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Playlist: Thanksgiving 2020

Compiled By: PRX Editors

Caption: PRX default Playlist image
Curated Playlist

New or updated for 2020.

For even more Turkey Day favorites, check out our classic picks here.

The Keepers: Archiving the Now with Host Frances McDormand

From The Kitchen Sisters | Part of the The Keepers series | 54:25

The Keepers: Archiving the Now — a new hour-long special from The Kitchen Sisters and PRX with host, Academy Award-winner Frances McDormand. Stories of can-do people. Must-do people. Get-it-done people. People who are grappling with the now, with where we are and where we’ve got to get to. As the world we all knew unravels and communities begin to re-shape themselves, The Kitchen Sisters have been gleaning, looking for those who have something to offer during these uncharted times. People who rebuild, restore, reinvent. Nobody showed them the path, they cut it themselves. Striking stories of grit, hope and possibility.

Frances-mcdormand-by-alison-rosa_small The Keepers: Archiving the Now — a new hour-long special from The Kitchen Sisters and PRX with host, Academy Award-winner Frances McDormand. Stories of can-do people. Must-do people. Get-it-done people. People who are grappling with the now, with where we are and where we’ve got to get to. As the world we all knew unravels and communities begin to re-shape themselves The Kitchen Sisters have been gleaning, looking for those who have something to offer during these uncharted times. People who rebuild, restore, reinvent. Like Gert McMullin, one of the first people to put a stitch on the AIDS Memorial Quilt, who is now sewing masks for healthcare workers fighting Covid, using leftover fabric from the quilt. The Climate Underground, former Vice President Al Gore and food activist Alice Waters convene a gathering of farmers, scientists, soil visionaries, chefs, students, activists and policymakers on Al Gore’s farm in Tennessee contemplating the role of soil, food and regenerative agriculture in combatting the climate crisis. Youth on Fire: The International Congress of Youth Voices, founded by writer Dave Eggers — 137 youth activists from 37 countries coming together to form a global network of young visionaries. Louis Jones: Detroit Field Archivist, who has been building and caring for the largest labor archive in North America. And host Frances McDormand speaks of her new film, Nomadland, about the new nomads — itinerant workers living in DIY vans, moving across America. Striking stories of grit, hope and possibility.


Frances McDormand Keepers Bio

Frances McDormand, the Academy, Tony and Emmy Award-winning actress, hosts The Keepers: Archiving the Now, a new radio special from The Kitchen Sisters. McDormand, whose new film Nomadland received the top prize at the Venice Film Festival and will be released in December 2020, has received two Best Actress Academy Awards for her performances in Fargo and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and was a Producer of the Emmy Award-winning HBO mini-series, Olive Kitteridge for which she received an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress. Frances has appeared in some six Coen Brothers films as well as the films of Wes Anderson, Cameron Crowe, Lisa Cholodenko among others. This is Frances' fifth collaboration with The Kitchen Sisters.  

A 2020 Thanksgiving

From WHYY | Part of the The Pulse Specials series | 59:00

Thanksgiving usually means we’re going big — way over the top. Twice the size bird we could possibly eat; more side dishes than the table can hold; and, of course, so much pie. But so many things will be different this year because of the pandemic. Our celebrations will be smaller, and our travel plans limited. We’ll try to be grateful for what we have, while feeling the pain of all we have lost. On this special episode of The Pulse, we explore the traditions of Thanksgiving through a scientific lens, and discuss how the coronavirus will impact the holiday. We hear stories about the neuroscience of gratitude — and how it can help us through grief, how the pandemic has impacted our food systems, and what people are doing to stabilize the supply chain. We also make a visit to a multi-generational cranberry farm, and hear about a tough decision over whether to cross state lines — not for turkey, but for love.

Playing
A 2020 Thanksgiving
From
WHYY

3000x3000_itunes_thepulse_1_small PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS:

Holiday travel
To travel or not to travel — that’s the dilemma facing millions of Americans ahead of this year’s Thanksgiving holiday. Health officials are urging the public to stay put, but as Alan Yu reports, the decision of whether to travel has become an agonizing one for people across the country. 

Cranberry farming in the Pine Barrens
Heavy usage of fertilizers, pesticides, and water in cranberry farming can pose a major threat to local ecosystems. But when it comes to families who have been cultivating the berries for generations in the New Jersey Pinelands, Steph Yin reports a successful business and environmental stewardship may go hand-in-hand.

Losing a loved one
For thousands of families in the U.S., this Thanksgiving will mark the first holiday without a loved one who died from the coronavirus. Mourning, like celebrations, is usually full of rituals: saying goodbye, and remembering the life of a person as a community.  But Ximena Conde reports the pandemic is changing how people grieve.

Gratitude
Jacqueline Mattis of Rutgers University researches positive emotions, and she says making time to feel gratitude is especially important this year.

