The Kitchen Sisters Present

On Sunday the first Oscar for Achievement in Casting will be given in the 98-year history of the Academy Awards. Today, The Kitchen Sisters and host Frances McDormand bring you the story of two legendary casting directors: Juliet Taylor and Ellen Lewis.Listen to Part 1 of this saga: Everyone’s a Casting Director: The First-Ever Academy Award for Casting in the 98-Year History of the Academy Awards“Casting is the first thing that is done on a movie. Everybody's sort of in a great mood, nothing's gone wrong yet, and everybody's feeling very positive. And it's the first time the director's heard the words read and it can really influence the way the movie goes.” —Juliet TaylorDuring her career, Juliet cast 103 films including Annie Hall, Taxi Driver, Manhattan, Terms of Endearment, Big, Schindler's List, Midnight Cowboy, Network and so many more. “It's an old-fashioned trade. You are learning from the person that you are working for. That's like your graduate school.” —Ellen LewisEllen has cast some dozen films for Martin Scorsese including Goodfellas, Casino, Gangs of New York, The Age of Innocence, Cape Fear, Kundun, The Wolf of Wall Street, The Irishman, The Departed, Killers of the Flower Moon. Also Forrest Gump, The Devil Wears Prada, A League of Their Own, lots of Jim Jarmusch movies, and the television series The Queen's Gambit, Godless, Boardwalk Empire and so much more.“More than 90% of directing a picture is the right casting.” —Martin ScorseseHave a Seat, The Casting Director Will See You Shortly: The Legends of Juliet Taylor & Ellen Lewis was produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva) in collaboration with Nathan Dalton, Brandi Howell and Hannah Kaye. Mixed by Jim McKee.

Featuring Frances McDormand with Gabriel Dominguez (Brazilian casting director), Francine Maisler (veteran casting pro), Nina Gold (seasoned UK casting leader), Jennifer Vendetti (street-casting specialist), and Cassandra Kulikundas (longtime Paul Thomas Anderson collaborator). They talk about large open calls in Brazil, global searches for musical performers, finding child actors and on-screen chemistry, street discoveries and building ensembles, and long director collaborations.

Louis Jones is a keeper— working as a Field Archivist at the Reuther Library at Wayne State University in Detroit, he cares for the largest labor archive in North America. Home to numerous union and labor collections from around the country, the Reuther Library also actively collects material documenting Detroit’s civil rights movement, women’s struggles in the workplace, the LGBTQ Archive of Detroit and more.Born in New York City, the grandson of a Pullman porter, Jones takes us through the archives with stories of the United Auto Workers, Cesar Chavez, Utah Phillips, A. Philip Randolph, the Civil Rights Movement, the 1967 Detroit uprising, and how archivists are examining and re-imagining their roles in the midst of Covid-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement.Special thanks to the Reuther Library at Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan; Nancy Beaumont and the Society of American Archivists (SAA); Paulina Hartono; The National Endowment for the Humanities; and supporters of The Kitchen Sisters Productions.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.

On December 21, 2025, activist and trailblazer Betty Reid Soskin passed away in Richmond, California. She was 104. Over the years we've chronicled Betty's remarkable story and want to share it today in honor of Betty and Black History Month.In 2011, at age 89, Betty became America's oldest national park service ranger, a position she held until she retired at 100. Her bold and forthright tours and talks at the Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front Museum were legendary. As a Black woman who worked in the segregated war effort, she spoke from her personal experience revealing a fuller, richer understanding of the World War II years experienced by women and people of color on the home front.Betty's Creole/Cajun family was from New Orleans and her great grandmother had been born into slavery in 1846. Displaced by the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, Betty moved with her family to Oakland, where she grew up in the late 20s and 30s. During WWII she worked as a file clerk for Boilermakers Union A-36, a Jim Crow all Black union auxiliary, where she witnessed firsthand the discrimination faced by Black workers in the wartime industry.Betty raised four children in the highly segregated Diablo Valley area where the family was subject to death threats. She and her first husband, Mel Reid, owned one of the first Black record shops west of the Mississippi located in Berkeley. She also worked as a Field Representative for California State Assembly women Dion Aroner and Lonnie Hancock. In 2016, at age 94, Betty survived a violent home invasion and returned to work at the Rosie the Riveter Museum just weeks later.A singer, songwriter, poet and musician, Betty chronicled her life and work in a memoir, "Sign My Name to Freedom," which inspired both a stage play and a documentary film. Betty received numerous awards and honors throughout her life, including a presidential coin from Barack Obama in 2015 after she lit the national Christmas tree at the White House.Special thanks to: The San Francisco Public Library and Shawna Sherman of the African American Center of the San Francisco Main Library; This is Love Podcast and creators Phoebe Judge and Lauren Spohrer; and A Lifetime of Being Betty, a Little Village Foundation recording release produced by Mike Kappus. Thanks also to Betty’s son, musician and songwriter Bob Reid  http://www.bobreidmusic.com/The Kitchen Sisters Present is produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Nikki Silva & Davia Nelson) with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell. We are part of the Radiotopia network from PRX.

