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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 9, 2026 - Poet Steve Biondolillo, Cantrip, and Sarah Longwell's book "How to Eat an Elephant"
Poet Steve Biondolillo, author of Macaroni and Cheese Manifesto: A Spiritual Memoir in Verse and founder of the National Baseball Poetry Festival, joins Jared ahead of the 25th anniversary of September 11th. He discusses and performs “480 B.C.,” his poem linking the Battle of Thermopylae with the sacrifice of first responders and service members in 2001. Learn more about Steve BiondolilloScottish quartet Cantrip has spent more than 25 years pushing traditional music through funk, metal, bluegrass, swing and klezmer. Fiddler Alasdair White and founding member Dan Houghton join Jared ahead of tonight’s album-release concert at Passim.Political strategist Sarah Longwell, CEO and publisher of The Bulwark and host of The Focus Group podcast, joins Jared to discuss How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter at a Time, drawing on years of focus groups to examine persuasion, voters and political change. She’ll appear tomorrow night at a sold-out Harvard Book Store event with Bill Kristol. -
September 8, 2026 - Fabiola Méndez, Mikko Nissinen on 25 years at Boston Ballet, and Jackson Cannon on Pickle Week
Emmy-nominated Puerto Rican cuatrista, composer and singer Fabiola Méndez joins Jared Bowen ahead of Berklee’s inaugural Homecoming Block Party, September 19 near Fenway. The Berklee alum, who has brought the cuatro from her own compositions to stages alongside Bad Bunny, is part of a lineup that also includes Susan Tedeschi, Tiwa Savage, Dogs in a Pile and Dreion.Boston Ballet Artistic Director Mikko Nissinen marks his 25th season with the company as it opens 2026–2027 with Fall Experience. He joins Jared Bowen to talk about a quarter-century of expanding Boston Ballet’s repertoire and international reach, upcoming performances in New York and Paris, and a $10 million gift in his honor—the largest endowment gift in the company’s history.America is in a pickle—and Jackson Cannon is putting the brine to work behind the bar. The ES Hospitality beverage director joins Jared Bowen to talk about the pickle boom and how vinegar, fermentation and pickle juice are finding their way into cocktails. His class, Dirty Talk: Brine & Pickles in Cocktails, is September 12 at Eastern Standard as part of Pickle Week, running September 8–13. -
September 7, 2026 - Patti Smith, Daniel Mendelsohn, and Robert Pinsky
Patti Smith, National Book Award–winning author of “Just Kids,” joins The Culture Show to discuss her latest memoir, “Bread of Angels.” The book traces her imaginative postwar childhood, her life with Fred “Sonic” Smith, and the years of loss and renewal that shaped her return to writing and performance. Daniel Mendelsohn—Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities at Bard College, and frequent contributor of essays to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books where he is Editor-at-Large—discusses his new translation of Homer's “The Odyssey.” Three-time U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky joins The Culture Show to talk about retiring from Boston University where he has been a professor since 1989. -
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.
