Midday

Rep. Jamie Raskin joins Tom. Raskin represents Maryland’s 8th District. He is a member of both the House Judiciary Committee and the Oversight and Reform Committee, which is chaired by another Maryland Congressman, Elijah Cummings. As President Trump meets with Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace, Rep. Raskin discusses how support for an impeachment inquiry is being fueled by the Special Counsel'...

Now, we turn to the future of Pimlico Race Course, home of the Preakness Stakes -- the race that is the second jewel in horse racing’s Triple Crown. Pimlico opened its doors in 1870, making it the second oldest racetrack in the nation. And it is now, by all accounts, badly deteriorated. The Preakness has been run in Baltimore City since 1873. The question now is: will next year’s Preakness be its...

Last Saturday night, a large group of teenagers gathered together in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. After a few tense hours, a handful of kids were arrested for charges ranging from assault to disturbing the peace. The incident was at least the fourth such episode in the Baltimore area since last summer, including disturbances at the White Marsh Mall and Eastpoint Mall in Baltimore County. Reaction to...

On today's Midday Healthwatch, Tom's guest is Baltimore City’s new Health Commissioner, Dr. Letitia Dzirasa. She was named to the position by then-Mayor Catherine Pugh. She began serving in March and was officially sworn in on April 16. She succeeds Dr. Leana Wen, who resigned last fall to become the president of Planned Parenthood. Dr. Dzirasa (pron. jih-RAH-zuh) is the first African American wom...

It's Thursday, and time once again for theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck, who joins us each week with her reviews of the regional stage. Today, she spotlights the new production of the hit 1960 musical, Oliver! by the Annapolis Shakespeare Company. A beloved turn on Charles Dickens' classic novel, Oliver Twist, this Tony Award-winning musical (1963, for Best Original Score in the 1962 Broadway produc...

New York Times national security reporter Scott Shane and cyber-security expert Avi Rubin join me with the latest developments on the ever growing cyber-threat and the lucrative business of hacking. Email us at midday@wypr.org, tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

The future of abortion rights, the fight over investigations into the Trump administration, the Democratic argument around health care, and the latest from President Trump about North Korea. We discuss it all with Maryland’s senior Senator, Ben Cardin. Email us at midday@wypr.org, tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

(This program was originally broadcast on April 17, 2019)Last month alone, Americans were bothered by more than 5 billion robocalls -- those unwelcome, computer-automated telemarketing or scam calls that are jangling our phones -- and our nerves -- with growing frequency. Is there any way to win the war on robocalls? And what can Congress do to rein in the scammers? Joining us to explore these que...

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

In 2012, Lawrence Lanahan led a team here at WYPR that explored racial inequity in the Baltimore region in a year-long radio and multi-media series called The Lines Between Us. Lanahan has just published a book in which he continues his examination of the effects of racial bias in housing, education, and economic opportunity by chronicling the journeys of an African American family who moves from...

It's Thursday, and time for theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck, who joins us in the studio each week with her reviews of the regional stage. Today, she spotlights not one, but two plays now in repertory at Baltimore's Everyman Theatre: Queens Girl in the World and Queens Girl in Africa, playwright Caleen Sinnette Jennings' semi-autobiographical coming-of-age tales, each featuring one-woman performance...

Tom’s guest for the hour is Andre M. Davis, the Baltimore City Solicitor. Davis was appointed to the post by then-Mayor Catherine Pugh in September 2017, after 30 years as a judge on local, state and federal courts -- including eight years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. As city solicitor, he directs the City’s legal department, which includes about 100 lawyers and support per...

James Cabezas was chief investigator for the Office of the State Prosecutor here in Maryland and, before that, he was a Baltimore City cop. His new memoir is called “Eyes of Justice: A Career Crime Fighter Battles Corruption… and Blindness.”Joan Jacobson is co-author of the book. She was a reporter for The Baltimore Sun and The Evening Sun for 28 years. They’ll be talking about the book tonight at...

Today, Tom's guest is John Urschel, whose resum\u233\u includes great skill and high achievement in two areas that are not often, in fact, hardly ever, associated: football and mathematics. He is a former offensive lineman for the Baltimore Ravens who retired from the NFL at the age of 26 to pursue a career in math. The book is called Mind and Matter: A Life in Math and Football. He co-wrote it wi...

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. Tom is joined in Studio A by representatives of three Baltimore communities: Reservoir Hill, located just south of Druid Hill Park, near the city’s geographic center, Overlea, located in the far northeast corner of the ci...

Today, it’s Midday on the Arts. We begin with a conversation about the profound influence of one artist on another. The acclaimed, MacArthur Award-winning artist Joyce Scott is featured in a new exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art that juxtaposes her work with the work of her late mother, Elizabeth Talford Scott, who was also an artist. They lived and worked together in Baltimore for more th...

Midday on the Arts continues with a conversation about the future of the Single Carrot Theater. Last January, the 12 year-old Baltimore company announced that next month, it will leave the theater it’s called home since 2014. The final performances in their Remington space takes place this weekend. That show is called Pink Milk, by the trans woman playwright Ariel Zetina. It’s based on the life of...

Today's Midday on the Arts concludes with theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck joining Tom with her review of Christina Anderson's new play, How to Catch Creation, now getting its regional premiere at Baltimore Center Stage. In this latest work by Anderson, a winner of the prestigious Lorraine Hansberry Award, we meet a wrongly convicted man who is released from prison after 25 years. As he sets about r...

Chris Wilson’s success story is one of incredible tenacity and determination, escape from despair, and triumph over adversity. It’s also the story of a lost and angry teenager who was unable to overcome the trauma that was part and parcel of his rough Washington DC neighborhood. After committing a murder at the age of 17, he was sentenced to life in prison. How does his story end so well, when it...

In his new book, the political economist William Davies argues that the decline of trust in scientific expertise has led individuals and governments to rely increasingly on feelings rather than facts. William Davies is a political economist at Goldsmiths university of London. He is the author of many books; his latest is called Nervous States:Democracy and the Decline of Reason. Davies is also a c...

Tom talks with Professor David Blight of Yale University. He is the winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for History for his expansive and acclaimed biography of Frederick Douglass. A highly respected Douglass scholar, David Blight is the annotator and editor of Douglass’ second autobiography. This latest contribution to Douglass scholarship explores Douglass’ amazing journey from enslavement on the...

Tom talks with Baltimore Ceasefire co-founders Erricka Brdigeford and Letrice Gant. The group's mission: the cessation of murder in Baltimore City for one weekend every quarter. This past weekend was a Ceasefire weekend. 3 people were shot on Friday night. Two of those victims died. There were no shootings on Saturday. One non-fatal shooting took place yesterday. Since Freddie Gray’s death four ye...

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. My guest is the President of Harford Community College in Bel Air, Dr. Dianna G. Phillips. Email us at midday@wypr.org, tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

It’s Midday on Ethics. An international court has ruled that South African Olympic champion Caster Semenya and other female athletes with naturally high levels of testosterone will need to take drugs that lower their hormone levels to compete in some women’s races. Dr. Jeffrey Kahn, director of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, joined us to discuss the ethics of doping - of a differ...

Comedian and actor Susie Essman joins us for a conversation about her life and career. She plays the foul-mouthed Susie Greene, Larry David’s nemesis, on HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” Essman will be in Baltimore next week headlining the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation’s 9th annual Night of the Stars on Thursday, May 16. For more information and to purchase tickets, please visit the BHC's website her...