The Kitchen Sisters Present
Episodes
84 - Levee Stream Live from New Orleans
12 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Levee Stream— a live neighborhood pop-up, Cadillac, radio station installation in New Orleans. Presented by Otabenga Jones & Associates and The ...
83 - Chicken Pills - A Hidden World of Girls Story from Jamaica
27 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Every culture has its idealized woman, its standard of beauty that is valorized. Everywhere women are altering themselves in small and major ways to a...
82 - First Day of School—1960, New Orleans
09 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
November 14, 1960 — Four six-year-old girls, flanked by Federal Marshals, walked through screaming crowds and policemen on horseback as they approac...
81 - Sonic Prayer Flags - New Orleans
24 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
A string of sonic prayer flags —voices and sounds from New Orleans and Bayou Road, the oldest street in the city. Local visionaries, neighborhood e...
80 – Thad Vogler: A Short History of Spirits
10 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Thad Vogler, creator of San Francisco’s Bar Agricole and Trou Normand, travels the world in search of hand made spirits — rum, scotch, cognac, mes...
79 – Pati’s Mexican Jewish Table
25 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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’...
78 – The Galveston Hurricane of 1900: No Tongue Can Tell
11 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The Great Galveston Hurricane arrived on a Saturday, September 8, 1900 — almost without warning. Galveston, the grand dame of Texas, a vibrant port ...
New Orleans Visions – King’s Candy & Living with Water
22 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Robert King Wilkerson (aka Robert Hillary King) was imprisoned at Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, Louisiana for 31 years. Twenty-nine of those...
Liberace and the Trinidad Tripoli Steel Band
08 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In 1967 thirty men left Trinidad with 97 steel drums to represent their country at the World’s Fair in Montreal. None of them had ever been off thei...
75 – The Making Of a Karaoke Ice Cream Truck and More Stories
25 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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, the making...
74 – What Is It About Men and Meat and Midnight and a Pit?
11 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Barbecue, burgoo, mopping the mutton, the fellowship of stirring. Hidden Kitchens stories of conflict, competition and resolution in the backyards and...
73 – Basque Sheepherders Ball
27 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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....
72 – Warriors vs Warriors
12 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
For the last five years The Golden State Warriors have been going inside San Quentin, the legendary maximum security California State prison, to tak...
71 – Hidden Kitchen Gaza: A Palestinian Culinary Journey
23 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Author and journalist, Laila El-Haddad takes us into the hidden world of Gaza through the kitchen. Interweaving history, personal experiences and st...
70 – The Egg Wars
09 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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 Franci...
69 – The Romance and Sex Life of the Date
25 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In 1898, the United States Department of Agriculture created a special department of men, called “Agriculture Explorers,” to travel the globe sear...
68 – Tony Schwartz: 30,000 Recordings Later
10 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Cab drivers, children’s jump rope rhymes, folk songs, dialects, controversial TV ads, interviews with blacklisted artists and writers during the Mc...
67 – The Hidden World of Girls with Tina Fey
27 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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 b...
66 – Sugar in the Milk: A Parsi Hidden Kitchen
13 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Niloufer Ichaporia King lives in a house with three kitchens. She prowls through six farmer’s markets a week, at least, in search of unusual greens,...
65 – Sam Phillips, Sun Records, and the Acoustics of Life
28 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Recording sound pioneer Sam Phillips — the father of Sun Records, the man who discovered Howlin’ Wolf, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash...
64 – Kimchi Diplomacy: Hidden Kitchens – War and Peace and Food
13 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Kimchi in space. The Kimchi Bus. Government-sponsored chefs and restaurants spreading the word of Kimchi around the globe. South Korea is one of the n...
63 – War and Food and Manga
24 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Manga, the ubiquitous Japanese comic books written on just about every subject—sports, music, sex, shooting pool—represent about 40% of all books ...
