Episodes
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August 26, 2026 - Remembering Dolly Parton with Paula Cole, Conversations with an Executioner, and corsets in Worcester
Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Paula Cole joins The Culture Show to remember Dolly Parton, an artist she long admired and later collaborated with on “Heart Door.” Cole reflects on Parton’s songwriting, influence and the experience of making music with her. Cole’s new archival project, Sonic Memoir: Demos 1989–1998, arrives September 10. On September 18, she brings This Fire: 30 to the Wilbur, performing This Fire in full for its 30th anniversary.Polish resistance fighter Kazimierz Moczarski spent 255 days imprisoned with Jürgen Stroop, the Nazi officer who oversaw the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto. Translator Sean Gasper Bye joins us to discuss Conversations with an Executioner, now available in its complete English translation for the first time. He’ll be at JustBook-ish in Dorchester September 1.Worcester was once a corset capital, producing a garment that constricted women physically even as the industry helped liberate them in the workforce. Anne Marie Murphy joins us to discuss A Proper Fit: Women at Work in a City of Corsets and the women who designed, invented and built businesses around the garment. -
August 25, 2026 - Masquerade, Chef Ana Sortun, and Christin Geall on "Flora Culture"
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 here.James Beard Award-winning chef Ana Sortun has spent more than two decades making the flavors of Turkey and the Eastern Mediterranean part of Boston’s flavor profile. The chef behind Oleana, Sofra and Sarma joins us to talk about how travel changed the way she cooks and why vegetables, spices and communal eating remain central to her food.In her new book, Flora Culture: How Flowers Shape Our World, writer, designer and gardener Christin Geall follows flowers through a global industry in full bloom, tracing the labor, trade, traditions and environmental costs behind what we grow, give and bring into our homes. She’ll sign books at Edgartown Books on Martha’s Vineyard on Wednesday, August 26. -
August 24, 2026 - Sally Mann, Jeremy Sewall and being Henry David Thoreau
First up, Sally Mann. In 2015 renowned photographer Sally Mann published her memoir “Hold Still,” an inquiry into family history, the American South and the nature of creativity. Now, comes her book “Art Work: On the Creative Life.” It is laugh-out-loud funny. It’s irreverent. And it’s refreshingly practical as she guides the reader through her experience and process of being an artist. From there Jeremy Sewall, Chef and Owner of Row 34, shares recipes and stories from his new “Everyday Chef: Simple Dishes for Family and Friends,” which illustrates how restaurant expertise can translate into simple, satisfying meals at home.Finally, Richard Smith. For more than a quarter century he embodied Henry David Thoreau—donning the waistcoat and straw hat, walking the paths of Concord, and giving voice to one of New England’s most enduring thinkers. Now, after 26 years of living deliberately in another man’s shoes, Smith has stepped away from the role. Closing a chapter that made Thoreau’s world vividly real for thousands who visited Walden Pond. -
August 21, 2026 - Week in Review: Hayden Panettiere, Columbia House Music Club, and Phoebe Bridgers' Mass. connection
Today on The Culture Show, it's our arts and culture Week in Review, featuring Callie Crossley and James Sullivan.Our topics include:Remembering Hayden Panettiere. The actress who became a household name at age 16 as a super-powered high schooler in Heroes and later as a country starlet on ABC’s “Nashville” has died at 36. We’ll look at her legacy, and the impact Hollywood has on young actors. From there, remembering Bill Rasmussen. He was the visionary founder of ESPN, who turned a $91 dollar incorporation fee into a multi-billion broadcasting behemoth. We’ll consider the legacy of the man who changed the way we talk, and think, about sports. Then, a musical giant fades to silence. The Columbia House Record Club, which raked in billions of dollars selling 10 records for a cent, is shuttering after 70 years. And, a royal return? Meghan and Harry are hopping back across the pond after six years stateside.Grammy-winning musician Phoebe Bridgers has a new album out, "Lost Weekend," and name drops a North Shore institution - the iconic Liberty Tree Mall in Danvers.And, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are on the move. After a six-year-stint in the U.S., the former royals plan to return to the UK. -
August 20, 2026 - Larkin McPhee, Pedro Alonzo, and Melissa Errico
Larkin McPhee joins us to discuss I’ll See You in My Dreams: A Sister’s Memoir, about her younger brother Charles McPhee, the nationally syndicated radio host known as “The Dream Doctor,” and his battle with ALS. Years after his death, the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker turned to writing to bring her brother back to life on the page. McPhee appears at a free book talk at the Nantucket Atheneum on Friday, August 28 at 6 p.m.Independent curator Pedro Alonzo, a regular Culture Show contributor, returns for “AI: Actual Intelligence” with dispatches from a recent trip to Oaxaca. Tony Award nominee Melissa Errico has built a career bringing dramatic intelligence to the Great American Songbook. Now she turns to one of its most commanding interpreters: Barbra Streisand. Errico joins us to discuss The Streisand Effect, her homage to Streisand’s voice, wit and fearlessness, created with pianist and music director Billy Stritch. They bring the show to Provincetown Town Hall on Sunday, August 23 at 8:30 p.m. Errico also discusses her new album, I Can Dream, Can’t I? Illusions & Conversations from the Great American Songbook. -
August 19, 2026 - Boston Arts and Culture Chief Joseph Zeil-Henry, Mary Grant, and Union Oyster House at 200
