The Culture Show Podcast

Filmmaker Rowan Haber joins us to discuss the new documentary We Are Pat, which revisits Julia Sweeney’s famously androgynous Saturday Night Live character through a 2026 lens. Once built around the question of whether Pat was a man or a woman, the film asks what that joke meant then, what it means now and whether Pat can be reconsidered or reclaimed. We Are Pat is available on Apple TV, Prime Video and Fandango at Home.Mahesh Daas, president of Boston Architectural College and co-author of the graphic novella I, Nobot, returns for AI: Actual Intelligence. This month, he looks at data centers — the massive facilities powering the cloud and artificial intelligence — and the questions they raise about land, energy, water, noise and who pays for the infrastructure AI requires.Music journalist Christian John Wikane joins us to discuss A Night at the Disco, co-written with Alice Harris, a full-color look at the artists, producers and performers who turned disco from an underground club sound into a global movement. Wikane will appear at Provincetown Bookshop on Thursday, June 25, Mitchell’s Book Corner on Nantucket on Tuesday, July 7, and Edgartown Books on Martha’s Vineyard on Wednesday, July 8.

Imari Paris Jeffries, President and CEO of Embrace Boston and co-chair of Everyone250, returns for AI: Actual Intelligence, The Culture Show’s recurring conversation with some of the region’s sharpest thinkers. This month, he brings his original, algorithm-free perspective on culture, civic life and the stories Boston is choosing to tell.The Boston Athenaeum’s exhibition Imagined Nation looks beyond the familiar scenes of the American Revolution to ask how ideas of nationhood have been formed, recorded and revised across generations. Curator Reed Gochberg joins us to discuss the books, maps, images and objects that reveal America as an unfinished story. The exhibition is on view through November 14, 2026.In The Tao of Lloyd, actor and writer Dennis Trainor Jr. imagines Lloyd Dobler, the open-hearted Gen X icon from Say Anything, decades later — older, grayer and still refusing the program. The new solo show heads to the Edinburgh Fringe this August, and Trainor is raising funds to help bring the production to Edinburgh. You can also see a workshop performance June 27 at Western Avenue Studios & Lofts in Lowell, before the show runs at the Edinburgh Fringe August 6 through 30.

Historian, lawyer and Pulitzer-prize winning author Annette Gordon-Reed joins The Culture Show to talk about her book “On Juneteenth,” which explores the holiday commemorating the day Union troops announced the end of slavery in Texas. We mark the staying power of William Shakespeare with Regie Gibson, the inaugural Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He’s a writer, performer, and educator whose work engages Shakespeare through spoken word .Finally the best-selling author Nina MacLaughlin joins The Culture Show to talk about her essay book “Summer Solstice,” which is a meditation on a season full of long days, hot nights and  fat red tomatoes.

Dr. Noelle Trent, president and CEO of the Museum of African American History in Boston and Nantucket, joins us to discuss Freedom! A Juneteenth Celebration. The museum marks the holiday with a free open house and block party on Joy Street, plus a sister celebration on Nantucket.Mary Grant, president of MassArt, returns for AI: Actual Intelligence, our recurring conversation with some of the region’s most original thinkers. This month, she reflects on a commencement season marked by political controversy, disinvited speakers and debates over what graduates need to hear.Catherine T. Morris, founder and executive director of the Boston Art & Music Soul Festival, joins us to discuss MOMENTUM, a five-day festival celebrating Black art, music, culture and enterprise across Greater Boston. She is joined by Isaiah Thelwell of Greater Brockton Young Professionals, one of the partners bringing MOMENTUM to Brockton through Fuller After Dark.

Sebastian Crane and Lawrence Gullo  join us to discuss the Salem Rainbow Stroll, a 90-minute walking tour exploring Salem’s hidden LGBTQIA+ history. The tour runs weekends through June, with proceeds benefiting the Trans Emergency Fund of Massachusetts.Director Dan Egan joins us to discuss Transforming the Beautiful Game: The Clyde Best Story, opening the Roxbury International Film Festival on June 18 at the Museum of Fine Arts. The documentary follows Clyde Best’s rise from Bermuda to West Ham United, where he became one of the first Black stars in English soccer while facing racism from the stands.Kate McNamara, director of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, and James Hoff, co-founder of Primary Information, join us to discuss Salad Days: Primary Information. The summer project turns the Carpenter Center’s third floor into a temporary art bookstore, screening room and archive, on view June 18 through August 16.

Regie Gibson, the inaugural Poet Laureate of Massachusetts, joins us to discuss Song of Massachusetts, his new collaboration with composer Carlos Simon. Commissioned by the Boston Pops, the piece premieres at the Boston Pops Fireworks Spectacular on July 4.Artist and arts organizer Josef Palermo joins us to discuss his Atlantic piece, What I Saw Inside the Kennedy Center. Palermo spent 10 months at the Kennedy Center as its first curator of visual arts and special programming.Justin Pelletier, chief operating officer of Nashoba Valley Winery in Bolton, joins us as the farm-winery heads into its busiest season. New England’s oldest running winery has grown into a winery, orchard, distillery, brewery and restaurant operation.

