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 explorer, Walter Swingle, to Algeria to study the date. As Swingle took temperature readings and soil temperature, he realized that the conditions were very much like those in California’s hot, arid Coachella Valley, sometimes referred to as the American Sahara. In order to market this new fruit and promote the region, date growers in the Coachella Valley began capitalizing on the exotic imagery and fantasy many Americans associated with the Middle East. In the 1950s date shops dotted the highway, attracting tourists. There was Pyramid Date shop where you could purchase your dates in a pyramid. Sniff’s Exotic Date Garden set up a tent like those used by nomadic tribes of the Sahara. One of the most well-known date shops, which still exists today, is Shields Date Garden, established in 1924. Floyd Shields lured in customers with his lecture and slide show titled, “The Romance and Sex Life of the Date.”

This story was produced in collaboration with Lisa Morehouse.

Niloufer Ichaporia King lives in a house with three kitchens. She prowls through six farmer’s markets a week in search of unusual greens, roots, seeds, and traditional food plants from every immigrant culture. She is an anthropologist, a kitchen botanist, a one-of-a-kind cook, a Parsi from Bombay living in San Francisco, and the author of My Bombay Kitchen: Traditional and Modern Parsi Home Cooking.

Niloufer is known for her ritual celebrations of Navroz, Parsi New Year, on the first day of Spring, when she creates an elaborate ceremonial meal based on the auspicious foods and traditions of her vanishing culture. The Parsi culture is some 3,000 years old and goes back from India to Persia. It’s estimated that there are now under 100,000 Parsis in the world.

Also featured in this Hidden Kitchens story are author Bharati Mukherjee, sharing her memories of the forbidden Bengali kitchen of her girlhood, with its four cooks and intricate rules of food preparation. And Harvard Professor Homi Bhabha, born in Mumbai to a Parsi family, who talks about auspicious lentils and the birth of his son.

The Kitchen Sisters Present is produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Nikki Silva & Davia Nelson) with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell. We are part of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated network created specifically for independent podcasts—some of the best stories out there.

Special thanks to the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and contributors to the non profit Kitchen Sisters Productions .

A new special from The Kitchen Sisters, the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation and PRX, hosted by Academy Award-winning actress Frances McDormand.

Story production by Brandi Howell for the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation’s podcast, New Angle: Voice, in association with The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva), mixed by Jim McKee.

A look at the President’s kitchen and some of the first cooks to feed the Founding Fathers—Hercules and James Hemings—the enslaved chefs of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

Hercules, described as a “dandy,” had eight assistants—stewards, butlers, undercooks, waiters. He cooked in a huge fireplace—hearth cooking. He walked through the streets of Philadelphia in a velvet waistcoat, with a gold-handled cane. When Washington was getting ready to leave Philadelphia to return to Mt. Vernon, Hercules escaped. Washington sent out search parties and offered rewards. Hercules was never found.

In 1784, Thomas Jefferson was appointed minister to France. He took with him his body servant, 19-year-old James Hemings (the brother of Sally Hemings), to master the French style of cooking. Hemings apprenticed with well-known French caterers and pastry chefs and assumed the role of chef de cuisine in Jefferson’s kitchen on the Champs-Elysees, earning $48 a year. In 1793, Hemings petitioned Jefferson for his freedom. Jefferson consented upon one condition—he must train someone to take his place. After teaching his brother, Peter Hemings, the cooking techniques he had learned in France and at home, James Hemings became a free man.

These stories begin a long connection of presidents and their African American cooks, including the story of Zephyr Wright, President Lyndon Johnson’s cook who worked for the family for 27 years. Johnson spoke to Zephyr Wright about the Civil Rights Movement and the March on Washington. She attended the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Johnson gave her a pen he used to sign the document.

Featuring interviews with: Jessica Harris, Culinary Historian and author of The Welcome Table: African American Heritage Cooking; Historian Willliam Seale, author of The President’s House; Chef Joe Randall, founder of African American Chef’s Hall of Fame; William Woys Weaver, food historian and author; Sharron Conrad, African American food historian. Special thanks to the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum and Michael L. Gillette for use of Zephyr Wright’s oral history.

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

Jelly Roll Morton talks of being a “Spy Boy” in the Mardi Gras Indian parades of his youth. Bo Dollis, of the Wild Magnolias, tells of sewing his suit of feathers and beads all night long. Tootie Montana masks for the first time as Mardi Gras starts up again after World War II. Big Queen Ausettua makes connections between the black Mardi Gras Indian traditions of New Orleans and Africa. Sister Alison McCrary, a Catholic nun and social justice attorney, tells of Big Chief Tootie Montana’s death at the podium in city council chambers defending the rights of the Mardi Gras Indians to parade without harassment.

A collection of stories and interviews in honor of the Mardi Gras Indian tradition in New Orleans. With special thanks and a shout out to all of the “Keepers” who have documented, preserved and shared these stories, including the Folklife Center Collection at the Library of Congress, Nick Spitzer and American Routes, filmmaker Lisa Katzman, and WWOZ in New Orleans.

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

Sarah “Sally” Pillsbury and Jean B. Fletcher were both architects who married architects. The two women and their husbands were founding members of The Architects Collaborative (TAC), a visionary, idealistic architecture firm founded just after WWII.

The two women, who had 13 children between them, lived with their families and several other founding partners in Six Moon Hill, a residential community in Lexington, Massachusetts, designed by the group.

