Midday

Today, we continue our series of Conversations with the Candidates with the first of several conversations with people who are running to be the next Mayor of Baltimore City. Tom's guest for the hour is one of 15 thus-far announced Democratic candidates for Mayor, Thiru Vignarajah. Mr. Vignarajah is a veteran city and federal prosecutor who’s spent most of his legal career in public service. He at...

(This program originally aired on October 23, 2019.) Tom’s guest in this archived edition of Midday is Reginald Dwayne Betts. He came to our attention last year when he wrote a wonderful piece in The New York Times Magazine entitled, “Could an Ex-Convict Become an Attorney? I Intended to Find Out.” He won a National Magazine Award for that essay. Betts grew up not far from here, in Suitland, Maryl...

This show originally aired Sept. 30, 2019. Tom’s guest is the acclaimed writer Ann Patchett. She is the winner of the Pen Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize for fiction, and her work has been translated into more than 30 languages. Patchett is the author of eight novels. The latest is The Dutch House. As with her other immensely popular books -- novels such as Commonwealth, State of Wonder and Be...

(This program originally aired on October 15, 2019) On this archived edition of Midday, Tom's guest is the award winning writer, Charles Johnson. In 1990, Charles Johnson won the National Book Award for his best-selling novel Middle Passage, a heroic, complex and powerful story that acutely and authoritatively explores the brutality of the slave trade. Johnson’s place in the panoply of great Ameri...

Hello and Happy Holidays! Welcome to the Midday Christmas Eve Special, with host Tom Hall. Today, we’ll spend the hour listening to some music and some poetry of the season, plus, a story by Baltimore writer Raphael Alvarez. Here's a playlist of the selections, in the order you'll hear them: 1. MUSIC: I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In. A carol arranged by Robert Shaw and Alice Parker. (from a 2010...

Today on Midday we continue our series of Conversations with the Candidates. Tom's guest is a member of the Maryland House of Delegates, having first been elected in 2014. Now, Delegate Terri Hill is one of 24 Democrats running to succeed Elijah Cummings in Congress. She is a physician who grew up in Columbia, MD. She earned her undergraduate degree from Harvard University and her medical degree f...

The intense acrimony between Republicans and Democrats was on full display during the impeachment debate and vote in the House of Representatives Wednesday. During more than six hours of impassioned discourse on two articles concerning abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, lawmakers considered the same set of facts in wildly different ways. Most of them spent most of the day and into the nig...

Today, Helicon, the renowned traditional music trio, joins us live in Studio A. Tomorrow, they continue a great Baltimore holiday tradition with their 34nd annual Winter Solstice Concerts at Goucher College’s Kraushaar Auditorium. Helicon will be joined on Saturday by Charm City Junction, the Ken and Brad Kolodner Quartet, and other traditional music performers, as well as the North American Step...

It's Thursday, and theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck joins us for another of her weekly reviews of the Maryland stage. Today, Judy describes the new North American touring production of Jesus Christ Superstar, the iconic Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice musical that began as a 1970 concept album, debuted on Broadway in 1971, and is currently lighting up the stage during an eight-performance productio...

Today on Midday, Tom's guest is world renowned social historian Judith Flanders. In her book, Christmas: A Biography, Ms. Flanders examines the facts and fiction of Christmas past – and how they inform and sometimes mis-inform our understanding of Christmas present. Email us at midday@wypr.org, tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

Last night, the House of Representatives voted along party lines to impeach President Donald Trump. A trial in the Senate is likely early next month. Senator Ben Cardin, the Senior Senator from MD, joins Tom on the line from Capitol Hill. Email us at midday@wypr.org, tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

Tom's guest is Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski, Jr. In his first year in office, he’s pushed through landmark housing legislation and the county’s first income tax increase in nearly 3 decades. What’s next for the County as we enter the New Year? Email us at midday@wypr.org, tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

Today, our series Midday on Higher Education series continues. Tom's guest is Dr. Freeman A. Hrabowski III, the President of the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Dr. Hrabowski has led UMBC since 1992, and he’s been collecting national accolades ever since. U.S. News & World Report named him one of America’s Best Leaders. Time Magazine called him one of the 100 most influential people in th...