Antonia Bennett joins us ahead of her Father’s Day concert at Regattabar in Cambridge on June 21. The daughter of Tony Bennett and Sandra Grant Bennett, she grew up close to the world of American popular song before studying at Berklee and building her own career in jazz, standards and original music.Eddie S. Glaude Jr. joins us to discuss his new book, America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries, as the country approaches its 250th birthday. The Princeton professor, political commentator and New York Times bestselling author will appear at a Brookline Booksmith event at WBUR CitySpace tonight at 6:30.Igor Golyak, founder and artistic director of Arlekin Players Theatre, joins us to preview DELIRIUM, his new adaptation of Eugène Ionesco’s Frenzy for Two, or More. The production runs June 18 through July 2 at the Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, turning an endless domestic argument into absurdist comedy, existential crisis and public chaos.

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.In Barcelona, Gaudí’s Sagrada Família reaches a milestone 144 years in the making, with the completion of the central tower dedicated to Jesus Christ — making the basilica the tallest church in the world.In Washington, President Trump’s name is coming down from the Kennedy Center after a federal judge ruled the renaming illegal, even as the institution prepares to award Bill Maher the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.David Hockney, one of the best-known contemporary artists, has died at age 88. We reflect on his legacy, which included his famed sun-soaked swimming pools of Los Angeles, the landscapes of his native Yorkshire and his innovative works with digital media. With World Cup matches headed to Foxborough, Boston faces a civic stress test as the tournament brings questions about traffic, transit, late-night crowds, fan culture and protest.

James Beard Award-winning cookbook author Dorie Greenspan joined The Culture Show to talk about her deep dive into Katharine Hepburn’s many brownie recipes. Greenspan, the writer behind xoxoDorie, traced the recipe’s journey from newspaper to cookbook to handwritten variations — with debates over cocoa, chocolate, oven temperature and a little movie-star mythology. Her latest book is Dorie’s Anytime Cakes. To see Katharine Hepburn's hand-written brownie recipe, courtesy of the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University, visit the GBH News YouTube channel.Susanne Ebbinghaus, curator of ancient art at the Harvard Art Museums, joined The Culture Show to discuss Celtic Art Across the Ages, on view through Aug. 2. The exhibition brings together nearly 300 objects from Europe and North America — including jewelry, weapons, carved stone and images — to explore more than 2,500 years of Celtic art, identity and imagination.Cocktail icon Jackson Cannon, beverage director for ES Hospitality, joined The Culture Show to talk about the bright, bitter, fizzy world of the spritz. From Aperol and Campari to vermouth, amaro and sparkling wine, Cannon shared what makes a good spritz and what he’s pouring now. On July 1 at 6 p.m., Standard Italian hosts a Summer of Spritz dinner in the Fenway.

Mariachi singer and cultural organizer Veronica Robles joins us to preview Vive Latinoamérica 2026, the Veronica Robles Cultural Center’s annual celebration of Latin American music, dance, and visual art. The showcase takes place Sunday, June 14, from 2 to 6 p.m. at Boston Symphony Hall. Lisa Simmons, artistic and executive director of the Roxbury International Film Festival, previews RoxFilm 2026, New England’s largest showcase for films by, for, and about people of color. The festival runs in person June 18–26, followed by virtual programming June 26–July 2. Commonwealth Shakespeare Company founding artistic director Steve Maler joins us to discuss A Midsummer Night’s Dream, this summer’s Free Shakespeare on the Common production. The show runs July 22 through August 9 at the Parkman Bandstand on Boston Common as the company celebrates the 30th anniversary of Free Shakespeare on the Common.

The Boston Gay Men’s Chorus marks Pride Month with RISE!, a concert celebrating protest, pride and the power of being seen. Music director Reuben Reynolds joins us to talk about a program that moves from Broadway anthem to protest song, from the dance floor to the front lines of history, coming to Groton Hill Music Center on June 14. Photographer Matthew Connors has spent more than a decade documenting protests, uprisings and places under authoritarian rule around the world. He joins us to discuss his new book, “The Axe Will Survive the Master,” which traces the recurring images of unrest — crowds, barricades, riot gear — and how protest and repression echo across borders. Abilities Dance Boston presents the world premiere of FIREBIRD, PART 2, a new ballet about a magical bird who finally gets to save herself. Founder, executive and artistic director Ellice Patterson and composer Andrew Choe join us to talk about this sequel to the company’s 2021 Firebird, with performances June 19 through 21 at Boston University’s Joan and Edgar Booth Theatre. 

Co-host Callie Crossley and Maurice Emmanuel Parent, award-winning actor, educator and Producing Artistic Director of The Front Porch Arts Collective, join us to recap the Tony Awards and what Broadway’s biggest night revealed about the state of the industry.Vanessa Calderón-Rosado, CEO of IBA, joins us to discuss La CASA: The Center for Arts, Self-determination and Activism, the largest Latino arts hub in New England, now open in the South End’s Villa Victoria.Grammy-winning soprano Jane Eaglen, a faculty member at New England Conservatory and president of the Boston Wagner Society, returns for another edition of “AI: Actual Intelligence,” with a wide-ranging conversation on how Timothée Chalamet may have done opera a favor, why concert performances matter for opera singers and who will fund opera’s future.

