The Culture Show Podcast

Quilling is the ancient art of coiling long strips of paper around a needle–or  going back to its namesake– around a quill.  In a twist of fate, Huong Wolf has ended up  on a mission to keep this tradition alive. Today she  and her husband  run the Framingham-based business, Quilling Card, a fair trade company that sells handcrafted cards–and now handcrafted art. She joins The Culture Show to talk...

What is a  prescription for anxiety or isolation that doesn't need FDA approval and won’t get churned through big pharma to drive up prices?  Art and culture. Known as “social prescriptions,”  there is a growing movement of physicians writing out prescriptions for dance classes, nature walks or a trip to the museum as a way to help treat mental and behavioral health concerns. Now Massachusetts is...

Ben Shattuck’s latest book, “The History of Sound: Stories”  is a collection of interconnected stories that examine the lives and landscapes of New England where Shattuck spans centuries in these haunting and often humorous stories. He joins “The Culture Show” ahead of his event at Harvard Book Store. And, it might be  “Shark Week” on the Discovery Channel, but on The Culture Show, it’s “Jumping t...

Today on The Culture Show, The play “Fat Ham.”  It’s a modern-day adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, where the court of Denmark is transported to a backyard barbecue in the South, but the most radical change is the sublimation of Shakespeare’s epic tragedy into an uproarious comedy.   Playwright James Ijames won a Pulitzer for Fat Ham in 2022.  We caught up with him when Fat Ham was onstage in Bo...

Coming up on The Culture Show…. We are steeped in American history, starting with  the Boston Tea Party.  Fed up with the tyranny of taxation without representation, American colonists  took matters into their own hands–literally: tossing three shiploads of tea into Boston Harbor. The theatrics alone  made it one of  THE most celebrated rebellions. But to understand the true ideals and motivations...

Will Dailey is an independent recording artist, performer and artist advocate. He’s won numerous Boston Music awards, including best album and best artist. He’s shared the stage and studio  with some of the greats, such as Eddie Vedder, Willie Nelson and Brandi Carlile. Now he has a new gig: elevating other artists and musicians  As artist-in-residence at the Omni Boston Hotel at the Seaport, he c...

Poetry often has a stigma that’s hard to shake. That it’s inscrutable, elite and out of reach. Even with the rhyming. And brevity.  But give poetry a chance, explore its roots, its history of experimentation and the beauty of its language and it comes alive. This is what Elisa New has done with “Poetry in America,” the PBS series. She joins The Culture Show to talk about its latest season. Elisa N...

“What to the American slave is your Fourth of July?”  That is the question Frederick Douglass posed to an audience of abolitionists at an event commemorating the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It was July 5, 1852 in Rochester, New York. In that speech, Douglass confronted the hypocrisy of a day celebrating freedom in a country that still endorsed the forced labor and bondage of more t...

Mfoniso Udofia. Frustrated as an actor when she didn’t see roles reflecting her or her reality, she picked up the pen, and never let go. In total she wrote a nine-play cycle chronicling three generations of a Nigerian-American family. Now a coalition of local theaters and arts organizations are putting on  a two-year festival celebrating and producing these works. Then, it’s a casting conundrum. I...

 Danza Orgánica, a Boston-based dance company, has been collaborating with members of the Aquinnah Wampanoag in a performance that explores   the indigenous people of two islands, Martha’s Vineyard and Puerto Rico, and what the two cultures have in common. Titled, “We Still Dance,”  it is a  multimedia theatrical performance, making its Boston Premiere this Saturday in a free performance at MassAR...

Percussionist and vocalist .Sheila E. is known for her solo work and her collaborations with Prince, and a  setlist that spans  R&B, Funk, Jazz, and Latin Pop. Now she's bringing her beats to Boston by way of two  shows at City Winery. She joins The Culture Show with the preview. From there, how does Boston, the city of champions, honor the stars who made this town a sports town? With public a...

Today on The Culture Show, contributor Joyce Kulhawik goes over the latest plays and movies to take in. She’s an Emmy-award winning arts and entertainment reporter and  president of the Boston Theatre Critics Association.  From there we enter the Gilded Age.  When families such as the Carnegies, Rockefellers, and Vanderbilts expanded their wealth, they needed to spend it. In the summers, they deci...

