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New civic center ‘steps’ from Boston’s Embrace sculpture to honor Frederick Douglass
The new hub will be close to Boston Common and the sculpture honoring Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King.
Listen to previous shows
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February 5, 2026 - Imari Paris Jeffries, the Overture to Spring Black History Month Concert, and Worcester's Valentines
Imari Paris Jeffries, President and CEO of Embrace Boston and a co-chair of Everyone 250 join us for our recurring segment “AI: Actual Intelligence.” This month we focus on his recent piece on the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., and if the Super Bowl can and should be non political.Composer Kevin Day and cellist Leo Eguchi, co founding artistic director of Sheffield Chamber Players, join us to discuss Day’s “Overture to Springtime,” created in collaboration with City Strings United, ahead of the Overture to Spring: A Black History Month Family Concert on Feb. 15 at 3 p.m. at The Strand Theatre. To learn more go here.Vanessa Bumpus, exhibition coordinator at Museum of Worcester, explains how entrepreneur Esther Howland helped turn Worcester into an early hub of Valentine’s Day card production—and what that history reveals about labor, industry, and the business of romance. -
February 4, 2026 - Jeff Taylor, Mary Grant, and Blind Date with a Book at the BPL
Jeff Taylor, founder of Monster.com, joins us to talk about how the job search has changed — again. When Monster launched in 1994, it moved job listings out of newspaper classifieds and onto the internet. Now Taylor is back with a new platform, Boomband, and discusses job hunting in the age of bots, when software increasingly decides what gets seen and what doesn’t.Mary Grant, president of Massachusetts College of Art and Design, returns for our recurring segment AI: Actual Intelligence. She joins us each month to offer her human, experience-driven perspective on creativity, art and education. Today she and Jared discuss the art of dissent–all the ways that musicians, poets, graphic designers are using their craft to protest ICE.Veronica Koven-Matasy, Reader Services Director at the Boston Public Library, joins us to talk about the library’s annual “Blind Date with a Book” event. For the month of February, selected titles are wrapped in paper and stripped of covers, authors, and blurbs, inviting readers to discover something unexpected. The program is available through the end of the month at the Central Library in Copley Square. -
February 3, 2026 - "We Had a World" with Joshua Harmon, Ball in the House, and Philip Kennicott on the Kennedy Center
Playwright Joshua Harmon joins us to talk about his new play, “We Had a World.” The work turns inward, following a playwright asked by his grandmother to write about their family — a request that opens up a fraught history of love, resentment, humor, and truth-telling across three generations. “We Had a World” is onstage at the Huntington Theatre Company from February 12 through March 15.Ball in the House is a Boston-based a cappella group working across R&B, soul, and pop. They’ve opened shows for artists including the Jonas Brothers, Fantasia, and Lionel Richie, and join us ahead of upcoming performances in Foxborough and Shirley. All five members stop by the studio to talk about touring, vocal music, and what’s next.A year ago, Philip Kennicott warned that President Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center threatened the independence of one of America’s most important cultural institutions. Now that warning is playing out: this week the administration announced plans to close the Kennedy Center for two years as part of what Trump calls a “complete rebuild,” following months of leadership upheaval, cancellations, and declining ticket sales. Kennicott joins The Culture Show to discuss how unprecedented this level of presidential control is — and what it could mean for the future of federal support for the arts. Philip Kennicott is a Pulitzer Prize-winning art and architecture critic for The Washington Post. -
February 2, 2026 - T: An MBTA Musical, Peggy Fogelman on 10 years at the ISGM, and A Midsummer Night's Dream at THT REP
What do MBTA service alerts sound like as show tunes? “T: An MBTA Musical” turns the daily frustrations of riding Boston’s transit system — delays, shuttle buses, and all — into a two-act musical that’s equal parts satire and love letter to riders. Composer and lyricist Mel Carubia and Cassandra West , Executive Producer of Infinite Rotary Productions join us to talk about the show’s return, now onstage at the Boston Center for the Arts and The Rockwell.After ten years leading the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Peggy Fogelman reflects on a decade of continuity and change at one of Boston’s most distinctive institutions. She joins us to talk about expanding contemporary exhibitions and performance, steering the museum through the pandemic, and what it means to lead a place so shaped by history, memory, and public expectation. To learn about all of the museum’s programming go here.A new production of William Shakespeare’s "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at the BrickBox Theater in Worcester is set in a 1980s nightclub called The Wood, awash in leather, glitter, and neon. Livy Scanlon, artistic director of The Hanover Theatre and Alan Seiffert, the new president and CEO of The Hanover Theatre and Conservatory for the Performing Arts join us for an overview. To learn more, go here. -
January 30, 2026 - Week in Review: Catherine O'Hara, music protests, and the Melania documentary
On this edition of The Culture Show, Jared Bowen, Lisa Simmons, and Edgar B. Herwick III go over the week’s top arts and culture headlines.First up, Catherine O’Hara, the Emmy and Golden Globe winning actress who starred in films including Home Alone, Beetlejuice and numerous collaborations with Christopher Guest, has passed at age 71.Then, protest music and cultural backlash. Bruce Springsteen released a new protest track taking aim at immigration raids, while the Dropkick Murphys reworked their 2005 song “Citizen CIA” into “Citizen ICE” for their upcoming album “New England Forever”. Neil Young also made a geopolitical gesture, offering free access to his music in Greenland amid rising political tensions.The reaction to the killing of Alex Pretti has rippled across culture and sports. At Sundance, filmmakers and actors spoke out against ICE, and the NBA postponed a Minnesota Timberwolves game as players grappled with the moment—underscoring how quickly politics and culture are colliding.Also in the headlines: the documentary “Melania” has struggled to find an audience despite a reported $75 million price tag, with some screenings selling zero tickets and one London show drawing just a single attendee.Plus, The Museum of Fine Arts is laying off dozens of employees amid financial strain, raising questions about sustainability even at major institutions. Meanwhile, three Bob Ross paintings Finally, it’s a week in preview, with the hosts offering their suggestions for arts and culture happenings to take in. Jared suggests “Some Like it Hot,” now onstage through February 8; Lisa Simmons is suggesting a screening of the documentary “Harm in the Water,” on February 5, and Edgar B. Herwick III offers a Kubrick film festival at the Harvard FIlm Archives.
