Podcast
The Culture Show Podcast
Hosted by GBH News · EN
A Boston-based podcast that thrives in how we live. What we like to see, watch, taste, hear, feel and talk about. It’s an expansive look at our society through art, culture and entertainment. It’s a conversation about the seminal moments and sizable shocks that are driving the daily discourse. We’ll amplify local creatives and explore the homegrown arts and culture landscape and tap into the big talent that tours Boston along the way.
65episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
May 19, 2026 - Peter Wolf, Megan Hilty, and John Ravenal on the US at the Biennale
Yesterday00:55:29Tap to summarizePeter Wolf came to Boston to study painting, but quickly became part of the city’s musical bloodstream — performing with The Hallucinations, spinning records at WBCN and fronting The J. Geils Band. As MassArt honors him with an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree, Wolf joins us to talk about art, music — and Waiting on the Moon, his memoir of late nights and unforgettable run-ins with Muddy Waters, Alfred Hitchcock and more.Megan Hilty joins us ahead of An Evening with Megan Hilty at The Umbrella Arts Center in Concord. The Tony-nominated actress and singer brings songs and stories from a career that has moved between Broadway, television and concert stages. To learn more, go here.Independent curator and art historian John Ravenal joins us to discuss History Maker, Robert Lazzarini’s proposed exhibition for the U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. The project was selected, then collapsed before it was announced, raising questions about art, politics and what America chooses to put on the world stage. To learn more, go here.
Transcribe →May 18, 2026 - Stephen Moyer and Jack Davenport, Jill Medvedow on "Things that Disappear," and Pedro Alonzo
2d ago00:55:33Tap to summarizeA 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.Jill Medvedow, Director Emerita of the Institute of Contemporary Art, returns for “Read on Arrival,” our series on short books with long afterlives. Her latest pick is Jenny Erpenbeck’s Things That Disappear, a 96-page collection of autobiographical essays.Independent curator and Culture Show contributor Pedro Alonzo joins us with dispatches from Buffalo and Mexico City, where Latino and Chicano artists are getting major museum attention. We discuss Let Us Gather in a Flourishing Way at the Buffalo AKG and Aztlán, túnel del tiempo at Mexico City’s Palacio de Bellas Artes.
Transcribe →May 15, 2026 - Week in Review: Eurovision, the World Cup halftime show, and Don Colossus
5d ago00:55:31Tap to summarizeOn this edition of The Culture Show, GBH’s Global Correspondent and News Host Jeremy Siegel, Lisa Simmons, and Joyce Kulhawik go over the latest arts and culture headlines on our week-in-review. Lisa Simmons is Artistic and Executive Director of the Roxbury International Film Festival and program manager at Mass Cultural Council. Joyce Kulhawik is an Emmy-award winning arts and entertainment reporter and President of the Boston Theatre Critics Association. You can find her reviews on Joyce’s Choices. The World Cup is getting its first-ever halftime show, set for July 19 at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. Shakira is returning to the World Cup stage, with Madonna and BTS also part of the spectacle.Cannes is underway with less Hollywood wattage this year, but plenty of awards-season intrigue. The festival is putting more focus on international auteurs and a new Oscar rule that could give Cannes winners a stronger path to the Academy Awards.Eurovision is once again where music, politics and spectacle collide. Israel has advanced to the final, but its participation has become a flashpoint, with several countries sitting out over the war in Gaza and the civilian death toll.A 22-foot gold statue of President Trump now stands at Trump National Doral in Florida. Called “Don Colossus,” it shows him with his fist raised — echoing the Butler assassination attempt photo — and has drawn attention for its mix of politics, spectacle and backlash.Dunkin is returning to Canada, setting up another round in its rivalry with Tim Hortons. The expansion puts an American coffee-and-doughnut chain back into competition with one of Canada’s most recognizable homegrown brands.
Transcribe →May 14, 2026 - Club Passim's Matt Smith, Bill Lichtenstein on WBCN, and 150 years of the Harvard Lampoon
6d ago00:55:31Tap to summarizeMatt Smith has spent 30 years at Club Passim, the tiny Harvard Square room with an enormous folk history. We talk with him about starting as a volunteer, booking artists, and helping shape one of the country’s great listening rooms. To learn more about Passim, go here.WBCN wasn’t just Boston’s rock station. In the late 1960s and early ’70s, it became a platform for anti-war politics, civil rights, LGBTQ and women’s rights, and listener-driven radio. We talk with Bill Lichtenstein about his documentary The Airwaves Belonged to the People: WBCN and The American Revolution, now returning to theaters around New England. To learn more about upcoming screenings, go here.The Harvard Lampoon began in 1876 as a student humor magazine and, 150 years later, remains one of American comedy’s most influential institutions. We talk with Geoff Edgers about his recent oral history of the Lampoon, its mythology, its famous alumni, and its long reach into National Lampoon, Saturday Night Live, The Simpsons, late night and Hollywood comedy. To read Edgers’ piece, go here.
