance and Sex Life of the date.

A Hidden Kitchens World Podcast Trifecta with Frances McDormand and The Kitchen Sisters. In this episode Salman Rushdie talks about his Hidden Kitchen. We travel to Sicily for The Pizza Connection—a story of fighting the mafia t...

Just about anytime we walk out of The Kitchen Sisters office in San Francisco we stop and stare in the windows of City Lights bookstore, soaking in the covers of the new arrivals. Awhile back, we were stopped in our tracks by a book of photographs of ...

Fugitive Waves: Episode 6: Cry Me a River: A story of three pioneering river activist and the damming of wild rivers in the west.  Mark Dubois, co-founder of Friends of the River, Earth Day and International Rivers Network,

In this episode of Fugitive Waves, The Kitchen Sisters ride the nightshift with The Homobile. Homobiles is a non-commercial, volunteer, 24/7 ride service created by Lynnee Breedlove for the "LGBTQRXT and transgender community and others around San Fran...

"I left Vietnam in 1972. I listen the radio when I was in high school. I still in Vietnam at that time. I left with US troops during the Vietnam War. I really love the song, you know, played by Glen Campbell, "Wichita Lineman.

Eel Pie Island: Fugitive Waves, Episode 3

The lost and found sound recordings of Tennessee Williams, Pancho Rodriguez, and several other drunken revelers in New Orleans

Tales of the near-deaf inventor of the phonograph