Cab drivers, children’s jump rope rhymes, folk songs, dialects, controversial TV ads, interviews with blacklisted artists and writers during the McCarthy Era — Tony Schwartz was one of the great sound recordists and collectors of the 20th Century. 

In honor of Tony Schwartz’s Centennial, The Kitchen Sisters Present an audio portrait of a man who spent his life exploring and influencing the world through recorded sound.

It was 1947 when Tony first stepped out of his apartment in midtown Manhattan with his microphone to capture the sound of his neighborhood. He was a pioneer recordist, experimenting with microphones and jury-rigging tape recorders to make them portable (some of these recordings were first published by Folkways Records). His work creating advertising and political TV and radio commercials is legendary.

The Kitchen Sisters visited Tony in his midtown basement studio in 1999. He had just finished teaching a media class at Harvard by telephone — Tony was agoraphobic and hardly ever ventured beyond his postal zone. He was there in his studio surrounded by reel to reel tape recorders, mixing consoles, framed photographs and awards — and row upon row of audio tapes in carefully labeled boxes.

Tony passed away in 2008. His collection now resides in the Library of congress — 90.5 linear feet, 230 boxes, 76,345 items — some 30,000 folk songs, poems, conversations, stories and dialects from his surrounding neighborhood and 46 countries around the world.

Tony’s Centennial is being celebrated on April 27, 2023, at the Library of Congress, as part of the Radio Preservation Task Force Conference—A Century of Broadcasting: Preservation and Renewal.

This story is part of the Lost & Found Sound series produced by The Kitchen Sisters, Jay Allison and NPR. Special thanks to The National Endowment for the Arts and The National Endowment for the Humanites.

For some eight years now thirty-four Black women have gathered monthly around a big dining room table in the orange house on Orange Street in Oakland, CA—meeting, cooking, dancing, strategizing—grappling with the issues of eviction, erasure, gentrification, inadequate health care, and the sex trafficking of Black women and girls that are overwhelming their community.

Spearheaded by dancer/choreographer Amara Tabor-Smith and theater director Ellen Sebastian Chang, this House/Full of Black Women—artists, scholars, healers, nurses, midwives, an ice cream maker, a donut maker, an architect, a theater director, a choreographer, sex trafficking abolitionists and survivors—have come together to creatively address and bring their mission and visions to the streets. Over the years they have created performances, rituals, pop-up processions in the storefronts, galleries, warehouses, museums and streets of Oakland.

This hour-long special features sound-rich “episodes” of performances and rituals, interviews with sex trafficking abolitionists, personal stories of growing up in the Bay Area, music, Black women dreaming, resisting, insisting.

Produced by Ellen Sebastian Change, Sital Muktari and The Kitchen Sisters, narrated by Sital Muktari, mixed by Jim McKee, in collaboration with an evolving House/Full of Black Women collective, Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell.

Funding for this House/Full of Black Women Special comes from The Creative Work Fund, The National Endowment for the Arts, The Kaleta Doolin Foundation, The Texas Women’s Foundation, Susan Sillins, listener contributions to The Kitchen Sisters Productions, and PRX.

Original funding for House/Full of BlackWomen was provided by Creative Capital, Creative Work Fund, The Kenneth Rainin Foundation, MAP Fund, and the Hewlett 50.

House/Full of Black Women is part of The Keepers series produced by The Kitchen Sisters, Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva, in collaboration with Brandi Howell and Nathan Dalton and mixed by Jim McKee. Archival sounds, recordings and compositions by Alexa Burrell. Visuals created by photographer Robbie Sweeney and designer Kevin Clarke. Ricardo Iamuuri Robinson created some of the soundscape. For names of all the many House/Full members who have had a hand in this project visit deepwatersdance.com.

Many know Ray Eames as the small, dirndled woman behind her more famous husband, Charles Eames. But Ray was the industrial designer bending plywood in the spare bedroom, a talented artist who saw the world full of color, the visionary who treated folk art, cigarette wrappers, flowers, and toys as equally valuable and inspiring. Ray brought the sparkle and inspiration to the legendary Eames Office.

The Kitchen Sisters Present Ray Eames from the New Angle Voice a podcast of the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation, produced by Brandi Howell.

