The Culture Show Podcast

Jared Bowen is joined by Culture Show Contributors Maurice Emmanuel Parent and Joyce Kulhawik. Maurice Parent is an  award-winning actor, Professor of the Practice, Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies  at Tufts University, and Producing Artistic Director at Front Porch Arts Collective.  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.They go over some of the week’s biggest arts and culture stories, which include:

More than two decades after “The Reason” turned Hoobastank into a mainstream phenomenon, frontman Doug Robb looks back at the song’s enormous success, the backlash that came with it and eventually finding his way back to it. The band also has its first new music in eight years and plays the Xfinity Center in Mansfield September 18 with Staind, Seether and Hinder.

 MassArt President Mary Grant joins us for another edition of AI: Actual Intelligence to discuss commemorating Constitution Day and fostering civic engagement.

Bestselling author and Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter Hank Phillippi Ryan joins us with her 17th thriller, Mother Daughter Sister Stranger, and talks about the long relationship between her reporting and fiction. Tonight at 6:30, Ryan also joins the Ashland Public Library for a virtual event.

Poet, essayist and Mellon Foundation President Elizabeth Alexander joins us to talk about her new book, Signals Across Vast Distances: Essays and Tales, which moves through poetry, art, history, family and public life. Alexander appears tonight with former U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith at the Brattle Theatre in an event presented by Harvard Book Store.

At Goodnow Farms Chocolate in Sudbury, Monica and Tom Rogan trace flavor all the way back to the cacao bean — sourcing directly from growers, roasting each origin differently and even pressing their own cocoa butter. The award-winning chocolate makers join us to explain how one ingredient can yield notes of berries, honey, coffee and toasted marshmallow.

 Grammy Award-winning and Tony-nominated actor Patrick Page has made a career of getting inside the minds of some very bad men. In All the Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the Villain, he moves through more than a dozen Shakespeare characters to examine how the playwright’s villains became increasingly, unsettlingly human. Page brings the solo show to Boston October 28 through November 1 at the Emerson Paramount Center, presented by ArtsEmerson.

Joyce Kulhawik: The Emmys have been handed out; now comes the verdict. Emmy Award-winning arts and entertainment critic Joyce Kulhawik joins us to sort through the winners, surprises, snubs and moments worth remembering — including a Massachusetts victory for Boston Casting’s Angela Peri and Lisa Lobel.

Actor Will Poulter and director Adam Meeks: In Union County, Will Poulter plays a young man navigating addiction, recovery and an Ohio court program where a relapse could mean prison. Writer-director Adam Meeks made the film in partnership with a real recovery court, casting people from the community alongside professional actors. Poulter and Meeks join us ahead of special advance screenings and an in-person Q&A September 15 at the Coolidge Corner Theatre. The film opens there September 18.

Robin Dawson: Alice Cooper, Joe Perry and the Hollywood Vampires are among the names coming to Boston for this year’s Boston Film Festival. Executive Director Robin Dawson previews a lineup spanning rock and roll, baseball, independent film and new work from emerging filmmakers. The 42nd Boston Film Festival runs September 17–21.

Boston Architectural College President Mahesh Daas looks at two architectural experiments in how much change a place can absorb: centuries-old Japanese timber buildings being dismantled and rebuilt an ocean away, including here in Massachusetts, and a new skyscraper redrawing Paris’ famously restrained skyline.

Before Dreamgirls reached Broadway, Boston audiences encountered Jennifer Holliday as she was still finding the role of Effie White at the Shubert Theatre. Forty-five years later, the Tony and Grammy Award winner returns to that Boston connection as the Boston Arts Academy Foundation’s 2026 Music Honoree. Holliday will be celebrated at the Foundation’s HONORS gala on October 22 at MGM Music Hall at Fenway.

The Handel and Haydn Society begins its 212th season with a new President and CEO. Acclaimed bassoonist and longtime Boston arts leader Lecolion Washington joins us to talk about taking the helm of one of the city’s oldest cultural institutions, reaching new audiences and the season ahead, which opens October 2 and 4 with The Art of Living at Symphony Hall.  All are welcome to join a webinar hosted by Lecolion Washington and H+H Artistic Director Jonathan Cohen September  15 at 6pm. This "Beyond the Baton" webinar is free and open to all. Lecolion and Jonathan will explore Handel’s L’Allegro, its lasting resonance, and what to listen for when H+H performs it at Symphony Hall on Oct 2 and 4. Please register here.

On this week’s Culture Show, Jared Bowen, Callie Crossley and Joyce Kulhawik mark the 25th anniversary of September 11. They look at how artists responded to the attacks and to the years that followed, from 25th Hour and United 93 to The Reluctant Fundamentalist. They also consider which works have endured, how public remembrance has changed, and what 25 years of distance now allows us to see about September 11 and its place in American culture.

Boston-based a cappella group Ball in the House joins Jared Bowen for an in-studio performance ahead of its September 11 show at Off Cabot in Beverly. The five-member group — Dylan Melville, Oscar Hall, Tyler Nordin, Wallace Thomas and Jon Ryan — performs R&B, soul and pop and has shared stages with artists including The Beach Boys, Blondie and Lionel Richie. Learn more about Ball in the House.

Back-to-school season sends Kiernan Schmitt back to Boston’s college campuses — not for class, but for the architectural oddities, forgotten traditions and bits of lore hiding in plain sight. Schmitt, author of Secret Boston: An Unusual Guide, joins Jared for a tour of some of the region’s best-kept campus secrets. He also co-hosts the Out of Office: A Travel Podcast with Ryan Davis.

Boston comedy mainstay Tony V joins Jared to look back on more than four decades of stand-up and screen work — from Boston comedy clubs to appearances in Seinfeld, The Town, The Heat and CODA. He also previews upcoming performances, including Boston Funny Live at the Royal Sonesta in Cambridge on September 26 and Tony V at the Sea Crest Beach Resort on Cape Cod on October 17.

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 Biondolillo

Scottish 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.

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.

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.