The Culture Show Podcast

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...

What does it mean to be a restless soul  in-between two worlds? That is the definition of a dybbuk.  With an ongoing  immigration crisis and refugees displaced by war– a new adaptation of the play “The Dybbuk,”  has deep resonance. And who better to wrestle with these themes than the Arlekin Players Theatre, which has a reputation for examining such existential plights.   Their  artistic director–...

Embrace Boston is gearing up for its third annual gathering to celebrate Juneteenth with the Boston community,  and it promises to be more than an event but a conversation about reimaging Boston ahead of its 400th Birthday. Plus,  no festival would be complete without a block party, DJ’s and dancing. Imari Paris Jeffries, CEO and President of Embrace Boston, joins The Culture Show for a preview. ...

The three-time U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky joins us to talk about his  new book of  poetry, “Proverbs of Limbo.”  His book launch is June 11th at the Cambridge Public Library at an event presented by Harvard Book Store. Robert Pinsky  is the author of “At The Foundling Hospital”, “The Figured Wheel” and “The Want Bone.”  He is also a professor in the graduate creative writing program at Bosto...

First up, Richard Dreyfuss didn’t just make waves, he sent shockwaves through Beverly’s Cabot Theater ahead of a special screening of  “Jaws.” Offending audiences by spewing transphobic, misanthropic rhetoric. And it turns out this wasn’t the first time. From there it’s time to meet Josh Gibson, Major League Baseball’s new GREATEST OF ALL TIME PLAYER. With the MLB  integrating statistics from the...

New York Times best-selling writer Ann Leary’s  latest book is a collection of Essays titled “I’ve Tried Being Nice.”   In total they are a reflection on her life…on the liberties that come with being older, on moments of mayhem and on scenes from a marriage that has had its ups and downs–on the tennis court, on the red carpet and behind closed doors.  The essays are funny and frank. They are pers...

On this episode of The Culture Show MassArt President Mary Grant joins us for her monthly appearance. Today she talks about the cost of college, if the expense is worth it and what higher-ed institutions need to do to meet incoming students where they are. From there we head to Colby College Museum of Art. Their head curator Beth Finch joins The Culture Show to give an overview of their current ex...

Writer Percival Everett’s satire verges on prophecy.  He is prolific–he has written westerns, mysteries, thrillers, and collections of poetry.   You likely recognize his name because of his book “Erasure,” the sardonic take on the  publishing industry on which the film “American Fiction” was based. Everett’s latest  book, titled “James,”  is a retelling of Mark Twain’s  “Adventures of Huckleberry...

Today on The Culture Show it’s the pharaoh of the opera.   Countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo has made a  name for himself starring in the MET’s production of Akhenaten –  earning a Grammy award along the way. He’s also figuratively found his voice and the freedom to have fun by collaborating with cabaret performer Justin Vivian Bond in their hit performance and accompanying album, “Only and Octav...

Today on the Culture Show, Callie Crossley, James Bennett II and Edgar B Herwick III  go over the latest headlines on our arts and culture week-in-review.  The topics they discuss include, Scarlett Johansson’s feud with Open AI, Elvis Presley’s  Graceland having a brush with foreclosure fraudsters, and Apple’s 100 best album list. They also look at  a taco stand in Mexico City that has just receiv...

When it comes to opera performances, Boston Lyric Opera is literally putting the wheels in motion. On June first the BLO is rolling out its “Street Stage Series” and by  rolling out, we mean driving a semi-trailer that converts into a stage, which will travel  to different neighborhoods throughout the summer, offering opera and popular music performances. The BLO’s Brad Vernatter,  the Stanford Ca...