In 2004, we opened up a phone line on NPR asking people to tell us about their Hidden Kitchens— secret, underground, below the radar cooking, and how people come together through food. One caller told us about immigrants and homeless people, who didn't have an official kitchens, using the George Foreman Grill to make meals and a home. Did George Foreman know about this? We called him up to find out.

George Foreman the legendary two-time World Heavy Weight Champion and Olympic gold medalist talked with us about growing up hungry and violent, about his time in the Job Corps, about his career and comeback, about becoming a preacher, and his work with kids. “Feed them,” he says. “Hunger makes you angry.”

In honor of George Foreman who left this earth March 21, 2025, The Kitchen Sisters Present an Unexpected Kitchen: The George Foreman Grill and Beyond.

"No one should be given up on. You never lose your citizenship as a human being just because you've been in trouble." - George Foreman

The Kitchen Sisters Present is produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva) with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell. Thanks to Laura Folger, Kate Volkman and Melissa Robbins for production help on this story. And thanks to our Hidden Kitchens series co-producer, Jay Allison. Special thanks to the National Endowment for the Arts. The Kitchen Sisters Present is part of the Radiotopia network from PRX.

In 1981 The Kitchen Sisters interviewed Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston for a story about life on the homefront during World War II. Jeanne told stories of her childhood growing up in Manzanar, a hastily built detention camp surrounded by barbed wire and armed guard towers in the midst of the Owens Valley in the Mojave desert, where Japanese Americans were incarcerated for 3 years during World War II.

Jeanne was 7 years old when her father, a commercial fisherman, was taken away with no explanation by the FBI and imprisoned in Bismarck, North Dakota. The family had no idea where he had been taken or why.

Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston's book, Farewell to Manzanar, written in collaboration with her husband James D. Houston, has become a curriculum staple in classrooms across the nation and is one of the first ways many are introduced to this dark period of American history.

In listening to this interview recorded 44 years ago we are struck by how Jeanne's memories of those years — the sense of fear, of families being separated, of innocent people being terrorized, hunted — resonate with what is happening in our country today.

Jeanne died last year at the age of 90.

Tom Luddy was a quiet titan of cinema. He presided over the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley for some 10 years, co-founded and directed The Telluride Film Festival for nearly 50 years, produced some 14 movies, match-made dozens of international love affairs, and foraged for the most beautiful, political, important, risky films and made sure there was a place for them to be seen in the world. And that the people making this powerful work were known and knew each other.

Tom Luddy with his photographic memory, his infinite rolodex, his encyclopedic knowledge of global cinema and his catalytic ability to connect people, caused the most unusual of collaborations to come to be.

Tom championed the French New Wave, the Czech New Wave, Brazilian cinema novo, dissident Soviet cinema, directors Francis Coppola, Jean-Luc Godard, Werner Herzog, Agnes Varda, Les Blank, Paul Schrader, Agnieszka Holland, Barry Jenkins, Laurie Anderson and countless others.

Tom passed away on February 13, 2023. There’s a giant hole in the screen without him here. But his DNA is in the hundreds of filmmakers, musicians, writers and activists he nurtured and inspired.

The Tom Luddy Connection: The Man, The Movies, The Rolodex was produced by Evan Jacoby and The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva) in collaboration with Brandi Howell and Nathan Dalton. Mixed by Jim McKee.