The Culture Show Podcast

A Massachusetts marathon that might be more rigorous than Boston’s famed 26.2 mile road race - This is a 25-hour, non-stop epic endeavor where the equivalent of Heartbreak Hill is reading Herman Melville to a live audience at 2:00 AM, or even 3:00 AM. I’m talking about the annual Moby-Dick Marathon. Though it’s been centuries since a whaling ship sailed out of New Bedford, the literary legacy of H...

Director Igor Golyak, founder of Needham’s Arlekin Players Theater, was born in Ukraine. Understandably, themes of displacement and war are often woven throughout his work. Now Golyak is embarking on a play recounting horrific real-life events: the massacre of 1600 Jews in a small Polish town in the summer of 1941. Titled, “Our Class,”  it follows 10 Polish classmates — five Jewish and five Cathol...

Content warning - discussion of domestic violence Today on our week-in-review, it’s the ghost of Christmas future haunting Hollywood. Will the double feature that was the actors’ and writers’ strikes take a toll on the film industry in 2024? Then it’s the stratospheric rise and fall of actor Jonathan Majors – a conviction on domestic assault charges has brought down the action film A-lister. With...

A story of a true underdog.  Ricky the rescue chihuahua goes to Broadway for the role of a lifetime:  playing Bruiser –  the canine costar of  Elle Woods, the rich ditz who charms her way through “Legally Blonde: The Musical.”   Ricky  might be small, but he steals the spotlight for a two-year run. Now “Legally Blonde” has landed in Boston. We’ll talk to Animal handler and actor, Brian Michael Hof...

What does it mean to be at sea? Literally, it means to be away from land. Figuratively it means to  have no path. It means confusion and  disorientation. This is what is captured in a 1915 Japanese work of art  by Hashio Kyoshi. Titled “Morning Sea” It’s a silk on silk embroidery of waves– these are aggressive, savage waves that  create  a sense of total turbulence. Writer Gish Jen describes the e...

Is the action film “Die Hard” a Christmas movie? Though there  are some Yippee Ki NAY sayers – from  film critics to Christmas traditionalists–  there’s a case to be made that it is.  Sure, there are explosions, terrorists and  gunfire – BUT it does take place on Christmas Eve and Bruce Willis’s hero cop wants nothing more than to bring his family together for the holidays. There are even Santa jo...

For his newest work, Playwright Lloyd Suh relied on maternal instincts. His works often take place during pivotal moments in Asian American history – examining the immigrant experience and how history exact can take a toll across culture generations. So for this one, he had long conversations with his mom. They surface in his comedy “The Heart Sellers,” where two young housewives grapple with the...

Today on our week in review: Is Netflix going the way of Neilsen?   The streaming  service has been described as a “black hole” for keeping its viewership data under wraps. But the battle for transparency became a key issue during the Hollywood strikes.  Now, in a first for Netflix, they’ve released reams of of data on thousands of titles and the billions of hours that people spent watching it all...

We are steeped in American history, marking the 250th anniversary of 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–the vision of angry patriots hurling 90,000 pounds of cargo overboard–has made it one of THE most celebrated rebel...

Coming up on The Culture Show, the extraordinary events of a Christmas truce between Germany and the Allies during World War  I  come to life in the musical “All is Calm”   We talk to the creative team at Greater Boston Stage Company who have made this a holiday tradition. Then it’s everything you need to know about the live music scene. Edgar B. Herwick III leads a roundup of performances in and...

Much of Alex Edelman’s comedy springs from his Jewish upbringing. He takes on Jewish identity, bigotry and ignorance–but there’s no malice in his material. Instead the Brookline native uses humor to process and even dismantle the complexities and the hate that plague our world. His recent Broadway hit, “Just for Us”--was inspired by his experience of attending a white nationalists meeting. Amid a...

It’s a modern spin on a fairy tale classic: The Urban Nutcracker. By mixing hip-hop, streetscapes, and strains of Duke Ellington –all of it propelled by the heartbeat of Tchaikovsky– choreographer Tony WIlliams has created a contemporary classic. We’ll talk to him and Drag artist Patty Bouree about this holiday season’s production. And local art curator Pedro Alonzo gives us the lowdown on produci...

It’s our arts and culture week-in-review. First up, pioneering  producer Norman Lear.  He dismantled TV’s nuclear family, taking on radioactive topics instead  – bigotry, abortion, poverty, politics—all of it was up for grabs and it landed lots of laughs along the way.  We’ll look at how his slew of successful sitcoms revolutionized Television–and changed the way we see ourselves. Then it’s time f...

I’m Jared Bowen. This is The Culture Show.  First up, 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 new 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...

First up,  we remember the titan of  TV: Norman Lear.  He not only changed television , he changed the way we see ourselves by doing away with the traditional sitcom that idealized the nuclear family–instead finding humor in the messiness of life. From “All in the Family to Maude.”  From there, MassArt is celebrating its 150th anniversary by celebrating others with the inaugural Common Good Awards...

“The Band's Visit” is one of the most captivating musicals about…nothing. Though it might not be action packed, it packs a punch for maximizing everyday moments and making them feel momentous. The Tony-winning show follows the adventures of a touring Egyptian band stranded in an Israeli village. With nowhere for the musicians to stay, the locals take them in for the night. The overriding sentiment...

This is the Culture Show. Coming up: Tracy K. Smith. Through her poetry, the Pulitzer-prize winner probes the meaning of life. She meditates on what happens to our souls when we die. She communes with the dead. And ultimately, she makes the personal universal. Smith’s poems scrutinize oppression, the contradiction that is the American dream, and the injustices that plague our nation. All these the...

First up, what happens when a people’s cultural identity becomes a casualty of war? Throughout history monuments, cultural sites, artworks and artifacts have become collateral damage. Now Gaza is surveying the wreckage of Israel’s airstrikes, which have reduced more than 100 landmarks to rubble. Then a new docuseries excavates Boston’s fraught history of racism and segregation by way of the 1989 C...

Today we are going to look at four pillars of holiday entertainment: the 1946 classic, “It’s a Wonderful Life.”  Then the contemporary classic “Love Actually. Plus “the juggernaut of jingle bells: The Hallmark Channel, which has 40 new holiday films this season. And finally, we break down Bah Humbug-ery, ranking the top adaptations of “A Christmas Carol.”

Congressman Joaquin Castro is calling for a federal investigation into Warner Bros. for scrapping its own film: Coyote vs. Acme. From there, rap legend Andre 3000 releases his first album in nearly 20 years–and it’s an 87 minute ode…to the flute; Gwyneth Paltrow’s ski trial is now on stage, as a musical. The feminist website Jezebel has folded. And just in time for Thanksgiving, season 2 of Julia...

The Grammy nominations are here, women dominate the album of the year with SZA, Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo topping the list. And yet, with nearly 100 categories, there are still snubs. And they say there’s no business like Show business, but for months there was no business IN show business. Now that the actors’ strike is over, what does this mean for Hollywood and another major production hu...

In the first episode of "The Culture Show," hosts Jared Bowen, Edgar B. Herwick III, and Callie Crossley discuss this week's arts and culture news.