The Culture Show Podcast

Poet, essayist and Mellon Foundation President Elizabeth Alexander joins us to talk about her new book, Signals Across Vast Distances: Essays and Tales, which moves through poetry, art, history, family and public life. Alexander appears tonight with former U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith at the Brattle Theatre in an event presented by Harvard Book Store.At Goodnow Farms Chocolate in Sudbury, Monica and Tom Rogan trace flavor all the way back to the cacao bean — sourcing directly from growers, roasting each origin differently and even pressing their own cocoa butter. The award-winning chocolate makers join us to explain how one ingredient can yield notes of berries, honey, coffee and toasted marshmallow. Grammy Award-winning and Tony-nominated actor Patrick Page has made a career of getting inside the minds of some very bad men. In All the Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the Villain, he moves through more than a dozen Shakespeare characters to examine how the playwright’s villains became increasingly, unsettlingly human. Page brings the solo show to Boston October 28 through November 1 at the Emerson Paramount Center, presented by ArtsEmerson.

Joyce Kulhawik: The Emmys have been handed out; now comes the verdict. Emmy Award-winning arts and entertainment critic Joyce Kulhawik joins us to sort through the winners, surprises, snubs and moments worth remembering — including a Massachusetts victory for Boston Casting’s Angela Peri and Lisa Lobel.Actor Will Poulter and director Adam Meeks: In Union County, Will Poulter plays a young man navigating addiction, recovery and an Ohio court program where a relapse could mean prison. Writer-director Adam Meeks made the film in partnership with a real recovery court, casting people from the community alongside professional actors. Poulter and Meeks join us ahead of special advance screenings and an in-person Q&A September 15 at the Coolidge Corner Theatre. The film opens there September 18.Robin Dawson: Alice Cooper, Joe Perry and the Hollywood Vampires are among the names coming to Boston for this year’s Boston Film Festival. Executive Director Robin Dawson previews a lineup spanning rock and roll, baseball, independent film and new work from emerging filmmakers. The 42nd Boston Film Festival runs September 17–21.

Boston Architectural College President Mahesh Daas looks at two architectural experiments in how much change a place can absorb: centuries-old Japanese timber buildings being dismantled and rebuilt an ocean away, including here in Massachusetts, and a new skyscraper redrawing Paris’ famously restrained skyline.Before Dreamgirls reached Broadway, Boston audiences encountered Jennifer Holliday as she was still finding the role of Effie White at the Shubert Theatre. Forty-five years later, the Tony and Grammy Award winner returns to that Boston connection as the Boston Arts Academy Foundation’s 2026 Music Honoree. Holliday will be celebrated at the Foundation’s HONORS gala on October 22 at MGM Music Hall at Fenway.The Handel and Haydn Society begins its 212th season with a new President and CEO. Acclaimed bassoonist and longtime Boston arts leader Lecolion Washington joins us to talk about taking the helm of one of the city’s oldest cultural institutions, reaching new audiences and the season ahead, which opens October 2 and 4 with The Art of Living at Symphony Hall.  All are welcome to join a webinar hosted by Lecolion Washington and H+H Artistic Director Jonathan Cohen September  15 at 6pm. This "Beyond the Baton" webinar is free and open to all. Lecolion and Jonathan will explore Handel’s L’Allegro, its lasting resonance, and what to listen for when H+H performs it at Symphony Hall on Oct 2 and 4. Please register here.

On this week’s Culture Show, Jared Bowen, Callie Crossley and Joyce Kulhawik mark the 25th anniversary of September 11. They look at how artists responded to the attacks and to the years that followed, from 25th Hour and United 93 to The Reluctant Fundamentalist. They also consider which works have endured, how public remembrance has changed, and what 25 years of distance now allows us to see about September 11 and its place in American culture.

Boston-based a cappella group Ball in the House joins Jared Bowen for an in-studio performance ahead of its September 11 show at Off Cabot in Beverly. The five-member group — Dylan Melville, Oscar Hall, Tyler Nordin, Wallace Thomas and Jon Ryan — performs R&B, soul and pop and has shared stages with artists including The Beach Boys, Blondie and Lionel Richie. Learn more about Ball in the House.Back-to-school season sends Kiernan Schmitt back to Boston’s college campuses — not for class, but for the architectural oddities, forgotten traditions and bits of lore hiding in plain sight. Schmitt, author of Secret Boston: An Unusual Guide, joins Jared for a tour of some of the region’s best-kept campus secrets. He also co-hosts the Out of Office: A Travel Podcast with Ryan Davis.Boston comedy mainstay Tony V joins Jared to look back on more than four decades of stand-up and screen work — from Boston comedy clubs to appearances in Seinfeld, The Town, The Heat and CODA. He also previews upcoming performances, including Boston Funny Live at the Royal Sonesta in Cambridge on September 26 and Tony V at the Sea Crest Beach Resort on Cape Cod on October 17.

Poet Steve Biondolillo, author of Macaroni and Cheese Manifesto: A Spiritual Memoir in Verse and founder of the National Baseball Poetry Festival, joins Jared ahead of the 25th anniversary of September 11th. He discusses and performs “480 B.C.,” his poem linking the Battle of Thermopylae with the sacrifice of first responders and service members in 2001. Learn more about Steve BiondolilloScottish quartet Cantrip has spent more than 25 years pushing traditional music through funk, metal, bluegrass, swing and klezmer. Fiddler Alasdair White and founding member Dan Houghton join Jared ahead of tonight’s album-release concert at Passim.Political strategist Sarah Longwell, CEO and publisher of The Bulwark and host of The Focus Group podcast, joins Jared to discuss How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter at a Time, drawing on years of focus groups to examine persuasion, voters and political change. She’ll appear tomorrow night at a sold-out Harvard Book Store event with Bill Kristol.

