Narrated by Andy Garcia. At the turn of the century until the 1930s in the cigar factories of Tampa and Ybor City, a well dressed man in a panama hat with a loud and beautiful voice sat atop a platform and read to the cigar workers as they rolled. These readers, known as Lectores de Tabaqueres, read Cervantes, Zola, Victor Hugo, Karl Marx, Jules Verne…. It was the voices and words of these lectores, before radio and mechanization, who informed, organized, and incited the cigar workers, who labored by hand until the 1930s, when both the rollers and readers were replaced by mechanization. A lost tradition of story and smoke.

From the Lost & Found Sound series on NPR. Produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva) and Jay Allison. The Kitchen Sisters Present is part of Radiotopia from PRX.

As part of our Quilts as Monuments series we revisit the story of Gert McMullin and the AIDS Memorial Quilt, the gay rights movement in San Francisco, Harvey Milk, The White Night Riots and more.

In 1985, Gert McMullin was one of the first San Franciscans to put a stitch on the AIDS Quilt, the quilt that began with one memorial square in honor of a man who had died of AIDS, and that now holds some 110,000 names. The quilt is made up of some 50,000 panels, each 3x6 feet, the size of a grave. It weighs 60 tons. End to end, it would stretch out more than 50 miles.

Gert never planned it this way, but over the decades she has become the keeper of the quilt and has stewarded it, repaired it, tended it, traveled with it and conserved it for some 33 years now.

In 2020, when COVID-19 hit, Gert was one of the first Bay Area citizens to begin sewing masks—PPE for nurses and health care workers who were lacking proper protection—masks she made from fabric left over from the AIDS Quilt. The comfort, outrage and honoring of an earlier pandemic being used to protect people from a new one.

In January of 2020, the AIDS Memorial Quilt, now part of the National AIDS Memorial, returned home to the Bay Area after 16 years in Atlanta. It took six 52-foot semis to get it there. The extensive AIDS archive, which Gert gathered, collected and protected since its earliest days, is now part of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.

This episode features interviews with LGBT rights activist Cleve Jones who worked with Harvey Milk and conceived of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, and John Cunningham, executive director of the National AIDS Memorial.

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

Olivia Wilde. Actor. Director. Producer. Olivia comes from a long line of journalists, a British father and an American mother, who have made groundbreaking investigative documentaries. The late writer Christopher Hitchens, a friend of the family, was her babysitter. She grew up in a world of words, a world of stories, a world of speaking truth to power. She chose her stage name in honor of Oscar Wilde, a writer she admires.

Olivia starred in dozens of TV shows and movies before directing her first feature in 2019, the raunchy, high-stakes, hilarious, high school comedy, Booksmart.

Her latest movie, The Invite, is a tight ensemble film, which she both directs and acts in alongside Penelope Cruz, Edward Norton and Seth Rogen.

The Invite was a smash hit at the Sundance Film Festival in January — the last one in Park City, Utah — and set off one of those legendary bidding wars you hear about like Sex, Lies, and Videotape did back in the day.

In April The Invite opened the San Francisco Film Festival at the newly renovated historic Castro Theatre and Olivia came to see us in the studios of KQED just before the screening to talk about the movie and her path as a filmmaker.

Perhaps it was the AIDS Quilt that redefined what a monument could look like and who could create it. Or maybe it was the quilters of Gee's Bend or the Freedom Quilting Circle in Alabama, taking the scraps of their lives — old military camo uniforms, overalls, flour sacks — honoring the living and the dead. Quilts as monuments, memorials, large and small, stretch far back into our American story.

Monuments are a contentious issue these days in the South and beyond. But right now, in Alabama, the Sew Their Names Project — some 20 quilters, a reverend, and a judge — are bringing unlikely collaborations together to embroider the names of hundreds of forgotten people who were once enslaved. Creating quilts that record and tell.

Today The Kitchen Sisters, together with the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University, present: Quilts as Monuments: Sew Their Names

John Steinbeck called it “The Mother Road.” Songwriter Bobby Troup said it was where to go to get your kicks. Mickey Mantle swore, “If it hadn’t been for Highway 66 I never would have been a Yankee.”

The Kitchen Sisters spent the summer of 1984 traveling every inch of this storied highway — “The Main Street of America” — as it was closing, recording just about everything that moved between Chicago and LA and made a series of epic radio documentaries to commemorate the legendary road and what it meant to the nation. If I remember right we paid about $1.20 a gallon as we motored east to west.