This week on The Culture Show, Callie Crossley is joined by Culture Show contributor Lisa Simmons and GBH global correspondent and news host Jeremy Siegel for a look at the week’s top arts and culture headlines. YouTubers are turning online followings into theatrical ticket sales, with internet-born horror films like Backrooms and Obsession making the case for a new route to the multiplex.Younger audiences are showing up for films that feel connected to the online conversation, raising the question of whether Gen Z is saving theaters or changing what gets them there.From Martin Scorsese’s AI storyboards to an AI actress, AI opera experiments and Amazon’s generative-AI animated series, artists are debating where the technology helps and where it threatens human craft.Clint Eastwood may be retiring from filmmaking, Euphoria has ended after three seasons, Serena Williams is headed back to the court and Jay-Z returned to the stage at Roots Picnic.The show remembers Peabo Bryson, the velvet-voiced R&B balladeer and two-time Grammy winner who gave Disney two of its signature love songs.

After her mother’s death, writer Alysia Abbott was raised by her father—poet Steve Abbott—in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury during the height of counterculture. Her memoir “Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father” captures that vivid, unconventional childhood and the complexities of growing up amid both liberation and loss. Now adapted into a feature film produced by Sofia Coppola, Abbott joins us to reflect on seeing her story come to life on screen. As the only son of Johnny Cash and June Carter, John Carter Cash has carried forward one of America’s most enduring musical legacies. A Grammy-winning producer, songwriter, and author, he’s worked with artists from Willie Nelson to Sheryl Crow while preserving his parents’ archives and spirit. He joins The Culture Show to talk about his latest book, The Complete Johnny Cash: Lyrics from a Lifetime of Songwriting, which gathers more than five decades of his father’s words—offering insight into the man behind the Man in Black.Finally Berlin-based baker Laurel Kratochvila joins the Culture SHow to talk about her  cookbook  Dobre Dobre: Baking from Poland and Beyond. The book celebrates Poland’s baking traditions — from Jewish-diasporic classics to regional favorites — and reveals how migration and memory live on in every recip

Actor Bob Odenkirk and writer Derek Kolstad reunite after the Nobody films for Normal, a twisted neo-Western about a bank robbery that shatters the facade of a seemingly quiet small town. Geoff Bennett, co-anchor and co-managing editor of PBS NewsHour, joins The Culture Show to discuss his new book, Black Out Loud: The Revolutionary History of Black Comedy from Vaudeville to ’90s Sitcoms. Bennett traces the long arc of Black comedy, from minstrelsy and vaudeville to Richard Pryor, In Living Color, and Living Single. For Maureen Abood, baking is a way of carrying culture, memory, and family tradition forward. She joins Jared to talk about her new cookbook, “Lebanese Baking,” and what its recipes reveal about Lebanese life at home and around the table. You can catch her tonight at 6:00 for a tasting and book signing event at Sofra Bakery + Cafe in Allston. To learn more go here. 

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. 

Ethan Hawke has built one of the most varied careers in contemporary film, spanning Hollywood classics like Dead Poets Society and Training Day, as well as independent films such as Before Sunrise and Boyhood. He’s also an accomplished novelist, screenwriter, producer, and filmmaker. He joined us ahead of receiving the 2025 Coolidge Corner Theatre Award.Few people know more about art theft than Anthony Amore. As Director of Security and Chief Investigator at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, he’s spent decades pursuing the truth behind its legendary 1990 heist. His new book, “The Rembrandt Heist: The Story of a Criminal Genius, a Stolen Masterpiece, and an Enigmatic Friendship,” revisits another one of Boston’s great art crimes — the 1975 theft of a Rembrandt from the MFA — and the larger-than-life thief who pulled it off, Myles Connor.And five-time James Beard Award winner Dorie Greenspan brings sweetness (and some savoriness) to the everyday with her new cookbook “Dorie’s Anytime Cakes” — filled with loaves, Bundts and snackable slices. 

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 Pu

Artist Derrick Adams joins us to discuss Derrick Adams: View Master, his first major museum survey, now on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art. The exhibition brings together more than 100 works from the past 25 years — paintings, sculpture, collage, video, performance and public projects — celebrating Black life, leisure and everyday joy. To learn more go here.Tony Award nominee Melissa Errico joins us to talk about Back to Barbra, her new cabaret show with pianist and music director Billy Stritch at 54 Below. A follow-up to The Streisand Effect, the show returns to Barbra Streisand’s music as a conversation about influence, performance and how one singer makes another icon’s songs her own. To learn more go here. Tickets for the May 29 livestream are available here.

Today on The Culture Show, we're joined by Marc Shaiman, the award-winning composer and lyricist whose work runs from When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle to Hairspray, Smash and Mary Poppins Returns, joins us with his new memoir, Never Mind the Happy. Before the Tonys, the Oscars and the Broadway openings, he was a teenager haunting community theaters, a young musician swept into Bette Midler’s world, and creating a career that would move through the devastation of AIDS, the machinery of Hollywood and the bruising, and thrilling business of making musicals. On June 9th, he'll be at Broadway in Worcester for "An Evening with Mark Shaiman." For tickets and more information, click here.Then artist Steve Locke joins us with his first career monograph,I Said What I Said, a new book featuring three decades of work in painting, sculpture and public art. From portraiture to public memory, Locke’s work confronts race, desire, and history — and asks what America is willing to look at.

