Midday

(This program was originally broadcast on January 29, 2019)Today, a conversation about one of the most fascinating figures, not only in baseball history, but in American history. George Herman ----Babe---- Ruth, Jr. was born and raised in Baltimore, graduated from the school of hard knocks, and evolved into the most famous man in America, whose every swing of the bat seemed to be a matter of natio...

It's Thursday, and Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck joins Tom in the studio for another of her weekly reviews of the Maryland stage. Today, her spotlight is on Baltimore Shakespeare Factory's new production of The Merry Wives of Windsor, the Bard's circa 1602 comedic romp about smart women, hapless men and communal joy. Reputedly a play that Queen Elizabeth I ordered William Shakespeare to wr...

(This program was originally broadcast on January 2, 2019)Today, on this archive edition of Midday, Tom's guest is journalist and attorney Steven Brill. He’s the founder of Court TV and American Lawyer magazine, and he teaches journalism at Yale University, where he founded the Yale Journalism Initiative. His latest book is a stunning and disconcerting compendium of some of the central problems fa...

Today, on this archive edition of Midday: Two days after the April 2015 uprising following the funeral of Freddie Gray, the Baltimore Orioles and Chicago White Sox played at Camden Yards in the only Major League Baseball game ever played without fans. Kevin Cowherd’s latest book tells the story of that historic day. It’s called ----When the Crowd Didn’t Roar: How Baseball's Strangest Game Ever Gav...

In the early days of the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980’s, a diagnosis of HIV was a death sentence. Now, infection with the human immunodeficiency virus is a chronic, treatable condition. Even more promising, medicines have been developed which curb the acquisition of HIV entirely. Today on Midday, a conversation about the feasibility of ridding the world of AIDS in the next decade. What strategies a...

From the attack 10 days ago by a gunman who targeted Hispanics at an El Paso Walmart, to migrant family separations and detentions at U.S. Customs and Border Patrol facilities, to the arrest of nearly 700 undocumented factory workers in a raid in Mississippi last week, and a policy announced just yesterday by the Trump Administration that will make getting a green card even harder for low-income,...

Today, another in our occasional series, Midday on Higher Education, in which we sit down with the presidents of colleges and universities throughout the state. Tom Hall's guest today is the president of the Maryland Institute College of Art, Samuel Hoi. Mr. Hoi took the reins at MICA in 2014. One of the country’s leading art schools, MICA teaches art and entrepreneurship. And as one of Baltimore’...

Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck joins Tom on our Friday edition this week with a review of the new Artscentric production of Little Shop of Horrors, a re-imagining of the hit 1982 musical by Howard Ashman (book and lyrics) and Alan Menken (music), which spawned a 1986 hit movie starring Rick Moranis. Both the musical and film were based on the 1960 cult classic by B-movie director Roger Corm...

Guest host Nathan Sterner unpacks local news with WYPR’s John Lee, and author Dale Beran explains the role the internet plays in advancing extremism. Plus, a new series by the Baltimore Business Journal about transportation woes in Baltimore . Email us at midday@wypr.org, tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

Tom's guest is Baltimore City Council President Brandon Scott. He’s proposing significant changes to the way the city operates, allowing 16-year-olds to vote in city elections, and bringing an equity framework to all that city government does. Email us at midday@wypr.org, tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

Tom's guest today is Emmy Jo Favilla. She's the senior manager of “brand voice” at BuzzFeed in New York (she'll explain what that job entails), and formerly its senior commerce editor. For several years before that, she was BuzzFeed’s global copy chief. As such, she created the BuzzFeed Style Guide, which, when it went public in 2014, was heralded by one reviewer as “the style guide for the intern...

Tom and Dr. Sheri Parks, MICA's Vice President of Strategic Initiatives, talk about the image of Baltimore in the national media and how that squares with the image those of us who live here have of our city. Political leaders and many people on social media have been in a position of defending Baltimore from verbal assaults by President Trump, but that defense has been mounted in full knowledge t...

