Midday

Maryland deregulated its energy markets in 1999. The aim was to create a decentralized free market for private electricity and natural gas suppliers who would offer customers a choice: stay with the Standard Offer Services provided by the utility companies -- Baltimore Gas ---- Electric and Pepco (which are now the same company) -- or switch to a third-party supplier who could offer a range of res...

It's Thursday, and theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck joins Tom in the studio with another of her weekly reviews of the region's thespian offerings. Today, she spotlights the new traveling production of Miss Saigon, on stage now at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C.From the creative team behind Les Mis\u233\urables, Miss Saigon tells the story of a young Vietnamese w...

Michael Harrison is the soon-to-be-former Superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department, and if he and Mayor Catherine Pugh have their way, he will become the permanent Chief of Police of the Baltimore Police Department sometime in the next few months. Several members of the City Council and other elected officials have expressed cautious optimism after the announcement yesterday of Mr. Harr...

Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh has named Michael Harrison, the Superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department, as her new nominee for BPD police commissioner. The announcement comes less than 24 hours after her first nominee, Fort Worth Police Chief Joel Fitzgerald, withdrew from the process. Tom speaks with Mayor Pugh about the reasons behind her endorsement of Mr. Harrison, who by many acco...

Tom and his panel of of Annapolitan Experts preview the 439th session of the MD General Assembly begins on Wednesday. The agenda will, as always, be full. Last year, lawmakers considered more than 3,000 bills. They passed nearly 900 of them in a record session that the Governor and Legislative leadership both praised as a success. Washington Post Maryland politics and government reporter Ovetta Wi...

It’s Midday on Ethics with Dr. Jeffrey Kahn of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. Today we’ll explore some of the ethical issues raised by the explosive case of a Chinese researcher named He Jiankui. In late November, He announced the birth of twin girls, Lulu and Nana, who, he says, are the world’s first gene-edited humans. Most countries, including China, ban human gene editing, an...

Tom welcomes the great pianist Leon Fleisher to Studio A. Fleisher, a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors in 2007, played his first public concert at the age of eight. He’s playing his latest series of concerts this weekend with the Baltimore Symphony at the age of 90, and he continues to teach at Peabody Institute. He will play a piano concerto by Mozart, No. 12 in A Major, with the BSO tonigh...

It's another edition of our monthly Midday at the Movies, with Jed Dietz, the founding director of the Maryland Film Festival and the SNF Parkway, the historic and newly renovated movie house on North Avenue. After a slump in 2017, North American movie-house ticket sales last year bounced back. Box office receipts jumped 6% to a record $11.9 billion, besting the record set in 2016. Global ticket s...

It's Thursday, and Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck kicks off the new year with her review of the world premiere of playwright David Ives' three-part comedy, ----The Panties, The Partner and The Profit,---- now on stage at the Shakespeare Theatre Company's Lansburgh Theater in Washington, D.C.In his fifth and final collaboration with the Shakespeare Theatre Company's retiring Artistic Directo...

Today, 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 America: the financialization of what had been a manufacturing based economy; rampant obsess...

Word nerds: You’re in luck. With whom is Tom speaking today? Emmy Favilla, the senior commerce editor and former global copy chief at BuzzFeed. As such, she created the BuzzFeed Style Guide which she later developed into a book called A World Without ----Whom----: The Essential Guide to Language in the BuzzFeed Age. It is hilarious. It is instructive. It pays homage to the serial comma as the “cil...

Today, Tom’s guest is award-winning young-adult author, poet and educator Kwame Alexander. He has written 28 books, including ----Booked,---- which was nominated for a National Book Award, and ----The Crossover,---- winner of the Newberry Medal for middle grades novel. ----Swing,---- his latest novel co-written with Mary Rand Hess, is a follow-up to ----The Crossover.----He is the winner of many a...

Voices Rise: A Baltimore Choir of Hope perform live in Studio A. The choir was formed last year at Paul’s Place, a service organization in the Washington Village/Pigtown neighborhood here in Baltimore. Paul’s Place has provided services for the people in that neighborhood for more than 30 years, including hot lunches, clothes, health care, and programs for children. Their directors are the brother...

