Episodes
-
May 26, 2026 - Danielle Allen, Eve Plumb, and Matthew Shifrin on blind athletics
Today on The Culture Show, Danielle Allen, the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University, director of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation at Harvard Kennedy School, joins us to discuss her New York Times essay, “Nothing Beats Polarization Like Civics Education” She is the author of Our Declaration and the forthcoming Radical Duke: How One Aristocrat — and the American Revolution — Transformed Britain.Eve Plumb, best known as Jan Brady on The Brady Bunch, joins us to discuss her new memoir, Happiness Included: Jan Brady and Beyond. She’ll be at First Parish Church in Cambridge on June 4 at 7 p.m. for a Harvard Book Store signing of Happiness Included.Matthew Shifrin, founder and CEO of Bricks for the Blind, joins us for “AI: Actual Intelligence” with a look at sports and accessibility. From tennis to cricket to rock climbing, Shifrin explores how adaptations to familiar games can be literally game-changing for blind athletes. -
May 25, 2026 - Keith Lockhart, Revolutionary Artists, and Paul Revere's Sons of Liberty Bowl
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 “The Painter’s Fire: A Forgotten History of the Artists Who Championed the American Revolution.” Zara Anishanslin is a Professor of History and Art History at the University of Delaware. As part of Countdown to 2026, we explore Paul Revere’s Sons of Liberty Bowl, crafted in 1768 to honor a Massachusetts vote rejecting new British taxes. Engraved with the names of lawmakers who opposed those measures, it’s a key artifact of early resistance. Ethan Lasser, Chief of Curatorial Affairs and Conservation at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, joins us for an overview. To learn more about the Sons of Liberty Bowl and the MFA’s exhibitions and programming go here. -
May 22, 2026 - Wednesday Watch Party: All The President's Men
For this month’s 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 All the President’s Men. Alan J. Pakula’s 1976 political thriller stars Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, whose reporting helped uncover the Watergate cover-up. Released during America’s Bicentennial, with the country still reeling from Vietnam and Watergate, the film became one of the great newspaper movies — finding suspense in missed calls, reluctant sources, editors demanding one more confirmation and the dawning realization that a botched break-in may reach into the White House. Fifty years later, we ask how it plays in 2026: as a period piece, or as newly relevant in a time of political distrust, attacks on the press and competing versions of reality. -
May 21, 2026 - Imari Paris Jeffries, Geoffrey Kelly on Thirteen Perfect Fugitives, and Edmonia Lewis at the PEM
Imari Paris Jeffries, president and CEO of Embrace Boston, joins us to preview tonight’s Embrace Honors Harry Hom Dow event, honoring the first Chinese American admitted to the Massachusetts Bar.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.Jeffrey Richmond-Moll, the George Putnam Curator of American Art at the Peabody Essex Museum, joins us to discuss Edmonia Lewis: Said in Stone, the first major retrospective devoted to the 19th-century Black and Indigenous sculptor. -
May 20, 2026 - Eco-Rhythms on the Tobin Bridge, Boston's Soundscape Tours, and MassArt president Mary Grant
The Tobin Bridge could become a public artwork about the forces shaping the coast around it. Ryan Edwards, a principal at MASARY Studios, joins us to discuss Eco-Rhythms — also called Accumulating Rhythms — a proposed lighting installation that would respond to tides and other ecological patterns along the Mystic River. To learn more, go here. Boston’s music history is hitting the road. Matt Bowker, founder of Soundscape Tours, joins us to talk about the new Mighty Mighty Bus Tour, which traces more than 60 years of local music through the clubs, venues and neighborhoods of Boston and Cambridge. To learn more, go here. It’s time for “AI: Actual Intelligence,” our recurring conversation with Mary Grant, president of Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Each month, Grant joins us for original, algorithm-free observations on art, culture, education and the creative life of the region. To learn more about MassArt, go here. -
May 19, 2026 - Peter Wolf, Megan Hilty, and John Ravenal on the US at the Biennale
