The Culture Show Podcast

The Culture Show broadcasts live from Salem as the city marks its 400th anniversary, with an hour exploring its history, culture and the people shaping it today.

For this month’s Wednesday Watch Party, Jared Bowen, Callie Crossley and Joyce Kulhawik revisit Bridesmaids, the 2011 comedy that turns a wedding into a collision of friendship, rivalry and spectacularly bad behavior. Fifteen years later, they consider whether its most outrageous moments still deliver, how the film changed the rules for women in comedy, and whether beneath the bridal warfare, airborne chaos and unforgettable bathroom humor lies an enduring story about jealousy, forgiveness and friendship.  Joyce Kulhawik is a Culture Show Contributor, an Emmy Award-winning arts and entertainment reporter, president of the Boston Theatre Critics Association, and you can find her reviews at joyceschoices.com.

On this edition of The Culture Show, Jared Bowen, Callie Crossley, and Culture Show contributor Lisa Simmons, go over the week’s top arts and culture headlines, which include:

Jill Lepore discusses her new book, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State, tracing the growing power of data, algorithms and private technology companies over public life. Her previous book, We the People, won the 2026 Massachusetts Book Award for nonfiction. Lepore appears at a Porter Square Books event Tuesday, Sept. 29 at First Parish in Cambridge.

John Wilson, creator of HBO’s How To with John Wilson, turns his eye to one of the world’s most ubiquitous materials in his new documentary, The History of Concrete — finding questions about cities, permanence and decay along the way. The film opens Friday, Sept. 25 at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, Alamo Drafthouse Seaport and AMC Boston Common.

John Cusack talks about Momo, his first graphic novel, illustrated by Ignacio Noé — a hallucinatory trip through 1970s America where political paranoia, UFOs, theology and pop culture collide. Momo is out Sept. 29 from Mad Cave Studios.

Chef Nicholas Dixon joins us to talk about Dalia, the South Boston restaurant recently named one of The New York Times’ 50 favorite restaurants in America — and how he pushes Spanish cooking in unexpected directions. Nicholas Dixon is Dalia’s executive chef and culinary director for Broadway Restaurant Group.

Elisa Smith explores “feminine power” on her new album, Perfume. She joins us to talk about the record and the stories behind it. Find more at Elisa Smith’s website. Elisa Smith is a Boston singer-songwriter and winner of the 2025 Josie Music Award for Female Country Song of the Year.

Julia Swanson takes us beyond Greater Boston’s usual landmarks for a back-to-school tour of hyper-local public art from Allston to Somerville to Chinatown. Find her maps at The Art Walk Project. Julia Swanson is a multidisciplinary artist, award-winning photographer and creator of The Art Walk Project.

Altın Gün — The Amsterdam-based band draws on generations of Turkish folk songs, reshaping them through rock, disco and psychedelia. Members of the group join us ahead of their Boston performance at Big Night Live.

Uli Lorimer — As New England faces hotter temperatures, heavier rain, drought and habitat loss, the Native Plant Trust horticulture director explains a new effort to collect, grow and preserve native seeds for future restoration.

Craig Dykers and Michelle Delk — The Snøhetta architects behind the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library discuss designing a museum that rises from the North Dakota Badlands, where landscape, architecture and Roosevelt’s conservation legacy become part of the same story.