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Exclusive: BSO President Chad Smith defends decision to oust Andris Nelsons
In his first broadcast interview, Smith told GBH’s The Culture Show that the decision to part ways with Nelsons stems from "a need for alignment."
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September 4, 2026 - Week-in-Review: Gloria Steinem, Cassandra Wilson, and Making MapQuest Great Again
Callie Crossley is joined by Lisa Simmons, Artistic and Executive Director of the Roxbury International Film Festival and program manager at Mass Cultural Council, and Maurice Emmanuel Parent, award-winning actor, Professor of the Practice, Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies at Tufts University, and Producing Artistic Director at Front Porch Arts Collective. They go over some of the week’s biggest arts and culture stories, which include: Gloria Steinem, the journalist and feminist leader who helped found Ms. magazine and pushed women’s rights into the center of American public life, died this week at 92. Her career stretched from an undercover investigation of New York’s Playboy Club to decades of advocacy for reproductive freedom and political equality. Cassandra Wilson, the Grammy-winning singer who moved through jazz, blues, folk, country and R&B with equal ease, died this week at 70. Albums including Blue Light ’Til Dawn and New Moon Daughter made her one of the defining jazz singers of the 1990s. how do you make MapQuest great again? By not making Lake Ontario great again. After President Trump pushed to rename it “Lake America,” MapQuest refused to follow directions—and the old-school navigation app shot to number one. The Metropolitan Museum of Art canceled its planned John Galliano retrospective after Jewish leaders, donors and New York politicians objected to honoring the designer, whose career was derailed by racist and antisemitic outbursts. Galliano withdrew from the exhibition, and the Met agreed to cancel it. Boston Ballet received a $10 million anonymous endowment contribution, the largest in the company’s history. The money permanently funds the artistic director’s position in honor of Mikko Nissinen, now in his 25th year leading the company, and marks a major step toward Boston Ballet’s goal of building a $100 million endowment. -
September 3, 2026 - Tracy K.Smith, "The Battle for Boston," and Dorie McCullough Lawson
Tracy K. Smith, former U.S. Poet Laureate discusses her book “Fear Less: Poetry in Perilous Times” — an invitation to listen, reflect, and let poetry guide us through uncertainty. Don Gillis and Ray Flynn join The Culture Show to discuss Gillis’ new book “The Battle for Boston: How Mayor Ray Flynn and Community Organizers Fought Racism and Downtown Power Brokers.” On June 5th at 6:00 Don Gillis will be at a book event at the Roslindale Public Library. To learn more go here.Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David McCullough spent decades helping Americans see their past in human terms. A new collection, “History Matters”, gathers his essays and speeches on why history endures — edited by his daughter Dorie McCullough Lawson and longtime collaborator Mike Hill. She joins us ahead of her American Ancestors Headquarters event today at 5 p.m. To learn more go here. -
September 2, 2026- Wednesday Watch Party: "Do The Right Thing"
Callie Crossley leads this month's Wednesday Watch Party with GBH’s Jeremy Siegel, host of In Common, and Culture Show contributor Lisa Simmons, Artistic and Executive Director of the Roxbury International Film Festival and program manager at Mass Cultural Council. We're revisiting Spike Lee’s landmark 1989 film Do the Right Thing. Set in Bed-Stuy on the hottest day of the summer, the film is funny, combative, exuberant and ultimately devastating, using blazing color, a restless camera and Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” to explore race, policing, neighborhood change, ownership and belonging. Nearly 40 years later, we consider what the film understands about the way prejudice builds through insults, resentments and competing claims to the same place — and why so much of what Lee put on screen remains recognizable today. -
September 1, 2026 - Bobbi Brown, Donnie Wahlberg, and Chef Aidan McGee
Bobbi Brown built a beauty empire on simplicity and self-expression. She joins The Culture Show to talk about her new book “Still Bobbi,” where she lays bare her lessons for reinvention, resilience, and redefining beauty on her own terms.From there, actor, singer and entrepreneur Donnie Wahlberg. Familiar to millions as “Blue Bloods’” Detective Danny Reagan, he spent fourteen seasons solving crimes in New York City. Now Danny Reagan is back — but this time, he’s doing it Boston-style. “Blue Bloods” followed a multi-generational law-enforcement family. In "Boston Blue," Wahlberg once again steps into Reagan’s shoes — this time moving the New York detective to Wahlberg’s own hometown. He joins The Culture Show to talk about a new chapter in the “Blue Bloods” universe and about his homecoming. Finally, McGonagle’s Pub landed a spot on “The New York Times” list of America’s best restaurants, making it the first Irish pub to get this national recognition. Chef Aidan McGee joins The Culture Show to talk about how he is reimagining pub fare. Aidan McGee is the chef patron of The Dubliner and McGonagle's P -
August 31, 2026 - Inside MASTERPIECE'S "The Forsytes," Fabiola Méndez, and John Sayles' "Crucible"
A sweeping drama on MASTERPIECE brings one of Britain’s most famous literary families back to the screen. In “The Forsytes,” actors Stephen Moyer and Jack Davenport play brothers Jolyon and James Forsyte, members of a wealthy Victorian dynasty whose fortunes can’t shield them from rivalry, ambition, and betrayal. To learn more go here.Then Fabiola Méndez is bringing the Puerto Rican cuatro to new audiences and bigger stages., The singer, composer, and bandleader joins Jared Bowen to discuss shaping a musical voice that has taken her from folk-rooted performance to the global stage alongside Bad Bunny. And Filmmaker and novelist John Sayles is back with “Crucible,” a new historical novel set in Henry Ford’s early-20th-century Detroit, where labor, power, and indu
