The Culture Show Podcast

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...

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 c...

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 n...

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 mil...

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 Sea Symposium September 17 and 18. Filmmaker Ivy Meeropol joins us to discuss A...

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, p...

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...

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 th...

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. ...

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 A...

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...

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...

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 cultur...

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 Prov...

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 , discu...

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 a...

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 Pro...

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,...

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, follo...

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 as...

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 . W...

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 ,...

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...

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 Mus...

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...