May 14, 2026 - Club Passim's Matt Smith, Bill Lichtenstein on WBCN, and 150 years of the Harvard Lampoon
About The Episode
Matt Smith has spent 30 years at Club Passim, the tiny Harvard Square room with an enormous folk history. We talk with him about starting as a volunteer, booking artists, and helping shape one of the country’s great listening rooms. To learn more about Passim, go here.
WBCN wasn’t just Boston’s rock station. In the late 1960s and early ’70s, it became a platform for anti-war politics, civil rights, LGBTQ and women’s rights, and listener-driven radio. We talk with Bill Lichtenstein about his documentary The Airwaves Belonged to the People: WBCN and The American Revolution, now returning to theaters around New England. To learn more about upcoming screenings, go here.
The Harvard Lampoon began in 1876 as a student humor magazine and, 150 years later, remains one of American comedy’s most influential institutions. We talk with Geoff Edgers about his recent oral history of the Lampoon, its mythology, its famous alumni, and its long reach into National Lampoon, Saturday Night Live, The Simpsons, late night and Hollywood comedy. To read Edgers’ piece, go here.
