The Kitchen Sisters Present

Pushed to the side and rarely credited for her architectural work at Davis Brody, Phyllis Birkby became a significant figure in extending the lesbian women's movement to architecture during the 1970s. Her environmental fantasy workshops played a crucial role in galvanizing the community, providing a creative and empowering space within a male-dominated profession. 

Growing out of other consciousness raising techniques, freed up in her classes, Phyllis released the rigor of her conventional training to get down on the floor,  and lead the group in sketching their fantasies however outlandish on giant rolls of butcher paper. She encouraged the women to imagine architecture above, below, and beyond the norm. 

Birkby's work not only contributed to architectural discourse but also fostered a sense of collective identity among lesbian architects, highlighting the intersectionality of gender, sexuality, and professional identity in the field. In her later years, she focused on architecture for people marginalized in other ways – by addiction, by age, and by disability, again imagining spaces of community and support.

This episode was produced by Brandi Howell for New Angle Voice, a podcast from Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation. Thanks to host Cynthia Phifer Kracauer. Thanks also to Alexandra Lange for editorial advising. Special thanks in this episode to Stephen Vider, MC Overholt, Gabrielle Esperdy, Matthew Wagstaffe, Leslie Kanes Weisman and the Smith College Special Collections.  Funding from the New York State Council on the Arts.  

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.

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It is Tuesday, November 5, 2024, the day when millions of Americans go to the polls to vote for who will lead their towns, their states, the nation. Souls to the polls today across the country, and so much hangs in the balance.

On this fraught and tender Tuesday, when all our nerves are frayed, we offer a moment of respite and contemplation — an episode of the podcast Constellation Prize from radio producer and filmmaker Bianca Giaever, featuring writer, poet and activist Terry Tempest Williams.

Constellation Prize is a podcast from The Believer Magazine. This story is Episode 1 of a 4 part series. You can hear the whole Nightwalking series and more episodes of Constellation Prize wherever you find your podcasts.

Our thanks to Bianca, The Believer, and the poet laureate of nightwalking, Terry Tempest Williams, for allowing us to share this story.

The music in Nightwalking is by Ishmael Ensemble, John Carroll Kirby and Elori Saxl. Our theme music is "Day of the Dead" by Ted Savarese.

We’re dropping this podcast on Tuesday, November 5. If you’re hearing it today and haven’t already voted we hope you’re headed to the polls for a little night voting.

The Kitchen Sisters Present... is part of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent podcasts that widen your world.

Thanks for listening.

July 17, 2024, Washington, D.C. Some 200 young people from across the nation aged 14-19 — aspiring poets, storytellers, MC's, activists — are gathered in the nation’s capital for the 29th annual Brave New Voices Festival — four non-stop days of slam poetry competition, coaching, workshops, late-night freestyling and in 2024, voting information.

In summer, as the election loomed larger and larger we decided to turn our microphone to young people across America to hear their thoughts and feelings about the nation, about voting, about the election. Everyone always says young people are the future. But the truth is they are the present. And it is all on their plate.

The Kitchen Sisters and producer Bianca Giaever traveled to the Brave New Voices Festival to take in the poets and their poetry, to listen and take the pulse of the moment. The hope, the scope, the vote. 

On July 21, the day after the festival ended, President Biden dropped out of the race. Keep that in mind as you listen.  

The Hope & The Scope was produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Nikki Silva & Davia Nelson) and Bianca Giaever and mixed by Jim McKee. In collaboration with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell.

Funding for The Hope & the Scope comes from The Robert Sillins Family Foundation, Susan Sillins & The Buenas Obras Fund.

Special thanks to all the poets, the teams, the coaches, to the fabulous Future Corps 2024 and to all the staff, volunteers and radiant community of Brave New Voices. And to all we interviewed at the festival.

Very special thanks to Youth Speaks, trailblazers of local and national youth poetry slams, festivals, mentoring, youth education and development — creators of the Brave New Voices Festival. Deep bow to Executive Director Michelle Mush Lee, Communications Director Bijou McDaniel, Stephanie Cajina, Joan Osato, James Kass, to Paige Goedkoop, Jamie DeWolf and Pawn Shop Productions and especially to Bianca Giaever who joined us in Washington, D.C. and came with her mic blazing.

The Kitchen Sisters Present... is part of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, thought-provoking, deeply-produced, highly-entertaining podcasts that widen your world.

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Today, The Kitchen Sisters Present: “Tupperware” — an homage and a eulogy.

It was 1980. Nikki and I had just met. We had just named ourselves The Kitchen Sisters. And we had just bought our first cassette recorder, a Sony TC-D5M. We hadn’t even taken it out of the box or been trained on it when we were invited to a Tupperware party our friend Kirsten was hosting. This was 1980 in Santa Cruz, a stronghold of the women’s movement. You just didn’t get invited to too many Tupperware parties back then.

It seemed the perfect moment to break out the Sony and tape the party. The party was such a bonanza of story and plastic we went to another and taped that too. This time the Tupperware lady invited us and our new tape recorder to Tupperware headquarters in Salinas where Tupperware ladies were trained and where sales rallies were held.  