In the summer of 1985 the road was officially removed from the United States Highway system and NPR’s All Things Considered aired our series of stories about the life and history of Route 66 filled with interviews with dozens and dozens of Americans whose lives intersected with The Mother Road, along with field recordings, archival audio, music and sound.

As Route 66 turns 100 we dipped into our archive to share these poignant and lively time capsules for your next road trip and your summer listening pleasure.

Our narrator is actor David Selby.

Today we’re celebrating Faith Spotted Eagle, an Ihanktonwan Oyate elder who has just received an honorary doctorate from South Dakota State University. We first met Faith in 2009 when we were working on our NPR Hidden World of Girls series — stories about rituals and rites of passage, of women who crossed a line, broke a trail, forged a path. That certainly describes Faith.

When we opened up a phone line for the series and asked people to tell us their stories, Faith’s daughter Brook Spotted Eagle called in and left this message.

Hi. My name is Brook Spotted Eagle. I belong to a women’s society on my reservation in South Dakota. The Brave Heart Women’s Society. My mother is one of the founding grandmother’s who has brought it back to life. Over the last 100 years we’ve lost a lot of our ceremonies. I’ll have to check with the elders, but when I saw the Hidden World of Girls I thought it would be amazing to share with other Native women the Isnati coming of age ceremony for our girls.

The Shakers. An offshoot sect of The Quakers, born in England in 1747. In worship they were known to break into states of ecstatic trembling. Trembling Quakers. Shaking Quakers. The Shakers. They came to America in 1774 with a utopian vision, egalitarian ideals, a belief in the equality of the sexes, a philosophy of communal, celibate, simple living. Known for their purposeful communities, their pacifism and legendary craftsmanship.

At their peak in the mid-nineteenth century there were some 6,000 Shakers worldwide. As of 2024 there were but two Shakers left in America, so it made headlines in 2025 when Sister April Baxter entered the fold.

Four-time Academy Award winner Frances McDormand and artist Suzanne Bocanegra were inspired by the communal Shaker philosophy and aesthetic and were invited by The Shaker Museum in Chatham, New York to create a pop-up exhibit curated from the museum’s archive of Shaker furniture, textiles and goods. They called their installation “Cradled.”

Maira Kalman's pop-up exhibition, Shaker Outpost: Design, Commerce and Culture, a curated selection of her favorite pieces from the vast Shaker Museum collection opens on Saturday, May 2 at 4 Depot Square in downtown Chatham, New York, running through Sunday, July 5.

Along with the exhibit Maira and the Museum will open a General Store drawing on the historic tradition of Shakers’ public-facing stores where Shaker communities shared their goods for purchase with “the world.” Handmade crafts, food in the Shaker style, potholders, honey, ginger snaps, Swedish fish, sardines, marmalade made by TART, notebooks, textiles and items made by local artisans will all be on sale.

Come Life, Shaker Life was produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva) in collaboration with Brandi Howell, Nathan Dalton and Hannah Kaye. Mixed by Jim McKee.

Pioneering radio artist Larry Massett, a producer's producer, who led listeners into unexpected worlds and influenced so many in public radio and beyond, died last year at the age of 80.

The Kitchen Sisters were fortunate to work with Larry on our NPR series Lost & Found Sound and Soundprint. He was a friend and colleague.

We learned of Larry's passing last spring on Transom.org, the premier site for producers to come together, share their work, and access the latest tools and advice.

It was there that we found a “Requiem for Larry Massett” created by Barrett Golding of Hearing Voices. We asked Barrett if he’d help produce an audio piece and bring it to air. He said yes. Transom said yes. And all of the producers who offered their memories said yes. And so, yes!

The Kitchen Sisters Present: “A Requiem for Larry Massett” — produced in collaboration with Barrett Golding and Transom.org.

Featuring excerpts from some of Larry Massett's iconic radio works including: Listen Up: Piano Down the Stairs, A Trip to the Dentist, Helium Filled Astronaut, Death in Venice, The Road, Solidod, Apache Elder and more.

With remembrances from Larry's friends and colleagues: Jay Allison, Art Silverman, Bob Boilen, Rob Rosenthal, Joe Frank, Jesse Boggs, Katie Davis, Erica Heilman, Susan Stamberg, Keith Talbot, Robin Wise, Scott Carrier.

Special thanks to Transom, Hearing Voices, NPR, Soundprint, Jake Fleming, The Shed Studio. And thanks to: Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities.

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. Visit kitchensisters.org for more stories and news from The Kitchen Sisters.