Emmy-nominated Puerto Rican cuatrista, composer and singer Fabiola Méndez joins Jared Bowen ahead of Berklee’s inaugural Homecoming Block Party, September 19 near Fenway. The Berklee alum, who has brought the cuatro from her own compositions to stages alongside Bad Bunny, is part of a lineup that also includes Susan Tedeschi, Tiwa Savage, Dogs in a Pile and Dreion.Boston Ballet Artistic Director Mikko Nissinen marks his 25th season with the company as it opens 2026–2027 with Fall Experience. He joins Jared Bowen to talk about a quarter-century of expanding Boston Ballet’s repertoire and international reach, upcoming performances in New York and Paris, and a $10 million gift in his honor—the largest endowment gift in the company’s history.America is in a pickle—and Jackson Cannon is putting the brine to work behind the bar. The ES Hospitality beverage director joins Jared Bowen to talk about the pickle boom and how vinegar, fermentation and pickle juice are finding their way into cocktails. His class, Dirty Talk: Brine & Pickles in Cocktails, is September 12 at Eastern Standard as part of Pickle Week, running September 8–13.

Patti Smith, National Book Award–winning author of “Just Kids,” joins The Culture Show to discuss her latest memoir, “Bread of Angels.” The book traces her imaginative postwar childhood, her life with Fred “Sonic” Smith, and the years of loss and renewal that shaped her return to writing and performance. Daniel Mendelsohn—Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities at Bard College, and frequent contributor of essays to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books where he is Editor-at-Large—discusses his new translation of Homer's “The Odyssey.” Three-time U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky joins The Culture Show to talk about retiring from Boston University where he has been a professor since 1989. 

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.

Tracy K. Smith,  former U.S. Poet Laureate discusses her book “Fear Less: Poetry in Perilous Times” — an invitation to listen, reflect, and let poetry guide us through uncertainty. Don Gillis and Ray Flynn join The Culture Show to discuss Gillis’ new book “The Battle for Boston: How Mayor Ray Flynn and Community Organizers Fought Racism and Downtown Power Brokers.” On June 5th at 6:00 Don Gillis will be at a book event at the Roslindale Public Library. To learn more go here.Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David McCullough spent decades helping Americans see their past in human terms. A new collection, “History Matters”, gathers his essays and speeches on why history endures — edited by his daughter Dorie McCullough Lawson and longtime collaborator Mike Hill. She joins us ahead of her American Ancestors Headquarters event today at 5 p.m. To learn more go here.  

Callie Crossley leads this month's  Wednesday Watch Party with GBH’s Jeremy Siegel, host of In Common, and Culture Show contributor Lisa Simmons, Artistic and Executive Director of the Roxbury International Film Festival and program manager at Mass Cultural Council. We're  revisiting Spike Lee’s landmark 1989 film Do the Right Thing. Set in Bed-Stuy on the hottest day of the summer, the film is funny, combative, exuberant and ultimately devastating, using blazing color, a restless camera and Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” to explore race, policing, neighborhood change, ownership and belonging. Nearly 40 years later, we consider what the film understands about the way prejudice builds through insults, resentments and competing claims to the same place — and why so much of what Lee put on screen remains recognizable today.

Bobbi Brown built a beauty empire on simplicity and self-expression. She joins The Culture Show to talk about her new book  “Still Bobbi,” where  she lays bare her lessons for  reinvention, resilience, and redefining beauty on her own terms.From there, actor, singer and entrepreneur Donnie Wahlberg. Familiar to millions as “Blue Bloods’” Detective Danny Reagan, he spent fourteen seasons solving crimes in New York City. Now Danny Reagan is back — but this time, he’s doing it Boston-style. “Blue Bloods” followed a multi-generational law-enforcement family. In "Boston Blue," Wahlberg once again steps into Reagan’s shoes — this time moving the New York detective to Wahlberg’s own hometown. He joins The Culture Show to talk about a new chapter in the “Blue Bloods” universe and about his homecoming. Finally, McGonagle’s Pub  landed a spot on “The New York Times” list of America’s best restaurants, making it the first Irish pub to get this national recognition. Chef Aidan McGee joins The Culture Show to talk about how he is reimagining pub fare. Aidan McGee is the chef patron of The Dubliner and McGonagle's P

A sweeping  drama on MASTERPIECE brings one of Britain’s most famous literary families back to the screen. In “The Forsytes,” actors Stephen Moyer and Jack Davenport play brothers Jolyon and James Forsyte, members of a wealthy Victorian dynasty whose fortunes can’t shield them from rivalry, ambition, and betrayal. To learn more go here.Then Fabiola Méndez is bringing the Puerto Rican cuatro to new audiences and bigger stages.,  The singer, composer, and bandleader joins Jared Bowen to discuss shaping a musical voice that has taken her from folk-rooted performance to the global stage alongside Bad Bunny. And Filmmaker and novelist John Sayles is back with “Crucible,” a new historical novel set in Henry Ford’s early-20th-century Detroit, where labor, power, and indu

Joyce Kulhawik joins Lisa Simmons, Artistic and Executive Director of the Roxbury International Film Festival, and Culture Show producer Kate Dellis for a look at some of the week’s biggest arts and culture stories, which included: Dolly Parton died this week at 80, leaving behind thousands of songs, 11 Grammys, more than 100 million records sold—and a philanthropic legacy that put hundreds of millions of books into the hands of children around the world. Tim Curry, the actor who turned Dr. Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show into one of cinema’s great cult characters, died this week at 80. His career also included indelible turns in Clue and It. Yayoi Kusama, whose polka dots, pumpkins and Infinity Mirror Rooms became some of contemporary art’s most recognizable images, died this month at 97 after a career spanning more than seven decades. After Boston Symphony Orchestra musicians unanimously authorized a strike, the players and management reached a new three-year contract that gives musicians greater influence over artistic planning and the choice of the orchestra’s next music director. Meta agreed to a $17.1 billion settlement over allegations that its platforms harmed young people. The deal could bring new restrictions for teenage users and as much as $516 million to Massachusetts for youth programs and mental-health services.