Peter Wolf came to Boston to study painting, but quickly became part of the city’s musical bloodstream — performing with The Hallucinations, spinning records at WBCN and fronting The J. Geils Band. As MassArt honors him with an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree, Wolf joins us to talk about art, music — and Waiting on the Moon, his memoir of late nights and unforgettable run-ins with Muddy Waters, Alfred Hitchcock and more.Megan Hilty joins us ahead of An Evening with Megan Hilty at The Umbrella Arts Center in Concord. The Tony-nominated actress and singer brings songs and stories from a career that has moved between Broadway, television and concert stages. To learn more, go here.Independent curator and art historian John Ravenal joins us to discuss History Maker, Robert Lazzarini’s proposed exhibition for the U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. The project was selected, then collapsed before it was announced, raising questions about art, politics and what America chooses to put on the world stage. To learn more, go here. -
May 18, 2026 - Stephen Moyer and Jack Davenport, Jill Medvedow on "Things that Disappear," and Pedro Alonzo
A sweeping drama on MASTERPIECE brings one of Britain’s most famous literary families back to the screen. In “The Forsytes,” actors Stephen Moyer and Jack Davenport play brothers Jolyon and James Forsyte, members of a wealthy Victorian dynasty whose fortunes can’t shield them from rivalry, ambition, and betrayal. To learn more go here.Jill Medvedow, Director Emerita of the Institute of Contemporary Art, returns for “Read on Arrival,” our series on short books with long afterlives. Her latest pick is Jenny Erpenbeck’s Things That Disappear, a 96-page collection of autobiographical essays.Independent curator and Culture Show contributor Pedro Alonzo joins us with dispatches from Buffalo and Mexico City, where Latino and Chicano artists are getting major museum attention. We discuss Let Us Gather in a Flourishing Way at the Buffalo AKG and Aztlán, túnel del tiempo at Mexico City’s Palacio de Bellas Artes. -
May 15, 2026 - Week in Review: Eurovision, the World Cup halftime show, and Don Colossus
On this edition of The Culture Show, GBH’s Global Correspondent and News Host Jeremy Siegel, Lisa Simmons, and Joyce Kulhawik go over the latest arts and culture headlines on our week-in-review. Lisa Simmons is Artistic and Executive Director of the Roxbury International Film Festival and program manager at Mass Cultural Council. Joyce Kulhawik is an Emmy-award winning arts and entertainment reporter and President of the Boston Theatre Critics Association. You can find her reviews on Joyce’s Choices. The World Cup is getting its first-ever halftime show, set for July 19 at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. Shakira is returning to the World Cup stage, with Madonna and BTS also part of the spectacle.Cannes is underway with less Hollywood wattage this year, but plenty of awards-season intrigue. The festival is putting more focus on international auteurs and a new Oscar rule that could give Cannes winners a stronger path to the Academy Awards.Eurovision is once again where music, politics and spectacle collide. Israel has advanced to the final, but its participation has become a flashpoint, with several countries sitting out over the war in Gaza and the civilian death toll.A 22-foot gold statue of President Trump now stands at Trump National Doral in Florida. Called “Don Colossus,” it shows him with his fist raised — echoing the Butler assassination attempt photo — and has drawn attention for its mix of politics, spectacle and backlash.Dunkin is returning to Canada, setting up another round in its rivalry with Tim Hortons. The expansion puts an American coffee-and-doughnut chain back into competition with one of Canada’s most recognizable homegrown brands. -
May 14, 2026 - Club Passim's Matt Smith, Bill Lichtenstein on WBCN, and 150 years of the Harvard Lampoon
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. -
May 13, 2026 - Sam Smallidge, and NEC's Andrea Kalyn and Juliano Aniceto on "Concert for the City"
Sam Smallidge has one of the more unusual jobs in Boston: he oversees Converse’s archive in Charlestown. We talk with him about building the company’s collection from a spreadsheet and a folder into more than 10,000 items — and how shoes, ads, prototypes, catalogs and company history help tell the story of one of the most recognizable brands in the world. New England Conservatory’s Preparatory School marks its 75th anniversary with Concert for the City, a free, family-friendly concert this Saturday at 4:00 at the Hatch Shell. The program features NEC Prep’s Youth Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Juliano Aniceto, Director of NEC Prep Orchestras, and also joins celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the United States. Registration is encouraged through NEC’s website, where attendees can also find arrival and parking details. To learn more or register, go here.
