The Kitchen Sisters Present

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. And Julia Kumari Drapkin director of ISeeChange, a community weather and climate journal project talks about creating water gardens, floating streets and living with water in New Orleans.

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, luminous sound that he took the Band on tour with him for two years around the world and through the segregated south. One flamboyant rhinestoned white piano player and 30 black steel drummers from Trinidad playing Flight of the Bumble.

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 Of...What People Make in the Bay Area and Why.

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, baked bread in underground ovens, carved poetry and drawings into the Aspen trees, listened to The Basque Radio hour traditional music and messages between the herders out in the isolated countryside—looking forward to The Annual Sheepherder’s Ball.

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. The Kitchen Sisters Present team up with Life of the Law Podcast to take you to a recent showdown between these two mighty Bay Area teams.

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, family and daily life and some of the issues facing people living in Gaza and the Middle East.

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 in the 1850s egg hunters gathered over 3 million eggs, nearly stripping the island bare, […]

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. These men introduced exotic specimens like the mango, the avocado, and the date. In 1900, the USDA sent plant […]

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. An audio portrait of a man who spent his life exploring and influencing the world through recorded sound.

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 Billings Ovulation Method of birth control. Plus stories from singer/actress Janelle Monae, […]

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, his adventures and “the acoustics of life.”

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 connections between them and spread their “brand.” South Korea is one of the countries most involved in using its food to spread its influence. They call it “Kimchi Diplomacy.”

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. Stories of food and conflict and competition abound in mangas like Soldier of Food, Food Wars, Cooking Papa…The Kitchen Sisters Present—Hidden Kitchens: War and Food and Manga.