Christopher Rothko joins us to discuss his donation of his father’s 1934 Gloucester Harbor painting to the Cape Ann Museum and what the early work reveals about Mark Rothko before abstraction defined his career. He and his sister, Kate Rothko Prizel, will also appear at the museum’s Avery, Gottlieb & Rothko: By the SeaSymposium September 17 and 18.Filmmaker Ivy Meeropol joins us to discuss Ask E. Jean, her new documentary tracing E. Jean Carroll’s unconventional life, public voice and legal battle with Donald Trump. The film screens August 27 as part of the Nantucket Film Festival’s summer documentary series.Washington Post reporter Danielle Paquette went to a forest outside Warsaw, where Europeans spent 28 hours role-playing life in a fictional Ohio trailer park. Her story, “What I Learned About the American Dream From Europeans Pretending to Live in Ohio,” explores what the experience revealed about America’s mythology abroad.

Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Paula Cole joins The Culture Show to remember Dolly Parton, an artist she long admired and later collaborated with on “Heart Door.” Cole reflects on Parton’s songwriting, influence and the experience of making music with her. Cole’s new archival project, Sonic Memoir: Demos 1989–1998, arrives September 10. On September 18, she brings This Fire: 30 to the Wilbur, performing This Fire in full for its 30th anniversary.Polish resistance fighter Kazimierz Moczarski spent 255 days imprisoned with Jürgen Stroop, the Nazi officer who oversaw the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto. Translator Sean Gasper Bye joins us to discuss Conversations with an Executioner, now available in its complete English translation for the first time. He’ll be at JustBook-ish in Dorchester September 1.Worcester was once a corset capital, producing a garment that constricted women physically even as the industry helped liberate them in the workforce. Anne Marie Murphy joins us to discuss A Proper Fit: Women at Work in a City of Corsets and the women who designed, invented and built businesses around the garment.

Tony Award–winning director Diane Paulus, Artistic Director of the American Repertory Theater, joins us to talk about “Masquerade,” an immersive reimagining of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom of the Opera.” Set in a five-story former department store on West 57th Street, the production turns the Paris Opera House into a candlelit maze of salons, staircases, and hidden rooms, bringing audiences in masks inches from the show’s spectacle and romance. To learn more go here.James Beard Award-winning chef Ana Sortun has spent more than two decades making the flavors of Turkey and the Eastern Mediterranean part of Boston’s flavor profile. The chef behind Oleana, Sofra and Sarma joins us to talk about how travel changed the way she cooks and why vegetables, spices and communal eating remain central to her food.In her new book, Flora Culture: How Flowers Shape Our World, writer, designer and gardener Christin Geall follows flowers through a global industry in full bloom, tracing the labor, trade, traditions and environmental costs behind what we grow, give and bring into our homes. She’ll sign books at Edgartown Books on Martha’s Vineyard on Wednesday, August 26.

First up, Sally Mann. In 2015 renowned photographer Sally Mann published her memoir “Hold Still,” an inquiry into family history, the American South and the nature of creativity. Now, comes her book  “Art Work: On the Creative Life.”  It is laugh-out-loud funny. It’s irreverent. And it’s refreshingly practical as she guides the reader through her experience and process of being an artist. From there Jeremy Sewall, Chef and Owner of Row 34, shares recipes and stories from his new  “Everyday Chef: Simple Dishes for Family and Friends,” which illustrates how restaurant expertise can translate into simple, satisfying meals at home.Finally, Richard Smith. For more than a quarter century he embodied Henry David Thoreau—donning the waistcoat and straw hat, walking the paths of Concord, and giving voice to one of New England’s most enduring thinkers. Now, after 26 years of living deliberately in another man’s shoes, Smith has stepped  away from the role. Closing a chapter that made Thoreau’s world vividly real for thousands who visited Walden Pond.

Today on The Culture Show, it's our arts and culture Week in Review, featuring Callie Crossley and James Sullivan.Our topics include:Remembering Hayden Panettiere. The actress who became a household name at age 16 as a super-powered high schooler in Heroes and later as a country starlet on ABC’s “Nashville” has died at 36. We’ll look at her legacy, and the impact Hollywood has on young actors. From there, remembering Bill Rasmussen. He was the visionary founder of ESPN, who turned a $91 dollar incorporation fee into a multi-billion broadcasting behemoth. We’ll consider the legacy of the man who changed the way we talk, and think, about sports. Then, a musical giant fades to silence. The Columbia House Record Club, which raked in billions of dollars selling 10 records for a cent, is shuttering after 70 years. And, a royal return? Meghan and Harry are hopping back across the pond after six years stateside.Grammy-winning musician Phoebe Bridgers has a new album out, "Lost Weekend," and name drops a North Shore institution - the iconic Liberty Tree Mall in Danvers.And, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are on the move. After a six-year-stint in the U.S., the former royals plan to return to the UK. 

Larkin McPhee joins us to discuss I’ll See You in My Dreams: A Sister’s Memoir, about her younger brother Charles McPhee, the nationally syndicated radio host known as “The Dream Doctor,” and his battle with ALS. Years after his death, the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker turned to writing to bring her brother back to life on the page. McPhee appears at a free book talk at the Nantucket Atheneum on Friday, August 28 at 6 p.m.Independent curator Pedro Alonzo, a regular Culture Show contributor, returns for “AI: Actual Intelligence” with dispatches from a recent trip to Oaxaca. Tony Award nominee Melissa Errico has built a career bringing dramatic intelligence to the Great American Songbook. Now she turns to one of its most commanding interpreters: Barbra Streisand. Errico joins us to discuss The Streisand Effect, her homage to Streisand’s voice, wit and fearlessness, created with pianist and music director Billy Stritch. They bring the show to Provincetown Town Hall on Sunday, August 23 at 8:30 p.m. Errico also discusses her new album, I Can Dream, Can’t I? Illusions & Conversations from the Great American Songbook.

