The Kitchen Sisters Present
Radiotopia
The Kitchen Sisters Present… Stories from the b-side of history. Lost recordings, hidden worlds, people possessed by a sound, a vision, a mission. The episodes tell deeply layered stories, lush with interviews, field recordings and music. From powerhouse NPR producers The Kitchen Sisters (The Keepers, Hidden Kitchens, The Hidden World of Girls, The Sonic Memorial Project, Lost & Found Sound, and Fugitive Waves). "The Kitchen Sisters have done some of best radio stories ever broadcast" —Ira Glass. The Kitchen Sisters Present is produced in collaboration with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell and mixed by Jim McKee. A proud member of Radiotopia, from PRX. Learn more at radiotopia.fm.
Location:
United States
Description:
The Kitchen Sisters Present… Stories from the b-side of history. Lost recordings, hidden worlds, people possessed by a sound, a vision, a mission. The episodes tell deeply layered stories, lush with interviews, field recordings and music. From powerhouse NPR producers The Kitchen Sisters (The Keepers, Hidden Kitchens, The Hidden World of Girls, The Sonic Memorial Project, Lost & Found Sound, and Fugitive Waves). "The Kitchen Sisters have done some of best radio stories ever broadcast" —Ira Glass. The Kitchen Sisters Present is produced in collaboration with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell and mixed by Jim McKee. A proud member of Radiotopia, from PRX. Learn more at radiotopia.fm.
Language:
English
Episodes
184 - The Road Ranger—My Business Is Trouble
2/22/2022
We first caught sight of him in a convenience store buying Marlboros and a Coke for the road. He was dressed in a grey jumpsuit, pants tucked into black boots, silver belt buckle and a large black Stetson hat. Out front, his Ford Ranchero pick-up idled in the parking lot, the words “Champion of the Stranded Traveler” emblazoned in gold on the door. We struck up a conversation.
“I go on the road looking for trouble and whenever I find some, I stop.” His voice was deep and resonant, his...
Duration:00:14:07
183 - That Cheap, Delicious, Rotisserie Chicken
2/15/2022
Cheap rotisserie chicken sold everywhere in markets and grocery outlets. Why is that chicken so cheap? How was it raised and what’s even in it? How much would it cost for farms to raise a chicken you could feel good? What would it taste like? Where can you find one of these chickens now? And why is it so hard to find them?
The Kitchen Sisters Present the first episode of What You’re Eating, a brand new podcast from FoodPrint.org. In this episode host Jerusha Klemperer talks to food policy...
Duration:00:57:34
182 - "The porters were fed up." C.L. Dellums and the rise of America's first Black union
2/1/2022
In the early 20th century, the largest employer of Black men in the United States was the Pullman Car Company, which operated luxurious trains that carried millions of passengers around the booming nation in an era before airplanes and interstate highways. Ever since the company’s founding during the Civil War, Pullman exclusively hired Black men as porters to keep the train cars clean and serve the white passengers. Although the job was prestigious, by the 1920s porters were fed up with the...
Duration:01:07:28
181 - The Accidental Archivist—Keeping the Wooster Group
1/18/2022
The Wooster Group, perched on a street corner in Soho in downtown New York, at the forefront of experimental theater for some 40 years. Singular, rigorous, flamboyant. Their startling performances unravel and transform classic texts by Brecht, Shakespeare, Chekhov, Eugene O’Neill... along with their own striking original works. Six Obies, nine Bessies, accolades from around the world as they tour their works through Europe and Asia.
Theater. One of the more ephemeral of art forms. How to...
Duration:00:27:34
180 - The Great Amish Pandemic Sewing Frolic
1/4/2022
On Sunday, December 19, 2021, The Cleveland Clinic and five other major health care institutions in Northeastern Ohio took out a full page ad in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the largest newspaper in the region. Simple and stark, the page was blank, save for the word—HELP—written in bold black letters.
Today the health care system of the region is nearing its breaking point with over 1700 hundred healthcare givers in the area out either with COVID-19 and its variants or in quarantine from...
Duration:00:23:11
179 - The Nights of Edith Piaf
12/21/2021
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. Nearly every song Edith Piaf sang came from a moment of her life on the streets of Paris. She would tell her composer and musician lovers a story, or describe a feeling or show them a gesture and they would put music and words to her pain and passion, giving her back her own musical autobiography. Charles Aznavour, Francis Lai,...
Duration:00:33:38
178- Hidden Kitchens - With Host Frances McDormand
12/7/2021
Hidden Kitchens, the duPont-Columbia and James Beard Award winning radio series on NPR’s Morning Edition, explores the world of unexpected, below the radar cooking, legendary meals and eating traditions — how communities come together through food.
With host Frances McDormand this collection of stories chronicles kitchen cultures, past and present including: An Unexpected Kitchen—The George Foreman Grill; Georgia Gilmore and the Club from Nowhere—A Secret Civil Rights Kitchen; A Prison...
Duration:00:53:27
177 - The Pardoning of Homer Plessy
11/16/2021
One hundred-twenty-five years after he was arrested for sitting down in a whites-only train car, Homer Plessy may be pardoned for his crime. In 1896 his landmark case, Plessy V. Ferguson, went before the Supreme Court which ruled to uphold "separate but equal" racial segregation which remained in effect until 1954.
In June,1892, Homer Plessy, a mixed race shoemaker in New Orleans, was arrested, convicted and fined $25 for taking a seat in a whites-only train car. This was not a random act....
