Episodes
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April 8, 2026 - Poet Laureate Regie Gibson, Jade Wheeler on "Who is Eartha Mae?" and Mahesh Daas on "The Drama"
Regie Gibson, the inaugural Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, joins The Culture Show as part of our ongoing celebration of National Poetry Month. A poet, performer, and educator, he discusses bringing poetry off the page and into public life.Jade Wheeler joins The Culture Show to discuss Who Is Eartha Mae?, her one-woman play with music about Eartha Kitt that moves beyond the icon’s public image to explore the woman behind it. Presented by The Hanover Theatre Repertory, Who Is Eartha Mae? is onstage through April 19 at the BrickBox Theater at the Jean McDonough Arts Center in Worcester.Mahesh Daas, president of Boston Architectural College and co-author of the graphic novella I, Nobot, joins The Culture Show for another edition of “AI: Actual Intelligence.” He brings his monthly, algorithm-free perspective to the conversation. -
April 7, 2026 - Béla Fleck, the High Line in New York, and Virginia Pye on "Marriage and Other Monuments"
Nineteen-time Grammy winner Béla Fleck joins The Culture Show ahead of his April 18 performance at The Cabot in Beverly with harpist Edmar Castañeda and drummer Antonio Sánchez. He talks about musical risk, unlikely combinations, and a career that has taken the banjo from bluegrass to jazz, classical music, and beyond. Richard Hayden, Senior Director of Horticulture at New York’s High Line, joins The Culture Show to discuss the elevated park that transformed an old freight rail line into one of the city’s most influential public spaces. He talks about caring for the gardens that help define the High Line’s identity and what it takes to steward a landscape shaped by both design and self-seeded wildness. Virginia Pye joins The Culture Show to discuss “Marriage and Other Monuments,” her new novel set in Richmond during the reckoning over Confederate memory in 2020, where public conflict spills into the private lives of two sisters and their marriages. She’ll appear at Newtonville Books on Wednesday, April 8 at 7 p.m. to talk about the book. -
April 6, 2026 - Elaine Sciolino, Matt Doyle, and Adam Rapp
Elaine Sciolino, former New York Times Paris bureau chief and the author of six books, joins The Culture Show to revisit her 1982 interview with Ali Khamenei, conducted years before he became Iran’s supreme leader, and to reflect on what that encounter reveals now about Iran, power, and history. Her latest book, “Adventures in the Louvre: How to Fall in Love with the World’s Greatest Museum,” is now out in paperback, and she’ll discuss it on Tuesday at the French Library during Night at the Louvre: Art, Intrigue & a Modern Heist; On April 21st she’ll be at the Boston Athenaeum.Tony Award-winning actor Matt Doyle joins The Culture Show to discuss “When Playwrights Kill” Matthew Lombardo’s dark backstage comedy inspired by the real-life collapse of “Tea at Five” and its aborted Broadway hopes. The production is onstage at the Huntington Theatre through April 18; details are here. Playwright Adam Rapp joins The Culture Show to discuss writing the book for “The Outsiders” the Tony-winning Broadway musical adaptation of S.E. Hinton’s novel. In town by way of Broadway in Boston it’s on stage at Citizens Opera House through April 12. To learn more go here. -
April 3, 2026 - Week-in-Review: An Art Heist, A Kit-Kat Caper, and Celine Dion's Comeback
On this edition of The Culture Show, Jared Bowen, Callie Crossley, and Lisa Simmons, go over the week’s top arts and culture headlines.First up, Italian authorities are searching for four masked thieves who stole a Renoir, a Cézanne, and a Matisse from the Magnani-Rocca Foundation outside Parma in a raid that took less than three minutes. The theft, valued at about $10.3 million, has renewed concerns about how vulnerable museums remain to fast, highly organized art crimes. From there, a truck carrying more than 400,000 KitKat bars vanished on its way to Poland, leaving Nestlé trying to solve a very different kind of heist. The stolen shipment weighed 12 tons, turning a candy delivery into an international mystery. And Boston’s arts community is remembering Candelaria Silva-Collins, who died at 71. As the first director of ACT Roxbury, she helped build lasting cultural infrastructure in Roxbury, from Roxbury Open Studios to the early Roxbury Film Festival and the transformation of Hibernian Plus Celine Dion will return to live performance this fall with a 10-show run in Paris, her first full concert engagement in six years. The comeback follows her diagnosis with stiff-person syndrome, which forced her to step away from the spotlight. Finally, “The Pitt” will bring its season finale to Alamo Drafthouse on April 13 as part of a one-night Healthcare Appreciation Week event. It is another example of television being repackaged as a theatrical experience. -
April 2, 2026 - David Duchovny, Edward Gorey, and Simon Curtis
Award-winning actor, director, singer-songwriter and bestselling author David Duchovny joins The Culture Show to discuss “About Time: Poems,” a collection that reflects on love, family, aging, and the shifting nature of time. From there Molly Schwartzburg joins The Culture Show to talk about Edward Gorey and how Harvard’s Houghton Library has acquired never before seen Gorey illustrations. These works reveal how his time at Harvard shaped his sensibility. Molly Schwartzburg is the Philip Hofer Curator of Printing and Graphic Arts.Finally acclaimed filmmaker Simon Curtis joins The Culture Show to talk about directing “Downton Abbey:The Grand Finale.” -
