September 4, 2026 - Week-in-Review: Gloria Steinem, Cassandra Wilson, and Making MapQuest Great Again

Callie Crossley is joined by Lisa Simmons, Artistic and Executive Director of the Roxbury International Film Festival and program manager at Mass Cultural Council, and Maurice Emmanuel Parent, award-winning actor, Professor of the Practice, Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies  at Tufts University, and Producing Artistic Director at Front Porch Arts Collective. They go over some of the week’s biggest arts and culture stories, which include: Gloria Steinem, the journalist and feminist leader who helped found Ms. magazine and pushed women’s rights into the center of American public life, died this week at 92. Her career stretched from an undercover investigation of New York’s Playboy Club to decades of advocacy for reproductive freedom and political equality. Cassandra Wilson, the Grammy-winning singer who moved through jazz, blues, folk, country and R&B with equal ease, died this week at 70. Albums including Blue Light ’Til Dawn and New Moon Daughter made her one of the defining jazz singers of the 1990s. how do you make MapQuest great again? By not making Lake Ontario great again. After President Trump pushed to rename it “Lake America,” MapQuest refused to follow directions—and the old-school navigation app shot to number one. The Metropolitan Museum of Art canceled its planned John Galliano retrospective after Jewish leaders, donors and New York politicians objected to honoring the designer, whose career was derailed by racist and antisemitic outbursts. Galliano withdrew from the exhibition, and the Met agreed to cancel it. Boston Ballet received a $10 million anonymous endowment contribution, the largest in the company’s history. The money permanently funds the artistic director’s position in honor of Mikko Nissinen, now in his 25th year leading the company, and marks a major step toward Boston Ballet’s goal of building a $100 million endowment.