Boston Chief of Arts and Culture Joseph Zeal-Henry joins us to talk about what the city’s next cultural chapter might look like — from affordable rehearsal space and a new cultural infrastructure plan to the future of the Boston Center for the Arts. We’ll also look at LEXICON, the new 23-foot installation at the Boston Public Library that brings art, engineering and public space together.MassArt president Mary Grant returns for “AI: Actual Intelligence.” This month, we consider Norman Rockwell and the American story at 250 through the Norman Rockwell Museum’s sweeping new exhibition, American Stories: From Revolution to Rockwell. Plus, new research suggests that even 10 minutes of drawing can help calm the nervous system.Executive Chef of Union Oyster House Rico DiFronzo joins us to mark the 200th anniversary of Boston’s oldest continuously operating restaurant, taking us through the hallowed history of the beloved Blackstone Block establishment and offering some pearls of wisdom as to the art of the shuck. 

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Richard Russo joins us to discuss his new novel, Under the Falls, about a rock star returning to the struggling upstate New York town he fled as a teenager — and confronting the resentment, loyalties and unfinished business he left behind. Russo appears tonight at 6 p.m. with Tom Perrotta at the Cambridge Public Library, in an event presented by Harvard Book Store. The event is sold out, but a standby line will be available.James Beard Award-winning chef Barbara Lynch built one of Boston’s most influential restaurant groups before closing her remaining restaurants in 2024. Now she’s working on a much more intimate scale. Lynch joins us after hosting a pair of 12-person dinners at her Manchester-by-the-Sea studio, part of a new venture that includes private dinners, recipe subscriptions and culinary travel.And for our recurring series “AI: Actual Intelligence,” Imari Paris Jeffries, president and CEO of Embrace Boston and co-chair of Everyone 250, returns with news about keeping the energy of the World Cup alive after the tournament's end, as well as former Celtic Jaylen Brown's promise to maintain his connections to Boston area nonprofits that help the community.

Paula Cole joins us to mark 30 years of her landmark album This Fire. The Grammy-winning singer-songwriter reflects on songs including “I Don’t Want to Wait” and “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?,” and on returning to the album three decades later. Her This Fire: 30 tour brings the Rockport-raised artist back to Massachusetts for a September 18 show at The Wilbur.Boston Globe TV and pop culture critic Chris Vognar looks at the changing face of the celebrity interview. As traditional late night loses its hold on audiences, shows including Hot Ones, SubwayTakes and Chicken Shop Date are finding new ways to get famous people talking. We discuss Vognar’s latest piece on how YouTube is reinventing the talk-show format.Contemporary Climate Gallery founder James LaMarca joins us ahead of Working Coast – Below the Line, a Fort Point exhibition featuring three emerging Boston-area artists exploring New England’s working waterfront through painting and sculpture. The show runs August 26–30 at the FPAC Art Space at the Envoy Hotel.

Jared Bowen is joined by Culture Show contributor Lisa Simmons, Artistic and Executive Director of the Roxbury International Film Festival, and GBH’s Jeremy Siegel, host of In Common, for a look at some of the week’s biggest arts and culture stories. Before Anthony Bourdain became the celebrated chef, writer and world traveler we knew, he was a cocky 19-year-old who landed at the bottom of a Provincetown restaurant kitchen. The new film Tony revisits that formative summer, with The Holdovers breakout Dominic Sessa playing the future culinary icon. Nearly 30 years after the murder of Tupac Shakur, a memoir has become central evidence in the case against Duane “Keffe D” Davis. Compton Street Legend placed Davis near the center of the events surrounding the killing. Now his lawyers argue that the swagger, exaggeration and street cred that helped sell the book shouldn’t be mistaken for truth. In Wales, Harry Potter fans forced a multimillion-dollar power cable to change course after its planned route threatened the beach where Dobby the house-elf is memorialized. The twist: the rerouted cable now passes closer to actual Bronze Age burial remains. And when is it okay to give up on a book? Goodreads has added a dedicated “Did Not Finish” shelf, giving new life to an old readerly debate over whether abandoning a book is sensible judgment—or simply quitting too soon.

Valerie Fridland, sociolinguist and professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, joins us to talk about her new book, Why We Talk Funny: The Real Story Behind Our Accents—from how accents develop and change to what our speech can reveal about identity, belonging and the assumptions we make about one another.Philip Kennicott, Pulitzer Prize-winning culture critic for The Washington Post, discusses the paper’s ambitious project, The 25 most influential works of American culture, tracing 250 years through everything from Thomas Paine and Jackson Pollock to blue jeans, Thriller and Doom.Jane Eaglen, Grammy-winning soprano, New England Conservatory faculty member and president of the Boston Wagner Society, returns for “AI: Actual Intelligence” following the Society’s 2026 American Wagner Festival to talk Wagner, singing and the latest stories from the world of classical music.

Judy Collins joins us ahead of her “Sweet Judy Blue Eyes: Farewell Tour”stop at Tanglewood on August 30, co-starring Mary Chapin Carpenter and Rosanne Cash, with special guest Amanda Shires. Collins discusses “Both Sides Now,” interpreting other writers’ songs and writing her own material.Mahesh Daas, president of the Boston Architectural College, returns for “AI: Actual Intelligence” to talk about how cities can adapt to increasingly extreme summer heat—from shade and trees to water, street design and lessons from places that have lived with punishing temperatures for centuries.The 116th annual Fisherman’s Feast returns to Boston’s North End August 13–16. Domenic Strazzullo, president of the Madonna del Soccorso Society, which organizes the Feast, and The Boston Guido, one of this year’s Best Meatball Competition judges, join Jared to preview four days of processions, food, the famed Flight of the Angel and Best Meatball Competition.

