Midday

Tom speaks with BaltimoreCity States Attorney Marilyn Mosby. Last week she announced a new initiative in the Victims and Witnesses Services Unit, which was established as part of the State’s Attorney’s Office more than 40 years ago. It’s been 15 years since the underground film Stop Snitching made the rounds of some of Baltimore’s most impoverished neighborhoods. It featured gang members urging wi...

The Baltimore Museum of Art has gathered together a bunch of masterpieces for its new show, including a few by the great surrealist painter Rene Magritte (one of the subjects of the photograph that inspired the beautiful Paul Simon song that opens this segment, Rene and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog After the War). There are also works by Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Joan Miro Mark...

Last Sunday, the First Lady of Baltimore Jazz, Ethel Ennis, passed away at the age of 86 from complications following a stroke. Baltimore has produced many great jazz artists like Billie Holiday, Cab Calloway, Eubie Blake and several others, and Ethel most certainly deserves her place in the panoply of these great jazz legends. She was a singer with uncanny technical gifts and a vivid, singular an...

It's Thursday on Midday, and time for another of J. Wynn Rousuck's weekly reviews of regional theater. Today, she spotlights the new traveling revival of The King and I. The new show is based on the 2015 Tony Award-winning Lincoln Center Theater production, and it's now on stage at Baltimore's Hippodrome Theatre. The fifth of the many great musicals by the collaborative team of Richard Rodgers (co...

Today, an update on the Governor’s more immediate concern: the Maryland General Assembly. With six weeks left in this year’s session, and more than 2,000 bills and counting, we’ll rundown the status of some the key pieces of legislation as they work their way through the House and Senate. Tom runds down the latest from Annapolis with Washington Post politics reporter Ovetta Wiggins and Baltimore S...

Today, a story of pernicious corruption and courageous integrity, and lessons learned from Watergate. President Trump has repeatedly called Robert Mueller’s inquiry a “witch hunt” and he continues to claim that the press is “the enemy of the people.” Is this unprecedented in American politics? No. An MSNBC podcast called ----Bag Man---- remind us that before he resigned as Vice President, Spiro Ag...

Today, it’s Midday on the Environment. Last fall, a United Nations climate change report and the U.S. National Climate Assessment estimated that in just 10 years, global warming will begin to trigger changes in the world’s climate that are more severe, more costly and more catastrophic than any we’ve seen thus far. For decades, scientists and activists have been urging the world’s governments to w...

Today, a conversation with William Purpura, a Baltimore attorney who was a member of the legal defense team for Joaqu\u237\un Guzm\u225\un Loera, the notorious Mexican drug kingpin also known as ----El Chapo.---- Guzman was convicted in a Brooklyn courthouse last week on charges related to his illicit drug enterprise. The guilty verdicts, on all 10 counts, came after a three-month trial, and for f...

Today, a conversation about the future of the BSO. The orchestra enjoys an excellent international reputation, and on stage, they continue to play beautifully and audiences continue to respond enthusiastically. Off stage, however, there is deep disagreement between the BSO management and the musicians about the future direction of the state’s largest arts organization. Negotiations on a new labor...

Tonight, is the opening night of Henry IV Part I at the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company. The play is the first of Shakespeare’s seven “Henry’s,” as they’re known by aficionados of the Bard, and it’s considered one of Shakespeare’s most ambitious history plays. Written between 1596 and 1599, Henry IV Part I and Henry IV Part II tell a story of friends, fathers and sons, war, and the weight of honor....

When VA Governor Ralph Northam was first confronted with a page from his medical school yearbook in 1984, he apologized for being one of the two people in a photograph that showed a white man in blackface, and a person dressed in the hood and sheet of the Ku Klux Klan. Calls for his resignation poured forth from both Democrats and Republicans, in VA and around the country. The next day, he announc...

Theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck joins Tom each Thursday with her reviews of the region's theatrical offerings. Today, she talks about Everything Is Wonderful, a powerful drama set in Amish country about a man, and a family, in crisis. The play by Chelsea Mercantel, which world-premiered at the Contemporary Theater Festival in West Virgina in 2017, is getting a new production at Baltimore's Everyman...

