On this edition of The Culture Show, Co-host Callie Crossley and contributors Lisa Simmons, and James Sullivan go over the week’s top arts and culture headlines. Lisa Simmons is the Artistic and Executive Director of the Roxbury International Film Festival and program manager at Mass Cultural Council. James Sullivan is a journalist and author specializing in popular culture and Americana. He’s also on the Emerson faculty.

• After seven years helping select Super Bowl halftime performers, Jay-Z is taking the stage himself in 2027. What changed for the rapper and Roc Nation founder?
• Sarah J. Maas has sent romantasy fans into a frenzy with her latest novel, A Court of Splintered Harmony. Midnight parties, elaborate costumes and missed workdays mark the release.
• Star Trek has lost two stars: Patrick Stewart, who played Captain Jean-Luc Picard, and Walter Koenig, the original series' Pavel Chekov. We remember their contributions to the enduring science-fiction franchise.
• Three-time Emmy winner Eric Bauza, the voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig, has died at 46. We remember the actor who carried on the Looney Tunes legacy.
• A century after his Halloween death, Harry Houdini returns to the spotlight at Salem's Peabody Essex Museum. A special installation revisits his 1906 visit and a controversy involving a pair of antique handcuffs.

Political strategist Sarah Longwell, CEO and publisher of The Bulwarkand 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. BONUS: If you want even more Sarah Longwell, earlier this year she was in Cambridge at First Parish Church in conversation with Bill Kristol as part of a Harvard Book Store event. It's a great discussion, which you can watch on the GBH Forum Network's Youtube channel.

Author Gish Jen discusses her novel, “Bad Bad Girl.” In this witty and deeply personal work, Jen blends fiction and autobiography to imagine her mother’s life and explore the distance between them — uncovering how storytelling can bridge what family history leaves unsaid. “Bad Bad Girl” is now out in paperback.

Finally travel writer Kiernan Schmitt takes us on a Halloween-inspired journey through the hidden and haunting corners of the city. His book “Secret Boston: An Unusual Guide”uncovers the eerie and unexpected — from ghostly convents to abandoned zoos and the bizarre sculpture garden known as Ponyhenge. Schmitt, who co-hosts the travel podcast “Out of Office,” returns to the show to reveal the stories and curiosities hiding in plain sight.

For this month’s Wednesday Watch Party, Jared Bowen, Callie Crossley and Joyce Kulhawik revisit Disney’s 1993 comedy Hocus Pocus. Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy conjure up a wicked brew of sorcery and high camp. It was a box-office flop that rose from the grave to become a Halloween hit. We’re dusting off the broomsticks (and vacuum) and asking: Thirty-three years later, is Hocus Pocus still a Halloween treat, or is nostalgia playing tricks on us?

Callie Crossley is a Culture Show co-host and host of Under the Radar with Callie Crossley; Joyce Kulhawik is a Culture Show Contributor, an Emmy Award-winning arts and entertainment critic, president of the Boston Theatre Critics Association, and you can find her reviews at joyceschoices.com.