Episodes
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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. -
April 29, 2026 - Michael Patrick MacDonald, Chef Jamie Bissonnette, and Colby College's art initiatives
Michael Patrick MacDonald is the bestselling author of All Souls: A Family Story from Southie and Easter Rising: A Memoir of Roots and Rebellion. He joins us to talk about The Rest of the Story, the trauma-informed storytelling program he created to help people use writing to reckon with what they’ve lived through.Jamie Bissonnette is a James Beard Award-winning chef, restaurateur, and founding partner of BCB3 Hospitality, the group behind restaurants including Coppa, Little Donkey, Somaek, ZURiTO, and now Willie’s on Beacon Hill. He joins us to talk about his new American Italian–inspired neighborhood restaurant, where pizza, pasta, and shared plates bring his lively, collaborative style to Charles Street.David A. Greene is president of Colby College, and Jacqueline Terrassa is the Carolyn Muzzy Director of the Colby College Museum of Art. They join us to talk about Colby’s growing arts presence in Waterville — from the museum and Lunder Institute for American Art to Greene Block + Studios and the Paul J. Schupf Art Center — and what it takes to sustain cultural institutions now. -
April 28, 2026 - "1972," A Rock Opera, Uli Lorimer on spring sprouts, and Tony V
Chadwick Stokes, musician, songwriter, and founder of Dispatch and State Radio, joins us with Sybil Gallagher, co-founder of Calling All Crows, the nonprofit they built to connect music fans with service, advocacy, and feminist movements. They’ll discuss 1972: A Rock Opera, Stokes’ new work about abortion, bodily autonomy, and life before Roe v. Wade, which will have its world premiere at the American Repertory Theater this fall. Uli Lorimer, Director of Horticulture at Native Plant Trust and author of The Northeast Native Plant Primer, returns to talk about spring blooms, from trilliums to rhododendrons. Lorimer is also a 2026 recipient of the Garden Club of America’s Distinguished Service Medal for his work conserving native plant species and restoring native plant communities. Comedian and actor Tony V joins us ahead of his appearance at The Town and the City Festival in Lowell, a three-day, Kerouac-inspired cultural crawl of music, readings, comedy, and more than 50 acts. Tony headlines the festival’s comedy night at Cobblestones, part of a lineup that runs Thursday, April 30 through Saturday, May 2. -
April 27, 2026 - Adele Bertei on "No New York," Persona + Picturing Isabella at the ISGM, and Evan Wang
Adele Bertei was part of the late-1970s downtown New York no wave scene, playing with The Contortions and later fronting the Bloods. In her new memoir, No New York: A Memoir of No Wave and the Women Who Shaped the Scene, Bertei writes from inside that abrasive, cross-disciplinary movement — and restores the women artists, musicians, and filmmakers who helped define it. At the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Picturing Isabella traces how Isabella Stewart Gardner shaped her public image through photography, while Persona: Photography and the Re-Imagined Self looks at artists who use the camera to construct alter egos and challenge fixed ideas of identity. Joining us are Pieranna Cavalchini, the Gardner’s Tom and Lisa Blumenthal Curator of Contemporary Art and co-curator of Persona, and Sylvia Hickman, Curatorial Associate at the Gardner and curator of Picturing Isabella.We close out National Poetry Month with Evan Wang, the National Youth Poet Laureate and author of the new chapbook Slow Burn: Poems. Wang will appear at Harvard Book Store on Wednesday, April 29 at 7 p.m., in conversation with Cindion Huang.