Stuffed
Overeating is a Turkey Day tradition — but what exactly does it do to our bodies? To find out, we talked with Atlanta gastroenterologist Earl Campbell III about the nuts and bolts of digestion … from one end to the other.

Rethinking our food system
The pandemic has exposed weaknesses in our food system. Nate Mook of World Central Kitchen talks about the symbolic meaning of a hot plate of delicious food and connecting the dots to get meals from people who produce it to those in need. 

The Thanksgiving Show

From Christopher Kimball's Milk Street Radio | Part of the Milk Street Specials series | 53:00

We’re celebrating Thanksgiving with friends old and new. Andrea Nguyen shares her family traditions, inspired by the Vietnamese Moon Festival; pie experts Chris Taylor and Paul Arguin put a new spin on classic desserts; Grant Barrett and Martha Barnette give us a language lesson on Thanksgiving Day; Rachael Ray, Maneet Chauhan, Maangchi, David Lebovitz and more chefs, authors and friends recount their Thanksgiving tales of disaster, culinary wisdom and family memories; and Dan Pashman breaks down the pros and cons of hosting a virtual Thanksgiving.

Msl_radio_logo_cobrand_prx_small We’re celebrating Thanksgiving with friends old and new. Andrea Nguyen shares her family traditions, inspired by the Vietnamese Moon Festival; pie experts Chris Taylor and Paul Arguin put a new spin on classic desserts; Grant Barrett and Martha Barnette give us a language lesson on Thanksgiving Day; Rachael Ray, Maneet Chauhan, Maangchi, David Lebovitz and more chefs, authors and friends recount their Thanksgiving tales of disaster, culinary wisdom and family memories; and Dan Pashman breaks down the pros and cons of hosting a virtual Thanksgiving.

Thanks and Prayers

From Wind & Rhythm | 59:30

This week on Wind & Rhythm we find things to be thankful for and prayers for all the rest with music by Kenneth Downie and Dorthy Gates, right here at the gathering place for people who love band music.

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We are nearing the end to what has been widely regarded as… well… a crummy year.  I’m sure there are things from this past year that we can all be thankful for, and I’m also pretty sure there a quite a few things that a lot of us feel could use a little more prayer.  And so for this Thanksgiving Day episode, we have Thanks and Prayers, with music by Kenneth Downie, Charles-Marie Widor, William Himes, Eiji Suzuki, Nigel Clarke, Dorothy Gates, and Dame Evelyn Glennie.  It’s a way to come together for the good and the things we wish could be better.  And we’ll have all of that and more, right here, at the gathering place for people who love band music, Wind & Rhythm.

Best of the Best: The 2020 Third Coast Broadcast (Series)

Produced by Third Coast International Audio Festival

Third Coast’s yearly ode to audio storytelling is back! Featuring the winners of the 20th annual Third Coast / Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Competition, the best audio stories of the year offer a beautiful, stirring portrait of 2020.

Best of the Best is a four-part broadcast. Each hour of the series can be aired independently or alongside the rest, and in any order.

Most recent piece in this series:

Best of the Best 2020: Letters to a Young Poet

From Third Coast International Audio Festival | Part of the Best of the Best: The 2020 Third Coast Broadcast series | 59:00

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Best of the Best is an annual ode to audio storytelling, taking listeners on a journey through the full breadth of what’s possible in stories made from sound.


This hour of the program showcases two of the winning stories from the 20th annual Third Coast / Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Competition. Host Palace Shaw introduces the winners of the Best Documentary Gold and Silver Awards, plus a behind-the-scenes interview with producer Axel Kacoutié.


Stories featured in this hour:


How to Remember [full story], produced by Axel Kacoutié and edited by Eleanor McDowall for Short Cuts from BBC Radio 4.
Winner of the 2020 Best Documentary: Gold Award
How to Remember is sonically inspired by producer Axel Kacoutié's travels to his home country of Côte d'Ivoire, where belonging and authenticity dominated his mind. This work is an attempt to reconcile and accept (in seven steps/scenes) all the parts of he’s either wrongly internalised or intuitively known to be true. 


Borders Between Us [full story], produced by Saidu Tejan-Thomas Jr. and Jay Allison for Transom.org.
Winner of the 2020 Best Documentary: Silver Award
Saidu Tejan-Thomas is a young poet. For a long time, he had a story he needed to tell: an homage and apology to his mother. It's a tragic love story driven by the tangled search for a better life. It's personal for sure, but set against the universal perils of immigration - in Saidu's case, from Sierra Leone in West Africa - but by extension, from anywhere. Borders Between Us uses Saidu's poems as narrative drivers, reveals, and resolutions. These are not easy tasks for poems.


Additional Information

All of the winning stories from the 2020 TC/RHDF Competition can be heard in their entirety at ThirdCoastFestival.org.

Best of the Best is a four-part series. Each hour of the program can be aired independently or alongside the rest, and in any order. All four hours of the program are 59’00” in length, with two minute-long breaks at approximately 20 minutes after and before the hour.

This program is made possible with support from the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation.