Episodes
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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. -
May 12, 2026 - Tracy K.Smith, "The Battle for Boston," and Dorie McCullough Lawson
Tracy K. Smith, former U.S. Poet Laureate discusses her book “Fear Less: Poetry in Perilous Times” — an invitation to listen, reflect, and let poetry guide us through uncertainty. Don Gillis and Ray Flynn join The Culture Show to discuss Gillis’ new book “The Battle for Boston: How Mayor Ray Flynn and Community Organizers Fought Racism and Downtown Power Brokers.” On June 5th at 6:00 Don Gillis will be at a book event at the Roslindale Public Library. To learn more go here.Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David McCullough spent decades helping Americans see their past in human terms. A new collection, “History Matters”, gathers his essays and speeches on why history endures — edited by his daughter Dorie McCullough Lawson and longtime collaborator Mike Hill. She joins us ahead of her American Ancestors Headquarters event today at 5 p.m. To learn more go here. -
May 11, 2026 -
James Sullivan, a journalist, author and longtime contributor to the Boston Globe, joins The Culture Show to talk about his book Which Side Are You On?: 20th Century American History in 100 Protest Songs.From there Aisha Muharrar joins The Culture Show to talk about her debut novel “Loved One.” She’s an Emmy Award–winning writer and producer who has worked on “Hacks,” “Parks” and “Recreation,” and “The Good Place.”Finally, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Richard Russo joins The Culture Show, to talk about his new book "Life and Art.” It’s a COVID-era meditation on his childhood, adulthood and what it means to be an artist. -
May 8, 2026 - Week in Review: Ted Turner, Tony nominations, and the Met Gala
On this edition of The Culture Show, Culture Show co-host Callie Crossley, GBH’s Global Correspondent and News Host Jeremy Siegel and James Sullivan, journalist, author and Emerson faculty member go over the latest arts and culture headlines on our week in review We reflect on Ted Turner’s legacy. The Media mogul who built CNN, TBS, TNT and Cartoon Network, died this week at 87. The Tony nominations are out, offering a clearer picture of the Broadway season: the revivals, new musicals, adaptations and surprises that broke through. The Rolling Stones are back with “Rough and Twisted,” a lead single from their upcoming album Foreign Tongues, out July 10. Club Passim celebrates Matt Smith’s 30 years with a May 12 concert at Arrow Street Arts featuring Ellis Paul, Kris Delmhorst, Alisa Amador and more. When Scotland plays in Foxboro for the World Cup, hundreds of fans are planning to beat steep train fares by taking yellow school buses to Gillette. -
May 7, 2026 - "Swept Away" by The Avett Brothers, and Elizabeth Strout's "The Things We Never Say"
Scott Avett and Seth Avett of The Avett Brothers join us to discuss “Swept Away,” the musical built around their songs. After a 2024 Broadway run, the show is now in Boston at SpeakEasy Stage Company, where it turns the Avetts’ music into a harrowing sea story about a New Bedford whaling crew, a shipwreck and an impossible moral choice. To learn more about “Swept Away” at SpeakEasy Stage Company, go here. The Avett Brothers will also be back in Boston this summer, performing with Mike Patton at the Boch Center Wang Theatre on June 10. To learn more, go here.Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Elizabeth Strout joins us to discuss her latest novel, “The Things We Never Say.” It introduces a new cast of characters while returning to familiar Strout territory: marriage, loneliness, family strain and the things people cannot quite bring themselves to say. Strout will be in Massachusetts for two events this week: at The Brattle Theatre in Cambridge tonight, presented by Harvard Book Store, and at Duxbury High School tomorrow, presented by The Duxbury Literary Circle. To learn more about the Brattle Theatre event, go here, and for the Duxbury event, go here. -
May 6, 2026 - Stephen Greenblatt, Jill Lepore and Nicholas Boggs
Pulitzer Prize–winning author Stephen Greenblatt joins The Culture Show, to talk about his latest book, “Dark Renaissance:The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival.” It traces the meteoric rise and violent end of Christopher Marlowe—playwright, poet, spy, and heretic—whose genius endures today. From there, Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore discusses her new book, “We the People." Published on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding—the anniversary, too, of the first state constitutions—"We the People" offers a wholly new history of the Constitution.Finally writer Nicholas Boggs joins The Culture Show to talk about his book, “Baldwin: A Love Story.” It's the first major biography of James Baldwin in three decades, revealing how the writer’s personal relationships shaped his life and work. -
