The Culture Show Podcast

On this edition of The Culture Show, Jared Bowen, Callie Crossley, and James Parker, staff writer at The Atlantic, go over the week’s top arts and culture headlines: The Venice Biennale is often called the Olympics of the art world, but this year its international jury made news before awarding any medals. The jury resigned, saying it would not honor artists from countries whose leaders face inter...

Award-winning New Yorker staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe joins us to discuss his latest book, London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth . The book investigates the death of 19-year-old Zac Brettler, who plunged from a luxury London apartment tower into the River Thames, and opens into a larger story of dirty money, criminal networks, police failure, and...

Michael Patrick MacDonald is the bestselling author of All Souls: A Family Story from Southie and Easter Rising: A Memoir of Roots and Rebellion . He joins us to talk about The Rest of the Story , the trauma-informed storytelling program he created to help people use writing to reckon with what they’ve lived through. Jamie Bissonnette is a James Beard Award-winning chef, restaurateur, and founding...

Chadwick Stokes, musician, songwriter, and founder of Dispatch and State Radio, joins us with Sybil Gallagher, co-founder of Calling All Crows , the nonprofit they built to connect music fans with service, advocacy, and feminist movements. They’ll discuss 1972: A Rock Opera , Stokes’ new work about abortion, bodily autonomy, and life before Roe v. Wade, which will have its world premiere at the Am...

Adele Bertei was part of the late-1970s downtown New York no wave scene, playing with The Contortions and later fronting the Bloods. In her new memoir, No New York: A Memoir of No Wave and the Women Who Shaped the Scene , Bertei writes from inside that abrasive, cross-disciplinary movement — and restores the women artists, musicians, and filmmakers who helped define it.  At the Isabella Stewart Ga...

On this edition of The Culture Show, Jared Bowen, Callie Crossley, and Joyce Kulhawik, go over the week’s top arts and culture headlines, which include “Michael,” the new Michael Jackson biopic is reigniting an old argument. The film leans into Jackson’s rise as a child star and global pop phenomenon while sidestepping the child sexual abuse allegations that permanently altered his public standing...

Tom Perrotta joins us to discuss Ghost Town , his new novel about memory, grief, and the long pull of the past. The Election , Little Children , and The Leftovers author returns to familiar New Jersey ground in a story centered on Jimmy Perrini, a successful writer drawn back to the hometown and the formative loss he thought he had left behind. Perrotta will appear at the Brattle Theatre on Wednes...

For this month’s Wednesday Watch Party, Jared Bowen is joined by Callie Crossley, host of GBH’s Under the Radar with Callie Crossley , and Joyce Kulhawik, Emmy Award-winning arts and entertainment critic and president of the Boston Theater Critics Association , to revisit When Harry Met Sally , the 1989 romantic comedy that helped define the genre and is still shaping how movies talk about love, f...

Geoff Bennett , co-anchor and co-managing editor of PBS NewsHour , joins The Culture Show to discuss his new book, Black Out Loud: The Revolutionary History of Black Comedy from Vaudeville to ’90s Sitcoms . Bennett traces the long arc of Black comedy, from minstrelsy and vaudeville to Richard Pryor, In Living Color , and Living Single .  Alison Hoagland, professor emerita of historic preservation...

Boston Pops conductor Keith Lockhart was recently honored with the Third Lantern Award at Old North Church, recognizing his role in using music to connect civic life and shared memory. As the nation approaches its 250th anniversary, he joins The Culture Show to reflect on the power of orchestral music at historic moments.  Zara Anishanslin joins The Culture Show to talk through her latest book “Th...

On this edition of The Culture Show , Jared Bowen, Lisa Simmons, and James Sullivan go over the week’s top arts and culture headlines. Lisa Simmons is the Artistic and Executive Director of the Roxbury International Film Festival and program manager at Mass Cultural Council. James Sullivan is a journalist and author specializing in popular culture and Americana. He’s also on the Emerson faculty. H...

Keefer Glenshaw joins The Culture Show ahead of Intention / Desire , a collaborative 24-hour performance that begins at sunset on April 25 and runs through sunset on April 26 at the Berklee Loft in Boston. Glenshaw, a musician, performance artist, electric cellist, and founder of the rock band The Romance, talks about pushing performance to its limits and inviting audiences directly into the work....

Providence-based six-piece Sharks Come Cruisin’ joined The Culture Show with their sea-shanty-driven sound, drawing on maritime music, group singing, and an instrument lineup that includes guitar, bass, banjo, fiddle, accordion, and melodica. The band also hosts the regular PVD Shanty Sing at The Parlour in Providence on May 8 and has a duo set at Aidan’s Pub in Bristol on May 10 .  A century afte...