The Gilded Age was a time of unparalleled wealth and prosperity in America—but it was also a time of staggering inequality, corruption, and unchecked power. Among its richest figures was Andrew Carnegie, the steel magnate who built his fortune on the backs of low-paid workers, only to give it away—earning him the nickname the Godfather of American Philanthropy. He didn’t just fund libraries and universities, he championed a philosophy: that it was the duty of the ultra-wealthy to serve the public good.But, as it turns out, even philanthropy is a form of power. So, what exactly have wealthy philanthropists done with their power? We explore that question at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, inside Carnegie’s former mansion. There, a board game called Philanthropy invites players to reimagine the connection between money and power—not by amassing wealth, but by giving it away.Produced by The Smithsonian's Podcast — Sidedoor.  With host and Senior Producer Lizzie Peabody. Featuring:  Christina de León, Associate Curator of Latino Design at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum Tommy Mishima, artist and co-creator (with Liam Lee) of the installation Game Room in Cooper Hewitt's triennial Making Home David Nasaw, author of the biography Andrew Carnegie The Kitchen Sisters Present is produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Nikki Silva & Davia Nelson) with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell. Part of the Radiotopia network from PRX. 

They don't make 'em like Marion Cunningham these days. Food writer, home cook, Fannie Farmer's new incarnation, James Beard’s sidekick, wizard of waffles. Marion was a treasured friend of The Kitchen Sisters, and in 2003, we sat down with her and recorded a long conversation.We've been digging through our archive of late looking for people and stories that inspire, that illuminate, that cut a new path and nourish the soul. Marion's story ticks all those boxes and more.Marion died in 2012. She left such a big hole in the firmament when she passed, but she left so much love, wisdom, guidance, and her amazing recipe for waffles behind. You can find that recipe on our website, kitchensisters.org.This story is part of The Kitchen Sisters Grand Dames of Cooking stories —  kitchen visionaries who worked to preserve, develop and pass on traditional foodways and cultural history through the art of cooking.

Host Frances McDormand leads us through this rich international story collection of land, community and food. From the organic olive groves and vineyards being grown on confiscated Mafia land in Sicily, to secret night clubs embedded in Soviet dissident kitchens. From tales of "cooking dogs" in Medieval England, to the little-known tale of agricultural explorers — the "Indiana Joneses of the plant world" — who introduced exotic dates from the Middle East to the Coachella Valley. We also go underground into the world of wine, war, and counterfeiting.Plus, actor Gael Garcia Bernal takes us to his grandmother's Sinaloa kitchen in Mexico, Salman Rushdie takes us to Chocolate Town, Werner Herzog eats his shoe, and poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti gives us his recipe for happiness.Hidden Kitchens World was produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva) in collaboration with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell, along with listeners around the world. Mixed by Jim McKee.

Frances McDormand hosts a lively discussion with notable guests. David Ferriero, the U.S. Archivist, emphasizes the vital role archives play in democracy and shares quirky tales from preservation. Nancy Pearl, a literacy advocate, talks about her unique journey to becoming an action figure and her community project promoting reading. Susan Rogers, a recording engineer for Prince, describes her work organizing the musician's extensive vault. Together, they highlight the significance of keeping culture accessible and alive.

In this tribute to Marcyliena Morgan, a linguistic anthropologist and founding director of the Hip-Hop Archive at Harvard, she and scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. explore the origins and significance of archiving hip-hop culture. They discuss the importance of preserving artifacts like boomboxes and turntables while framing hip-hop as a vital art form deserving of academic study. The conversation highlights hip-hop's role as social commentary and its impact on community voices. Students share personal stories, showcasing the archive's emotional significance and its capacity to inspire future generations.

The worlds of a young Canadian immigrant, an Italian pasta-making family, and a 70-year-old survivor of the Armenian Genocide converge in this story of the San Francisco Treat.A Canadian woman, Lois DeDomenico, marries an Italian immigrant, Tom DeDomenico, whose family founded Golden Grain Macaroni in San Francisco. Just after WWII, the newlyweds rent a room from an elderly Armenian woman, Pailadzo Captanian, who teaches the young, pregnant, 18-year-old Lois how to cook — including how to make yogurt, baklava, and pilaf.During those hours in the kitchen, the old Armenian woman tells Lois the story of her life — her forced trek from Turkey to Syria, leaving her two young sons with a Greek family, her husband’s murder, the birth of her baby along the way (his name means “child of pain”), the story of the genocide. Mrs. Captanian shows Lois a book she wrote shortly after her experiences — one of the only eyewitness accounts written at the time. Most survivor accounts were published 30–40 years later. Hers was published in 1919 for the Paris Peace Talks, in hopes that it would help provide context for the establishment of an Armenian state.Years after the DeDomenicos move away from Mrs. Captanian’s home, Tom’s brother is having dinner at the young couple’s house. He looks down at the pilaf Lois made and says, “This would be good in a box.” They name it Rice-A-Roni.