Boston Chief of Arts and Culture Joseph Zeal-Henry joins us to talk about what the city’s next cultural chapter might look like — from affordable rehearsal space and a new cultural infrastructure plan to the future of the Boston Center for the Arts. We’ll also look at LEXICON, the new 23-foot installation at the Boston Public Library that brings art, engineering and public space together.MassArt president Mary Grant returns for “AI: Actual Intelligence.” This month, we consider Norman Rockwell and the American story at 250 through the Norman Rockwell Museum’s sweeping new exhibition, American Stories: From Revolution to Rockwell. Plus, new research suggests that even 10 minutes of drawing can help calm the nervous system.Executive Chef of Union Oyster House Rico DiFronzo joins us to mark the 200th anniversary of Boston’s oldest continuously operating restaurant, taking us through the hallowed history of the beloved Blackstone Block establishment and offering some pearls of wisdom as to the art of the shuck. -
August 18, 2026 - Richard Russo on "Under the Falls," Chef Barbara Lynch, and Imari Paris Jeffries
Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Richard Russo joins us to discuss his new novel, Under the Falls, about a rock star returning to the struggling upstate New York town he fled as a teenager — and confronting the resentment, loyalties and unfinished business he left behind. Russo appears tonight at 6 p.m. with Tom Perrotta at the Cambridge Public Library, in an event presented by Harvard Book Store. The event is sold out, but a standby line will be available.James Beard Award-winning chef Barbara Lynch built one of Boston’s most influential restaurant groups before closing her remaining restaurants in 2024. Now she’s working on a much more intimate scale. Lynch joins us after hosting a pair of 12-person dinners at her Manchester-by-the-Sea studio, part of a new venture that includes private dinners, recipe subscriptions and culinary travel.And for our recurring series “AI: Actual Intelligence,” Imari Paris Jeffries, president and CEO of Embrace Boston and co-chair of Everyone 250, returns with news about keeping the energy of the World Cup alive after the tournament's end, as well as former Celtic Jaylen Brown's promise to maintain his connections to Boston area nonprofits that help the community. -
August 17, 2026 - Paula Cole, Chris Vognar on a new era of talk shows, and Working Coast - Below the Line
Paula Cole joins us to mark 30 years of her landmark album This Fire. The Grammy-winning singer-songwriter reflects on songs including “I Don’t Want to Wait” and “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?,” and on returning to the album three decades later. Her This Fire: 30 tour brings the Rockport-raised artist back to Massachusetts for a September 18 show at The Wilbur.Boston Globe TV and pop culture critic Chris Vognar looks at the changing face of the celebrity interview. As traditional late night loses its hold on audiences, shows including Hot Ones, SubwayTakes and Chicken Shop Date are finding new ways to get famous people talking. We discuss Vognar’s latest piece on how YouTube is reinventing the talk-show format.Contemporary Climate Gallery founder James LaMarca joins us ahead of Working Coast – Below the Line, a Fort Point exhibition featuring three emerging Boston-area artists exploring New England’s working waterfront through painting and sculpture. The show runs August 26–30 at the FPAC Art Space at the Envoy Hotel. -
August 14, 2026 - Week in Review: DNF Debate, Potterheads' Win Duel With History, and Obama's Great Books
Jared Bowen is joined by Culture Show contributor Lisa Simmons, Artistic and Executive Director of the Roxbury International Film Festival, and GBH’s Jeremy Siegel, host of In Common, for a look at some of the week’s biggest arts and culture stories. Before Anthony Bourdain became the celebrated chef, writer and world traveler we knew, he was a cocky 19-year-old who landed at the bottom of a Provincetown restaurant kitchen. The new film Tony revisits that formative summer, with The Holdovers breakout Dominic Sessa playing the future culinary icon. Nearly 30 years after the murder of Tupac Shakur, a memoir has become central evidence in the case against Duane “Keffe D” Davis. Compton Street Legend placed Davis near the center of the events surrounding the killing. Now his lawyers argue that the swagger, exaggeration and street cred that helped sell the book shouldn’t be mistaken for truth. In Wales, Harry Potter fans forced a multimillion-dollar power cable to change course after its planned route threatened the beach where Dobby the house-elf is memorialized. The twist: the rerouted cable now passes closer to actual Bronze Age burial remains. And when is it okay to give up on a book? Goodreads has added a dedicated “Did Not Finish” shelf, giving new life to an old readerly debate over whether abandoning a book is sensible judgment—or simply quitting too soon. -
August 13, 2026 - Valerie Fridland, Phillip Kennicott and an afternoon at the opera with Jane Eaglen
Valerie Fridland, sociolinguist and professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, joins us to talk about her new book, Why We Talk Funny: The Real Story Behind Our Accents—from how accents develop and change to what our speech can reveal about identity, belonging and the assumptions we make about one another.Philip Kennicott, Pulitzer Prize-winning culture critic for The Washington Post, discusses the paper’s ambitious project, The 25 most influential works of American culture, tracing 250 years through everything from Thomas Paine and Jackson Pollock to blue jeans, Thriller and Doom.Jane Eaglen, Grammy-winning soprano, New England Conservatory faculty member and president of the Boston Wagner Society, returns for “AI: Actual Intelligence” following the Society’s 2026 American Wagner Festival to talk Wagner, singing and the latest stories from the world of classical music.