Actor Bob Odenkirk and writer Derek Kolstad reunite after the Nobody films for Normal , a twisted neo-Western about a bank robbery that shatters the facade of a seemingly quiet small town. They join us ahead of the film’s theatrical release this Friday, April 17. To learn more, go here . At Harvard’s Houghton Library, Thanks for Typing brings long-overlooked women’s labor out of the margins and in...

Historian and bestselling author Timothy Snyder joins The Culture Show to discuss how democracies weaken, how authoritarianism rises, and what freedom actually requires. Snyder, the inaugural Temerty Chair in Modern European History at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto, will be honored on April 26 at the Literary Lights Gala .  Boston Youth Poet Lau...

On this edition of The Culture Show , Jared Bowen, Callie Crossley, and Joyce Kulhawik, go over the week’s top arts and culture headlines, which include: CBS is handing Stephen Colbert’s late-night slot to Byron Allen, marking a sharp change in tone. Colbert made the show a home for biting political comedy; Allen brings a broader, more mainstream style. “The Drama,”  starring Zendaya and Robert Pa...

Cady Coleman joins The Culture Show to discuss Artemis II, NASA’s first crewed lunar flyby in more than 50 years, and what the mission represents for the future of deep-space exploration. She reflects on the ambition, risk, and sense of shared purpose that still make a moon mission feel like a true moonshot. Coleman is a retired NASA astronaut, U.S. Air Force colonel, scientist, pilot, and musicia...

Regie Gibson, the inaugural Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, joins The Culture Show as part of our ongoing celebration of National Poetry Month. A poet, performer, and educator, he discusses bringing poetry off the page and into public life. Jade Wheeler joins The Culture Show to discuss Who Is Eartha Mae? , her one-woman play with music about Eartha Kitt that moves beyond the i...

Nineteen-time Grammy winner Béla Fleck joins The Culture Show ahead of his April 18 performance at The Cabot in Beverly with harpist Edmar Castañeda and drummer Antonio Sánchez. He talks about musical risk, unlikely combinations, and a career that has taken the banjo from bluegrass to jazz, classical music, and beyond.  Richard Hayden, Senior Director of Horticulture at New York’s High Line, joins...

Elaine Sciolino, former New York Times Paris bureau chief and the author of six books, joins The Culture Show to revisit  her 1982 interview with Ali Khamenei, conducted years before he became Iran’s supreme leader, and to reflect on what that encounter reveals now about Iran, power, and history. Her latest book, “Adventures in the Louvre: How to Fall in Love with the World’s Greatest Museum,”  is...

On this edition of The Culture Show , Jared Bowen, Callie Crossley, and Lisa Simmons, go over the week’s top arts and culture headlines. First up, Italian authorities are searching for four masked thieves who stole a Renoir, a Cézanne, and a Matisse from the Magnani-Rocca Foundation outside Parma in a raid that took less than three minutes. The theft, valued at about $10.3 million, has renewed con...

Award-winning actor, director, singer-songwriter and bestselling author David Duchovny joins The Culture Show to discuss “ About Time: Poems ,” a collection that reflects on love, family, aging, and the shifting nature of time.  From there Molly Schwartzburg joins The Culture Show to talk about Edward Gorey and how Harvard’s Houghton Library has acquired never before seen Gorey illustrations. Thes...

Poet Robert Pinsky joins The Culture Show to kick off National Poetry Month with a look at PoemJazz at Regattabar, where poetry and live music meet. The next edition, “ Misrule Music ,” is April 12 and shares its title with Pinsky’s new poem in the April issue of "The Atlantic." Chef Jason Santos discusses “ Citrus & Salt ,” his new cookbook inspired by the flavors of his Fort Point restaurant...

Ibram X. Kendi joins The Culture Show to discuss his latest book “ Chain of Ideas: The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age .” The National Book Award-winning author examines how replacement theory gained political force and how it has been used to justify fear, exclusion, and authoritarian power. Ibram X. Kendi is the Carter G. Woodson Endowed Chair in History at Howard University where he is also a...

Retired FBI agent Geoffrey Kelly joins The Culture Show to discuss “Thirteen Perfect Fugitives: The True Story of the Mob, Murder, and the World’s Largest Art Heist.” After 22 years chasing leads through Boston’s criminal underworld, Kelly reflects on the missing art, the long investigation, and the toll of living inside one of the city’s most enduring mysteries. We preview Berklee’s “Mambo Mania:...