Today on The Culture Show, Danielle Allen, the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University, director of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation at Harvard Kennedy School, joins us to discuss her  New York Times essay, “Nothing Beats Polarization Like Civics Education” She is the author of Our Declaration and the forthcoming Radical Duke: How One Aristocrat — and the American Revolution — Transformed Britain.Eve Plumb, best known as Jan Brady on The Brady Bunch, joins us to discuss her new memoir, Happiness Included: Jan Brady and Beyond. She’ll be at First Parish Church in Cambridge on June 4 at 7 p.m. for a Harvard Book Store signing of Happiness Included.Matthew Shifrin, founder and CEO of Bricks for the Blind, joins us for “AI: Actual Intelligence” with a look at sports and accessibility. From tennis to cricket to rock climbing, Shifrin explores how adaptations to familiar games can be literally game-changing for blind athletes.

Boston Pops conductor Keith Lockhart was recently honored with the Third Lantern Award at Old North Church, recognizing his role in using music to connect civic life and shared memory. As the nation approaches its 250th anniversary, he joins The Culture Show to reflect on the power of orchestral music at historic moments. Zara Anishanslin joins The Culture Show to talk through her latest book “The Painter’s Fire: A Forgotten History of the Artists Who Championed the American Revolution.” Zara Anishanslin is a Professor of History and Art History at the University of Delaware. As part of Countdown to 2026, we explore Paul Revere’s Sons of Liberty Bowl, crafted in 1768 to honor a Massachusetts vote rejecting new British taxes. Engraved with the names of lawmakers who opposed those measures, it’s a key artifact of early resistance. Ethan Lasser, Chief of Curatorial Affairs and Conservation at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, joins us for an overview. To learn more about the Sons of Liberty Bowl and the MFA’s exhibitions and programming go here.

For this month’s Watch Party, Jared Bowen is joined by Callie Crossley, host of GBH’s Under the Radar with Callie Crossley, and Joyce Kulhawik, Emmy Award-winning arts and entertainment critic and president of the Boston Theater Critics Association, to revisit All the President’s Men. Alan J. Pakula’s 1976 political thriller stars Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, whose reporting helped uncover the Watergate cover-up. Released during America’s Bicentennial, with the country still reeling from Vietnam and Watergate, the film became one of the great newspaper movies — finding suspense in missed calls, reluctant sources, editors demanding one more confirmation and the dawning realization that a botched break-in may reach into the White House. Fifty years later, we ask how it plays in 2026: as a period piece, or as newly relevant in a time of political distrust, attacks on the press and competing versions of reality.

Imari Paris Jeffries, president and CEO of Embrace Boston, joins us to preview tonight’s Embrace Honors Harry Hom Dow event, honoring the first Chinese American admitted to the Massachusetts Bar.Retired FBI agent Geoffrey Kelly joins The Culture Show to discuss “Thirteen Perfect Fugitives: The True Story of the Mob, Murder, and the World’s Largest Art Heist.” After 22 years chasing leads through Boston’s criminal underworld, Kelly reflects on the missing art, the long investigation, and the toll of living inside one of the city’s most enduring mysteries.Jeffrey Richmond-Moll, the George Putnam Curator of American Art at the Peabody Essex Museum, joins us to discuss Edmonia Lewis: Said in Stone, the first major retrospective devoted to the 19th-century Black and Indigenous sculptor.

The Tobin Bridge could become a public artwork about the forces shaping the coast around it. Ryan Edwards, a principal at MASARY Studios, joins us to discuss Eco-Rhythms — also called Accumulating Rhythms — a proposed lighting installation that would respond to tides and other ecological patterns along the Mystic River. To learn more, go here. Boston’s music history is hitting the road. Matt Bowker, founder of Soundscape Tours, joins us to talk about the new Mighty Mighty Bus Tour, which traces more than 60 years of local music through the clubs, venues and neighborhoods of Boston and Cambridge. To learn more, go here. It’s time for “AI: Actual Intelligence,” our recurring conversation with Mary Grant, president of Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Each month, Grant joins us for original, algorithm-free observations on art, culture, education and the creative life of the region. To learn more about MassArt, go here. 

Peter Wolf came to Boston to study painting, but quickly became part of the city’s musical bloodstream — performing with The Hallucinations, spinning records at WBCN and fronting The J. Geils Band. As MassArt honors him with an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree, Wolf joins us to talk about art, music — and Waiting on the Moon, his memoir of late nights and unforgettable run-ins with Muddy Waters, Alfred Hitchcock and more.Megan Hilty joins us ahead of An Evening with Megan Hilty at The Umbrella Arts Center in Concord. The Tony-nominated actress and singer brings songs and stories from a career that has moved between Broadway, television and concert stages. To learn more, go here.Independent curator and art historian John Ravenal joins us to discuss History Maker, Robert Lazzarini’s proposed exhibition for the U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. The project was selected, then collapsed before it was announced, raising questions about art, politics and what America chooses to put on the world stage. To learn more, go here.