62 - Black Cake: Emily Dickinson’s Hidden Kitchen
10 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Black cake, gingerbread, slant rhyme, secret loves, family scandals, poems composed on the back of a coconut cake recipe —we journey into the steam...
61 – Rattlesden
27 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
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 W...
60 – Milk Cow Blues: The Apple Family Farm and the Indiana Cow Share Association
13 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
A journey into the mysterious and controversial world of raw milk. Tucked away in the vanishing farm land on the outskirts of Indianapolis, the Appl...
59 – Weenie Royale: The Impact of the Internment on Japanese American Cooking
22 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
During World War II, In desolate inland internment camps in the US, like Manzanar, Topaz, and Tule Lake, some 120,000 Japanese and Japanese American...
58 – The Kiosk Strategy, Lisbon — Hidden Kitchens: War & Peace & Food
08 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
A story from the plazas of Portugal, where small ornate kiosks that served traditional snacks and drinks once graced the city and brought people toget...
57 – War and Peace and Coffee
25 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
“Nobody can soldier without coffee,” a Union calvary man wrote in 1865. Hidden Kitchens looks at three American wars through the lens of coffee: t...
56 – Operation Hummus and More Stories of War and Peace and Food from Israel and Ramallah
11 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Nothing is simple in Mideast relations. Not even hummus. Lebanon, Israel and Palestinians are entangled over who owns the dish. Not even the title of ...
55 – Between Us, Bread and Salt: Lebanon Hidden Kitchens with Kamal Mouzawak
26 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
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...
54 — Walking High Steel: Mohawk Ironworkers at the World Trade Towers
12 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Six generations of Mohawk Indian ironworkers, known for their ability to work high steel, have helped shape New York City’s skyline. Hundreds of Moh...
53 — Garden Allotments—London’s Kitchen Vision
23 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
A Hidden Kitchens story about London’s long tradition of urban garden allotments — and the story of Manor Garden Allotments, a 100 year old com...
Hunting & Gathering with Angelo Garro
09 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Sometimes it’s the kitchen that’s hidden, sometimes it’s the food itself. Blacksmith Angelo Garro forges and forages, recreating in wrought iron...
Harvest on Big Rice Lake
26 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
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...
An Unexpected Kitchen: The George Foreman Grill
12 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Sometimes life without a kitchen leads to the most unexpected hidden kitchen of all—the George Foreman Grill. How immigrants and homeless people wit...
49 – The Cabyard Kitchen
28 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
A lot of Kitchen Sisters stories are born in taxicabs. The Hidden Kitchens series was conceived in the back of a Yellow. Davia lives in San Francisco...
48 – Kibbe at the Crossroads: Lebanese Cooking in the Mississippi Delta
14 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
We travel to the Mississippi Delta into the world of Lebanese immigrants —where barbecue and the blues meet kibbe, a kind of traditional Lebanese ra...
47 – The Chili Queens of San Antonio
24 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Some kitchens are hidden by place, some by time—like the saga of the chili queens. For over 100 years, young women came at twilight to the Alamo and...
46 – Stubb Stubblefield: The Archangel of BBQ
10 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
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...
45 – Hidden Kitchen Mama
26 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Kitchens and mothers. The food they cooked or didn’t. The stories they told or couldn’t. In honor of mothers from around the world, The Kitchen Si...
44 – Black Chef, White House: African American Cooks in the President’s Kitchen
12 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Hidden Kitchens turns its focus on the president’s kitchen and some of the first cooks to feed the Founding Fathers — Hercules and James Hemings ...
43 – Carmen Miranda: The Life and Fate of the Brazilian Bombshell
22 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Carmen Miranda—Brazil’s Ambassador of Samba, the highest paid woman entertainer in the world in the 1940s. When she died, hundreds of thousands of...
42 – Hidden World of Traveller Girls
08 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Stories of young Irish Traveller women. Travellers—the people of walking. Sometimes called the gypsies of Ireland. They speak of non-Travellers as “...