Duration:00:33:21
176-Arctic Ice, Extreme Weather—Activist Photographer Camille Seaman
11/2/2021
Arctic Ice, Extreme Weather, the Reckoning at Standing Rock—a journey into the deep rich world of photographer Camille Seaman.
Born to a Native American father and African-American mother, Camille Seaman has been bearing witness and sounding the alarm through her powerful, other worldly photographs for more than 20 years. Her photographs and vivid stories document her journeys to the Arctic and Antarctic over the past two decades, her work as a storm chaser in the midwest, her documentation...
Duration:00:28:57
175 - Finding Julia Morgan
10/19/2021
Julia Morgan, the first woman architect to be licensed in California, designed over 700 buildings in California including Hearst Castle in San Simeon. Despite her prolific career her architectural genius was overlooked by history for almost 100 years before she posthumously earned the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal.
Morgan was the first woman to be admitted to the architecture program at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. She designed many buildings serving women and girls,...
Duration:00:43:48
174 - The Braveheart Grandmothers and Yankton Sioux Coming of Age Ceremony
10/5/2021
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. This year the 24th Isnati ceremony took place.
Eleven summers ago The Kitchen Sisters were invited to document this ceremony for our Hidden World of Girls Series. It was a mind expanding experience.
The grandmothers, mothers,...
Duration:00:29:45
173 - Betty Reid Soskin, Celebrating the 100th Birthday of the Oldest Park Ranger in America
9/21/2021
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. Her tours and talks are hot ticket items. 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 home front as experienced by women and people of color.
In celebration of Betty Reid Soskin’s 100th year we’ve curated a kind of mix tape of...
Duration:01:00:48
172 - The Sonic Memorial—The 20th Anniversary of 9/11m], Narrated by Paul Auster
9/7/2021
An 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. The Sonic Memorial Project was produced by The Kitchen Sisters in collaboration with NPR, independent radio producers, artists, writers, archivists, historians and public radio listeners throughout the country.
The Sonic Memorial Project began in October 2001 as part of the Lost &...
Duration:01:04:34
171—What Fire Reveals: Stories from the CZU August Lightning Fires in The Santa Cruz Mountains
8/16/2021
In the early morning hours of August 16, 2020, 12,000 lightning strikes exploded across northern California, igniting more than 585 wildfires. In the Santa Cruz Mountains scattered blazes grew into one massive burning organism — The CZU August Lightning Complex Fire — eating all in its path, scorching some 86,000 acres, destroying over 900 homes and Big Basin Redwoods, California’s first state park. A year later the fire is still burning deep in some of the roots and stumps of ancient...
Duration:00:36:05
170—Route 66—The Mother Road
7/27/2021
John Steinbeck called it the “Mother Road.” Songwriter Bobby Troup described it as the route to get your kicks on. And Mickey Mantle said, “If it hadn’t been for Highway 66 I never would have been a Yankee.” For the Dust Bowl refugees of the 1930s, for the thousands who migrated after World War II, and for the generations of tourists and vacationers, Route 66 was “the Way West.”
Route 66, the first continuously paved highway linking east and west was the most traveled and well known road in...
Duration:01:04:47
169—Cry Me A River
7/13/2021
Today we’re thinking about Pack Creek Ranch in southern Utah and an incredible archive of material, gathered by river guide and environmental activist Ken Sleight, that was consumed by fire in early June, 2021.
The archive held over 50 years of photographs, writings, and correspondence chronicling Ken Sleight’s years of guiding on the Colorado River, his fight to stop the damming of Glen Canyon and the filling of Lake Powell in the 1950s and 60s, and his close friendship with Edward Abbey,...
Duration:00:35:30
169-Gert McMullin—Sewing on the Frontline—From the AIDS Quilt to COVID-19 PPE
6/22/2021
In 1985, Gert McMullin was one of the first San Franciscans to put a stitch on the AIDS Quilt, the quilt that began with one memorial square in honor of a man who had died of AIDS, and that now holds some 95,000 names. Gert never planned it this way, but over the decades she has become the Keeper of the Quilt and has stewarded it, repaired it, tended it, traveled with it and conserved it for some 33 years. Gert knows the power of sewing.
In 2020, when COVID-19 hit, Gert was one of the first...
Duration:00:34:54
168-Soul to Soul at 50 — A Homecoming Festival in Ghana for African American Artists, 1971
6/8/2021
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 that was dubbed the “Soul to Soul Festival.” Thousands of audience members filled Accra’s Black Star Square for a continuous 15 hours of music. The festival was planned in part for the annual celebration of Ghana’s independence, but also as an invitation to a “homecoming”...
Duration:00:55:52
166—Danni Washington and The Genius Generation
5/25/2021
We’re excited about The Genius Generation, a new podcast hosted by Danni Washington, and we want you to get in on it. The Genius Generation — innovative kids, tweens and teens who are making discoveries, taking on the issues and problems they see around them and inventing new solutions using science.
Host Danni Washington is a young science communicator dedicated to inspiring and educating youth about all things science. Danni, the first African American woman to host a Science Television...
Duration:00:33:01
166-Dave Brubeck & The Ambassadors of Jazz
5/11/2021
“A blue note in a minor key—America has its secret sonic weapon—Jazz.”
That was the headline in 1955 when the United States sent its top musicians overseas to promote democracy. They called them the Jazz Ambassadors—Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, and Dave Brubeck.
Today, in honor of Dave Brubeck month (May 4 is Dave Brubeck day — that’s 5/4 named for the 5/4 time signature of take 5) the story of Dave Brubeck and the Jazz Ambassadors. In 1958, the Dave Brubeck Quartet...
Duration:00:46:35