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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.
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February 9, 2026 - "PILLION," Fran Lebowitz, and Super Bowl Postgame
Filmmaker Harry Lighton joins us to discuss his debut feature Pillion, a darkly funny and tender look at a relationship shaped by power, trust, and BDSM. The film premiered at Cannes, where it won Best Screenplay, and stars Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melling. Lighton will appear in person tonight at 7:00 p.m. at the Coolidge Corner Theatre for a screening, Q&A and to receive the Coolidge Breakthrough Artist Award. To learn more go here.Cultural critic Fran Lebowitz brings her signature wit to the show, talking about aging, cities, manners, and why she avoids football. The author and star of Netflix’s Pretend It’s a City appears live at the Emerson Colonial Theatre on February 19. To learn more go here.It’s Monday afternoon quarterbacking with co-host Callie Crossley and Culture Show contributor Joyce Kulhawik as we unpack the Super Bowl as a pop-culture spectacle. From the halftime show to the commercials, we look at the moments everyone’s talking about. Joyce Kulhawik is an Emmy Award–winning arts and entertainment reporter and President of the Boston Theatre Critics Association, you can read Kulhawik’s reviews here. -
February 6, 2026 - Week in Review: National Film Registry, an AI social network, and Iron Lung
On this edition of The Culture Show, Jared Bowen, Callie Crossley, and Lisa Simmons, go over the week’s top arts and culture headlines.First up, In an era of bloated blockbusters, YouTuber Markiplier bypassed Hollywood entirely, writing, financing, and releasing his sci-fi horror film Iron Lung on his own — and turning a $3 million budget into more than $17 million at the box office.And, the bots are coming, the bots are coming. Moltbook is a new social platform built entirely for bots — they post, argue, organize, and even police each other, creating a strange, self-contained online culture with no humans at the controls.Then we remember Woodie King Jr., the pioneering theater producer who spent decades creating space for Black playwrights and performers, launching careers and reshaping American theater through the New Federal Theatre.We also reflect on the legacy of Demond Wilson who died this week. The actor and writer best known as Lamont on the groundbreaking sitcom Sanford and Son, bringing Black family life and humor into millions of homes.And we head to Rome; the city introduces a new tourist tax at the Trevi Fountain, putting a modern price tag on the timeless coin toss and giving fresh meaning to “cash flow.”Finally, Callie recommends the star-studded Super Bowl commercials, with a focus on Dunkin’ ads; Lisa Simmons suggests a Sidney Poitier film festival for Black History Month. “Icons: Poitier” runs at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, “A Warm December” screens at the Somerville Cine-Club, and “In the Heat of the Night” and “Pressure Point” screen at the Somerville Theatre; Jared offers the 100 Year Book Debate at the Boston Public Library, -
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.
