The Culture Show Podcast

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 imagine...

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...

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 genu...

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 Fe...

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 f...

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-...

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,...

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 lat...

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 a...

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. Thes...

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...

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 new...

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 inves...

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 P...

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...

Harvard political theorist Danielle Allen joins us to discuss her new book, Radical Duke: How One Aristocrat — and the American Revolution — Transformed Britain , which traces the mystery of a rare parchment copy of the Declaration of Independence found in England to Charles Lennox, the third Duke of Richmond — a British aristocrat who became one of the American Revolution’s most important allies....

Imari Paris Jeffries, president and CEO of Embrace Boston and a co-chair of Everyone250 , returns for “AI: Actual Intelligence,” The Culture Show’s monthly, algorithm-free conversation with some of the region’s sharpest thinkers.  Cameron McCloud, frontman, rapper and songwriter for the Dallas hip-hop collective Cure for Paranoia , joins The Culture Show after the band won NPR’s 2026 Tiny Desk Con...

Broadway director Marc Bruni joins The Culture Show to talk about The Great Gatsby , the Broadway musical that turns F. Scott Fitzgerald’s story of reinvention, romance and illusion into a Jazz Age stage spectacle. The production comes to Citizens Opera House July 7–19 by way of Broadway in Boston . Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Elizabeth Strout joins us to discuss The Things We Never Say , her...

Ron Chernow―prizewinning author of seven books, including the National Book Award winner “The House of Morgan,” the Pulitzer Prize winner “Washington: A Life,” and the George Washington Book Prize winner “Alexander Hamilton ” ―joins The Culture Show to talk about his new biography “Mark Twain . ”      From there we talk to National Geographic Explorer  in Residence Tara Roberts. She joins The Cult...

Filmmaker, writer, performer and longtime Provincetown presence John Waters joins The Culture Show during our broadcast from WOMR. He talks with Jared Bowen about Provincetown, his career and his new live show, Going to Extremes , presented by Payomet Performing Arts Center at Provincetown Town Hall on July 23. Provincetown Town Crier Daniel Gómez Llata takes us into the summer rush of Commercial...

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.  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 S...

Chad Smith , president and CEO of the Boston Symphony Orchestra , joins The Culture Show as the BSO heads into a major summer season shadowed by the decision not to renew music director Andris Nelsons’ contract beyond the 2027 Tanglewood season. Smith talks with Jared Bowen about the fallout, the questions facing the orchestra, and what comes next. He also previews the Boston Pops Fireworks Specta...

Actor and filmmaker Olivia Wilde joins The Culture Show to talk about The Invite , her new A24 comedy, which she directs and stars in. The film, co-starring Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton, opens in Boston at the Coolidge Corner Theatre on Friday, July 3, before its nationwide release on July 10. Comedian Kevin Flynn, co-founder and executive director of the Nantucket Comedy Festival ,...

On this edition of The Culture Show, Jared Bowen, Callie Crossley, and Culture Show contributor Lisa Simmons, go over the week’s top arts and culture headlines, which include: President Trump’s blue Reflecting Pool makeover has become a swampy spectacle in Washington, with algae, peeling paint and blame quickly giving way to parody songs and guerrilla projections. What began as a patriotic renovat...

Providence-based chamber choir Ensemble Altera joins The Culture Show live from GBH’s Fraser Performance Studio to perform excerpts from Declarations , a new work marking America at 250. The full world-premiere work will be performed Saturday, June 27 at 7 p.m. at Old South Church in Boston and Sunday, June 28 at 3 p.m. at First Baptist Church in Providence. Curator Souleo and artist Michael A. Cu...