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.Jill Medvedow, Director Emerita of the Institute of Contemporary Art, returns for “Read on Arrival,” our series on short books with long afterlives. Her latest pick is Jenny Erpenbeck’s Things That Disappear, a 96-page collection of autobiographical essays.Independent curator and Culture Show contributor Pedro Alonzo joins us with dispatches from Buffalo and Mexico City, where Latino and Chicano artists are getting major museum attention. We discuss Let Us Gather in a Flourishing Way at the Buffalo AKG and Aztlán, túnel del tiempo at Mexico City’s Palacio de Bellas Artes.

On this edition of The Culture Show, GBH’s Global Correspondent and News Host Jeremy Siegel, Lisa Simmons, and Joyce Kulhawik go over the latest arts and culture headlines on our week-in-review. Lisa Simmons is  Artistic and Executive Director of the Roxbury International Film Festival and program manager at Mass Cultural Council. 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 World Cup is getting its first-ever halftime show, set for July 19 at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. Shakira is returning to the World Cup stage, with Madonna and BTS also part of the spectacle.Cannes is underway with less Hollywood wattage this year, but plenty of awards-season intrigue. The festival is putting more focus on international auteurs and a new Oscar rule that could give Cannes winners a stronger path to the Academy Awards.Eurovision is once again where music, politics and spectacle collide. Israel has advanced to the final, but its participation has become a flashpoint, with several countries sitting out over the war in Gaza and the civilian death toll.A 22-foot gold statue of President Trump now stands at Trump National Doral in Florida. Called “Don Colossus,” it shows him with his fist raised — echoing the Butler assassination attempt photo — and has drawn attention for its mix of politics, spectacle and backlash.Dunkin is returning to Canada, setting up another round in its rivalry with Tim Hortons. The expansion puts an American coffee-and-doughnut chain back into competition with one of Canada’s most recognizable homegrown brands. 

Matt Smith has spent 30 years at Club Passim, the tiny Harvard Square room with an enormous folk history. We talk with him about starting as a volunteer, booking artists, and helping shape one of the country’s great listening rooms. To learn more about Passim, go here.WBCN wasn’t just Boston’s rock station. In the late 1960s and early ’70s, it became a platform for anti-war politics, civil rights, LGBTQ and women’s rights, and listener-driven radio. We talk with Bill Lichtenstein about his documentary The Airwaves Belonged to the People: WBCN and The American Revolution, now returning to theaters around New England. To learn more about upcoming screenings, go here.The Harvard Lampoon began in 1876 as a student humor magazine and, 150 years later, remains one of American comedy’s most influential institutions. We talk with Geoff Edgers about his recent oral history of the Lampoon, its mythology, its famous alumni, and its long reach into National Lampoon, Saturday Night Live, The Simpsons, late night and Hollywood comedy. To read Edgers’ piece, go here.

Sam Smallidge has one of the more unusual jobs in Boston: he oversees Converse’s archive in Charlestown. We talk with him about building the company’s collection from a spreadsheet and a folder into more than 10,000 items — and how shoes, ads, prototypes, catalogs and company history help tell the story of one of the most recognizable brands in the world. New England Conservatory’s Preparatory School marks its 75th anniversary with Concert for the City, a free, family-friendly concert this Saturday at 4:00 at the Hatch Shell. The program features NEC Prep’s Youth Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Juliano Aniceto, Director of NEC Prep Orchestras, and also joins celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the United States. Registration is encouraged through NEC’s website, where attendees can also find arrival and parking details. To learn more or register, go here.

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.  

James Sullivan,  a journalist, author and longtime contributor to the Boston Globe, joins The Culture Show to talk about his book Which Side Are You On?: 20th Century American History in 100 Protest Songs.From there Aisha Muharrar joins The Culture Show to talk about her debut novel “Loved One.” She’s an Emmy Award–winning writer and producer who has worked on “Hacks,” “Parks” and “Recreation,” and “The Good Place.”Finally,  Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Richard Russo joins The Culture Show, to talk about his new book "Life and Art.”  It’s a COVID-era meditation on his  childhood, adulthood and what it means to be an artist.

On this edition of The Culture Show, Culture Show co-host Callie Crossley, GBH’s Global Correspondent and News Host Jeremy Siegel and James Sullivan, journalist,  author and Emerson faculty member go over the latest arts and culture headlines on our week in review We reflect on Ted Turner’s legacy. The Media mogul who built CNN, TBS, TNT and Cartoon Network, died this week at 87. The Tony nominations are out, offering a clearer picture of the Broadway season: the revivals, new musicals, adaptations and surprises that broke through. The Rolling Stones are back with “Rough and Twisted,” a lead single from their upcoming album Foreign Tongues, out July 10. Club Passim celebrates Matt Smith’s 30 years with a May 12 concert at Arrow Street Arts featuring Ellis Paul, Kris Delmhorst, Alisa Amador and more. When Scotland plays in Foxboro for the World Cup, hundreds of fans are planning to beat steep train fares by taking yellow school buses to Gillette.