For decades, E. Jean Carroll dispensed advice as a journalist, television personality and Elle columnist. Then she took Donald Trump to court—and won twice. Director Ivy Meeropol joins us to discuss Ask E. Jean, her new documentary looking beyond the courtroom at Carroll’s unconventional life, career and refusal to be silenced. Ask E. Jean screens August 11 at 6 p.m. at Water’s Edge Cinema in Provincetown, followed by a Q&A with Meeropol, and August 27 as part of the Nantucket Film Festival’s NFF NOW Summer Doc Series.Revere’s century-old McKinley School is being transformed into an unusual civic hub, bringing preschool classrooms, city offices and a regional 911 dispatch center under one roof. CambridgeSeven principal Justin Crane discusses the challenges of adapting the historic McKinley School for radically different uses—and designing it to serve its community for decades to come.The new musical The Jack of Hearts Club travels back to Provincetown in 1963, where the regulars at a local gay bar gather for one last summer celebration as relationships and lives face change. Creator Jon Richardson, who wrote the book, music and lyrics, joins us to discuss his musical love letter to Provincetown. The Jack of Hearts Club runs at Provincetown Theater through September 6.

Federal arts funding cuts are hitting New England organizations in jobs, programs and dollars. Emily Ruddock, executive director of MASSCreative, joins Jared to discuss a new regional survey of 125 arts and cultural organizations, which reports $13.5 million in lost or unavailable funding and more than 700 jobs affected.Swedish-born modernist Carl Sprinchorn found inspiration in the Maine woods, painting the lumberjacks, hunters and laborers who lived and worked there. Devon Zimmerman, curator at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art, discusses the major new exhibition Carl Sprinchorn: All the World is a Painting, which reconsiders the artist through the lenses of immigration, sexuality, masculinity and American modernism.BIG LITTLE BOOKS returns with a twist. Jill Medvedow and cocktail icon Jackson Cannon join Jared to discuss John Maxwell Hamilton’s The French 75, a spirited history of the iconic cocktail, from its World War I origins through a century of legend and reinvention. Cannon, beverage director for ES Hospitality, brings the cocktail history out of the book and into the glass. On August 20 Jackson Cannon will be throwing a Garden Party Dinner at Standard Italian. To learn more go here.

This week on The Culture Show, Jared Bowen is joined by Culture Show co-host Callie Crossley and Culture Show contributor James Sullivan, a journalist and author specializing in popular culture and Americana who is also on the faculty of Emerson College, for a look at the week’s top arts and culture headlines.Ariana Grande plans to step back from public life after her Eternal Sunshine tour, following years of scrutiny over her body and health. Can a celebrity ever truly reclaim her privacy?A new MASSCreative survey finds New England arts groups lost $11.4 million in federal funding, affecting 486 jobs and forcing cuts to programs and public services.Live Nation-owned Veeps has laid off nearly all staff at BrooklynVegan, Alternative Press, Revolver and Goldmine, shrinking the music press that helps emerging artists find an audience.Fans buying albums from Charli xcx, Olivia Rodrigo and others are finding missing passages, early mixes and absent guest stars—the result of physical copies going into production before the music is finished.John Cage’s As Slow as Possible changed a chord for the first time in two and a half years. The 639-year performance at a German church is scheduled to end in 2640.

Cellist Matt Haimovitz discusses Neighbors, a three-track EP created after federal immigration operations brought fear and protest to his new home in the Twin Cities. Recorded with University of Minnesota students and colleagues, the project includes a reimagining of Ernest Bloch’s “Prayer” incorporating the words of Minneapolis activists. Matt Haimovitz is a multi-Grammy-nominated cellist and assistant professor of cello at the University of Minnesota.Claudia Rankine discusses Triage, a genre-defying work that moves among novel, memoir, criticism and visual art. Through two women whose decades-long friendship begins with a game of collapsing to the ground, Rankine examines grief, solidarity, self-protection and the demand to act amid relentless loss. Ruth Ganesh discusses The Great Elephant Migration, which brings one hundred life-size elephant sculptures to Boston’s Commonwealth Avenue Mall. Indigenous artisans in southern India made the herd from lantana, an invasive plant threatening elephant habitat. The free installation runs August 8 through September 13 and explores how humans and wildlife can share the planet

Historian Dylan Gottlieb discusses Yuppies: The Bankers, Lawyers, Joggers, and Gourmands Who Conquered New York, which traces how ambitious young bankers, lawyers and other professionals made Wall Street glamorous, reshaped American cities and helped build a culture of punishing work, gentrification and widening inequality. The book was named one of The New Yorker’s best books of 2026 so far.Writer and visual art advisor Natalie Lemle discusses her debut novel, Artifacts. The story follows a trusts-and-estates lawyer drawn into a dispute over a Roman glass cup that Italy says was illegally removed—and back to the archaeological dig, relationships and unanswered questions she left behind two decades earlier.Plays in Place producing artistic director Patrick Gabridge previews four site-specific productions exploring the conflicts and unfinished promises of the American Revolution. The plays include Loyalty or Liberty in Newport, A Stake in the Ground: 1774 at Historic Deerfield, The Slippery Truth at Connecticut’s Old New-Gate Prison and The Hull/Hawley Playsat Historic Northampton.