Today we continue our series of Conversations with the Candidates as Tom is joined in the studio by Delegate Talmadge Branch, a veteran state lawmaker who has represented Baltimore and the 45th District in the Maryland House since 1995. He has also been the Democratic Majority Whip since 2007. Del. Branch is a candidate, running in a crowded field of 24 Democrats (and 8 Republicans), for the 7th D...

It's Thursday and time again for theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck, who joins us each week with her reviews of the Maryland stage. Today, we hear her take on Baltimore Center Stage's new production of Men On Boats. The 2015 play by Jaclyn Backhaus, directed at Center Stage by Jenny Koons, is based on the published journals of John Wesley Powell, who led an 1869 expedition down the Green and Colorado...

Our Conversation with the Candidates series continues with Kimberly Klacik, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Congress. Klacik is a GOP strategist and activist who lives in Baltimore County. She is the Executive Director and Founder of “Potential Me,” a nonprofit which provides works with disadvantaged women. Email us at midday@wypr.org, tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

Republican candidate Liz Matory is an author and the CEO of a small publishing house called Liberty Lives Media. She holds a BA from Columbia University, a law degree from Howard University, and an MBA from the University of MD. Ms. Matory is mounting her third campaign for Congress after unsuccessful bids in two other districts. We livestreamed this conversation the WYPR Facebook page. Click here...

It's another episode of Midday's Conversations With The Candidates series. Tom's next guest is Dr Mark Gosnell, a Democratic candidate in the 7th District -- the seat made available by the death of Rep. Elijah Cummings. Dr. Gosnell is the Director of the Intensive Care Unit at Medstar Harbor Hospital and also the chief of pulmonary medicine there. This is his first run for public office. Healthcar...

The business of diversity is booming. Corporations and cultural institutions spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year on diversity training, yet despite the ubiquity and expense of these efforts, overall racial, gender and ethnic diversity remains an aspiration rather than a reality. Today on Midday: what's been tried, what has succeeded and what's flopped in efforts to achieve more inclus...

Today, the multiple-Tony and Olivier-Award winning American playwright Ken Ludwig joins Tom and Midday theater critic J.Wynn Rousuck for a conversation about his life and work. Ludwig has written 28 plays and musicals, and has had six of them on Broadway. They've been performed in over 30 countries in more than 20 languages, and are produced somewhere in the United States every night of the year....

It's the December edition of Midday at the Movies, our monthly feature about films and filmmaking, and joining Tom to consider the cascade of pre-Oscars holiday movies are two of our favorite film fans: here in the studio, Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday, who is also the author of Talking Pictures: How to Watch Movies; and on the line from Manhattan, Maryland Film Festival founder Jed Die...

Now, a conversation about the Blueprint for Baltimore. It's a project supported by The Open Society Institute-Baltimore and the T.Rowe Price Foundation, in partnership with several community groups -- including Black Leaders Organizing for Change (BLOC), CASA, Baltimore Votes, Black Girls Vote, and the No Boundaries Coalition. The goal of Blueprint for Baltimore is to survey as many as 12,000 Balt...

Today, another in our series of Conversations with the Candidates. Tom's guest is University of Baltimore Law Professor Michael Higginbotham, who is running in the Democratic primary. He’s had a long academic legal career. He’s an expert in constitutional law, human rights and race relations. He has lived and worked in the 7th District for more than 30 years. Higginbotham is one of 32 candidates w...

Chef David Thomas of Ida B’s Table and John Shields of Gertrude’s Chesapeake Kitchen at the BMA are in the house for our annual pre-Thanksgiving edition of What Ya Got Cooking. Plus, Tom's mother, Rosemary Hall, brings her motherly and authoritative musings on all things Thanksgiving to the show! Email us at midday@wypr.org, tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

Today, we begin a new series of Conversations with the Candidates: 2020 in advance of the special primary election in February, and the local and national primary elections in April. The congressional vacancy in the 7th District created by the death last month of Representative Elijah Cummings has attracted 32 candidates to an election to succeed him, including Congressman Cummings’ widow, a forme...