On The Culture Show we talk a lot about museums and their efforts to be  more accessible, but that has been the mission of the Museum of Bad Art. Since its inception it’s been free to the public, with wall text that  easy to understand –and entertaining, and now that their home is  Dorchester Brewing you can even drink a beer while taking in their collection. With  MOBA marking its 30th anniversar...

Today on The Culture Show, co-hosts Callie Crossley, Edgar B. Herwick III and James Bennett II go over the latest arts and culture headlines on our week-in-review, First up, start spreading the news. Literally. France has opened its first museum of cheese, honoring  dairy excellence from their famous cheeses to their traditional cheese makers. From there we reflect on  the legacy of  Willie Mays -...

Summertime, and the living is easy. Or,  if you’re Audra McDonald, you make it look and sound easy.  The award winning singer and actor earned her fifth – of a record-breaking six– Tony awards for her portrayal of Bess in the Broadway hit “The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess,”  which was mounted right here at The American Repertory Theater. The Culture Show  caught up with McDonald when she was in Bosto...

Through her poetry, Tracy K. Smith probes the meaning of life, she meditates on what happens to our souls when we die, she communes with the dead. She uses poetry to explore her own role in the world as a mother, making the personal profound. Her poems also scrutinize historical racial oppression, the paradox that is the American dream, and the injustices that plague our nation.  All of these them...

Juneteenth is the annual commemoration marking the end of slavery in the United States. The name is derived from the date June 19, 1865, when Major General Gordon Granger informed a Texas audience that all enslaved persons were now free…that was two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation. It’s an important fact to underscore because justice delayed is justice denied. In this context,...

In the documentary film “More Than Our Skin,” five women share their stories about what it’s like to live with vitiligo, an autoimmune disease in which the skin loses its pigment cells, resulting in discolored patches throughout the body. As the film details, while the disease can’t kill you, it can kill your spirit as people with vitiligo are more prone to depression, social stigmatization and is...

 Today on The Culture Show co-hosts  Callie Crossley, James Bennett II and Edgar B. Herwick III  cover the latest headlines on our arts and culture week-in-review. First up, greatness recognizes greatness. Who surprised Tom Brady  at his Patriots Hall of Fame Ceremony with a pop up performance? JAY-Z. And onto another sports Hall of Famer: Jerry West.  We remember the LA Lakers legend whose silhou...

Salvatore Del Deo is a contemporary painter whose 75-year career  has  been inspired by the light of Provincetown, the  landscape,  particularly the dunes, and the people who cycle in and out of town. If you don’t know his paintings you likely know his plight. Since the early 1940’s, his  part-time home has been a dune shack .  But he nearly lost it when the National Parks Service served the Del D...

Playwright Jo Clifford performed the first production of her one-woman show, “The Gospel According to Jesus, Queen of Heaven,” in 2009.   The play reimagines the parables of the New Testament as told by a modern day  Jesus who has come back to earth as a transgender woman. Fifteen years on, “The Gospel According to Jesus, Queen of Heaven,”  has been translated into seven  languages and performed i...

Ken Field is a composer, flautist, saxophonist and the leader of the Revolutionary Snake Ensemble–a New Orleans  inspired brass band, which is marking its 35th anniversary this Friday at Regattabar. The celebration doubles as a live recording session of new material. Ken Field joins The Culture Show for a preview, to talk about leading a band for 35 years and the origin of his group’s name. From t...

What do you call three lost souls left on a prep school campus during the holidays? The holdovers. That’s also the title of Alexander Payne’s film.  Set in the 1970’s, Paul Giamatti plays a scrooge-like New England teacher–stingy with good grades and generosity. But over the winter holiday break, his heart thaws –slightly –and he forges an unlikely fellowship with a student  and the school cook. T...

Today on  The Culture Show it’s our arts and culture week-in-review. GBH’s Jared Bowen, Callie Crossley,  and Culture Show contributor Lisa Simmons, who is artistic and executive director of the Roxbury International Film Fest and  program manager at Mass Cultural Council , go over the latest arts and culture headlines. First up, ex terior design.  The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston  is on a mission...

Berklee College of Music and the Audio Engineering Society are hosting an inaugural international symposium at Berklee on AI in music, exploring the benefits, the ethics and the caveats.   Two people instrumental to this symposium join The Culture Show for a preview: The event organizer, Berklee  music production and engineering professor Jonathan Wyner and keynote speaker Tod Machover.  Tod Macho...