The Kitchen Sisters are a duo of sound and radio creators, Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva. They connected in 1979 creating a variety of series including Hidden Kitchens, Lost & Found Sound, The Making Of…, The Hidden World of Girls, The Sonic Memorial Project, and The Keepers for NPR , KQED and AIR, and of course their podcast. Their sound work has won a duPont-Columbia Award, two Peabody Awards, and three Audie Awards. Hidden Kitchens: Stories Recipes and More, their book, has been nominated for a James Beard Award and was selected as the New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

They attended the RPTF conference and spoke at the Library of Congress as their “Accidental Archive” of over 7,000 hours of recordings, their collection of production photos and logs, and even select personal journals are being donated to the Library of Congress sound archive.

“Radio to me is a living thing.” -Sam Phillips

The above clip is from one of their talks at the Library of Congress with Francis McDormand, though sadly not the RPTF recording with Stacey Copeland. However, this selection was also presented at the RPTF Conference. Focusing on the segment “WHER–1000 Beautiful Watts” from Lost & Found Sound, this section asks us to actively “close listen” to an introduction around the discovery of the materials and a short segment of the program.