(This program was originally broadcast on October 5, 2018) Tom's guest for the hour is John Waters. He’s a filmmaker, actor, and writer -- not necessarily in that order. Early in his career, Waters established himself as an enfant terrible who was affectionately dubbed the ----King of Sleaze.---- His filmography spans 40 years and 16 films, some of which are cult classics, while others, like Hairs...

Tom's guest is the acclaimed playwright, poet and author, Sarah Ruhl. Her latest book is called Letters from Max: A Book of Friendship. It’s a collection of her correspondence with Max Ritvo, who took a playwriting class with Sarah at Yale University. Max Ritvo was a poet who had begun attracting a significant following before he died of cancer at the age of 25. Sarah Ruhl is a playwright who has...

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...

This show originally aired on Nov. 28, 2018Wes Moore, the bestselling author and social entrepreneur, and his mother, Joy Thomas Moore, are live with Tom Hall. Wes Moore is the CEO of the New York-based anti-poverty organization Robin Hood. He is the author of several books, including two New York Times bestsellers: The Other Wes Moore and The Work: Searching for a Life that Matters. He also is th...

(This program was originally broadcast on September 5, 2018)Today, an archive edition of Midday on Poetry: Tom and his guests explore a variety of poetic styles that all resonate with universal themes. Tom is joined first by two local poets who enjoy international acclaim. Michael Collier has written numerous books of poetry over the past forty years, including The Ledge -- a finalist for the 2000...

A few weeks, ago, Tom spoke with Maya Rockeymoore Cummings and Kathleen Matthews, who at the time were running to be the next chair of the MD Democratic Party. Maya Cummings won that election, and she has begun regrouping Democrats after their second loss in a row in their bid to capture the Governor’s mansion. Today, Tom looks at the prospects for Maryland's GOP. While enjoying their winning hand...

Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck, who joins us each week with a review of one of the region's many theatrical productions, today spotlights the revival of British playwright Oscar Wilde's classic 1895 work, The Importance of Being Earnest, now on stage at Baltimore's Everyman Theatre. For this raucous comedy of manners exploring the complications of love, friendship, identity and class, Josep...

We come to you today with a heavy heart. Yesterday afternoon Gilbert Sandler, the great writer and raconteur died, after a long illness. No one knew Baltimore or wrote about its charms, its quirks, and its characters as well as Gilbert Sandler. He was a gifted and spirited story teller, with a great ear for the rhythm and the arc of the stories he told, whether or not he was writing a book, a news...

Gen. Michael Flynn will have to wait until March 13th to learn his fate after Judge Emmet Sullivan proposed that the national security adviser's legal team postpone sentencing. The former Trump aide is awaiting sentencing for lying to the FBI Plus, new details emerge about Russian efforts to sway the 2016 presidential elections through a disinformation campaign targeting African Americans with fak...

As the year comes to a close, I’d like to take a moment to look back and remember some important contributors to local cultural and civic life who we lost in 2018. This is by no means an exhaustive list. I simply want to mention a few people I was blessed to know, and who our community was blessed to have. Tom Saunders died in January. He was an accomplished historian of local African American his...

Today, on Midday with the Mayor, Baltimore City Mayor Catherine Pugh joins Tom in Studio A for an exclusive interview. She discusses her nomination of Dr. Joel Fitzgerald, the current police chief in Ft. Worth, Texas, to be Baltimore’s new police commissioner. If the City Council confirms him next month, Fitzgerald will take over a department that is still reeling from frequent leadership changes,...

Rep. John Sarbanes joins Tom for the hour today. Last month, he was re-elected to represent Maryland’s 3rd congressional district for a seventh term. For nearly two years, Sarbanes has chaired the House Democracy Reform Task Force, a group of legislators seeking to minimize the influence of special interests on elections. He is the principle author of H.R. 1, a bill that addresses ethics and campa...