Today, Tom's guest is Steve Luxenberg, a longtime associate editor at The Washington Post. His latest book, Separate: The Story of Plessy v. Ferguson, and America’s Journey from Slavery to Segregation, chronicles the events that led up to the landmark 1896 Supreme Court ruling. In 1892, Homer Plessy, a young black musician who often passed for white, boarded a train in New Orleans, and was arreste...

Today on Midday, a conversation about foster parenting and adoption. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, 63 percent of children adopted from foster care go to white families. White families also make up 71 percent of the total number of adoptive parents in the U.S. And transracial or interracial adoptions now account for more than 40 percent of adoptions in the U.S.How has th...

Today, another in our occasional series, Midday on Higher Education. From time to time, host Tom Hall sits down with the presidents of Maryland colleges and universities to talk about the challenges that each of their institutions face, and how those institutions are connected to the fabric of the communities in which they are located. Today Tom's guest is the Rev. Brian F. Linnane, a Jesuit pries...

On today's News Wrap, guest host Nathan Sterner sits in for Tom Hall with a rundown of the stories making headlines in our region this week:Turmoil in Virginia as a blackface scandal and allegations of sexual assault have led to calls for the resignation of the state's top political leaders; Baltimore County executive Johnny Olszewski sites ----tough challenges---- following cuts to the county's e...

Today, a special Oscars Preview edition of Midday at the Movies, with guest host and Midday senior producer Rob Sivak sitting in for Tom Hall. With the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gearing up for its 91st annual awards ceremony in Los Angeles later this month, we’re going to talk about some of the extraordinary films and artists that have been nominated for Oscars – and some that we...

Theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck joins guest host Rob Sivak with another of her weekly reviews of the region's stage offerings. Today she spotlights the Tony-award winning musical, Fun Home, now getting a new production at Baltimore's Center Stage. Adapted from the best-selling graphic novel of the same name by Alison Bechdel, with music composed by Jeanine Tesori with book and lyrics by Lisa Kron,...

In an 82-minute State of the Union address that was long on introductions and short on new proposals to achieve the bipartisan cooperation the President says he aspires to, Donald Trump repeated his oft-repeated claims about illegal immigration. And, with an ad-lib, he also elevated a questionable claim about legal immigration, and he even attempted some soaring rhetoric as he finished an address...

The slogan of Baltimore Ceasefire 365 is simple: “Nobody kill anybody.” The mission of the organization is to re-direct our hearts and minds to the positive dimensions of our lives, so that we take better care of each other. Last weekend, the first Ceasefire of 2019 took place. As we do after every Ceasefire weekend here on Midday, we are joined by one of the organizers to touch base about how thi...

The annual Motor Trend International Auto Show opens tomorrow at noon at the Baltimore Convention Center. More than 500 cars, not all makes and models, but lots of makes and models, from the ultra-expensive to the very practical. Some run on gas, some on electricity, some on a little of both. Last year, we visited the auto show with a young man who knows an awful lot about cars: Rory Cahill. His e...

We begin with a look at the history of African Americans in Horror movies. On Thursday, Shudder TV will premiere a terrific new documentary called, Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror. The film offers a fresh, fearless and affectionately humorous ethnographic examination into representations and contributions of African Americans in this popular genre. Tananarive Due is educator, author and ex...

Today, a conversation with U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat from Maryland. He was elected to the Senate in 2016 after serving seven terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he represented Maryland’s 8th congressional district. Sen. Van Hollen currently serves on the Senate Budget Committee, the Banking and Environment Committees, and the all-important Appropriations Committee. Earl...

Tom speaks with Congressman Elijah Cummings. He represents Maryland's 7th District, which includes parts of Baltimore City and some of Baltimore and Howard Counties. On January 4th, 2019 Rep. Cummings was voted Chairman of the Committee of Oversight and Reform for the 116th Congress. We’ll hear about what issues the committee will be looking into now that the Democrats control the agenda including...

Today, a birthday tribute to our dear friend Gil Sandler. This Sunday, Gil would have celebrated his 96th birthday. His Baltimore Stories have delighted WYPR listeners for a decade and a half . Today, we share with you an interview recorded about six months prior to his final appearance on our show, in June of 2017, as we approached the 15th anniversary of the Baltimore Stories. This is the first...