TAC was a world class firm of eight architects, including famed architect Walter Gropius, working collectively as a team, stressing anonymity of design. The group won design awards and competitions, and was hired by the National Institute of Architects to design their new headquarters.They also designed the Harvard Graduate Center, many civic and educational buildings, and the University of Baghdad.

Soon after the founding of the firm in 1947, Sarah and Jean wrote an article for House & Garden titled “Architecture, Family Style” which – as their biographer Michael Kubo writes – constituted something of a manifesto for the changing needs of the postwar housewife.

Produced by Brandi Howell for Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation’s podcast New Angle: Voice with host Cynthia Krakauer. Editorial advising from Alexandra Lange.  Production assistants Virginia Eskridge and Aislinn McNamara.

Special thanks to Sara Harkness and Joseph Fletcher, Michael Kubo and Amanda Kolson Hurley.  Current Six Moon Hill residents Linda Pagani and Barbara Katzenberg kindly opened their homes and shared their stories.  Long time TAC  partners Perry Neubauer and Gail Flynn were generous with their time as were Andrea Leers and Jane Weinzapfel.  The archival oral history of Sally Harkness comes from her interview with Wendy Cox.

Funding for New Angle: Voice comes from National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Graham Foundation.

The Kitchen Sisters Present is produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Nikki Silva & Davia Nelson) with Brandi Howell and Nathan Dalton. Supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and contributors to the non profit Kitchen Sisters Productions.

The Kitchen Sisters Present is part of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated network of podcasts created by independent producers.

For five years Davia’s father, Lenny Nelson, asked her to go to Rattlesden, England, to visit the Air Force base where he was stationed during WWII and to find an old photograph hanging in the town pub honoring his 8th Air Force squadron. It was still there, over 50 years later, he told her. Finally, one fine Sunday, Davia headed out in search of the pub and a piece of her father’s past—the piece he was proudest of.

Lenny died on Christmas Eve 2015. In his honor, we share the journey with you.

Samuel Shelton Robinson helped produce this story with The Kitchen Sisters. He’s from London. It seemed only right.

Deep in the hidden archives of Harvard’s Houghton Library are the butter stained recipes of Emily Dickinson. Who knew? Emily Dickinson was better known by most as a baker than a poet in her lifetime.

In this story a beautiful line up of “Keepers”— dedicated archivists, librarians, historians, poets and more—lead us through the complex labyrinth of Emily Dickinson’s hidden kitchen. Black cake, gingerbread, slant rhyme, secret loves, family scandals, poems composed on the back of a coconut cake recipe —we journey into the world of poet Emily Dickinson. Filled with mystery, intrigue and readings by Patti Smith, Thornton Wilder, Jean Harris and an array of passionate poets and experts.

Lou Reed, musician, rock icon, poet, leader of the legendary Velvet Underground, was obsessed with tai chi — the practice, the community, the health and spiritual benefits. Lou had been writing a book about this ancient martial art that was unfinished when he died in 2013.

Lou’s wife, the artist and musician Laurie Anderson, looked at Lou's unfinished work and decided the book needed to be completed, that there was something important to be shared in Lou’s long, life-altering journey with tai chi.

She turned to three of Lou's friends to help her with the project. By the time the book, The Art of the Straight Line: My Tai Chi by Lou Reed, hit the stands in the spring of 2023, they had spoken with nearly 100 people and created a riveting portrait of Lou’s spiritual, medical and musical life, beckoning readers to enter the world of tai chi.

The Kitchen Sisters read the book and we kept thinking, these conversations must have been taped. We asked Laurie if there were recordings. There were. Dozens and dozens of them from rock stars, to tai chi masters, to doctors, to family….

We listened to the raw interviews, this remarkable trove of sound and story, and created a podcast that goes deep inside the making of this book. Voices heard in the story include Laurie Anderson, Iggy Pop, Julian Schnabel, Hal Willner, Anohni, Master Ren and many more, plus archival recordings of Lou Reed.

The Kitchen Sisters Present: Lou Reed’s Tai Chi.

“Well, everybody does something, some people race cars, others collect stamps. I find tai chi to be philosophically, aesthetically, physically and spiritually fascinating.” — Lou Reed

Late autumn is Kimjang season in the Republic of Korea when families and communities come together to make and share large quantities of kimchi to ensure that every household has enough to sustain it through the long, harsh winter.

This story is part of series Hidden Kitchens: Kimchi Diplomacy — War & Peace and Food

“Kimchi is everywhere in Korea. It’s like air,” says Hyunjoo Albrecht, a San Francisco-based chef who grew up near the DMZ border between South and North Korea. 1.5 million tons of kimchi are eaten each year in Korea and there are hundreds of different varieties.

South Korea is one of the nations most involved in branding itself through its food, using food as a part of its “soft power.” It’s called “gastrodiplomacy” — the use of food as a diplomatic tool to help resolve conflicts and foster connections between nations. “The government gave financial support to some of the Korean restaurants in US,” says Hyunjoo. “They want more people outside Korea to eat more Korean food.”

Si-Hyeon Ryu is a chef and writer from South Korea who, with support from the government, has traveled in The Kimchi Bus to more than 34 countries cooking traditional Korean food and spreading his love of kimchi. “People on the street, they know just about North and South Korea,” he says, "but not much about Korean cuisine. “If I explain about kimchi they will understand about Korea.”

Astronaut Soyeon Yi, Korea’s first astronaut, describes the Korean government’s efforts to invent kimchi for space travel — not an easy task. Soyeon Yi prepared a special Korean meal for her Russian comrades in space. “Having kimchi in space, you are far from your home planet,” she says. “When you eat your own traditional food it makes you feel emotionally supported. I can feel my home.”