We first caught sight of him in a convenience store buying Marlboros and a Coke for the road. He was dressed in a grey jumpsuit, pants tucked into black boots, silver belt buckle and a large black Stetson hat. Out front, his Ford Ranchero pick-up idled in the parking lot, the words “Champion of the Stranded Traveler” emblazoned in gold on the door. We struck up a conversation.

“I go on the road looking for trouble and whenever I find some, I stop.”  His voice was deep and resonant, his timing, impeccable.  “I suppose that’s why they call me “The Bloodhound of Breakdown.  But then, my business is trouble.” He lit a cigarette and handed us his card — “The Road Ranger — Scourge of the Tow Hook and the Long Delay.”

We go out on patrol with The Road Ranger in one of the first stories produced by The Kitchen Sisters.

This bonus episode is part of a special Radiotopia-wide project. This week, shows across the network are releasing episodes on the theme “Making Trouble.” You can learn more and donate to support our work at radiotopia.fm.

184 - The Road Ranger—My Business Is Trouble

The Kitchen Sisters Present… Stories from the b-side of history. Lost recordings, hidden worlds, people possessed by a sound, a vision, a mission. Deeply layered stories, lush with interviews, field recordings and music. From powerhouse NPR producers The Kitchen Sisters (The Keepers, Hidden Kitchens, The Hidden World of Girls, The Sonic Memorial Project, Lost &amp; Found Sound, and Fugitive Waves). "The Kitchen Sisters have done some of best radio stories ever broadcast" —Ira Glass. The Kitchen Sisters Present is produced in by The Kitchen Sisters (Nikki Silva &amp; Davia Nelson) in collaboration with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell and mixed by Jim McKee. A proud member of Radiotopia, from PRX. Learn more at radiotopia.fm.

Society & Culture

Personal Journals

History

Philosophy

Places & Travel

On April 12, 2024, Eleanor Coppola, artist, filmmaker, mother and wife of director Francis Ford Coppola, died at her home in the Napa Valley surrounded by family. She was 87 years old and had lived a most remarkable life.Shortly before her death, Eleanor had completed her third memoir. In it she wrote:“I appreciate how my unexpected life has stretched and pulled me in so many extraordinary ways and taken me in a multitude of directions beyond my wildest imaginings.”On May 6, 2008, on the occasion of the release of her second memoir, Notes on a Life, Eleanor and Davia sat down together at The Commonwealth Club of California and had this conversation before a live audience.Our thanks to The Commonwealth Club of California for sharing this 2008 recording. This conversation was part of their Good Lit Series, underwritten by the Bernard Osher Foundation.The Kitchen Sisters' San Francisco studio is located in Francis and Eleanor's Zoetrope building in North Beach. Ellie has been a part of our lives since the day we came here some three decades ago. Our love goes to the many generations of the Coppola family.

Eleanor Coppola: Notes on a Life

Over the years, The Kitchen Sisters have zeroed in on Memphis, Tennessee in a big way. The inspiration for that and the inspiration for some of our favorite stories is Knox Phillips.  Davia met Knox in 1997 in Memphis when she was doing casting for Francis Ford Coppola’s film The Rainmaker. She was on the set standing next to a guy. Cool hair, great smile. During the long set up between takes they started talking. About Memphis, about music, about radio. She told him about a new series we were starting to produce for NPR — Lost & Found Sound. Stories about sonic pioneers and people possessed by sound. The guy with the cool hair listens.  “Girl, I think you better come over to the house and meet my parents. My dad, Sam, started the Memphis Recording Service and Sun Records. He recorded Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Howlin’ Wolf.... When he sold Elvis’ contract he and my mother, Becky, used the money to start the first all-girl radio station in the nation, WHER: 1000 Beautiful Watts.”Nikki was on a plane to Memphis the next day and we drove to the Phillips family house that night. Knox, Sam, Becky and Sam’s girlfriend Sally were all there and the stories started pouring out. We walked in at 7:00 and left after midnight, recording the whole time. Those interviews became the basis of some of the most groundbreaking Kitchen Sisters pieces.  Knox Phillips — producer, promoter of Memphis music, Keeper of his family's legacy, died in April 2020, right at the beginning of the pandemic, and never really got his due. His massive spirit, love and music live on.

Cool Hair, Great Smile: Remembering Knox Phillips

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.

The Romance and Sex Life of the Date

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 .

Parsi New Year—First Day of Spring

Little known stories of pioneering architects — Julia Morgan, the first accredited female architect in California, who designed Hearst Castle and was nearly written out of the history books. Natalie de Blois, who helped imagine the first glass skyscrapers on Park Avenue by day and raised four children by night. Amaza Lee Meredith, a Black queer modernist architect from the 1930s South who helped establish Sag Harbor as a haven for Black intellectuals, artists and beachcombers.

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.

184 - The Road Ranger—My Business Is Trouble

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