We went back to the studio at our local community radio station with a ton of tape and no real idea of what to do with it. These were analog days, days of cassettes and reel-to-reels, of razor blades and splicing tape.

The story you’re about to hear includes every mistake in the book. We mixed using two reel-to-reel tape recorders, two cassette recorders running through a mixing board we had no real idea how to use, onto a third reel-to-reel. We also had no idea you could splice takes of the mix together, we thought you had to do one complete running mix of the whole thing from start to finish. It probably took us 50 takes to do it. Nikki thinks this is Take 47, when all the levels were up at the same time and the sound started cascading and coming out of every machine at once, all at full volume. But out of that cacophony came our signature sound, a way of telling stories that holds with us to this day.  

Tupperware. What began shortly after World War II as a use for the plastic resins invented for the war, was sold like Avon lipstick using direct sales and home parties, gave generations of women a chance to make their own money outside the home and kept our leftovers fresh, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on September 17, 2024.  

Mergers and acquisitions, fewer parties and get togethers during covid, changes in the culture of selling, the work opportunities available to women, concerns about the eco-disaster that is plastic — so many factors seem to have been part of this collapse.   

Tupperware shuttered its only remaining plant in the United States in South Carolina this year, resulting in 148 layoffs.  The plastic is no longer fantastic. 

Today on the podcast, the third story The Kitchen Sisters ever produced for NPR, “Tupperware.”

As elections loom, we need to get involved, step up to the civic plate, take part in discourse. And that’s what Manny Yekutiel has been driven to do since 2018. He’s created a community-focused meeting place in San Francisco — a gathering space for people to watch presidential debates, meet people working on the front lines of social change, and discuss issues with policy makers in person. From community forums debating the new trash can designs in San Francisco, to town hall meetings with political candidates for the Senate and the Presidency, Manny’s is a place to commune, listen, and be heard.

They’ve got a restaurant — Farming Hope, a non-profit that hires formerly homeless and formerly incarcerated individuals and trains them in the food skills needed to work in the restaurant industry. They’ve got a bookstore specializing in local history and politics — with no pressure to buy books.

As church basements and social clubs fade as places where young people feel comfortable gathering, Manny has created a place — not home, not work — but a "third place" where people can come together to meet and engage with civic leaders, elected officials, artists, and activists.

Thanks to Precious Green and to the staff of Farming Hope. Thanks also to Valerie Velardi who led us to Manny’s, and to Manny Yekutiel for the time and the vision.

The Kitchen Sisters Present is part of the Radiotopia from PRX, a network of hand-crafted, independent, vibrant podcasts that widen your world.

There was a moment at the 2024 Democratic National Convention when Oprah took the stage — and the crowd went wild. She spoke boldly about Kamala Harris and her place in a long line of strong Black women who have paved the way. At one point she veered into the story of Tessie Prevost Williams, who recently passed away,  and the New Orleans Four.

November 14, 1960 — Four six-year-old girls— Leona Tate, Gail Etienne, Tessie Prevost and Ruby Bridges—flanked by Federal Marshals, walked through screaming crowds and policemen on horseback as they approached their new schools for the first time. Leona Tate thought it must be Mardi Gras. Gail thought they were going to kill her. Tessie Prevost's mother was scared to death handing over her daughter to a Federal Marshal for protection from the mob.

Four years after the Supreme Court ruled to desegregate schools in Brown v. Board of Education, schools in the South were dragging their feet. Finally, in 1960, the NAACP and a daring judge selected two schools in New Orleans to push forward with integration — McDonogh No.19 Elementary and William Frantz.

An application was put in the paper. From 135 families, four girls were selected. They were given psychological tests. Their families were prepared. Members of the Louisiana Legislature took out paid advertisements in the local paper encouraging parents to boycott the schools. There were threats of violence.

When the girls going to McDonogh No.19 arrived in their classroom, the white children began to disappear. One by one their parents took them out of school. For a year and a half the girls were the only children in the school. Guarded night and day, they were not allowed to play outdoors. The windows were covered with brown paper.

Since this story first aired in 2017, The Leona Tate Foundation for Social Change has created the TEP Interpretive Center (Tate, Etienne and Prevost Center) in the former McDonogh No. 19 school where the three girls broke the color barrier in 1960. Its mission is to engage visitors in the history of civil rights in New Orleans. Find out more at tepcenter.org

Special thanks to: The New Orleans Four: Leona Tate, Gail Etienne, Tessie Prevost Williams and Ruby Bridges. Retired Deputy US Marshalls Charlie Burke, Herschel Garner, and Al Butler. Tulane University. Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, Louisiana Center for Civil Rights and Social Justice, The US Marshals Museum.

We are especially grateful to Keith Plessy and Phoebe Fergusson for introducing us to this story, and to Brenda Square and Amistad Research Center History Department.   

The Kitchen Sisters Present is produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Nikki Silva & Davia Nelson) with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell. We're part of the Radiotopia Network from PRX.

On the night of Summer Solstice 1986, Larry Harvey and Jerry James built and burned an eight-foot wooden figure on San Francisco's Baker Beach surrounded by a handful of friends. Burning Man was born.