April 1, 2026 - Robert Pinsky, Chef Jason Santos, and Joyce's Choices
Poet Robert Pinsky joins The Culture Show to kick off National Poetry Month with a look at PoemJazz at Regattabar, where poetry and live music meet. The next edition, “Misrule Music,” is April 12 and shares its title with Pinsky’s new poem in the April issue of "The Atlantic."Chef Jason Santos discusses “Citrus & Salt,” his new cookbook inspired by the flavors of his Fort Point restaurant. He talks about translating the bright, high-impact world of coastal Mexican food and cocktails from the restaurant kitchen to the home cook. It’s Stage and Screen with Joyce Kulhawik, with reviews, previews, and recommendations on what to see now. This week’s roundup includes Ryan Gosling’s “Project Hail Mary” and “Angry, Raucous, and Shamelessly Gorgeous” at Lyric Stage. Joyce Kulhawik is a Culture Show contributor, 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. -
March 31, 2026 - Ibram X. Kendi, Fmr. US Poet Laureate Billy Collins, and "Living in Pryde"
Ibram X. Kendi joins The Culture Show to discuss his latest book “Chain of Ideas: The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age.” The National Book Award-winning author examines how replacement theory gained political force and how it has been used to justify fear, exclusion, and authoritarian power. Ibram X. Kendi is the Carter G. Woodson Endowed Chair in History at Howard University where he is also a professor of history. Tonight he’ll be at First Parish in Cambridge in conversation with Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley at an event sponsored by Porter Square Books. To learn more go here.Billy Collins joins us to discuss “Dog Show,” his latest collection of poems. Featuring 25 poems with watercolor portraits by Pamela Sztybel, the book enters the canine consciousness — moving from the comic to the metaphysical. Collins is a “New York Times” bestselling author and former U.S. Poet Laureate.GBH’s documentary “Living in Pryde” takes us inside The Pryde in Hyde Park, New England’s first affordable LGBTQ+-welcoming senior housing community. Producer and editor Emily Judem and resident Eddie Whitman join us ahead of the film’s April 4 screening at the Coolidge Corner Theatre as part of “Stories from Our Community.” To learn more about the screening go here. -
March 30, 2026 - Geoffrey Kelly on "Thirteen Perfect Fugitives," an Eddie Palmieri tribute, and a PAX East recap
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.We preview Berklee’s “Mambo Mania: A Tribute to Eddie Palmieri,” happening Wednesday, April 1 at 8 p.m. at the Berklee Performance Center. Berklee Professor Eguie Castrillo and Grammy-winning trumpeter Humberto Ramírez join us to discuss the tribute to Palmieri, the late pianist and bandleader whose La Perfecta helped redefine the sound of salsa and Latin jazz. To learn more go here.And GBH’s Senior Radio Producer Diego Lopez joins us with a recap of PAX East, which turned Boston into a hub of cosplay, tournaments, demos, and gaming fandom for one packed weekend. He shares the highlights from one of the East Coast’s biggest gaming gatherings. -
March 27, 2026 - Week in Review: Hannah Montana at 20, SNL's UK debut, and remembering Tracy Kidder
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:Twenty years after Hannah Montana premiered, Disney is marking the anniversary with a new special celebrating the show and the fandom that never let go. After 50 years of turning American politics and celebrity into live comedy, Saturday Night Live is heading to Britain. The new adaptation raises the question: can the SNL formula survive a culture with a different comic sensibility? Meta and Google have lost a major case over social media addiction, with a California jury finding Instagram and YouTube liable and awarding $6 million in damages. Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Tracy Kidder has died at 80. In books like “The Soul of a New Machine” and “Mountains Beyond Mountains,” he brought narrative force and moral seriousness to stories about people under pressure and the systems that shaped them. Stephen Colbert is taking his Tolkien fandom to a new level: the late-night host is now co-writing a new “Lord of the Rings film.” His move from superfan to franchise writer has fans wondering what one of pop culture’s most devoted Tolkien obsessives will bring to Middle-earth. And we close the show with our week in preview. Jared recommends “Nixon in China” at Symphony Hall, James Parker offers “An Evening with Black Seed Writers” at Brookline Booksmith and Callie suggests the play “Lifted,” by Mfonisao Udofia onstage at Wellesley College Theatre. -
March 26, 2026 - Renée Fleming and Thomas Hampson on "Nixon in China," “André Is an Idiot,” and presidential pets
John Adams’s Nixon in China turned a geopolitical spectacle into something stranger, sharper, and more human. Renée Fleming and Thomas Hampson join the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Symphony Hall to reprise Pat and Richard Nixon in scenes from the opera, with performances March 26 through 28. To learn more go here.The documentary “André Is an Idiot” begins with a terrible mistake — putting off a colonoscopy — and turns it into something candid, profane, funny, and unexpectedly life-affirming. Director Tony Benna joins “The Culture Show” to talk about the film, which opens at Alamo Drafthouse Boston Seaport Friday, March 27. Alan Price, Director of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, joins The Culture Show for an overview of their current exhibition “Presidential Pets.” To learn more go here.