41 – A Secret Civil Rights Kitchen: Georgia Gilmore and the Club from Nowhere
23 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
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 l...
40 – New Orleans—Cowboys, Indians, Broncos & Boudin
09 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
New Orleans stories from The Kitchen Sisters—including the world of unexpected, down home convict cooking at The Angola Prison Rodeo, an event that...
39 – One Big Self: The Hidden World of Deborah Luster & C. D. Wright
26 Jan 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Our show today is in honor of the beloved poet C. D. Wright who unexpectedly passed away recently. We interviewed C. D. in 2009 as part of a story we ...
Walkin’ Talkin’ Bill Hawkins
12 Jan 2016
Contributed by Lukas
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 broadca...
37 – Bone Music: A Collaboration with 99% Invisible
22 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Before the availability of the tape recorder and during the 1950s, when vinyl was scarce, ingenious Russians began recording banned bootlegged jazz, b...
36 – Tupperware
08 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
“Somewhere in the world there’s a Tupperware Party starting every 10 seconds.” And we’re going to one with The Kitchen Sisters. Parties. Rall...
35 – Way To Blue: The Songs of Nick Drake
24 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Nick Drake was a British singer songwriter from the early 1970s. His music has attracted a passionate, loyal following and influenced countless musici...
34 – The Vietnam Tapes of Michael A. Baronowski
09 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
33 – WHER: 1000 Beautiful Watts—The First All Girl Radio Station in the Nation—Part 2
27 Oct 2015
Contributed by Lukas
When Sam Phillips sold Elvis’ contract in 1955 he used the money to start WHER, an all-girl radio station in Memphis, TN. In this episode we move f...
32 – WHER: 1000 Beautiful Watts—The First All Girl Radio Station in the Nation—Part 1
13 Oct 2015
Contributed by Lukas
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 t...
31 – Waiting for Joe DiMaggio
22 Sep 2015
Contributed by Lukas
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...
30 – The Building Stewardesses: Construction Guides at the World Trade Center
07 Sep 2015
Contributed by Lukas
As construction commenced in 1968 on the largest building project since the pyramids, questions and controversies swirled around Lower Manhattan. How ...
29 – King’s Candy: A New Orleans Prison Kitchen Vision
25 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Robert King Wilkerson was imprisoned at Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, Louisiana for 31 years. Twenty-nine of those years he was in solitary...
28 – Wall Street: San Quentin’s Stock Market Wizard
19 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Everyone in San Quentin calls him Wall Street. Curtis Carroll aka Wall Street teaches his fellow prisoners about stocks. Through friends and family o...
27 – Braveheart Women’s Society: Coming of Age in South Dakota
11 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
The Braveheart Women’s Society, a group of Yankton Sioux grandmothers and tribal elders, have re-established an almost forgotten coming of age ritua...
26 – Horses, Unicorns & Dolphins
28 Jul 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Horses and dolphins and unicorns—creatures that possess the imagination of so many young girls—borderland creatures—gateway animals to other wor...
25 – Hidden Kitchens Texas with host Willie Nelson
13 Jul 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Willie Nelson and Dallas-born actress Robin Wright, along with some wild and extraordinary tellers, take us across Texas and share some of their hidde...
24 – Route 66: The Mother Road, Part 2
23 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
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 i...
23 – Route 66: The Mother Road, Part I
09 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
The birth of the Main Street of America—songwriter Bobby Troup tells the story of his 1946 hit Get Your Kicks on Route 66; Gladys Cutberth, aka Mrs....
22 – War and Separation: Life on the Homefront During World War II
26 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
For Memorial Day — a portrait of life on the homefront during World War II featuring 4 women’s stories, rare home recorded letters sent overseas t...
21 – The Secret (and Not So Secret) Life of Theresa Sparks
12 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Theresa Sparks has lived more than one life. Born a guy’s guy, a man’s man, cowboy boots, motorcycles, a stint in the army, married his childhood ...
