217 - Lena Richard - America's Unknown Celebrity Chef

The Kitchen Sisters Present

The Kitchen Sisters & Radiotopia

Society & Culture

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 5 September 2023

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When Lena Richard cooked her first chicken on television, she beat Julia Child to the screen by over a decade. At a time when most African American women cooks worked behind swinging kitchen doors, Richard claimed her place as a culinary authority, broadcasting in the living rooms of New Orleans’s elite white families. She was an entrepreneur, educator, author, and an icon—and her legacy lives on in her recipes.

Produced by Sidedoor: A Podcast from the Smithsonian.

Special thanks to producer Lizzie Peabody and the Smithsonian for sharing this story with The Kitchen Sisters Present.

The Kitchen Sisters Present is produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva) with Brandi Howell and Nathan Dalton. We are part of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated network of podcasts created by independent producers—some of the best storytelling out there.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Radio Topia.
0:02.2	Welcome to the Kitchen Sisters present, P-R-X.
0:05.6	We're the Kitchen Sisters, Davian Nelson and Nikki Silva.
0:09.6	The fourth season of Radio Topia's Weird TV Rewatch podcast
0:14.4	in the scenes behind Blaine's site has just launched.
0:18.2	Both Time Magazine and New York Magazine
0:20.7	have called the show one of the best podcasts of 2023
0:24.5	and the New York Times called it, quote,
0:27.0	silly and terrific.
0:29.0	If you haven't listened, it's just like those other TV
0:31.7	rewatch podcasts where former stars of some TV show
0:35.4	rewatch it and chat.
0:37.1	Except within the scenes behind Blaine's site,
0:40.3	the TV show never existed.
0:42.7	It's all made up.
0:43.8	It's a surreal satire of TV Hollywood and podcasting itself.
0:48.9	Here's a clip from last season with the hosts
0:51.4	promoing another new podcast.
0:53.7	In March 2023, five college students
0:57.1	went missing from a van in the Arizona desert.
1:01.2	Where they were found will blow you away.
1:04.8	New from Radio Topia in conjunction with Wondery Media,
	...

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