Scott Avett and Seth Avett of The Avett Brothers join us to discuss “Swept Away,” the musical built around their songs. After a 2024 Broadway run, the show is now in Boston at SpeakEasy Stage Company, where it turns the Avetts’ music into a harrowing sea story about a New Bedford whaling crew, a shipwreck and an impossible moral choice. To learn more about “Swept Away” at SpeakEasy Stage Company, go here. The Avett Brothers will also be back in Boston this summer, performing with Mike Patton at the Boch Center Wang Theatre on June 10. To learn more, go here.Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Elizabeth Strout joins us to discuss her latest novel, “The Things We Never Say.” It introduces a new cast of characters while returning to familiar Strout territory: marriage, loneliness, family strain and the things people cannot quite bring themselves to say. Strout will be in Massachusetts for two events this week: at The Brattle Theatre in Cambridge tonight, presented by Harvard Book Store, and at Duxbury High School tomorrow, presented by The Duxbury Literary Circle. To learn more about the Brattle Theatre event, go here, and for the Duxbury event, go here.

Pulitzer Prize–winning author Stephen Greenblatt joins The Culture Show, to talk about his latest book, “Dark Renaissance:The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival.”  It traces the meteoric rise and violent end of Christopher Marlowe—playwright, poet, spy, and heretic—whose genius endures today.  From there, Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore  discusses her new book, “We the People." Published on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding—the anniversary, too, of the first state constitutions—"We the People" offers a wholly new history of the Constitution.Finally writer Nicholas Boggs joins The Culture Show to talk about his book, “Baldwin: A Love Story.” It's the first major biography of James Baldwin in three decades, revealing how the writer’s personal relationships shaped his life and work. 

Boston Pops conductor Keith Lockhart joins The Culture Show with a preview of the Pops’ spring season, running May 8 through June 6 at Symphony Hall. The season includes appearances by Ray Chen, Jon Batiste, Leslie Odom Jr., St. Vincent and more, along with film nights, Pride Night and Gospel Night. To learn more, go here. 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 hereSteve Biondolillo, founder and president of the National Baseball Poetry Festival, and Sarah Connell Sanders, teacher, writer and organizer of the festival’s youth poetry contest, join us ahead of the festival’s return to Worcester. Running May 7 through 10 at Polar Park, the festival brings together poets, baseball fans, students and families for readings, workshops, open mics, WooSox games, a ballpark tour and a sunset catch on the field. To learn more, go here. 

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. 

On this edition of The Culture Show, Jared Bowen, Callie Crossley, and James Parker, staff writer at The Atlantic, go over the week’s top arts and culture headlines:The Venice Biennale is often called the Olympics of the art world, but this year its international jury made news before awarding any medals. The jury resigned, saying it would not honor artists from countries whose leaders face international criminal charges — a move effectively pointing to Russia and Israel, and throwing the exhibition into a political and cultural storm.Robert Indiana’s famous stacked-letter LOVE image has traveled far beyond the art world — onto posters, stamps, T-shirts, tote bags and coffee mugs. Now his legacy is at the center of a major legal fight, after the Morgan Art Foundation was awarded $102 million in a case involving forged works and disputed rights to some of Indiana’s best-known images.Nudes are nothing new in museums, from Degas’ bathers to Michelangelo’s David. But when performance artist Xandra Ibarra appeared nude in the MFA’s galleries, the reaction was very different — laying bare how complicated our feelings about the human body can be when art steps out of the frame and into the flesh.Jimmy Kimmel, Donald Trump and the FCC are back in the ring after Kimmel joked about Trump’s mortality and Melania Trump’s future during a mock White House Correspondents’ Dinner roast. The White House called the joke “violent rhetoric,” Trump demanded ABC fire Kimmel, and now critics are questioning the timing of an FCC review of Disney-owned ABC station licenses.

Award-winning New Yorker staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe joins us to discuss his latest book, London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth. The book investigates the death of 19-year-old Zac Brettler, who plunged from a luxury London apartment tower into the River Thames, and opens into a larger story of dirty money, criminal networks, police failure, and extreme wealth.Obie Award-winning Boston playwright Kirsten Greenidge joins us to talk about writing the new English dialogue for Boston Lyric Opera’s Daughter of the Regiment, now onstage at the Emerson Colonial Theatre through May 3. BLO’s production moves Gaetano Donizetti’s comic opera to Revolutionary-era Massachusetts, where a young woman raised by soldiers finds love, loyalty, and a new American setting.As part of our “Countdown to 250” series, we continue our monthly conversation with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston about artworks that offer fresh perspectives on the American Revolution. Erica Hirshler, the MFA’s Croll Senior Curator of American Paintings, and Ben Weiss, the MFA’s Leonard A. Lauder Senior Curator of Visual Culture, join us to discuss Gilbert Stuart’s portraits of George Washington and Martha Washington — images that helped shape how a new nation pictured power, legacy, and memory.

Michael Patrick MacDonald is the bestselling author of All Souls: A Family Story from Southie and Easter Rising: A Memoir of Roots and Rebellion. He joins us to talk about The Rest of the Story, the trauma-informed storytelling program he created to help people use writing to reckon with what they’ve lived through.Jamie Bissonnette is a James Beard Award-winning chef, restaurateur, and founding partner of BCB3 Hospitality, the group behind restaurants including Coppa, Little Donkey, Somaek, ZURiTO, and now Willie’s on Beacon Hill. He joins us to talk about his new American Italian–inspired neighborhood restaurant, where pizza, pasta, and shared plates bring his lively, collaborative style to Charles Street.David A. Greene is president of Colby College, and Jacqueline Terrassa is the Carolyn Muzzy Director of the Colby College Museum of Art. They join us to talk about Colby’s growing arts presence in Waterville — from the museum and Lunder Institute for American Art to Greene Block + Studios and the Paul J. Schupf Art Center — and what it takes to sustain cultural institutions now.

