The Kitchen Sisters Present

The Kitchen Sisters Present
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The Kitchen Sisters Present… Stories from the b-side of history. Lost recordings, hidden worlds, people possessed by a sound, a vision, a mission. 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 by The Kitchen Sisters (Nikki Silva & Davia Nelson) 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.

  1. 5D AGO

    The National Archives – The What and the Why

    “From the very beginning the intent was that the American people needed to be able to access the records so that we would be able to hold the government accountable for its actions.” - David Ferriero During the first Trump administration, when access to certain websites and information was being threatened, we started our Keepers series about activist archivists, rogue librarians, historians, collectors, curators — protectors of the culture and the free flow of information and ideas.  Today our national librarians and archivists are being fired, our museums are being threatened, our journalists are being hampered, and truth and transparency is once again under attack. In 2017, we talked with David Ferriero, the 10th Archivist of the United States, about the the beginnings of the National Archives under Franklin Roosevelt and its purpose. Ferriero tells of early keepers like Stephen Pleasonton, a brave civil servant who saved the Constitution and Declaration of Independence as the British burned Washington during the War of 1812. Stories of a letter from Fidel Castro to President Roosevelt requesting a $10 dollar bill, and a letter from Annie Oakley to William McKinley volunteering to rally 50 women sharp shooters to fight in the Spanish Civil War. Selected as Archivist of the United States in 2010 by President Obama during the time of his Open Government Initiative, Ferriero worked to make the system more transparent and accessible to the public.    With a collection of about 13 billion pieces of paper, 43 million photographs and miles and miles of film and video and about 6 billion electronic records, Ferriero believes “we are responsible for documenting what is going on.”  “I think my favorite times are twice a year when we do naturalization ceremonies in the Rotunda and between 50 and 200 new citizens are sworn in in front of the Constitution," he said. "Just to see them experiencing the documents outlining the rights that are now theirs. Those are powerful moments.”

    29 min
  2. MAY 20

    Radio Pacific - A New Show From KALW San Francisco

    The Kitchen Sisters are excited to share the first episode of Radio Pacific, a new monthly show from KALW in San Francisco that takes a deep and creative look at the issues facing California and the rest of our country today. The hour-long, monthly program features journalists, writers, and documentarians who are grappling with life in the country’s most populous and diverse state. In this first episode, California legal scholar Kevin R. Johnson puts the first months of Trump’s administration in perspective and helps us understand California’s unique and disturbing role in the country’s immigration history. Then we look into “Rapid Response Hotlines.” These community-run, 24/7 lines keep tabs on ICE activity in their neighborhoods, and dispatch legal assistance to those who need it. To understand how they work, we sit down with filmmaker Paloma Martinez, whose beautiful short documentary “Enforcement Hours” follows the San Francisco Rapid Response Hotline during President Trump’s first term.  We’re joined by Finn Palamaro, a staff member at the non-profit Mission Action and the lead organizer of the hotline today. Special thanks to: KALW - San Francisco Host and Executive Producer: Eli CohenEditor: Ben Trefny.Composer: Kirk PearsonSound Designer: Dogbotic StudiosThe Kitchen Sisters Present is produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva) with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Hall. The show is part of PRX's  Radiotopia.