This summer, the 39th annual Burning Man gathering begins to assemble on a vast dry lake bed in Nevada's Black Rock Desert, the nomadic ritual's home since 1990. An estimated 80,000 people will come.

During production of our Keepers series, chronicling activist archivists, rogue librarians and keepers of the culture and free flow of information, we received this message on the Keepers Hotline:

"Hello Kitchen Sisters, I am a rogue archivist, the archivist for Burning Man. Come to Burning Man headquarters and I’ll show you the collection. Cheers.” —LadyBee, Archivist & Art Collection Manager, Burning Man

How do you archive an event when one of it's driving principles is "leave no trace," where The Burning Man is in fact burned? What is being kept and who is keeping it? We journey into the archives of this legendary gathering to find out.

Produced by The Kitchen Sisters with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell, mixed by Jim McKee.

In honor of the Paris Olympics and the astounding contribution of the French to culture and art of the world, The Kitchen Sisters Present, Archive Fever: Henri Langlois and the history of the Cinémathèque Française, featuring Francis Ford Coppola, Wim Wenders, Tom Luddy, Lotte Eisner, Simone Signoret, Agnes Varda, Costa-Gavras, Barbet Schroeder.

Henri Langlois never made a single film — but he's considered one of the most important figures in the history of filmmaking. Possessed by what French philosopher Jacques Derrida called "archive fever," Langlois began obsessively collecting films in the 1930s and by the outset of World War II, he had one of the largest film collections in the world. The archive's impact on the history of French cinema is legendary, as is the legacy of its controversial keeper.

Langlois fell in love with film in his teens, just as silent films were being replaced by talkies. "In the early 30s they were destroying every silent movie," says film director Costa-Gavras, now president of Langlois' Cinémathèque Française. "He started collecting all those movies, not just to save them for the future, but to show them."

"Langlois educated a whole generation of film archivists and filmmakers," says filmmaker Wim Wenders. "He spread the idea of saving the memory of mankind that is in the history of cinema."

This story is part of The Keepers series — Activist archivists, rogue librarians, historians, collectors, curators — keepers of the culture and the free flow of information. Produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Nikki Silva & Davia Nelson) with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell. Mixed by Jim McKee.

San Francisco officially declared July 15th Linda Ronstadt Day. In her honor, The Kitchen Sisters Present this story about her book, Feels Like Home, about her family, and the food, culture and music of the borderland of Arizona and Mexico where she is rooted.  

Feels Like Home: A Song for the Sonoran Borderlands is an historical, musical, edible memoir that spans the story of five generations of Linda’s Mexican American German family, from the Sonoran desert in Mexico to the Ronstadt family hardware store in Tucson to the road that led Linda to LA and musical stardom. Intimate and epic, "this is little Linda, Mexican Linda, cowgirl Linda, desert Linda."

The book, written in collaboration with New York Times writer Lawrence Downes, is a road trip through the Sonoran Borderlands, from Tucson to Banámichi, Mexico — the path Linda’s immigrant grandfather took at a time when the border was not a place of peril but of possibility.

We went to see Linda at home to ask her about the journey.

This story was produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva) and Evan Jacoby in collaboration with Brandi Howell and Nathan Dalton. Mixed by Jim McKee

Thanks to Lawrence Downes, John Boylan, Bill Steen, Janet Stark and The PRX Podcast Garage. And to the team at Heyday Books: Steve Wasserman, Kalie Caetano & Megan Beatie and to Putamayo Music who just released Feels Like Home: Songs From The Sonoran Borderlands, Linda Ronstadt’s Musical Odyssey.

Special thanks to Linda Ronstadt for opening her home and her vault to this story.

Route 66—The Main Street of America— the first continuously paved highway linking east and west was the most traveled and well known road in the US for almost fifty years. From Chicago, through the Ozarks, across Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandle, up the mesas of New Mexico and Arizona, and down into California to the Pacific Ocean. The first road of its kind, it came to represent America’s mobility and freedom—inspiring countless stories, songs, and even a TV show.

Songwriter Bobby Troup tells the story of his 1946 hit “Get Your Kicks on Route 66.” Mickey Mantle says, “If it hadn’t been for US 66 I wouldn’t have been a Yankee.” Stirling Silliphant, creator of the TV series “Route 66” talks about the program and its place in American folklore of the 60s.

Studs Terkel reads from The Grapes of Wrath about the "Mother Road," and the great 1930s migration along Highway 66. We hear from musicians who recall what life on the road during the 1930s was like for them, including Clarence Love, Woody Guthrie, and Eldin Shamblin, who played guitar for Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys.

We travel the history of the road from its beginnings through caverns and roadside attractions, into tourist traps and bunko joints, through the hard times of the Dust Bowl, Depression and the “Road of Flight,” and into the “Ghost Road” of the 1980s, as the interstates bypass the businesses and roadside attractions of another era.

Produced by The Kitchen Sisters and narrated by actor David Selby. 

The Kitchen Sisters Present is produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Nikki Silva & Davia Nelson) with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell. Part of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated network of podcasts created by independent producers.