Episodes
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February 6, 2026 - Week in Review: National Film Registry, an AI social network, and Iron Lung
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, In an era of bloated blockbusters, YouTuber Markiplier bypassed Hollywood entirely, writing, financing, and releasing his sci-fi horror film Iron Lung on his own — and turning a $3 million budget into more than $17 million at the box office.And, the bots are coming, the bots are coming. Moltbook is a new social platform built entirely for bots — they post, argue, organize, and even police each other, creating a strange, self-contained online culture with no humans at the controls.Then we remember Woodie King Jr., the pioneering theater producer who spent decades creating space for Black playwrights and performers, launching careers and reshaping American theater through the New Federal Theatre.We also reflect on the legacy of Demond Wilson who died this week. The actor and writer best known as Lamont on the groundbreaking sitcom Sanford and Son, bringing Black family life and humor into millions of homes.And we head to Rome; the city introduces a new tourist tax at the Trevi Fountain, putting a modern price tag on the timeless coin toss and giving fresh meaning to “cash flow.”Finally, Callie recommends the star-studded Super Bowl commercials, with a focus on Dunkin’ ads; Lisa Simmons suggests a Sidney Poitier film festival for Black History Month. “Icons: Poitier” runs at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, “A Warm December” screens at the Somerville Cine-Club, and “In the Heat of the Night” and “Pressure Point” screen at the Somerville Theatre; Jared offers the 100 Year Book Debate at the Boston Public Library, -
February 5, 2026 - Imari Paris Jeffries, the Overture to Spring Black History Month Concert, and Worcester's Valentines
Imari Paris Jeffries, President and CEO of Embrace Boston and a co-chair of Everyone 250 join us for our recurring segment “AI: Actual Intelligence.” This month we focus on his recent piece on the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., and if the Super Bowl can and should be non political.Composer Kevin Day and cellist Leo Eguchi, co founding artistic director of Sheffield Chamber Players, join us to discuss Day’s “Overture to Springtime,” created in collaboration with City Strings United, ahead of the Overture to Spring: A Black History Month Family Concert on Feb. 15 at 3 p.m. at The Strand Theatre. To learn more go here.Vanessa Bumpus, exhibition coordinator at Museum of Worcester, explains how entrepreneur Esther Howland helped turn Worcester into an early hub of Valentine’s Day card production—and what that history reveals about labor, industry, and the business of romance. -
February 4, 2026 - Jeff Taylor, Mary Grant, and Blind Date with a Book at the BPL
Jeff Taylor, founder of Monster.com, joins us to talk about how the job search has changed — again. When Monster launched in 1994, it moved job listings out of newspaper classifieds and onto the internet. Now Taylor is back with a new platform, Boomband, and discusses job hunting in the age of bots, when software increasingly decides what gets seen and what doesn’t.Mary Grant, president of Massachusetts College of Art and Design, returns for our recurring segment AI: Actual Intelligence. She joins us each month to offer her human, experience-driven perspective on creativity, art and education. Today she and Jared discuss the art of dissent–all the ways that musicians, poets, graphic designers are using their craft to protest ICE.Veronica Koven-Matasy, Reader Services Director at the Boston Public Library, joins us to talk about the library’s annual “Blind Date with a Book” event. For the month of February, selected titles are wrapped in paper and stripped of covers, authors, and blurbs, inviting readers to discover something unexpected. The program is available through the end of the month at the Central Library in Copley Square. -
February 3, 2026 - "We Had a World" with Joshua Harmon, Ball in the House, and Philip Kennicott on the Kennedy Center
