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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."
Listen to previous shows
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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 -
August 28, 2026 - Week in Review: Remembering Dolly Parton, Tim Curry, and Yayoi Kusama
Joyce Kulhawik joins Lisa Simmons, Artistic and Executive Director of the Roxbury International Film Festival, and Culture Show producer Kate Dellis for a look at some of the week’s biggest arts and culture stories, which included: Dolly Parton died this week at 80, leaving behind thousands of songs, 11 Grammys, more than 100 million records sold—and a philanthropic legacy that put hundreds of millions of books into the hands of children around the world. Tim Curry, the actor who turned Dr. Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show into one of cinema’s great cult characters, died this week at 80. His career also included indelible turns in Clue and It. Yayoi Kusama, whose polka dots, pumpkins and Infinity Mirror Rooms became some of contemporary art’s most recognizable images, died this month at 97 after a career spanning more than seven decades. After Boston Symphony Orchestra musicians unanimously authorized a strike, the players and management reached a new three-year contract that gives musicians greater influence over artistic planning and the choice of the orchestra’s next music director. Meta agreed to a $17.1 billion settlement over allegations that its platforms harmed young people. The deal could bring new restrictions for teenage users and as much as $516 million to Massachusetts for youth programs and mental-health services. -
August 27, 2026 - Christopher Rothko, Ask E. Jean, and "Broken American Dream" with Daniel Paquette
Christopher Rothko joins us to discuss his donation of his father’s 1934 Gloucester Harbor painting to the Cape Ann Museum and what the early work reveals about Mark Rothko before abstraction defined his career. He and his sister, Kate Rothko Prizel, will also appear at the museum’s Avery, Gottlieb & Rothko: By the SeaSymposium September 17 and 18.Filmmaker Ivy Meeropol joins us to discuss Ask E. Jean, her new documentary tracing E. Jean Carroll’s unconventional life, public voice and legal battle with Donald Trump. The film screens August 27 as part of the Nantucket Film Festival’s summer documentary series.Washington Post reporter Danielle Paquette went to a forest outside Warsaw, where Europeans spent 28 hours role-playing life in a fictional Ohio trailer park. Her story, “What I Learned About the American Dream From Europeans Pretending to Live in Ohio,” explores what the experience revealed about America’s mythology abroad. -
August 26, 2026 - Remembering Dolly Parton with Paula Cole, Conversations with an Executioner, and corsets in Worcester
Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Paula Cole joins The Culture Show to remember Dolly Parton, an artist she long admired and later collaborated with on “Heart Door.” Cole reflects on Parton’s songwriting, influence and the experience of making music with her. Cole’s new archival project, Sonic Memoir: Demos 1989–1998, arrives September 10. On September 18, she brings This Fire: 30 to the Wilbur, performing This Fire in full for its 30th anniversary.Polish resistance fighter Kazimierz Moczarski spent 255 days imprisoned with Jürgen Stroop, the Nazi officer who oversaw the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto. Translator Sean Gasper Bye joins us to discuss Conversations with an Executioner, now available in its complete English translation for the first time. He’ll be at JustBook-ish in Dorchester September 1.Worcester was once a corset capital, producing a garment that constricted women physically even as the industry helped liberate them in the workforce. Anne Marie Murphy joins us to discuss A Proper Fit: Women at Work in a City of Corsets and the women who designed, invented and built businesses around the garment. -
August 25, 2026 - Masquerade, Chef Ana Sortun, and Christin Geall on "Flora Culture"
Tony Award–winning director Diane Paulus, Artistic Director of the American Repertory Theater, joins us to talk about “Masquerade,” an immersive reimagining of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom of the Opera.” Set in a five-story former department store on West 57th Street, the production turns the Paris Opera House into a candlelit maze of salons, staircases, and hidden rooms, bringing audiences in masks inches from the show’s spectacle and romance. To learn more go here.James Beard Award-winning chef Ana Sortun has spent more than two decades making the flavors of Turkey and the Eastern Mediterranean part of Boston’s flavor profile. The chef behind Oleana, Sofra and Sarma joins us to talk about how travel changed the way she cooks and why vegetables, spices and communal eating remain central to her food.In her new book, Flora Culture: How Flowers Shape Our World, writer, designer and gardener Christin Geall follows flowers through a global industry in full bloom, tracing the labor, trade, traditions and environmental costs behind what we grow, give and bring into our homes. She’ll sign books at Edgartown Books on Martha’s Vineyard on Wednesday, August 26.