Editorial advising from Alexandra Lange. Thanks also to Virginia Eskridge, and Amy Auscherman, Director of Archives and Brand Heritage for MillerKnoll. The archival audio heard in this episode comes from the MillerKnoll archives and the Smithsonian Archives of American Art. Intro music composed by Emma Jackson. Special thanks to Pat Kirkham, Lucia Dewey Atwood, Llisa Demetrios, Jeannine Oppewall, Donald Albrecht, Meg McAleer and Tracey Barton at the Library of Congress, and Alexandra Lange.

Funding for this podcast comes from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Graham Foundation, and MillerKnoll.

Funding for The Kitchen Sisters comes from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Susan Sillans Foundation, and contributors to The Kitchen Sisters non profit productions.

In 1935, W. E. B. Du Bois, scholar, public intellectual, and social and political activist, published his magnum opus: Black Reconstruction in America. In it, he tackled the subject of the American Civil War and, especially, the decade or so that followed, a period known as Reconstruction.

During Reconstruction it seemed, for a time, that the South and the United States as a whole, might be remade as a radically more equitable society. What was achieved during Reconstruction and why these efforts ultimately failed, is what concerns Du Bois in Black Reconstruction. He was also concerned with challenging and correcting the racist histories of Reconstruction that were prevalent in both popular and academic circles in his day.

Black Reconstruction is a widely respected and celebrated book today, but many of its early readers were dismissive, perhaps none more than the academic historians who Du Bois was justifiably calling out. The American Historical Review, for its part, ignored the book entirely. No review. Well, until now. Almost a century later, the AHR just published a review of Black Reconstruction in the December 2022 issue, penned by Yale historian Elizabeth Hinton.

Professor Elizabeth Hinton serves as our guide exploring W.E.B. Du Bois’ Black Reconstruction. We also hear from Eric Foner, Chad Williams, Sue Mobley, and Kendra Field.

Produced by History in Focus, a podcast from The American Historical Review, hosted and produced by Daniel Story, Digital Scholarship Librarian at UC Santa Cruz.

Voices in this Episode

• Elizabeth Hinton (Associate Professor of History and African American Studies at Yale University, with a secondary appointment as Professor of Law at Yale Law School)

• Eric Foner (DeWitt Clinton Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University)

• Chad Williams (Samuel J. and Augusta Spector Professor of History and African and African American Studies at Brandeis University)

• Sue Mobley (New Orleans based organizer/activist/urbanist; Director of Research at Monument Lab)

• Kendra Field (Associate Professor of History and Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at Tufts University; Project Historian for The Du Bois Freedom Center)

• Daniel Story (Host and Producer, Digital Scholarship Librarian at UC Santa Cruz)

In the early 1980s, Black students and the African American community at American University had been demonstrating for more access and inclusion in the university’s community services. One of the demands was for four hours of time every Saturday on Radio station WAMU, the campus station. This demand was met and suddenly Black students and the community were pouring into the station on Saturdays to make radio, to learn the craft, to be heard. Judi Moore Smith heard the call and soon was producing 10 minutes every week during that four-hour Saturday slot.

Someone heard one of Judi’s pieces and urged her to apply for funding. She was already going to Union Temple Baptist Church in Anacostia near Washington DC, mesmerized by the preaching of Rev. Willie Wilson. She began to cross the country interviewing preachers and ministers, capturing their speaking styles, their preaching styles, listening, watching, realizing these were not only religious men delivering weekly sermons—these were performing artists.

Judi lit the path with this piece and the creation of a deep archive of Black history and creative expression. It is one of the projects that has inspired us over the years—the spirit, the stylizing, the swagger, the soul, the poetry—and the music. Judi asked one of the preachers, Reverend Robert Pruitt, to do the narration for the piece and gathered a kind of congregation in the studio with him to enact call and response.

Davia reached out to Judi this year to see if she had a copy of the piece. It was created in the days way before the internet and the archiving of everything. Luckily we found a cassette of it at the Pacifica Archives.

Special Thanks to Judi Moore Latta for all her pioneering radio documentary work especially about Black culture, history and expression and her decades of teaching and working with hundreds of young people across the years. And thanks to Pacifica Archive.