Paul Giamatti and John Turturro discuss the American Repertory Theater’s production of Eugène Ionesco’s Rhinoceros.Directed by Diane Paulus, the darkly comic play follows a town whose residents surrender their humanity and join the herd. The production runs August 14 through September 27 at the Loeb Drama Center in Cambridge. To learn more go here.Director Alysa Nahmias discusses Cookie Queens, a new documentary following four Girl Scouts, ages five to twelve, through the ambition, competition and family commitment of cookie season. The film examines what girls learn while navigating an $800 million business and opens in theaters nationwide on August 7.Composer and educator Bill Banfield takes us inside Jazz Urbane Cafe, a new 200-seat music venue and restaurant in Nubian Square. Banfield explains how Jazz Urbane grew from a performing collective and record label into a permanent home for Boston musicians to share the stage with nationally recognized artists.

The Brattle Theatre’s TV Goes to the Movies series explores how filmmakers have portrayed television news, corporate power and journalistic ambition. Boston Globe critic Chris Vognar previews a lineup that includes Network, Broadcast News, The Insider, Nightcrawler and Anchorman. The series runs August 5 through September 2.Culture Show contributor Julia Swanson shares public spaces where art, play and community can keep Boston’s World Cup energy going after the games. Swanson created The Art Walk Project, a collection of self-guided tours exploring murals, sculptures and installations across Greater Boston and beyond.Duxbury native Mickey White discusses Harbour Lights Theatre and its effort to bring New York theatre professionals together with Massachusetts artists. The actor, producer and artistic director launches the company’s mainstage work with Dear Evan Hansen, directed by Adam Pascal and running August 6 through 9 at the Carr Amphitheater in Hingham.

This week on The Culture Show, Jared Bowen is joined by  Co-host Callie Crossley and Culture Show Culture Show contributor Joyce Kulhawik. Joyce Kulhawik is an Emmy-award winning arts and entertainment reporter and President of the Boston Theatre Critics Association.The topics they discuss include: BTS pulled its comeback album, Arirang, from the Grammy race to protest the new Best Asian Pop Music Performance category. The group argues that separating Asian pop from the general field marginalizes the artists it claims to recognize. New releases from Olivia Rodrigo, Gracie Abrams, Ariana Grande and Charli xcx trade carefree summer anthems for songs about heartbreak, anxiety and political dread. Four Winds Craft Guild posted a tongue-in-cheek ban on influencers, only to watch the sign go viral. The ensuing dispute drew responses from creators, residents and critics far beyond the island. Barbara Lynch, the acclaimed Boston chef, will host two private dinners in Manchester-by-the-Sea as she develops a new venture. The events mark Lynch’s first major step back into dining after her restaurant group closed amid allegations of workplace abuse, which she has denied. Artist Robert Lazzarini and curator John Ravenal will debut History Maker at the MassArt Art Museum this fall. The exhibition, originally selected for the U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, reworks familiar American symbols including flags, George Washington and a toppled eagle.

Angela Peri and Lisa Lobel discuss finding the New England faces who populate Apple TV’s horror comedy Widow’s Bay. Their work on the series earned them their first Emmy nominations for Outstanding Casting for a Comedy Series.MassArt President Mary Grant returns for “AI: Actual Intelligence,” our recurring series featuring original, algorithm-free ideas from some of the region’s most interesting thinkers. This month, Grant discusses the continued scrutiny of the Smithsonian museum, the resurgence of “grandma hobbies,” and more.Mary’s Summer Reading + Watchlist:  Theo of Golden by Allen Levi Bread of Angels by Patti Smith How to Get to Heaven from Belfast on Netflix Remarkably Bright Creatures on Netflix Curator David Bettencourt introduces Bones of the Statue of Liberty, an exhibition at Belcourt of Newport featuring lamps, pedestal railings and a massive elevator cog removed during the monument’s 1984–1986 restoration. The objects reveal the engineering beneath the statue’s copper exterior and the generations of work required to keep it standing, shining and accessible.

For this month’s Wednesday Watch Party, Jared Bowen is joined by Culture Show co-host Callie Crossley, host of GBH’s Under the Radar with Callie Crossley, and Joyce Kulhawik, the Emmy Award-winning arts and entertainment reporter and president of the Boston Theater Critics Association, to revisit James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Thirty-five years after its release, the film’s imagined 2029 is now just three years away. The conversation considers how its vision of artificial intelligence looks from 2026, whether the sequel surpassed the original, and how the digital breakthrough that helped define the film compares with the AI now reshaping Hollywood.

Emily Wilson, professor and chair of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, discusses how her acclaimed translation of The Odyssey helped shape Christopher Nolan’s approach to Homer’s hero. Nolan singled out Wilson’s opening line—“Tell me about a complicated man”—as a key reference point for the film. Wilson considers what the blockbuster preserves or leaves behind as it brings the ancient epic to the screen, and why her translations of The Odyssey and The Iliad have transformed the way modern readers encounter Homer. Her forthcoming book is Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea: Journeys Through Ancient Literature.Kevin Nealon looks back on helping define a memorable era of Saturday Night Live, his eight seasons on Weeds and the unpredictable celebrity conversations of Hiking with Kevin. He also discusses returning to stand-up with his latest special, Loose in the Crotch, ahead of his August 1 performance at the Wilbur.Laurie Anderson, the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award recipient who carried New York’s experimental downtown into the pop charts, concert halls and major museums around the world, discusses a Berkshire summer that spans the full range of her groundbreaking career in music, performance, film, storytelling and technology. She has added new work to her long-term MASS MoCA installation and makes her Tanglewood debut with Amelia and What War Is This? on August 13, the Lou Reed Drone on August 16 and The Republic of Love that evening.

