The Kitchen Sisters Present

Producer Zoe Kurland's father, costume designer Jeffrey Kurland, talks about designing the iconic push up bra for actress Julia Roberts for the film Erin Brockovich. Zoe follows the story interviewing the real Erin Brockovich and examining her own relationship to body image, confidence and identity. 

This story was written and produced by Zoe Kurland for Signal Hill, and edited by Liza Yeager and Jackson Roach. Sound design and...

To mark the 25th anniversary of 9/11, we present the Peabody Award winning Sonic Memorial Project with a post script recorded on the 10th Anniversary by our narrator, Paul Auster. 

The Sonic Memorial Project began in October 2001 as part of the Lost & Found Sound series. We opened a phone line on NPR for listeners to call in with their stories and audio artifacts relating to the September 11 attacks and the history of the W...

Tom Luddy was a quiet titan of cinema. He presided over the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley for some 10 years, co-founded and directed the Telluride Film Festival for nearly 50 years, produced some 14 movies, match-made dozens of international love affairs, and foraged for the most beautiful, political, important, risky films and made sure there was a place for them to be seen in the world. And he made sure that the people making ...

The Hip Hop Archive at Harvard, the Pack Horse Librarians of Eastern Kentucky, the Lenny Bruce Archive, the Internet Archive and more surprising stories of preservation and civic life. 

With host, Academy Award-winning actress, Frances McDormand. 

The Kitchen Sisters Present Archiving the Underground, hour one of our two-part Keepers special. Stories of activist archivists, rogue librarians, curators, collectors and histori...

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 with a loud and beautiful voice sat atop a platform and read to the cigar workers as they rolled. These readers, known as Lectores de Tabaqueres, read Cervantes, Zola, Victor Hugo, Karl Marx, Jules Verne…. It was the voices and words of these lectores, before radio and mechaniz...

As part of our Quilts as Monuments series we revisit the story of Gert McMullin and the AIDS Memorial Quilt, the gay rights movement in San Francisco, Harvey Milk, The White Night Riots and more.

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 110,000 names. The quilt is made up...

Olivia Wilde. Actor. Director. Producer. Olivia comes from a long line of journalists, a British father and an American mother, who have made groundbreaking investigative documentaries. The late writer Christopher Hitchens, a friend of the family, was her babysitter. She grew up in a world of words, a world of stories, a world of speaking truth to power. She chose her stage name in honor of Oscar Wilde, a writer she admires.

Olivia ...

Perhaps it was the AIDS Quilt that redefined what a monument could look like and who could create it. Or maybe it was the quilters of Gee's Bend or the Freedom Quilting Circle in Alabama, taking the scraps of their lives — old military camo uniforms, overalls, flour sacks — honoring the living and the dead. Quilts as monuments, memorials, large and small, stretch far back into our American story.

Monuments are a contenti...

John Steinbeck called it “The Mother Road.” Songwriter Bobby Troup said it was where to go to get your kicks. Mickey Mantle swore, “If it hadn’t been for Highway 66 I never would have been a Yankee.”

The Kitchen Sisters spent the summer of 1984 traveling every inch of this storied highway — “The Main Street of America” — as it was closing, recording just about everything that mov...

Today we’re celebrating Faith Spotted Eagle, an Ihanktonwan Oyate elder who has just received an honorary doctorate from South Dakota State University. We first met Faith in 2009 when we were working on our NPR Hidden World of Girls series — stories about rituals and rites of passage, of women who crossed a line, broke a trail, forged a path. That certainly describes Faith. 

When we opened up a phone line for the se...

The Shakers. An offshoot sect of The Quakers, born in England in 1747. In worship they were known to break into states of ecstatic trembling. Trembling Quakers. Shaking Quakers. The Shakers. They came to America in 1774 with a utopian vision, egalitarian ideals, a belief in the equality of the sexes, a philosophy of communal, celibate, simple living. Known for their purposeful communities, their pacifism and legendary craftsmanship...

Pioneering radio artist Larry Massett, a producer's producer, who led listeners into unexpected worlds and influenced so many in public radio and beyond, died last year at the age of 80. 

The Kitchen Sisters were fortunate to work with Larry on our NPR series Lost & Found Sound and Soundprint. He was a friend and colleague. 

We learned of Larry's passing last spring on Transom.org, the premier site for producers to come...

Stucco arches, red tile floors, exposed beams — the look and feel of the houses in the oceanfront towns of Santa Barbara and Montecito can be attributed to a woman architect known by one name: Lutah. 

The Ohio-born and California-bred architect Lutah Maria Riggs was on track to be a teacher, one of few professions to welcome women in the early 20th century, when she won a scholarship to Berkeley by selling newspapers. Lik...

On Sunday the first Oscar for Achievement in Casting will be given in the 98-year history of the Academy Awards. Today, The Kitchen Sisters and host Frances McDormand bring you the story of two legendary casting directors: Juliet Taylor and Ellen Lewis.

Listen to Part 1 of this saga: Everyone’s a Casting Director: The First-Ever Academy Award for Casting in the 98-Year History of the Academy Awards

“Casting is the first t...

Who discovered Diane Keaton and put her in Annie Hall? Who found Dustin Hoffman and made sure he played Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy? Who saw Jason Schwartzman and made sure Wes Anderson knew about him for Rushmore? Casting Directors, that’s who. 

When the 98th Oscar ceremony airs on March 15, the first Academy Award for Achievement in Casting will be given in nearly 100 years of Academy history. Five films, laden with ...

Louis Jones is a keeper— working as a Field Archivist at the Reuther Library at Wayne State University in Detroit, he cares for the largest labor archive in North America. Home to numerous union and labor collections from around the country, the Reuther Library also actively collects material documenting Detroit’s civil rights movement, women’s struggles in the workplace, the LGBTQ Archive of Detroit and more.

Born...

On December 21, 2025, activist and trailblazer Betty Reid Soskin passed away in Richmond, California. She was 104. Over the years we've chronicled Betty's remarkable story and want to share it today in honor of Betty and Black History Month.

In 2011, at age 89, Betty became America's oldest national park service ranger, a position she held until she retired at 100. Her bold and forthright tours and talks at the Rosie the Riveter WWI...

The Gilded Age was a time of unparalleled wealth and prosperity in America—but it was also a time of staggering inequality, corruption, and unchecked power. Among its richest figures was Andrew Carnegie, the steel magnate who built his fortune on the backs of low-paid workers, only to give it away—earning him the nickname the Godfather of American Philanthropy. He didn’t just fund libraries and universities, he ch...

They don't make 'em like Marion Cunningham these days. Food writer, home cook, Fannie Farmer's new incarnation, James Beard’s sidekick, wizard of waffles. Marion was a treasured friend of The Kitchen Sisters, and in 2003, we sat down with her and recorded a long conversation.

We've been digging through our archive of late looking for people and stories that inspire, that illuminate, that cut a new path and nourish the soul. Ma...