The Culture Show Podcast

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.

The Culture Show Podcast is a society podcast hosted by GBH News, with 709 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

GBH News hosts The Culture Show Podcast, a society show with 709 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  The Culture Show Podcast

  August 21, 2026 - Week in Review: Hayden Panettiere, Columbia House Music Club, and Phoebe Bridgers' Mass. connection

  Aug 21, 202656 min

  Today on The Culture Show, it's our arts and culture Week in Review, featuring Callie Crossley and James Sullivan. Our topics include: Remembering Hayden Panettiere. The actress who became a household name at age 16 as a super-powered high schooler in Heroes and later as a country starlet on ABC’s “Nashville” has died at 36. We’ll look at her legacy, and the impact Hollywood has on young actors. From there, remembering Bill Rasmussen. He was the visionary founder of ESPN, who turned a $91 dollar incorporation fee into a multi-billion broadcasting behemoth. We’ll consider the legacy of the man who changed the way we talk, and think, about sports. Then, a musical giant fades to silence. The Columbia House Record Club, which raked in billions of dollars selling 10 records for a cent, is shuttering after 70 years. And, a royal return? Meghan and Harry are hopping back across the pond after six years stateside. Grammy-winning musician Phoebe Bridgers has a new album out, "Lost Weekend," and name drops a North Shore institution - the iconic Liberty Tree Mall in Danvers. And, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are on the move. After a six-year-stint in the U.S., the former royals plan to return to the UK.

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  The Culture Show Podcast

  August 20, 2026 - Larkin McPhee, Pedro Alonzo, and Melissa Errico

  Aug 20, 202656 min

  Larkin McPhee joins us to discuss I’ll See You in My Dreams: A Sister’s Memoir , about her younger brother Charles McPhee, the nationally syndicated radio host known as “The Dream Doctor,” and his battle with ALS. Years after his death, the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker turned to writing to bring her brother back to life on the page. McPhee appears at a free book talk at the Nantucket Atheneum on Friday, August 28 at 6 p.m. Independent curator Pedro Alonzo, a regular Culture Show contributor, returns for “AI: Actual Intelligence” with dispatches from a recent trip to Oaxaca. Tony Award nominee Melissa Errico has built a career bringing dramatic intelligence to the Great American Songbook. Now she turns to one of its most commanding interpreters: Barbra Streisand. Errico joins us to discuss The Streisand Effect , her homage to Streisand’s voice, wit and fearlessness, created with pianist and music director Billy Stritch. They bring the show to Provincetown Town Hall on Sunday, August 23 at 8:30 p.m. Errico also discusses her new album, I Can Dream, Can’t I? Illusions & Conversations from the Great American Songbook .

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  The Culture Show Podcast

  August 19, 2026 - Boston Arts and Culture Chief Joseph Zeil-Henry, Mary Grant, and Union Oyster House at 200

  Aug 19, 202656 min

  Boston Chief of Arts and Culture Joseph Zeal-Henry joins us to talk about what the city’s next cultural chapter might look like — from affordable rehearsal space and a new cultural infrastructure plan to the future of the Boston Center for the Arts. We’ll also look at LEXICON , the new 23-foot installation at the Boston Public Library that brings art, engineering and public space together. MassArt president Mary Grant returns for “AI: Actual Intelligence.” This month, we consider Norman Rockwell and the American story at 250 through the Norman Rockwell Museum’s sweeping new exhibition, American Stories: From Revolution to Rockwell . Plus, new research suggests that even 10 minutes of drawing can help calm the nervous system. Executive Chef of Union Oyster House Rico DiFronzo joins us to mark the 200th anniversary of Boston’s oldest continuously operating restaurant, taking us through the hallowed history of the beloved Blackstone Block establishment and offering some pearls of wisdom as to the art of the shuck.

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  The Culture Show Podcast

  August 18, 2026 - Richard Russo on "Under the Falls," Chef Barbara Lynch, and Imari Paris Jeffries

  Aug 18, 202656 min

  Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Richard Russo joins us to discuss his new novel, Under the Falls , about a rock star returning to the struggling upstate New York town he fled as a teenager — and confronting the resentment, loyalties and unfinished business he left behind. Russo appears tonight at 6 p.m. with Tom Perrotta at the Cambridge Public Library , in an event presented by Harvard Book Store . The event is sold out, but a standby line will be available. James Beard Award-winning chef Barbara Lynch built one of Boston’s most influential restaurant groups before closing her remaining restaurants in 2024. Now she’s working on a much more intimate scale. Lynch joins us after hosting a pair of 12-person dinners at her Manchester-by-the-Sea studio, part of a new venture that includes private dinners, recipe subscriptions and culinary travel. And for our recurring series “AI: Actual Intelligence,” Imari Paris Jeffries , president and CEO of Embrace Boston and co-chair of Everyone 250 , returns with news about keeping the energy of the World Cup alive after the tournament's end, as well as former Celtic Jaylen Brown's promise to maintain his connections to Boston area nonprofits that help the community.

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  The Culture Show Podcast

  August 17, 2026 - Paula Cole, Chris Vognar on a new era of talk shows, and Working Coast - Below the Line

  Aug 17, 202656 min

  Paula Cole joins us to mark 30 years of her landmark album This Fire . The Grammy-winning singer-songwriter reflects on songs including “I Don’t Want to Wait” and “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?,” and on returning to the album three decades later. Her This Fire: 30 tour brings the Rockport-raised artist back to Massachusetts for a September 18 show at The Wilbur . Boston Globe TV and pop culture critic Chris Vognar looks at the changing face of the celebrity interview. As traditional late night loses its hold on audiences, shows including Hot Ones , SubwayTakes and Chicken Shop Date are finding new ways to get famous people talking. We discuss Vognar’s latest piece on how YouTube is reinventing the talk-show format. Contemporary Climate Gallery founder James LaMarca joins us ahead of Working Coast – Below the Line , a Fort Point exhibition featuring three emerging Boston-area artists exploring New England’s working waterfront through painting and sculpture. The show runs August 26–30 at the FPAC Art Space at the Envoy Hotel .

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