Transcribe →May 13, 2026 - Sam Smallidge, and NEC's Andrea Kalyn and Juliano Aniceto on "Concert for the City"
1w ago00:40:55Tap to summarizeSam Smallidge has one of the more unusual jobs in Boston: he oversees Converse’s archive in Charlestown. We talk with him about building the company’s collection from a spreadsheet and a folder into more than 10,000 items — and how shoes, ads, prototypes, catalogs and company history help tell the story of one of the most recognizable brands in the world. New England Conservatory’s Preparatory School marks its 75th anniversary with Concert for the City, a free, family-friendly concert this Saturday at 4:00 at the Hatch Shell. The program features NEC Prep’s Youth Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Juliano Aniceto, Director of NEC Prep Orchestras, and also joins celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the United States. Registration is encouraged through NEC’s website, where attendees can also find arrival and parking details. To learn more or register, go here.
Transcribe →May 12, 2026 - Tracy K.Smith, "The Battle for Boston," and Dorie McCullough Lawson
1w ago00:54:54Tap to summarizeTracy 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.
Transcribe →May 11, 2026 -
1w ago00:55:30Tap to summarizeJames Sullivan, a journalist, author and longtime contributor to the Boston Globe, joins The Culture Show to talk about his book Which Side Are You On?: 20th Century American History in 100 Protest Songs.From there Aisha Muharrar joins The Culture Show to talk about her debut novel “Loved One.” She’s an Emmy Award–winning writer and producer who has worked on “Hacks,” “Parks” and “Recreation,” and “The Good Place.”Finally, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Richard Russo joins The Culture Show, to talk about his new book "Life and Art.” It’s a COVID-era meditation on his childhood, adulthood and what it means to be an artist.
Transcribe →May 8, 2026 - Week in Review: Ted Turner, Tony nominations, and the Met Gala
2w ago00:46:58Tap to summarizeOn this edition of The Culture Show, Culture Show co-host Callie Crossley, GBH’s Global Correspondent and News Host Jeremy Siegel and James Sullivan, journalist, author and Emerson faculty member go over the latest arts and culture headlines on our week in review We reflect on Ted Turner’s legacy. The Media mogul who built CNN, TBS, TNT and Cartoon Network, died this week at 87. The Tony nominations are out, offering a clearer picture of the Broadway season: the revivals, new musicals, adaptations and surprises that broke through. The Rolling Stones are back with “Rough and Twisted,” a lead single from their upcoming album Foreign Tongues, out July 10. Club Passim celebrates Matt Smith’s 30 years with a May 12 concert at Arrow Street Arts featuring Ellis Paul, Kris Delmhorst, Alisa Amador and more. When Scotland plays in Foxboro for the World Cup, hundreds of fans are planning to beat steep train fares by taking yellow school buses to Gillette.
Transcribe →May 7, 2026 - "Swept Away" by The Avett Brothers, and Elizabeth Strout's "The Things We Never Say"
2w ago00:41:10Tap to summarizeScott Avett and Seth Avett of The Avett Brothers join us to discuss “Swept Away,” the musical built around their songs. After a 2024 Broadway run, the show is now in Boston at SpeakEasy Stage Company, where it turns the Avetts’ music into a harrowing sea story about a New Bedford whaling crew, a shipwreck and an impossible moral choice. To learn more about “Swept Away” at SpeakEasy Stage Company, go here. The Avett Brothers will also be back in Boston this summer, performing with Mike Patton at the Boch Center Wang Theatre on June 10. To learn more, go here.Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Elizabeth Strout joins us to discuss her latest novel, “The Things We Never Say.” It introduces a new cast of characters while returning to familiar Strout territory: marriage, loneliness, family strain and the things people cannot quite bring themselves to say. Strout will be in Massachusetts for two events this week: at The Brattle Theatre in Cambridge tonight, presented by Harvard Book Store, and at Duxbury High School tomorrow, presented by The Duxbury Literary Circle. To learn more about the Brattle Theatre event, go here, and for the Duxbury event, go here.
Transcribe →May 6, 2026 - Stephen Greenblatt, Jill Lepore and Nicholas Boggs
2w ago00:55:30Tap to summarizePulitzer Prize–winning author Stephen Greenblatt joins The Culture Show, to talk about his latest book, “Dark Renaissance:The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival.” It traces the meteoric rise and violent end of Christopher Marlowe—playwright, poet, spy, and heretic—whose genius endures today. From there, Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore discusses her new book, “We the People." Published on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding—the anniversary, too, of the first state constitutions—"We the People" offers a wholly new history of the Constitution.Finally writer Nicholas Boggs joins The Culture Show to talk about his book, “Baldwin: A Love Story.” It's the first major biography of James Baldwin in three decades, revealing how the writer’s personal relationships shaped his life and work.
Transcribe →