Kerri Maher  discusses her new novel, Summer of Love, which moves between 1967 San Francisco and the present, tracing how the freedoms, ambitions and upheavals of one generation shape the next. Digital forensics pioneer Hany Farid has spent his career determining whether photographs and videos are real. He joins Bowen to discuss how AI can fabricate events that never happened, cast doubt on genuine evidence and make even an expert question his own eyes. Farid is the Donald Knuth Professor of Computation and Just Communities and a professor of computer science at Dartmouth College, as well as co-founder and chief science officer of GetReal Security.Fazendo a América: Rosângela Rennó and Histories of Memory and Migration in Brazil explores migration between Brazil and the United States through photographs shaped by loss, displacement and reinvention—and asks what is preserved, obscured or erased from personal and political history. Kristen Gresh, the MFA’s Estrellita and Yousuf Karsh Senior Curator of Photographs and curator of the exhibition joins us before it closes August 2.

This week on The Culture Show, Co-host CAllie Crossley is joined by Culture Show Culture Show contributors Joyce Kulhawik and  Lisa Simmons. Joyce Kulhawik is an Emmy-award winning arts and entertainment reporter and President of the Boston Theatre Critics Association. You can find her reviews on Joyce’s Choices. Lisa Simmons  is Artistic and Executive Director of the Roxbury International Film Festival and program manager at Mass Cultural Council.Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey — The film earned a record $52 million for IMAX during its opening weekend as audiences traveled to the limited number of theaters equipped to show it in 70mm. The release has also lifted sales of Emily Wilson’s translation of Homer’s epic past one million copies in the U.S.The World Cup’s biggest images — The final drew a record U.S. audience of nearly 63 million viewers, while Donald Trump’s appearance in Spain’s trophy celebration set off competing edits from FIFA and the White House. A newly resurfaced 2007 photograph also shows Lionel Messi bathing an infant Lamine Yamal during a UNICEF charity shoot.The Louvre reopens the Apollo Gallery — Nine months after thieves stole $102 million in crown jewels, the museum has reopened the gallery without its display cases or surviving treasures. Visitors can now see the gilded room and the window the thieves used to enter.Jimothy takes over the internet — Seattle’s unusually shaped raccoon now has a Roku video game, a bobblehead and an appearance on the White House social media feed.

Bestselling author George Saunders joins The Culture Show to talk about his novel “Vigil.”  Set over a single night, the book follows Jill “Doll” Blaine, a long-deceased guardian figure who keeps watch over a dying oil executive, returning Saunders to the moral and metaphysical terrain familiar from “Lincoln in the Bardo.”  Actress Claire Foy joins The Culture Show to talk about her film, “H Is for Hawk”, adapted from Helen Macdonald’s bestselling memoir. Known for performances defined by restraint and emotional precision, Foy reflects on inhabiting grief, solitude, and endurance in a story that unfolds through the training of a goshawk.Boston comedian and actor Steve Sweeney joins The Culture Show to talk about his film “Townie,” which is drawn directly from his Charlestown upbringing. Known for comedy rooted in working-class Catholic culture, Sweeney uses the neighborhood as a lens on loyalty, memory, and what it means to stay put as a place — and a city — changes. 

What Boston learned from its World Cup party: The matches were in Foxborough, but the celebration filled Boston’s pubs, hotels and streets. Aidan McGee, chef and partner at The Dubliner and McGonagle’s Pub, reflects on the Tartan Army, extended closing hours and how Boston can keep its newly activated party gene alive. Gonzalo Grau returns to Boston: Venezuelan-born pianist, composer and multi-instrumentalist Gonzalo Grau brings together Venezuelan rhythms, Latin jazz, flamenco and classical music. Grau and Plural perform a free concert July 25 at Long Live Roxbury, followed by a July 30 appearance with Alex Alvear and the Ecuadorian Council. Both shows support the Massachusetts United for Venezuela Fund. Regina Pizzeria celebrates 100 years: From the lines outside its original North End location to slices served across the region, Regina Pizzeria has become part of Boston’s culinary identity. Corporate chef Mark Murphy joins us to discuss its charred, chewy crust, century-old traditions and the challenge of preserving a hometown institution as it grows. 

Filmmaker Arthur Egeli and producer Judith Richland discuss their documentary portrait of Provincetown painter Anne Packard, following her path from a single mother of five to one of Cape Cod’s most celebrated artists. The film screens July 26 at the Woods Hole Film Festival and August 11 at the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum.Comedian Gus Constantellis remembers his late mother, Julia, whose cooking, sharp opinions and appearances in his viral videos made her beloved by his online audience. The cookbook brings together 75 Greek recipes with stories about family, comedy and grief. Find more from Constantellis at ConstantlyGus.com.Fiddlehead vocalist Patrick Flynn and guitarist Alex Dow discuss the Boston hardcore band’s new EP, Baby I’ll Change, and the family, loss and community behind their music. Fiddlehead plays the Middle East Upstairs on July 29, a free show at the Lynch Family Skatepark on August 1 and Roadrunner on November 13.

Co-directors Doug Blush and Piero F. Giunti discuss Los Lobos: Native Sons, a new documentary tracing the East Los Angeles band’s 50-year journey through rare archival footage, performances and intimate access. The film screens July 26 and 29 at the Woods Hole Film Festival.Bestselling author Brad Meltzer introduces young readers to the conservationist president in I Am Teddy Roosevelt, the latest picture-book biography in his Ordinary People Change the World series.Former O Positive frontman and Northeastern professor Dave Herlihy talks about returning to songwriting and finding an online audience with “Good Trouble,” his homage to civil rights icon John Lewis—and performs the song live in the studio.

