The Culture Show Podcast

Aaron Lansky is credited with saving a world of Yiddish literature, language and culture. It started in the late 1970’s when he was studying Yiddish literature at Mcgill University and was having a hard time finding the books he needed to pursue his scholarship. So he organized a nationwide network of volunteer book collectors  and launched a campaign, now known as The Yiddish Book Center ,  to sa...

Imari Paris Jeffries, president and CEO of Embrace Boston,  joins The Culture Show every month. With Memorial Day approaching, we’re going to get his take on the role black military members have played in U.S. history, from emancipation to protecting our democracy, and how recent developments in local government are supporting Embrace Boston’s call for reparations.  From there, we’re fashion forwa...

Writer Flannery O’Connory  was  a devout Catholic. She grew up in Georgia and  eventually lived on a farm among peacocks. She negotiated life under the threat of looming death because she had lupus.  But her imagination took her elsewhere.  Mostly to peculiar places, often violent ones , where prophets, sinners and outsiders sought truth and redemption. Now her biography, her characters  and her l...

Coming up on the Culture Show, live from our GBH studio at the Boston Public Library, it’s our arts and  culture week-in-review. First up, The Red Scare.  The new portrait of King Charles III is saturated in reds and sparking controversy. Is it a monarchy masterpiece? Or a monstrosity?   Then we remember culinary legend Jasper White who elevated New England’s food scene by taking us out of the era...

F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said “There are no second acts in American lives.”  but there are certainly second acts when it comes to Fitzgerald’s own classic “The Great Gatsby.”  Fitting for a story about reinvention, The Great Gatsby has been adapted to  the screen and stage countless times. Now the American Repertory Theater is bringing it to life in a world premiere musical “Gatsby: an America...

Miranda July, a triple threat in the art world as an innovative visual artist, filmmaker, and writer has just released a new novel titled “All Fours.”  It’s a coming-of- middle -age story about a married woman who is either experiencing a turning point or is turning her world upside down when she derails a solo road trip by abruptly checking into and staying at a highway motel. She joins The Cultu...

Climbing a mountain is a metaphor frequently used to describe something that seems insurmountable. For the Chelsea-based Apollinaire Theatre Company, they are both figuratively and literally climbing a mountain in their latest production “Touching the Void.” The play involves a climbable mountain, a Scottish pub, a base camp, and the ever-present void. Two of the actors starring in this production...

The landmark Supreme Court case that struck down racial segregation in public schools helped to dismantle  the legal apparatus of white supremacy. It also prompted a civil rights movement.  With This Friday marking the 70th anniversary of this ruling,   Kerri Greenidge, associate professor in history and in the department of race, colonialism, and diaspora at Tufts University,  joins us to talk ab...

Today Culture Show co hosts Callie Crossley, Edgar B. Herwick III and Jared Bowen go over the latest headlines on our  arts and  culture week-in-review, which includes Eurovision. in 2019 Tel Aviv hosted the song contest. Now, amid Israel’s war on Gaza,  the Olympics of pop music is politically charged as pro-Palestinian protesters denounce Israel’s participation.  And we remember the inventive  a...

The new film “I Saw the TV Glow”  is a complex exploration of childhood nostalgia and how it can haunt us into adulthood. It also explores  the irresistible pull of pop culture.  Writer and director Jane Schoenbrun joins The Culture Show ahead of their Saturday appearance at the Coolidge  to receive their Breakthrough Artist Award, which spotlights the next generation of filmmaking talent.  From t...

Is it the human condition to take life for granted? Do we need to be confronted with death as a way to acknowledge life, appreciate life  and to find meaning in life?  These are both metaphysical and matter-of-fact questions that are central to Dael Orlandersmith’s solo play “Spiritus/Virgil’s Dance.” It is described as being in conversation with Dante’s Divine Comedy, where Virgil guides Dante’s...

From guns to reproductive rights, the  majority of  Supreme Court justices  think we should follow the original intentions of the Constitution as closely as possible. So what does that mean in modern-day America?  Writer A.J. Jacobs went to find out. In his latest book, “The Year of Living Constitutionally: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution’s Original Meaning.”  Jacobs documents  l...