May 5, 2026 - Boston Pops conductor Keith Lockhart, Masquerade, and the National Baseball Poetry Festival
Boston Pops conductor Keith Lockhart joins The Culture Show with a preview of the Pops’ spring season, running May 8 through June 6 at Symphony Hall. The season includes appearances by Ray Chen, Jon Batiste, Leslie Odom Jr., St. Vincent and more, along with film nights, Pride Night and Gospel Night. To learn more, go here. Tony Award–winning director Diane Paulus, Artistic Director of the American Repertory Theater, joins us to talk about “Masquerade,” an immersive reimagining of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom of the Opera.” Set in a five-story former department store on West 57th Street, the production turns the Paris Opera House into a candlelit maze of salons, staircases, and hidden rooms, bringing audiences in masks inches from the show’s spectacle and romance. To learn more go hereSteve Biondolillo, founder and president of the National Baseball Poetry Festival, and Sarah Connell Sanders, teacher, writer and organizer of the festival’s youth poetry contest, join us ahead of the festival’s return to Worcester. Running May 7 through 10 at Polar Park, the festival brings together poets, baseball fans, students and families for readings, workshops, open mics, WooSox games, a ballpark tour and a sunset catch on the field. To learn more, go here. -
May 4, 2026 - George Saunders, Claire Foy, and Steve Sweeney
Bestselling author George Saunders joins The Culture Show to talk about his novel “Vigil.” Set over a single night, the book follows Jill “Doll” Blaine, a long-deceased guardian figure who keeps watch over a dying oil executive, returning Saunders to the moral and metaphysical terrain familiar from “Lincoln in the Bardo.” Actress Claire Foy joins The Culture Show to talk about her film, “H Is for Hawk”, adapted from Helen Macdonald’s bestselling memoir. Known for performances defined by restraint and emotional precision, Foy reflects on inhabiting grief, solitude, and endurance in a story that unfolds through the training of a goshawk.Boston comedian and actor Steve Sweeney joins The Culture Show to talk about his film “Townie,” which is drawn directly from his Charlestown upbringing. Known for comedy rooted in working-class Catholic culture, Sweeney uses the neighborhood as a lens on loyalty, memory, and what it means to stay put as a place — and a city — changes. -
May 1, 2026 - Week in Review: The Venice Biennale, nude art, and Jimmy Kimmel vs. Trump
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 international criminal charges — a move effectively pointing to Russia and Israel, and throwing the exhibition into a political and cultural storm.Robert Indiana’s famous stacked-letter LOVE image has traveled far beyond the art world — onto posters, stamps, T-shirts, tote bags and coffee mugs. Now his legacy is at the center of a major legal fight, after the Morgan Art Foundation was awarded $102 million in a case involving forged works and disputed rights to some of Indiana’s best-known images.Nudes are nothing new in museums, from Degas’ bathers to Michelangelo’s David. But when performance artist Xandra Ibarra appeared nude in the MFA’s galleries, the reaction was very different — laying bare how complicated our feelings about the human body can be when art steps out of the frame and into the flesh.Jimmy Kimmel, Donald Trump and the FCC are back in the ring after Kimmel joked about Trump’s mortality and Melania Trump’s future during a mock White House Correspondents’ Dinner roast. The White House called the joke “violent rhetoric,” Trump demanded ABC fire Kimmel, and now critics are questioning the timing of an FCC review of Disney-owned ABC station licenses. -
April 30, 2026 - Patrick Radden Keefe on "London Falling," BLO's Daughter of the Regiment, and Washington at the MFA
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 extreme wealth.Obie Award-winning Boston playwright Kirsten Greenidge joins us to talk about writing the new English dialogue for Boston Lyric Opera’s Daughter of the Regiment, now onstage at the Emerson Colonial Theatre through May 3. BLO’s production moves Gaetano Donizetti’s comic opera to Revolutionary-era Massachusetts, where a young woman raised by soldiers finds love, loyalty, and a new American setting.As part of our “Countdown to 250” series, we continue our monthly conversation with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston about artworks that offer fresh perspectives on the American Revolution. Erica Hirshler, the MFA’s Croll Senior Curator of American Paintings, and Ben Weiss, the MFA’s Leonard A. Lauder Senior Curator of Visual Culture, join us to discuss Gilbert Stuart’s portraits of George Washington and Martha Washington — images that helped shape how a new nation pictured power, legacy, and memory.