Today, a conversation one of the towering figure in American literature, and narrator of the African American experience, Toni Morrison. We learned this morning that the great writer, Toni Morrison, died yesterday at the age of 88. The author of 11 powerful novels, she was the first African American writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. She also won the Pulitzer Prize, and in 2012, Preside...

With so much of Baltimore's suffering in the news over the past week, we turn to community leaders to discuss a future beyond violence. City Councilmembers Kristerfer Burnett and Zeke Cohen join Tom to discuss the Baltimore City Trauma-Responsive Care Act. The bill, which was introduced in late July, would create a task force to harness all relevant city programs to benefit youth traumatized by vi...

A fascinating exhibition of portrait photographs selected from the archives of the Maryland Historical Society was recently assembled in a show called “Reflections: A Brief History of Looking at Ourselves.”The exhibition, which opened June 19th and runs through July 1, 2020, highlights themes of identity and place, and showcases portrait work from unsung and in some cases unidentified photographer...

Today on the Midday News Wrap, we recap the second round of Democratic presidential debates. On Tuesday and Wednesday, 20 Democratic contenders took the stage in Detroit, Michigan to make their case for the party's presidential nomination. Then, we discuss the continuing attacks by President Trump on the city of Baltimore and Rep. Elijah E. Cummings. The president took his assault a step further a...

Quentin Tarantino’s ninth and latest film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, is being lauded by some reviewers as fearless filmmaking, and dismissed by others as artistic self-indulgence. What did you think? On the August edition of Midday at the Movies, Ann Hornaday, Washington Post film critic and author of Talking Pictures: How to Watch Movies, and Maryland Film Festival founder Jed Dietz join Tom...

It's Thursday, and time for our weekly visit with theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck, who joins Tom with her review of Tiger Style!, now on stage at Olney Theatre Center in Olney, Maryland. Tiger Style! is playwright Mike Lew's response, in part, to the criticisms of Chinese-American author Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, a 2011 bestseller which argued that a strict Chinese style of parent...

Today, it's another edition of Midday in the Neighborhood, a series in which we’ve set out to spotlight the remarkable tapestry of communities that make up the city of Baltimore. Today, Tom is joined in Studio A by representatives of Ednor Gardens-Lakeside, located in northeast Baltimore, off 33rd Street; and Coldspring Netown on the west side of town, south of Cylburn Arboretum. Email us at midda...

Former MD Governor and Presidential candidate Martin O’Malley knows what it’s like to be on that debate stage. He joins Tom with analysis. Email us at midday@wypr.org, tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

When it was ratified in September of 1787, the U.S. Constitution stood alone as a beacon of freedom from tyranny and an unparalleled attempt to create a republic controlled by the people. On today's Midday, CBS legal analyst and University of Baltimore Law Professor Kim Wehle talks about her new book, How to Read the Constitution and Why. Her book is a how-to guide for understanding the Constituti...

Before Tom welcomes today's guest, he shares a few thoughts about President Trump's decision this past weekend to single out Baltimore and Representative Elijah Cummings -- the Democratic Chair of the House Oversight Committee -- with a series of scornful and racist Tweets. We've included the full text of Tom's comments at the bottom of this post. As Tom notes in his commentary, ----(t)he roots of...

On Wednesday, Robert Mueller testified for nearly seven hours in separate hearings in front of the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees. It was his 90th appearance before Congress during a career in public service that spans more than three decades. The 74 year-old former FBI Director and former Special Counsel declined to directly answer his congressional interrogators nearly 200 times, re...

Today, Live in Studio A, Tom welcomes the talented Baltimore-borne-and-raised entertainer and cabaret singer Mariah Bonner, and pianist Marcus Dagan, for a sampling of great songs to take us into the weekend. Bonner has honed her talents on two continents as a singer, film-and-TV actress and producer. She had her first acting role in a French television film in 2004. After graduating from The Guil...

It's Thursday, and theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck is back with another of her weekly reviews of the Maryland regional stage. Today, she joins Tom to spotlight Chesapeake Shakespeare Company's new production of the Bard's ----Love's Labour's Lost,---- staged outdoors ----In the Ruins---- at the Patapsco Female Institute (PFI) Historic Park in Ellicott City. In this pun-filled romantic comedy penned...