On this edition of The Culture Show, Co-host Callie Crossley and contribbutors Lisa Simmons, and James Sullivan go over the week’s top arts and culture headlines. Lisa Simmons is the Artistic and Executive Director of the Roxbury International Film Festival and program manager at Mass Cultural Council. James Sullivan is a journalist and author specializing in popular culture and Americana. He’s also on the Emerson faculty.Christopher Nolan’s $250 million epic, “The Odyssey,” opens July 17 after earning widespread praise for its scale and ambition. Shot entirely with IMAX film cameras, it will screen in 70mm IMAX at only a limited number of theaters. The Michael Jackson biopic “Michael” has become the first biographical film to pass the billion-dollar mark at the global box office, despite criticism that it sanitizes Jackson’s legacy and objections from members of his family. Holden Caulfield turns 75 — J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye helped define the modern voice of adolescence. Its alienated narrator remains an enduring—and contested—American literary figure, recognized by generations of readers for his contempt for adult pretense.Frozen yogurt gets a wellness-era makeover — Froyo is back, with protein, probiotics and gut-health claims replacing the low-fat marketing of earlier crazes. The latest renaissance is being fueled by wellness influencers, stylish new shops and consumers looking for a health-conscious indulgence.The World Cup final expands into a global entertainment spectacle — A closing ceremony featuring Post Malone, Jennifer Hudson, Tom Cruise and other stars will precede Sunday’s match. Madonna, Shakira, BTS, Justin Bieber, Burna Boy and more will then perform during the tournament’s first-ever halftime show.

Award-winning actor, director, singer-songwriter and bestselling author David Duchovny joins The Culture Show to discuss “About Time: Poems,” a collection that reflects on love, family, aging, and the shifting nature of time. From there Molly Schwartzburg joins The Culture Show to talk about Edward Gorey and how Harvard’s Houghton Library has acquired never before seen Gorey illustrations. These works reveal how his time at Harvard shaped his sensibility. Molly Schwartzburg is the Philip Hofer Curator of Printing and Graphic Arts.Finally acclaimed filmmaker Simon Curtis joins The Culture Show to talk about directing “Downton Abbey:The Grand Finale.”  

Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic Sebastian Smee discusses President Trump’s proposed 250-foot triumphal arch near Arlington National Cemetery. His Atlantic essay, “Trump’s Arch Is Atrocious. Don’t Build It,” considers how the monument could reshape a landscape devoted to sacrifice and remembrance.As drought strains Massachusetts gardens, horticultural expert Uli Lorimer explains why water should go to mature trees, shrubs and perennials before lawns. Lorimer is director of horticulture at Native Plant Trust and author of The Northeast Native Plant Primer.Cape Ann Museum director Oliver Barker and curator Eliza Rathbone explore the friendship among Milton Avery, Adolph Gottlieb and Mark Rothko—and how their summers in Gloucester shaped their art. Avery, Gottlieb & Rothko: By the Sea is on view through September 27.

Playwright Levi Holloway discusses transforming the slow-building dread of the hit film Paranormal Activity from screen to stage. Directed by Sleep No More co-creator Felix Barrett, the new story uses live illusion, darkness and sound to build suspense. It runs at the Emerson Colonial Theatre through July 30.Mahesh Daas, president of Boston Architectural College, shares his impressions of the newly opened Obama Presidential Center, considering how its museum and public campus recast the presidential library as a civic gathering place—and how its monumental design enters Chicago’s storied architectural landscape.Photographer Winslow Martin and Project SAVE executive director Arto Vaun discuss My Armenia (1999–2008), an exhibition of black-and-white photographs tracing everyday life during the first decade of Armenia’s independence. The show also inaugurates Project SAVE’s expanded Watertown gallery dedicated to contemporary photography.

Grammy-winning soprano Jane Eaglen, president of the Boston Wagner Society, previews the American Wagner Festival, running July 27 through August 8 with masterclasses, performances and the popular Wagner and Vino.Shakespeare scholar Caroline Bicks, the Stephen E. King Chair in Literature at the University of Maine, discusses Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King, her investigation into the drafts, revisions and creative process behind King’s early fiction.Boston-based violinist, songwriter and producer Rhett Price talks about his debut album, Renaissance Man, and his journey from subway busking and viral cover songs to placing his own original music at center stage.

This week on The Culture Show, Jared Bowen is joined by Culture Show Culture Show contributors Joyce Kulhawik and  James Sullivan for a look at the week’s top arts and culture headlines. James Sullivan is  a journalist and author specializing in popular culture and Americana who is also on the faculty of Emerson College. Joyce Kulhawik is an Emmy-award winning arts and entertainment reporter and President of the Boston Theatre Critics Association. You can find her reviews on Joyce’s Choices.  The Emmy nominations are out, with The Pitt leading the field and Hacks making comedy history. We’ll look at the surprises, snubs and first-year series breaking into the top categories. The White House is taking aim at the Smithsonian, accusing the National Museum of American History of turning away from patriotic storytelling in a new Fourth of July report. The Boston Hunters are stepping up to the plate as one of the first four franchises in the Women’s Pro Baseball League, with play beginning August 1. Microsoft is cutting thousands of Xbox jobs and closing studios, marking a major reversal after years of gaming-industry expansion. Bonnie Tyler, the Welsh singer whose unmistakable raspy voice turned heartbreak into high drama, has died at 75.

Judy Collins joins us ahead of her “Sweet Judy Blue Eyes: Farewell Tour” stop at Tanglewood on August 30, co-starring Mary Chapin Carpenter and Rosanne Cash, with special guest Amanda Shires. Collins discusses “Both Sides Now,” interpreting other writers’ songs and writing her own material.Rebecca Bradshaw of Gloucester Stage Company joins us to discuss Harold Pinter’s Betrayal, onstage through August 1. The play traces a love triangle in reverse, moving backward through an affair, a marriage and the betrayals between friends.Francene Blythe-Lewis, president and CEO of Vision Maker Media, joins us to discuss the new PBS limited series First Peoples, First Stories, featuring short films by emerging Native filmmakers about their own communities. Episodes are available through PBS Passport.