 When Reginald Dwayne Betts was 16 years old, he was an honors student. He was also arrested for carjacking. Prosecuted as an adult, he spent eight years in a Virginia prison, existing among grown up men. What got him through those years behind bars? Books.  Betts left prison a poet; he then became an Ivy League-educated Lawyer and now he’s on a mission to bring libraries into prisons with a first...

Today on The Culture Show co hosts  Jared Bowen, Callie Crossley and Edgar B. Herwick III go over the latest arts and culture headlines on our week-in-review.  First up, Boston will host its first ever public art triennial. A year from now the city will be populated by public art from international superstars to locally renowned artists.  From there, disappointed museum goers are putting the moan...

When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan  from 1996 to 2001, creating art was dangerous. The Taliban disapproved of music and banned all artistic representations of the human form. They saw art as an expression of protest and resistance. After their reign, when Afghanistan functioned as an open society, art flourished. But since the Taliban returned to power in 2021, after the final US  troops left Afgh...

In 1985 Marty McFly skateboarded onto the silver screen –and into cinematic history– with the blockbuster, “Back to The Future.” In this sci-fi classic, the eccentric scientist Doc Brown turns a DeLorean into a  plutonium - powered time machine. Then, in an experiment gone awry, Marty McFly finds himself taking a ride of his lifetime, going back to 1955 where he meets his parents when they were te...

What’s past doesn’t need to be prologue. That is the point of the exhibition “Auschwitz: Not long ago. Not far away,” –  to learn about the atrocities of the Holocaust so that history is not repeated. From the concrete posts used to fence in the camp,  to a gas mask used by SS garrison members, to the suitcases and journals belonging to the prisoners– hundreds of  original artifacts tell  the horr...

Today we continue to celebrate national poetry month with Oliver de la Paz. He is the poet laureate of Worcester and an associate professor at The College of the Holy Cross. His latest collection of poetry “The Diaspora Sonnets,”  is winner of the New England Book Award for Poetry. These sonnets illuminate the immigrant experience with meditations on the meaning of home and family bonds. They refl...

Today on The Culture Show , it's our arts and culture week in review. First up,  the culture of Hollywood  shifted in the years following the  downfall of Harvey Weinstein and the launch of the #MeToo movement. So what will the reverberations throughout the industry be now that his New York rape conviction has been overturned? From there, Jerry Seinfeld says that Hollywood is a has been, declaring...

Boston POPS conductor Keith Lockhart is here with a preview of their star-studded Spring Season, from Harry Connick Jr, and Branford Marsalis,  to Pride night, Gospel night and a Jurassic Park concert along the way.  Performances that are sure to put a spring in your step. From there, it’s a message in a mural.  In East Boston, public art is making a splash by way of a series of  large-scale mural...

We’re putting a fine point on the pencil. Rendered ordinary by its utility and ubiquity, it does have a romantic origin story involving a lighting strike that unearthed graphite in the north of England.  Even so the pencil endures  as practical, and reliable. After all, when the tip breaks, just snap your Number 2 in  two, and…you  have two pencils. The fascinating story  of the pencil is the subj...

Marking the 25th anniversary of a cult classic. In 1999, the adult cartoon Mission Hill debuted. It focused on the misadventures of a group of disparate roommates.  It was created by Simpsons writers Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein, and earned a GLAAD award for their realistic portrayal of a gay couple. Alas, the show was doomed from the start thanks to a decidedly unsupportive network and dismal r...

According to the laws of physics, a body in motion stays in motion.  And for John Lam, he’s been in motion for nearly his entire life. But soon the Boston Ballet principal dancer will be approximating something like rest with the announcement that he is exiting the stage. He joins us to talk about his career, the decision to retire after a 20-year tenure with Boston Ballet, and what’s next. From t...

Coming up: Our arts and culture week in review. First up, the Venice Biennale– Artist Jeffrey Gibson, with his riot of color, is the first ever Indigenous artist selected to represent the United States;  At the Israeli pavilion, artist Ruth Patir, won’t open her show until “a cease-fire and hostage release agreement is reached;  And the German Pavilion, which has been described as creepy and encha...

Leslie Odom, Jr. The award winning actor and singer’s portrayal of  Aaron Burr in the hit musical “Hamilton,” gave us a new way to think about America’s history and the fathers who founded it.  And if history doesn’t repeat itself, it rhymes . In his recent return to Broadway, Odom starred in a play that skewers racism in America in the Broadway revival of  “Purlie Victorious.” Music remains at hi...