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The 25-hour Moby Dick Marathon sails on in New Bedford
Every winter, thousands of fans descend on the New Bedford Whaling Museum to hear the novel out loud.
Listen to previous shows
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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.