    52 min
  3. MAY 6

    Plessy AND Ferguson—Activism and the Fight for Justice and Equal Rights

    In 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. It was a carefully planned move by the Citizen’s Committee, an activist group of Free People of Color, to fight a new law being enacted in Louisiana which threatened to re-impose segregation as the reforms made after the Civil War began to dissolve. The Citizen’s Committee recruited Homer Plessy, a light skinned black man, to board a train and get arrested in order to push the case to the Supreme Court in hopes of a decision that would uphold equal rights. On May 18, 1896 the Supreme Court ruled on the Plessy v. Ferguson case establishing the "separate but equal" doctrine, upholding the constitutionality of racial segregation.  The case sharply divided the nation racially and its defeat “gave teeth” to Jim Crow. The “separate but equal” decision not only applied to public transportation it spread into every aspect of life — schools, public toilets, public eating places. For some 58 years it was not recognized as unconstitutional until the Brown v. Public Education case was decided in 1954. Homer Plessy died in 1925 and his conviction for breaking the law remained on his record. In 2022, 125 years after his arrest, the Louisiana Board of Pardons voted unanimously to recommend that Homer Plessy be pardoned for his crime. The pardon was spearheaded by Keith Plessy, a descendent of Homer Plessy, and Phoebe Ferguson, the great-great granddaughter of John Howard Ferguson, the convicting judge in the case. The two have joined forces digging deep into this complex, little known story – setting the record straight, and working towards truth and reconciliation in the courtrooms, on the streets and in the schools of New Orleans and across the nation. The Plessy and Ferguson Foundation is responsible for erecting plaques throughout New Orleans commemorating African American historic sites and civil rights leaders.

    16 min
  4. APR 15

    Pie Down Here: Listening Back—Alabama Sharecroppers and Communist Organizers,1930s

    Pie Down Here — Produced by Signal Hill In the 1980s, when Robin D.G. Kelley was 24 years old, he took a bus trip to the Deep South. He was researching and recording oral histories with farmworkers and Communist Party members who had organized a sharecroppers union in Alabama during the Great Depression. Kelly used those oral histories to write his award winning book, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression. Recently Kelley listened back to those early recordings with Signal Hill contributor Conor Gillies. He hadn’t heard some of the recordings in decades. Memories came flooding back as Kelley reflected on the people, the story and the power of oral history.  Robin Davis Gibran Kelley is an American historian and academic, and the Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at UCLA. His books include the prize-winning Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (Free Press, 2009); Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (Beacon Press, 2002, new ed. 2022. His essays have appeared in dozens of publications, including The Nation, the New York Times, the New Yorker, New York Review of Books and more. Pie Down Here was produced by Conor Gillies and edited by Liza Yeager and Omar Etman, with help from the Signal Hill team: Jackson Roach, Annie Rosenthal, and Lio Wong. Music by Nathan Bowles. You can listen to the entire first issue of Signal Hill — eight original stories — on their website at signalhill.fm, or wherever you get podcasts.  The Kitchen Sisters Present is produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Nikki Silva & Davia Nelson) with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell. The Kitchen Sisters Present is part of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated network of independent producers.

    38 min
  5. APR 1

    A Tribute to George Foreman: An Unexpected Kitchen—The George Foreman Grill

    In 2004, we opened up a phone line on NPR asking people to tell us about their Hidden Kitchens— secret, underground, below the radar cooking, and how people come together through food. One caller told us about immigrants and homeless people, who didn't have official kitchens, using the George Foreman Grill to make meals and a home. Did George Foreman know about this? We called him up to find out. George Foreman the legendary two-time World Heavy Weight Champion and Olympic gold medalist talked with us about growing up hungry and violent, about his time in the Job Corps, about his career and comeback, about becoming a preacher, and his work with kids. “Feed them,” he says. “Hunger makes you angry.” In honor of George Foreman who left this earth March 21, 2025, The Kitchen Sisters Present an Unexpected Kitchen: The George Foreman Grill and Beyond. "No one should be given up on. You never lose your citizenship as a human being just because you've been in trouble." - George Foreman The Kitchen Sisters Present is produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva) with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell. Thanks to Laura Folger, Kate Volkman and Melissa Robbins for production help on this story. And thanks to our Hidden Kitchens series co-producer, Jay Allison. Special thanks to the National Endowment for the Arts. The Kitchen Sisters Present is part of the Radiotopia network from PRX.

    23 min

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ENDLESS RADIOTOPIA

Stories from the b-side of history, now ad-free!

$4.99/month or $49.99/year

4.5
out of 5
1,255 Ratings

About

The Kitchen Sisters Present… Stories from the b-side of history. Lost recordings, hidden worlds, people possessed by a sound, a vision, a mission. 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 by The Kitchen Sisters (Nikki Silva & Davia Nelson) 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.

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