The Kitchen Sisters Present is produced by The Kitchen Sisters, Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva, with Brandi Howell and Nathan Dalton.

The Kitchen Sisters receive support from the National Endowment for the Arts, and from generous contributors to The Kitchen Sisters nonprofit Productions.

We’re part of PRX’s Radiotopia – a network of independently created and owned podcasts – some of the best stories out there.

Criticisms of fast food often focus on the industrialized system that produces the burgers, buns and fries, or the food’s negative health impacts. Some criticisms have noted the deep ties between McDonald’s and the Black community, blaming communities of color for bad choices, sometimes blaming the fast food industry for being predatory with its advertising or store locations. But the relationship between fast food and Black America is way more complicated.

Jerusha Klemperer, host of the podcast “What You’re Eating” talks with Dr. Marcia Chatelain about her Pulitzer Prize winning book, “Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America,” and the history of that complicated relationship.

This story was produced for “What You’re Eating” by Nathan Dalton and FoodPrint.org. We thank them for sharing it with The Kitchen Sisters Present.

The Kitchen Sisters Present is produced by The Kitchen Sisters with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell. We are part of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated network of independent producers who own their own work.

Support for The Kitchen Sisters comes from The National Endowment for the Arts and supporters of The Kitchen Sisters Productions non profit.

In 2015 we presented this story about Curtis Carroll, the Stock Market Wizard of San Quentin. Everyone in San Quentin called him Wall Street. He was teaching his fellow prisoners about stocks and had become an informal financial adviser to fellow inmates and correctional officers.

After serving 27 years of a 54 years to life sentence in prison, Curtis Carroll, has been released on parole. We hear his story and talk to him about what’s next.

When Wall Street was put in prison almost three decades ago he couldn’t read or write. One day he stumbled on the financial section of the newspaper thinking it was the sports section, which his cellmate used to read to him. An inmate asked him if he played the stocks.

“I had never heard the word before,” Wall Street said. “He explained to me how it works and said, ‘This is where white people keep their money.’ When he said that I said, ‘Whoa, I think I stumbled across something here.’ ”

Wall Street taught himself how to read and write beginning with candy wrappers and clothing logos. He pored over financial news: the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Forbes.

On the inside, Wall Street didn’t have access to a computer or the Internet, so he called his family members to check the closing prices for the day and told them what to buy. He says business is like a soap opera — he’s always trying to anticipate what will happen next. “I like to know what the CEO’s doing. I like to know who’s in trouble.”

“I’m in prison, but I’m on just the same playing field as Warren Buffett,” Carroll says. “I can pick the exact same companies. I can’t buy as many shares, but technically we’re just the same.”

You can find out more about Wall Street, his life and Financial Empowerment, Emotional Literacy Project at ProjectFeel.org. He’s also on Instagram (@CurtisWallstreetCarroll) and Youtube (@WallStreetCarroll).

The Kitchen Sisters Present is produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Nikki Silva & Davia Nelson) with Brandi Howell and Nathan Dalton. Wall Street’s original story was mixed by Jim McKee at Earwax Studios. We are part of PRX’s Radiotopia Network.

This episode was produced in collaboration with Nancy Mullane and Life of the Law. Many thanks!

Special thanks to Curtis Carroll, San Quentin Financial Literacy Program, Anna Deavere Smith, Arnold Perkins, Troy Williams, Lt. Sam Robinson, Tom DeMartini, Zach Williams, Clarence Long, James Fox and the Prison Yoga Project, Tracy Wahl, Jacob Conrad, Nigel Poor, TED, Pop-Up Magazine, and NPR.

The Kitchen Sisters are supported by NEA and contributions to the non-profit Kitchen Sisters Productions.

Since the devastating 2019 fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, the ringing of the cathedral’s bells has ceased. Sound artist, Bill Fontana, known for his sound sculptures of Golden Gate Bridge, temple bells in Kyoto, and trees in Sequoia National Forest, creates a new work giving voice to the silenced bells of Notre Dame.