Chadwick Stokes, musician, songwriter, and founder of Dispatch and State Radio, joins us with Sybil Gallagher, co-founder of Calling All Crows, the nonprofit they built to connect music fans with service, advocacy, and feminist movements. They’ll discuss 1972: A Rock Opera, Stokes’ new work about abortion, bodily autonomy, and life before Roe v. Wade, which will have its world premiere at the American Repertory Theater this fall. Uli Lorimer, Director of Horticulture at Native Plant Trust and author of The Northeast Native Plant Primer, returns to talk about spring blooms, from trilliums to rhododendrons. Lorimer is also a 2026 recipient of the Garden Club of America’s Distinguished Service Medal for his work conserving native plant species and restoring native plant communities. Comedian and actor Tony V joins us ahead of his appearance at The Town and the City Festival in Lowell, a three-day, Kerouac-inspired cultural crawl of music, readings, comedy, and more than 50 acts. Tony headlines the festival’s comedy night at Cobblestones, part of a lineup that runs Thursday, April 30 through Saturday, May 2.

Adele Bertei was part of the late-1970s downtown New York no wave scene, playing with The Contortions and later fronting the Bloods. In her new memoir, No New York: A Memoir of No Wave and the Women Who Shaped the Scene, Bertei writes from inside that abrasive, cross-disciplinary movement — and restores the women artists, musicians, and filmmakers who helped define it. At the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Picturing Isabella traces how Isabella Stewart Gardner shaped her public image through photography, while Persona: Photography and the Re-Imagined Self looks at artists who use the camera to construct alter egos and challenge fixed ideas of identity. Joining us are Pieranna Cavalchini, the Gardner’s Tom and Lisa Blumenthal Curator of Contemporary Art and co-curator of Persona, and Sylvia Hickman, Curatorial Associate at the Gardner and curator of Picturing Isabella.We close out National Poetry Month with Evan Wang, the National Youth Poet Laureate and author of the new chapbook Slow Burn: Poems. Wang will appear at Harvard Book Store on Wednesday, April 29 at 7 p.m., in conversation with Cindion Huang.

On this edition of The Culture Show, Jared Bowen, Callie Crossley, and Joyce Kulhawik, go over the week’s top arts and culture headlines, which include“Michael,” the new Michael Jackson biopic is reigniting an old argument. The film leans into Jackson’s rise as a child star and global pop phenomenon while sidestepping the child sexual abuse allegations that permanently altered his public standing, raising questions about mythmaking, memory, and omission. Hollywood is revving Miami Vice back to life with Miami Vice ’85, a new feature film starring Michael B. Jordan as Tubbs and Austin Butler as Crockett. The project heads back into the franchise’s pastel, speedboat, neon-night vision of 1980s cool. In the final days of World War II, hundreds of paintings hidden in Berlin for safekeeping were destroyed by fire, including works by artists like Caravaggio and Rubens. Now those lost masterpieces are being recreated in digital form from old photographs, turning a story of destruction into one of remembrance. One of Britain’s great television landmarks is coming to a close. The documentary series Up, which returned to the same participants every seven years from childhood onward, became a portrait of class, fate, and the changing character of England; now 70 Up, directed by Asif Kapadia, will bring the series to an end later this year

Tom Perrotta joins us to discuss Ghost Town, his new novel about memory, grief, and the long pull of the past. The Election, Little Children, and The Leftovers author returns to familiar New Jersey ground in a story centered on Jimmy Perrini, a successful writer drawn back to the hometown and the formative loss he thought he had left behind. Perrotta will appear at the Brattle Theatre on Wednesday, April 29, at 6 p.m. for a Harvard Book Store event; tickets are available through Harvard Book Store. What could Mayor Michelle Wu’s proposed FY2027 budget mean for Boston’s public art landscape? Culture Show contributor Julia Swanson joins us for that conversation. She’s a multidisciplinary artist, producer, and award-winning photographer, and the creator of The Art Walk Project, a series of self-guided micro tours exploring public art across Greater Boston and beyond. On April 23, traditionally observed as Shakespeare’s birthday, we mark the staying power of a writer whose plays continue to be staged, adapted, and reimagined around the world. Joining us is Regie Gibson, the inaugural Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, a writer, performer, and educator whose work engages Shakespeare through spoken word — including his Hamlet-inspired poem “cry havoc (to thine own self be hip)”. 

For this month’s Wednesday Watch Party, Jared Bowen is joined by Callie Crossley, host of GBH’s Under the Radar with Callie Crossley, and Joyce Kulhawik, Emmy Award-winning arts and entertainment critic and president of the Boston Theater Critics Association, to revisit When Harry Met Sally, the 1989 romantic comedy that helped define the genre and is still shaping how movies talk about love, friendship, and timing. Together they dig into the film’s autumn-in-Manhattan charm, its famous one-liners, and the question at its center: does When Harry Met Sally still hold up? 

