June 23, 2026 - We Are Pat, Mahesh Daas on data centers, and A Night at the Disco

June 24, 2026 - Reynaliz Herrera & Ideas, Not Theories' with BIKEncerto, Parade: A Folktale, and the Boston Art Review

Percussionist and composer Reynaliz Herrera [https://www.ideasnottheories.com/about] returns to The Culture Show with excerpts from BIKEncerto [https://www.ideasnottheories.com/bikencerto-album-release], her four-movement concerto for solo bicycle and orchestra. Herrera turns the bicycle into a rich percussive instrument of rhythm, texture, machinery and music. The full album is also available on Bandcamp [https://reynalizherrera.bandcamp.com/album/bikencerto-a-concerto-for-solo-bicycle-and-orchestra-by-reynaliz-herrera]. Today  we hear excerpts from  I. Everything Movement,  III. Metallic Movement and IV. Tires Movement. Today’s performance full credits: “BIKEncerto: a concerto for solo bicycle and orchestra” Composer: Reynaliz Herrera Performed by: Reynaliz Herrera (Bicycle Percussion Soloist)& Ideas, Not Theories;  Ideas,  Not Theories Orchestra: Founder/Owner/Artistic Director: Reynaliz Herrera, David Flowers: Conductor, Nathaniel Kim: Concertmaster/Violin I, Hannah Rebeca Lopez Vega: Violin II, Emma Michaud: Viola, Thomas Rodman: Cello, Adam Gurczak: Double Bass, Vivek Patel: Flute, Mary O’Keefe: Oboe,, Shannon Leigh: Clarinet, Francesca Panunto: Bassoon Jill Medvedow returns for Big Little Books, The Culture Show’s book club series celebrating short books that can be read in one sitting but linger long after. This month’s selection is Parade: A Folktale [https://softskull.com/books/parade/] by Hiromi Kawakami, translated by Allison Markin Powell — a 96-page novella about memory, guilt, imagination and the mythic creatures we carry with us into adulthood. Jameson Johnson [https://www.bostonartreview.com/team], founder and editor in chief of Boston Art Review, joins us to discuss the publication’s latest issue and how artists are thinking through history, America at 250 and the stories we choose to preserve. The conversation also looks at Art Radar [https://www.bostonartreview.com/shop/box-of-radar-maps], Boston Art Review’s map of Greater Boston’s art spaces, galleries, museums and artist-run venues.

June 23, 2026 - We Are Pat, Mahesh Daas on data centers, and A Night at the Disco

Filmmaker Rowan Haber joins us to discuss the new documentary We Are Pat, which revisits Julia Sweeney’s famously androgynous Saturday Night Live character through a 2026 lens. Once built around the question of whether Pat was a man or a woman, the film asks what that joke meant then, what it means now and whether Pat can be reconsidered or reclaimed. We Are Pat is available on Apple TV [https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/we-are-pat/umc.cmc.r1bwmj036xbfplmc6oi5qynm], Prime Video [https://www.primevideo.com/detail/0F9KP4X75Y97ZG7EF7PS09T3DN] and Fandango at Home [https://athome.fandango.com/content/browse/details/We-Are-Pat/4952114]. Mahesh Daas, president of Boston Architectural College [https://the-bac.edu/leadership/office-of-the-president] and co-author of the graphic novella I, Nobot [https://oroeditions.com/product/i-nobot], returns for AI: Actual Intelligence. This month, he looks at data centers — the massive facilities powering the cloud and artificial intelligence — and the questions they raise about land, energy, water, noise and who pays for the infrastructure AI requires. Music journalist Christian John Wikane joins us to discuss A Night at the Disco [https://www.accartbooks.com/us/book/a-night-at-the-disco/], co-written with Alice Harris, a full-color look at the artists, producers and performers who turned disco from an underground club sound into a global movement. Wikane will appear at Provincetown Bookshop on Thursday, June 25 [https://www.provincetownbookshop.com/events], Mitchell’s Book Corner on Nantucket on Tuesday, July 7 [https://nantucketbookpartners.com/event/2026-07-07/book-signing-christian-john-wikane], and Edgartown Books on Martha’s Vineyard on Wednesday, July 8 [https://www.edgartownbooks.com/events].

