The Culture Show Podcast

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...

Percussionist and composer Reynaliz Herrera returns to The Culture Show with excerpts from BIKEncerto , her four-movement concerto for solo bicycle and orchestra. Herrera turns the bicycle into a rich percussive instrument of rhythm, texture, machinery and music. The full album is also available on Bandcamp . Today  we hear excerpts from  I. Everything Movement,  III. Metallic Movement and IV. Tir...

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 V...

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 be...

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...

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 re...

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...

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...

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 Natio...

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...

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 Anyt...

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 20...

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 docu...

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...