Geoff Bennett, co-anchor and co-managing editor of PBS NewsHour, joins The Culture Show to discuss his new book, Black Out Loud: The Revolutionary History of Black Comedy from Vaudeville to ’90s Sitcoms. Bennett traces the long arc of Black comedy, from minstrelsy and vaudeville to Richard Pryor, In Living Color, and Living Single. Alison Hoagland, professor emerita of historic preservation at Michigan Technological University and a board member of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, joins us to talk about the legal fight over President Trump’s White House ballroom project. The case, filed by the National Trust after the demolition of the East Wing, has become a high-stakes battle over preservation, presidential power, and the future of the White House grounds. Paul C. Ha, director of the MIT List Visual Arts Center, joins us as the museum marks its 40th anniversary. We discuss the List’s role in bringing contemporary art into the life of MIT, and the exhibitions, performances, and public programs celebrating four decades of experimentation and artistic inquiry. 

Boston Pops conductor Keith Lockhart was recently honored with the Third Lantern Award at Old North Church, recognizing his role in using music to connect civic life and shared memory. As the nation approaches its 250th anniversary, he joins The Culture Show to reflect on the power of orchestral music at historic moments. Zara Anishanslin joins The Culture Show to talk through her latest book “The Painter’s Fire: A Forgotten History of the Artists Who Championed the American Revolution.” Zara Anishanslin is a Professor of History and Art History at the University of Delaware. As part of Countdown to 2026, we explore Paul Revere’s Sons of Liberty Bowl, crafted in 1768 to honor a Massachusetts vote rejecting new British taxes. Engraved with the names of lawmakers who opposed those measures, it’s a key artifact of early resistance. Ethan Lasser, Chief of Curatorial Affairs and Conservation at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, joins us for an overview. To learn more about the Sons of Liberty Bowl and the MFA’s exhibitions and programming go here.

On this edition of The Culture Show, Jared Bowen, 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.Hampshire College, the experimental Amherst campus built around independent thinking and academic rebellion, will close after the fall semester under the weight of declining enrollment and financial strain. Its loss is hitting alumni hard, including filmmaker Ken Burns, who called Hampshire’s model of experimentation profoundly transformative. Meta is reportedly exploring whether AI can do more than complete tasks — whether it can replicate executive presence itself. The company is said to be building a digital version of Mark Zuckerberg that could advise employees across the organization, raising questions about whether this is a new kind of access or a new kind of control. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s class of 2026 stretches across genres and generations, from Iron Maiden and Wu-Tang Clan to Sade and Oasis. It is a lineup that rewards longevity, settles a few old arguments, and reopens the question of who gets to define rock history. The Brady Bunch house has entered yet another phase of its afterlife. After HGTV rebuilt the interior to match the sitcom’s remembered world, the home now exists somewhere between landmark, attraction, and pop-culture shrine to the grooviest decade in television décor. At the MFA, Art in Bloom turns 50 this year, pairing works from the collection with floral arrangements inspired by them. The annual event brings together floral designers, garden clubs, and museum volunteers for one of the museum’s most colorful spring traditions. 

Keefer Glenshaw joins The Culture Show ahead of Intention / Desire, a collaborative 24-hour performance that begins at sunset on April 25 and runs through sunset on April 26 at the Berklee Loft in Boston. Glenshaw, a musician, performance artist, electric cellist, and founder of the rock band The Romance, talks about pushing performance to its limits and inviting audiences directly into the work. MassArt president Mary Grant returns for our recurring feature “AI: Actual Intelligence,” where we hear from some of the region’s most original thinkers. This month, she joins us to talk about the school’s new co-op program and whether an art school can also become a pathway to work.Ahead of Patriots’ Day, Kiernan P. Schmitt joins us to go beyond the Freedom Trail and into the lesser-known corners of Greater Boston where the Revolution still leaves visible marks on the landscape. Schmitt is the author of Secret Boston: An Unusual Guide and co-host of the travel podcast Out of Office.

Providence-based six-piece Sharks Come Cruisin’ joined The Culture Show with their sea-shanty-driven sound, drawing on maritime music, group singing, and an instrument lineup that includes guitar, bass, banjo, fiddle, accordion, and melodica. The band also hosts the regular PVD Shanty Sing at The Parlour in Providence on May 8 and has a duo set at Aidan’s Pub in Bristol on May 10. A century after Robert Goddard launched the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket in Auburn, Massachusetts, Vanessa Bumpus, exhibition coordinator at the Museum of Worcester, joined us to discuss Worcester to the Stars: The Goddard Rocket Centennial. On view through August 1, the exhibition traces Worcester’s place in the history of American rocketry through artifacts and images from Clark University, NASA, the Smithsonian Institution, and other collections. Then we turned to the other Boston marathon: the Boston Theater Marathon XXVIII, a full-day relay of 50 new ten-minute plays staged by New England theater companies at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre on May 3. Nathan Alan Davis, Director of the MFA Playwriting Program and Associate Professor of the Practice of Playwriting at Boston University, joined us to talk about the event’s staying power and its broader role as a gathering point for the region’s theater community, with proceeds benefiting the Theatre Community Benevolent Fund.