June 22, 2026 - Imari Paris Jeffries on the Embrace's new center, Imagined Nation at the Athenaeum, and the Tao of Lloyd

Imari Paris Jeffries, President and CEO of Embrace Boston [https://www.embraceboston.org/about/our-team/] and co-chair of Everyone250 [https://everyone250.org/about/], returns for AI: Actual Intelligence, The Culture Show’s recurring conversation with some of the region’s sharpest thinkers. This month, he brings his original, algorithm-free perspective on culture, civic life and the stories Boston is choosing to tell. The Boston Athenaeum’s exhibition Imagined Nation [https://bostonathenaeum.org/whats-on/exhibitions/imagined-nation/] looks beyond the familiar scenes of the American Revolution to ask how ideas of nationhood have been formed, recorded and revised across generations. Curator Reed Gochberg joins us to discuss the books, maps, images and objects that reveal America as an unfinished story. The exhibition is on view through November 14, 2026. In The Tao of Lloyd, actor and writer Dennis Trainor Jr. imagines Lloyd Dobler, the open-hearted Gen X icon from Say Anything, decades later — older, grayer and still refusing the program. The new solo show heads to the Edinburgh Fringe this August, and Trainor is raising funds to help bring the production to Edinburgh [https://www.gofundme.com/f/Tao-of-Lloyd-Goes-to-Edinburgh-Fringe?utm_source=chatgpt.com]. You can also see a workshop performance June 27 at Western Avenue Studios & Lofts in Lowell [https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-tao-of-lloyd-workshop-performance-tickets-1990669370675?utm_source=chatgpt.com], before the show runs at the Edinburgh Fringe August 6 through 30 [https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/the-tao-of-lloyd?utm_source=chatgpt.com].

June 19, 2026 - Annette Gordon-Reed onJuneteenth, Regie Gibson on Shakespeare, and Summer Solstice

Historian, lawyer and Pulitzer-prize winning author Annette Gordon-Reed joins The Culture Show to talk about her book “On Juneteenth,” which explores the holiday commemorating the day Union troops announced the end of slavery in Texas.  We mark the staying power of William Shakespeare with Regie Gibson, the inaugural Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He’s a writer, performer, and educator whose work engages Shakespeare through spoken word . Finally the best-selling author Nina MacLaughlin joins The Culture Show to talk about her essay book “Summer Solstice,” which is a meditation on a season full of long days, hot nights and  fat red tomatoes.

June 18, 2026 - Dr. Noelle Trent of the Museum of African American History, Mary Grant, and the MOMENTUM festival

Dr. Noelle Trent, president and CEO of the Museum of African American History in Boston and Nantucket, joins us to discuss Freedom! A Juneteenth Celebration [https://www.maah.org/juneteenth/]. The museum marks the holiday with a free open house and block party on Joy Street, plus a sister celebration on Nantucket [https://www.maah.org/events/]. Mary Grant, president of MassArt, returns for AI: Actual Intelligence, our recurring conversation with some of the region’s most original thinkers. This month, she reflects on a commencement season marked by political controversy, disinvited speakers and debates over what graduates need to hear. Catherine T. Morris, founder and executive director of the Boston Art & Music Soul Festival, joins us to discuss MOMENTUM [https://www.bamsfest.org/momentum], a five-day festival celebrating Black art, music, culture and enterprise across Greater Boston. She is joined by Isaiah Thelwell of Greater Brockton Young Professionals, one of the partners bringing MOMENTUM to Brockton through Fuller After Dark [https://fullercraft.org/programs/fuller-craft-museum-x-greater-brockton-young-professionals-fuller-after-dark/].