Playwright Joshua Harmon joins us to talk about his new play, “We Had a World.” The work turns inward, following a playwright asked by his grandmother to write about their family — a request that opens up a fraught history of love, resentment, humor, and truth-telling across three generations. “We Had a World” is onstage at the Huntington Theatre Company from February 12 through March 15.Ball in the House is a Boston-based a cappella group working across R&B, soul, and pop. They’ve opened shows for artists including the Jonas Brothers, Fantasia, and Lionel Richie, and join us ahead of upcoming performances in Foxborough and Shirley. All five members stop by the studio to talk about touring, vocal music, and what’s next.A year ago, Philip Kennicott warned that President Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center threatened the independence of one of America’s most important cultural institutions. Now that warning is playing out: this week the administration announced plans to close the Kennedy Center for two years as part of what Trump calls a “complete rebuild,” following months of leadership upheaval, cancellations, and declining ticket sales. Kennicott joins The Culture Show to discuss how unprecedented this level of presidential control is — and what it could mean for the future of federal support for the arts. Philip Kennicott is a Pulitzer Prize-winning art and architecture critic for The Washington Post. -
February 2, 2026 - T: An MBTA Musical, Peggy Fogelman on 10 years at the ISGM, and A Midsummer Night's Dream at THT REP
What do MBTA service alerts sound like as show tunes? “T: An MBTA Musical” turns the daily frustrations of riding Boston’s transit system — delays, shuttle buses, and all — into a two-act musical that’s equal parts satire and love letter to riders. Composer and lyricist Mel Carubia and Cassandra West , Executive Producer of Infinite Rotary Productions join us to talk about the show’s return, now onstage at the Boston Center for the Arts and The Rockwell.After ten years leading the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Peggy Fogelman reflects on a decade of continuity and change at one of Boston’s most distinctive institutions. She joins us to talk about expanding contemporary exhibitions and performance, steering the museum through the pandemic, and what it means to lead a place so shaped by history, memory, and public expectation. To learn about all of the museum’s programming go here.A new production of William Shakespeare’s "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at the BrickBox Theater in Worcester is set in a 1980s nightclub called The Wood, awash in leather, glitter, and neon. Livy Scanlon, artistic director of The Hanover Theatre and Alan Seiffert, the new president and CEO of The Hanover Theatre and Conservatory for the Performing Arts join us for an overview. To learn more, go here. -
January 30, 2026 - Week in Review: Catherine O'Hara, music protests, and the Melania documentary
On this edition of The Culture Show, Jared Bowen, Lisa Simmons, and Edgar B. Herwick III go over the week’s top arts and culture headlines.First up, Catherine O’Hara, the Emmy and Golden Globe winning actress who starred in films including Home Alone, Beetlejuice and numerous collaborations with Christopher Guest, has passed at age 71.Then, protest music and cultural backlash. Bruce Springsteen released a new protest track taking aim at immigration raids, while the Dropkick Murphys reworked their 2005 song “Citizen CIA” into “Citizen ICE” for their upcoming album “New England Forever”. Neil Young also made a geopolitical gesture, offering free access to his music in Greenland amid rising political tensions.The reaction to the killing of Alex Pretti has rippled across culture and sports. At Sundance, filmmakers and actors spoke out against ICE, and the NBA postponed a Minnesota Timberwolves game as players grappled with the moment—underscoring how quickly politics and culture are colliding.Also in the headlines: the documentary “Melania” has struggled to find an audience despite a reported $75 million price tag, with some screenings selling zero tickets and one London show drawing just a single attendee.Plus, The Museum of Fine Arts is laying off dozens of employees amid financial strain, raising questions about sustainability even at major institutions. Meanwhile, three Bob Ross paintings Finally, it’s a week in preview, with the hosts offering their suggestions for arts and culture happenings to take in. Jared suggests “Some Like it Hot,” now onstage through February 8; Lisa Simmons is suggesting a screening of the documentary “Harm in the Water,” on February 5, and Edgar B. Herwick III offers a Kubrick film festival at the Harvard FIlm Archives. -
January 29, 2026 - Donald Nally from The Crossing, the Moby Dick Marathon, and public art in Boston