To create his new work, Silent Echoes, Fontana attached seismic accelerometers—sensors designed to detect vibrations—to each of its ten bells of Notre Dame. As the bells reverberate in response to the ambient sounds of Paris—rain, the calls of birds, the noise of the street—the live feed is transmitted to a series of speakers at the Centre Pompidou creating a haunting, immersive sound sculpture. Silent Echoes debuted at the Centre Pompidou in June, where, on the fifth floor terrace of the museum, visitors stood awash in the acoustics of the bells, with the towers of Notre Dame in view just across the Seine.

Alisa Carroll of the podcast Alcôve interviewed Bill Fontana in San Francisco and Davia Nelson spoke with him in Paris before the opening of the exhibition.

This story was produced by Jim McKee.  Sound design and mixing by Jim McKee. Special thanks to Alisa Carroll and Jim McKee for sharing this piece with The Kitchen Sisters Present.

The Kitchen Sisters Present is produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Nikki Silva & Davia Nelson) with Brandi Howell and Nathan Dalton. For more info and stories visit kitchensisters.org

The Kitchen Sisters Present is part of Radiotopia from PRX - a curated network of independent, creator owned podcasts.

Over 7000 hours of interviews, oral histories, songs, field recordings, along with photographs, notebooks, journals, and research material created by The Kitchen Sisters has recently been acquired by The Library of Congress where it will be preserved and made accessible to researchers, students, other producers and the general public into the future.

Alexis Madrigal of KQED’s Forum talks with Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva about the collection and their 40 year history of producing audio stories together. Stories featured and discussed include The Packhorse Librarians of Eastern Kentucky; The Birth of Rice A Roni; The Mohawk Iron Workers at the Twin Towers; and The Homobile—a Story of Transportation, Civil Rights and Glitter.

The Kitchen Sisters have been working together since 1979 creating audio stories for NPR, public broadcast and their Kitchen Sisters’ Present podcast. They are the producers, with Jay Allison, of the Peabody Award winning series Lost & Found Sound and The Sonic Memorial Project, the DuPont Columbia Award winning series Hidden Kitchens, the NPR series Hidden World of Girls, and The Keepers, Stories of Activist Archivists, Rogue Librarians, Historians, Curators, Collectors — keepers of the culture and the free flow of information.

The Kitchen Sisters Productions is supported by National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, California Humanities, Creative Work Fund, Robert Sillins Family Foundation, TRA Fund, Kaleta A. Doolin Foundation, Franklin Legacy Foundation, Susie Tompkins Buell Fund, and Listener Contributions to The Kitchen Sisters Productions.   The Kitchen Sisters Present is part of PRX’s Radiotopia podcast network.

Edmond Richardson is an audio producer for Uncuffed, a KALW podcast produced by people in prison. Recently, Edmond and his love, Avelina, got married inside San Quentin and Uncuffed produced this story.

The Kitchen Sisters are great admirers of KALW’s Uncuffed podcast and are proud to share this story. KALW, San Francisco, has led rehabilitative classes in audio production inside San Quentin State Prison since 2012, and Solano Prison since 2018. Their mission is to provide media training to people in the carceral system. Radio producers from KALW visit the prisons to teach classes in audio production, and to help edit the stories. Audio engineers at KALW do some final polishing before it goes out to the world.

Special thanks to the Uncuffed crew at San Quentin Prison: Tommy Shakur Ross, Edmond Richardson, Thanh Tran, and me, Greg Eskridge. Thanks to the team at KALW Public Radio: Ninna Gaensler-Debs, Angela Johnston, Sonia Paul, James Rowlands, Andrew Stelzer, Ben Trefny, Eli Wirtschafter, and sound designer, Eric Maserati "E" Abercrombie. Theme music by David Jassy, the Swedish phenom. And thanks to the staff at San Quentin Prison who make this possible: Mr. Skylar Brown, Ms. Madeline Tenney, and Lieutenant Sam Robinson, who approved this episode. We fact checked everything to the best of our ability. And a special thanks to Avelina and Carla for being a part of this episode. And Edmond and Avelina, Uncuffed wishes you all the happiness in your marriage. Thanks for listening.

Uncuffed gets support from the California Arts Council and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

The Kitchen Sisters Present is produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva) with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell. We are part of the Radiotopia podcast network from PRX. Special thanks to the National Endowment for the Arts and contributors to the non profit Kitchen Sisters Productions.