We travel to the Mississippi Delta and the world of Lebanese immigrants, where barbecue and the blues meet kibbe, a kind of traditional Lebanese raw meatloaf. Lebanese immigrants began arriving in the Delta in the late 1800s, soon after the Civil War. Many worked as peddlers, then grocers and restaurateurs.

Kibbe — a word and a recipe with so many variations. Ground lamb or beef mixed with bulgur wheat, cinnamon, salt and pepper. Many love it raw. However it’s made, it’s part of the glue that holds the Lebanese family culture together in the Mississippi Delta and beyond.

We visit Pat Davis, owner of Abe’s BAR-B-Q at the intersection of Highway 61 and 49 in Clarksdale, Mississippi, the famed crossroads where, legend has it, blues icon Robert Johnson made a deal with the devil to play guitar better than anybody. Since 1924 Abe’s has been known for it’s barbecue, but if you know to ask, they’ve got grape leaves in the back.

Chafik Chamoun, who owns Chamoun’s Rest Haven on Highway 61, features Southern, Lebanese and Italian food — but he’s best known for his Kibbe. Chafik arrived in Clarksdale from Lebanon in 1954, and first worked as a peddler selling ladies slips and nylon stockings.

Sammy Ray, Professor Emeritus at Texas A&M University, Galveston, talks about growing up in a barbecue shack that his mother ran on the edge of what was then called “Black Town.” His father peddled dry goods to the Black sharecroppers.

During the civil rights movement in the 1960s, Abe’s BAR-B-Q and Chamoun’s Rest Haven were some of the only restaurants in the area that would serve Black people. “We were tested in 1965,” Pat Davis remembers. “A bunch of Black kids went to all the restaurants on the highway and every one refused them except Chamoun’s and my place. And everybody else got lawsuits against them.”

The list of famous Lebanese Americans is long and impressive. Ralph Nader, Paul Anka, Dick Dale, Casey Kasem, Khalil Gibran and Vince Vaughn, to name a few. But the one most people talked about on our trip was Danny Thomas. Pat Davis took us out in the parking lot to listen to a CD that he just happened to have in his car of Danny Thomas singing in Arabic.

“We called ourselves Syrians when we first came here,” Davis says. “And until Danny came and said he was Lebanese then we all began to realize we really are Lebanese and Danny Thomas can say it. So we’re Lebanese now.”

Produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva), mixed by Jim McKee, for the James Beard Award winning Hidden Kitchens series on NPR.

The Kitchen Sisters Present is produced by The Kitchen Sisters with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell. We are part of PRX's Radiotopia, a curated network of podcasts created by independent producers.

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“Some people might think that honesty boxes are from the past, from a different age, a simpler age, a more honest age, but I would say they're a future thing as well.” – Mark Cousins

Throughout the islands and out of way places in Scotland, along the rural roads, at the end of driveways, out on their own with no house nearby, you'll find fresh baked bread, homemade jam, cauliflower, scones, Victoria Sponge Cake, ceramics, you name it. If someone can make it, bake it, grow it or sew it, it may turn up for sale in an “Honesty Box.”

Just a wooden or metal box, sometime with a slot, nailed down so it can’t be nicked, sometimes an open bowl of money, with a price list of the items and the implicit understanding that if you fancy a shortbread, or a dozen eggs, or a pound of sausages, or a home-knitted hat, you’ll leave the money in the Honesty Box. No one is there to watch you. It’s a trust thing. An honor thing. In this era when trust and honor are in such short supply in America

Produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva) with Mark Buell & George Bull in collaboration with Nathan Dalton & Brandi Howell. Mixed by Jim McKee.

Special Thanks: In Edinburgh: Mark Cousins | On the Isle of Gigha: John Bannatyne, James, Colin Campbell, Dougie, Annie, Donald, the Guy at the Town Store, Isle of Gigha Golf Club | On The Isle of Arran: Nicky & Pete Brown (Clachaig Farm), Ailsa Currie (Bellevue Farm), Sally & Andy Pollock, Charles Colin Macleod Currie, Hamish Bannatyne, Shiskine Golf Course | In Campbeltown: Ellen Mainwood & Mhairi Hendrie at the Campbeltown Picture House (The Wee Picture House), Ardsheil Hotel, Flora Grant & Marion MacKinnon, Scott Eland | Carradale Golf Club: Mack Ezell | On The Isle of Skye: Catherine MacPhee. More Thanks: Frances McDormand & Joel Coen.

Funding for The Kitchen Sisters Present… comes from The National Endowment for the Arts, Every Page Foundation, The Fertel Foundation, The Robert Sillins Family Foundation and Listener Contributions to The Kitchen Sisters Productions.

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

Willie Nelson and Dallas-born actress Robin Wright, along with some wild and extraordinary tellers, take us across Texas and share some of their Hidden Kitchen stories. Gas station tacos, ice houses, Chili Queens, Stubb's BBQ, cowboy kitchens, car wash kitchens, space food. With special guests Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Kinky Friedman, Joe Nick Patoski,  and so many more.

Produced by The Kitchen Sisters with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Texas Humanities, KUT, NPR and contributors to The Kitchen Sisters Productions.

Fish Fries, political BBQs, family reunions — during the 1930s writers were paid by the government to chronicle local food, eating customs and recipes across the United States. America Eats, a WPA project, sent writers like Nelson Algren, Zora Neale Hurston, Eudora Welty, and Stetson Kennedy out to document America’s relationship with food during the Great Depression.

When we were searching for Hidden Kitchens and stories about how people come together through food we opened up a phone line on NPR and asked the nation for their ideas. Mark Kurlansky, author of Choice Cuts: Food Writing from Around the World and Throughout History told us about America Eats, a federal Works Progress Administration (WPA) program in the 1930s that sent writers throughout the country to document foodways.

Each region had its own America Eats team. Their writings, photographs and even some scripts for a proposed weekly radio program are tucked away in collections around the country — at the New York Municipal Archive, the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, the University of Iowa Library, and the State Library and Archives of Florida, as well as at the Library of Congress.

Producer Jamie York and The Kitchen Sisters follow the story to the Library of Congress and beyond.

Produced by Jamie York and The Kitchen Sisters. Mixed by Jeremiah Moore. In collaboration with Tim Folger, Jay Allison, Laura Folger, Kate Volkman, Melissa Robbins, Viki Merrick, Sydney Lewis, Chelsea Merz and Susan Leem.

The Kitchen Sisters Present is produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Nikki Silva & Davia Nelson) with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell. We're part of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated network of  podcasts created by independent producers — some of the best stories out there. Find out more at Radiotopia.fm and kitchensisters.org.

“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.”

Deep within the National Museum of American History’s vaults is a battered Atari case containing what’s known as “the worst video game of all time.” The game is E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and it was so bad that not even the might of Steven Spielberg could save it. It was so loathsome that all remaining copies were buried deep in the desert. And it was so horrible that it’s blamed for the collapse of the American home video game industry in the early 1980s. The story of just what went SO wrong with E.T.

Produced by Lizzie Peabody for Sidedoor, a podcast from the Smithsonian with support from PRX.

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

For more visit kitchensisters.org

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 Cohen
Editor: Ben Trefny.
Composer: Kirk Pearson
Sound Designer: Dogbotic Studios

The 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.

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.  

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.

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.