20 – The Birth of Rice-A-Roni: The San Francisco, Italian, Armenian Treat
28 Apr 2015
Contributed by Lukas
The worlds of a young Canadian immigrant, an Italian pasta-making family, and a 70-year-old survivor of the Armenian Genocide converge in this story o...
19 – America Eats: A Hidden Archive
13 Apr 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Potlucks, church picnics, fish fries, family reunions — during the 1930s writers were paid by the government to chronicle local food, eating c...
18 – A Man Tapes his Town: The Unrelenting Oral Histories of Eddie McCoy
24 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Eddie McCoy owned a janitorial service in Oxford, North Carolina, a tobacco town of some 10,000 people. When he was badly injured in a car wreck, fru...
17 – Unfinished Business: Ali vs Frazier VI, Daughters of Destiny
10 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
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 ti...
16 – The Green Street Mortuary Band
24 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote a poem about them. Amy Tan’s mother was serenaded by them as she lay in state. Jessica Mitford’s memorial procession w...
15 – Electronic Memories: R.A. Coleman’s Memphis
10 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 1950s, at the same time legendary record producer Sam Phillips was making recordings of the pageants and events happening in Memphis’ w...
14 – Taylor Negron: Portrait of an Artist as an Answering Machine
27 Jan 2015
Contributed by Lukas
A look into the life of Taylor Negron—actor, comedian, and telephone message hoarder—told through the voicemails on his machine. We produced this...
13 – Sam Phillips and the Early Years of the Memphis Recording Service: We Record Anything, Anywhere, Anytime
13 Jan 2015
Contributed by Lukas
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, ...
The Nights of Edith Piaf
16 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
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 th...
11 – Cigar Stories: El Lector—He Who Reads
25 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Narrated by Andy Garcia. At the turn of the century until the 1930s in the cigar factories of Tampa and Ybor City, a well dressed man in a panama hat ...
10 – Dissident Kitchens
13 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Part 3 of the Hidden Kitchens World Trifecta with host Frances McDormand: Hidden Kitchens Russia, stories of the role of the kitchen in the downfall o...
9 – Atomic Wine
30 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Part 2 of the Hidden Kitchens World Trifecta with host Frances McDormand and special guests Werner Herzog, Gael Garcia Bernal and Stories of Atomic Wi...
The Pizza Connection + Turnspit Dogs
14 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
A Hidden Kitchens World Podcast Trifecta with Frances McDormand and The Kitchen Sisters. In this episode Salman Rushdie talks about his Hidden Kitchen...
7 – Just Girls: The Hidden World of Patti Smith and Judy Linn
03 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
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 th...
6 – Cry Me A River: A story of three pioneering river activists and the damming of wild rivers in the west
31 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The story of three pioneering river activists and the damming of wild rivers in the west. Ken Sleight, now in his late 80s, is a long time river and ...
5 – The Making of the Homobile: A Story of Transportation, Civil Rights & Glitter (and further stories of making…)
24 Jun 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The Kitchen Sisters ride the nightshift with The Homobile. Homobiles is a non-commercial, volunteer, 24/7 ride service created by Lynne Breedlove for ...
4 – The French Manicure – The Long Shadow of Shirley Temple
15 May 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Shirley Temple died on February 10. 2014. Watching the parade of clips from her 1930s movies on TV that night brought back the magic she had as a chi...
3 – Eel Pie Island
12 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The Kitchen Sisters take us to a little-known, hidden corner of London — to Eel Pie Island, a tiny slice of land in the middle of the Thames. Now ...
2 – Tennessee Williams: The Pennyland Recordings
27 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In 1947 Tennessee Williams and his lover Pancho stepped into a recording booth at a penny arcade in New Orleans and recorded 8 cardboard discs. Lost i...
1 – The Rise and Fall and Rise and Fall and Rise of Thomas Alva Edison
04 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Look around your daily life. There’s a little piece of Thomas Edison almost everywhere. Your desk lamp. That x-ray you got when you broke your ar...