Episodes
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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. -
April 24, 2026 - Week in Review: "Michael," toxic fandoms, and a new Drag Race champion
On this edition of The Culture Show, Jared Bowen, Callie Crossley, and Joyce Kulhawik, go over the week’s top arts and culture headlines, which include“Michael,” the new Michael Jackson biopic is reigniting an old argument. The film leans into Jackson’s rise as a child star and global pop phenomenon while sidestepping the child sexual abuse allegations that permanently altered his public standing, raising questions about mythmaking, memory, and omission. Hollywood is revving Miami Vice back to life with Miami Vice ’85, a new feature film starring Michael B. Jordan as Tubbs and Austin Butler as Crockett. The project heads back into the franchise’s pastel, speedboat, neon-night vision of 1980s cool. In the final days of World War II, hundreds of paintings hidden in Berlin for safekeeping were destroyed by fire, including works by artists like Caravaggio and Rubens. Now those lost masterpieces are being recreated in digital form from old photographs, turning a story of destruction into one of remembrance. One of Britain’s great television landmarks is coming to a close. The documentary series Up, which returned to the same participants every seven years from childhood onward, became a portrait of class, fate, and the changing character of England; now 70 Up, directed by Asif Kapadia, will bring the series to an end later this year -
April 23, 2026 - Tom Perrotta on "Ghost Town," Julia Swanson, and the Bard's Birthday with Regie Gibson
Tom Perrotta joins us to discuss Ghost Town, his new novel about memory, grief, and the long pull of the past. The Election, Little Children, and The Leftovers author returns to familiar New Jersey ground in a story centered on Jimmy Perrini, a successful writer drawn back to the hometown and the formative loss he thought he had left behind. Perrotta will appear at the Brattle Theatre on Wednesday, April 29, at 6 p.m. for a Harvard Book Store event; tickets are available through Harvard Book Store. What could Mayor Michelle Wu’s proposed FY2027 budget mean for Boston’s public art landscape? Culture Show contributor Julia Swanson joins us for that conversation. She’s a multidisciplinary artist, producer, and award-winning photographer, and the creator of The Art Walk Project, a series of self-guided micro tours exploring public art across Greater Boston and beyond. On April 23, traditionally observed as Shakespeare’s birthday, we mark the staying power of a writer whose plays continue to be staged, adapted, and reimagined around the world. Joining us is Regie Gibson, the inaugural Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, a writer, performer, and educator whose work engages Shakespeare through spoken word — including his Hamlet-inspired poem “cry havoc (to thine own self be hip)”. -
April 22, 2026 - Wednesday Watch Party: When Harry Met Sally
For this month’s Wednesday 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 When Harry Met Sally, the 1989 romantic comedy that helped define the genre and is still shaping how movies talk about love, friendship, and timing. Together they dig into the film’s autumn-in-Manhattan charm, its famous one-liners, and the question at its center: does When Harry Met Sally still hold up? -
April 21, 2026 - Geoff Bennett on "Black Out Loud," Alison Hoagland, and 40 years of MIT List Visual Arts Center
Geoff Bennett, co-anchor and co-managing editor of PBS NewsHour, joins The Culture Show to discuss his new book, Black Out Loud: The Revolutionary History of Black Comedy from Vaudeville to ’90s Sitcoms. Bennett traces the long arc of Black comedy, from minstrelsy and vaudeville to Richard Pryor, In Living Color, and Living Single. Alison Hoagland, professor emerita of historic preservation at Michigan Technological University and a board member of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, joins us to talk about the legal fight over President Trump’s White House ballroom project. The case, filed by the National Trust after the demolition of the East Wing, has become a high-stakes battle over preservation, presidential power, and the future of the White House grounds. Paul C. Ha, director of the MIT List Visual Arts Center, joins us as the museum marks its 40th anniversary. We discuss the List’s role in bringing contemporary art into the life of MIT, and the exhibitions, performances, and public programs celebrating four decades of experimentation and artistic inquiry. -
April 20, 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. -
April 17, 2026 - Week in Review: Hampshire College closing, AI storefronts, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
On this edition of The Culture Show, Jared Bowen, Lisa Simmons, and James Sullivan go over the week’s top arts and culture headlines. Lisa Simmons is the Artistic and Executive Director of the Roxbury International Film Festival and program manager at Mass Cultural Council. James Sullivan is a journalist and author specializing in popular culture and Americana. He’s also on the Emerson faculty.Hampshire College, the experimental Amherst campus built around independent thinking and academic rebellion, will close after the fall semester under the weight of declining enrollment and financial strain. Its loss is hitting alumni hard, including filmmaker Ken Burns, who called Hampshire’s model of experimentation profoundly transformative. Meta is reportedly exploring whether AI can do more than complete tasks — whether it can replicate executive presence itself. The company is said to be building a digital version of Mark Zuckerberg that could advise employees across the organization, raising questions about whether this is a new kind of access or a new kind of control. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s class of 2026 stretches across genres and generations, from Iron Maiden and Wu-Tang Clan to Sade and Oasis. It is a lineup that rewards longevity, settles a few old arguments, and reopens the question of who gets to define rock history. The Brady Bunch house has entered yet another phase of its afterlife. After HGTV rebuilt the interior to match the sitcom’s remembered world, the home now exists somewhere between landmark, attraction, and pop-culture shrine to the grooviest decade in television décor. At the MFA, Art in Bloom turns 50 this year, pairing works from the collection with floral arrangements inspired by them. The annual event brings together floral designers, garden clubs, and museum volunteers for one of the museum’s most colorful spring traditions. -
April 16, 2026 - Keefer Glenshaw, Mary Grant, and a Secret Boston Patriots' Day special
Keefer Glenshaw joins The Culture Show ahead of Intention / Desire, a collaborative 24-hour performance that begins at sunset on April 25 and runs through sunset on April 26 at the Berklee Loft in Boston. Glenshaw, a musician, performance artist, electric cellist, and founder of the rock band The Romance, talks about pushing performance to its limits and inviting audiences directly into the work. MassArt president Mary Grant returns for our recurring feature “AI: Actual Intelligence,” where we hear from some of the region’s most original thinkers. This month, she joins us to talk about the school’s new co-op program and whether an art school can also become a pathway to work.Ahead of Patriots’ Day, Kiernan P. Schmitt joins us to go beyond the Freedom Trail and into the lesser-known corners of Greater Boston where the Revolution still leaves visible marks on the landscape. Schmitt is the author of Secret Boston: An Unusual Guide and co-host of the travel podcast Out of Office.