Donald Nally, founder and conductor of The Crossing, a Grammy-winning ensemble dedicated almost entirely to new music, joins The Culture Show ahead of their performance at Symphony Hall. The Crossing is joining the Boston Symphony Orchestra for a program exploring sacred music in the 21st century. The concert pairs David Lang’s “poor hymnal” with the Boston premiere of Carlos Simon’s “Good News Mass”. To learn more about upcoming performances go here. Culture Show producer Max Chow-Gillette takes inside 25 hours of the 30th Moby-Dick marathon, an annual voyage at the New Bedford Whaling Museum where Melville enthusiasts read the entire novel aloud.Culture Show contributor Julia Swanson takes us downtown for a Public Service Arts Announcement, spotlighting Boston Bricks — bronze reliefs embedded in the sidewalks of Winthrop Lane. An award-winning photographer, multidisciplinary artist and founder of The Art Walk Project, Swanson guides us through this hidden gem of a public art installation that tells Boston’s story from the ground up. -
January 28, 2026 - Wednesday Watch Party: Groundhog Day
Today we’re hitting the snooze button for our Wednesday Watch Party — the show where we revisit the movies that shaped us, and ask if they still hold up. This month Jared Bowen, Callie Crossley and Edgar B. Herwick III are stuck in a time loop with “Groundhog Day.” Released in 1993, the Bill Murray comedy starts as a small-town farce and turns into something stranger and deeper: a romantic comedy about repetition, self-improvement, and what it means to actually change. In 2026 our hosts ask: does it hold up today? And do we get more out of the movie every time we watch it? -
January 27, 2026 - Noelle Trent, Davóne Tines, and Bruno Carvalho
Noelle Trent, President and CEO of the Museum of African American History in Boston and Nantucket, joins us as Black History Month marks its centennial—100 years since Carter G. Woodson launched Negro History Week. She joins us to discuss why this milestone matters now and to give an overview of the museum’s Black History Month programming. To learn more go here. Bass-baritone Davóne Tines joins us ahead of his Boston concert with early-music ensemble Ruckus, “What Is Your Hand in This?”—a genre-hopping exploration of Revolutionary-era hymns and ballads traced through American history. He reflects on his boundary-crossing career in opera and protest music, and how performance can become a form of cultural reckoning. To learn more about the upcoming concert go here.Bruno Carvalho, Harvard professor and co-director of the Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative, discusses his new book The Invention of the Future: A History of Cities in the Modern World. He traces how cities—from Rio to Paris to New York—have been shaped by art, politics, and competing visions of modern life, and what urban history reveals about the futures we’re building. You can catch him tonight at Harvard Book Store. -
January 26, 2026 - Preserving the Smithsonian, Max Wolf Friedlich on JOB, and Boston's most beautiful buildings
After the White House ordered a sweeping review of exhibitions and interpretive text at the Smithsonian Institution, historians launched an unprecedented public documentation effort. Citizen Historians for the Smithsonian recruits volunteers to photograph artifacts, wall labels, and explanatory text across museums—creating a time-stamped, independent archive they call a “Crowd to Cloud” record. Co-founder Chandra Manning joins us to explain how the project works, and why preserving the public record matters now. Chandra Manning is a Professor of U.S.History at Georgetown University, a best-selling author and a former National Park Service Ranger. Max Wolf Friedlich’s high-pressure play, “JOB” is set entirely inside a mandatory therapy session between a content moderator and a company-appointed counselor. Now in Boston. Friedlich joins us to unpack how “JOB” explores power, surveillance, and mental health in the modern workplace. “JOB” is presented by SpeakEasy Stage Company, onstage through Feb7 at Roberts Studio Theatre, Calderwood Pavilion, Boston Center for the Arts. To learn more go here.Who decides what makes a building beautiful—the jury, or the public? Voting is now open for the Boston Society for Architecture’s Harleston Parker People’s Choice Award, where the public weighs in on the same finalists considered for the historic Harleston Parker Medal. Paige Johnston, the BSA's Senior Director of Programs & Impact, joins us to talk about this year’s finalists and what they reveal about how Greater Boston thinks about design. To learn more go here.
