This Thanksgiving, KUNC is delivering a cornucopia of programs for your holiday table. Make sure to catch favorites like Turkey Confidential and Giving Thanks, and start new traditions with a visit from the American History Guys. Spend Thanksgiving with your KUNC family — special programming kicks off November 24 at 9:00 am.
You can find Alice's Restaurant on its new home on 105.5 The Colorado Sound, beginning at noon on Thanksgiving Day.
4:00 am -Morning Edition
9:00 am - Backstory with the American History Guys – A History of Thanksgiving
When we sit down to Thanksgiving dinner, we think we know what we're commemorating. After all, the story of Pilgrims and Indians breaking bread together is one of the first history lessons many of us had.
But if an actual Pilgrim were to attend your Thanksgiving dinner, chances are he'd be stunned, and not a little disgusted, by what transpired there.
On this holiday edition of BackStory, the History Guys search for the true roots of Thanksgiving. They discover that the holiday we celebrate today begins not with the Pilgrims, but with the Victorians, who in the midst of the Civil War sought a national holiday honoring home and family.
But did Thanksgiving strengthen the Union, as its proponents had hoped? What relation do Indians have to the holiday in reality - and in myth?
And what does football have to do with any of it?
10:00 am - Turkey Confidential
Help is on the way for Thanksgiving cooks, kitchen helpers and dinner guests on this, the biggest cooking day of the year.
Lynne Rossetto Kasper, award-winning host of public radio's national food show The Splendid Table, will be available to answer listener questions throughout the live, two-hour program. Joining Lynne for the broadcast this year will be:
- James Beard Award-winning TV personality, chef, writer and teacher Andrew Zimmern
- StoryCorps founder Dave Isay
- Internationally renowned chef, author and TV host Jacques Pépin
- Food enthusiast, TV personality and journalist Nigella Lawson
12:00 pm - With Good Reason: Giving Thanks
In this special holiday episode, we're taking a look at the indigenous side of a Thanksgiving table. Minnesota Chef Sean Sherman (the Sioux Chef) gives us a taste of pre-contact American Indian cuisine. We'll also take a look at the complicated history of the most well-known reservation food, fry-bread. And talk with American Indian scholars Anton Treuer and Karenne Wood about their food traditions.An oldie but goodie from our archives… With Good Reason invites you to a traditional Thanksgiving meal, but nearly everything on the table is grown, made, or brewed within 100 miles of our studios in Charlottesville, Virginia.
1:00 pm - Five Farms: Harvest
Autumn is harvest time. That means Iowa corn and soybeans; fruit dried in the California sun; greens, beans, and potatoes; slaughtered hogs and beef trucked to market. It also means Thanksgiving turkeys. Harvest follows the families to the grain elevator, the farmers markets and, in a welcome break from work, the State Fair. It's the time of summing up after the long growing season --- the time to decide whether the gamble of early spring planting season has paid off.
2:00 pm - All Things Considered / Marketplace
7:00 pm - Giving Thanks
With music and stories for Thanksgiving, host John Birge creates a thoughtful, contemporary reflection on the meaning of the holiday. Between the music, no clichés about pilgrims and pumpkin pies. Instead, it's a contemporary celebration of the spirit of Gratitude.
Whether you are early in the kitchen, on the road to a family gathering, or relaxing after the feast, Giving Thanks provides the perfect atmosphere for Thanksgiving: the warmth of great music, and truly memorable words.
