Midday

Last week, Gov. Wes Moore issued an executive order entitled, “Housing Starts Here,” a four-pronged order Moore hopes will spur construction or renovation to address an estimated housing deficit of 96,000 units here in Maryland. Maryland is by no means alone in facing housing challenges. Up for Growth, a network of advocates that tracks housing data, reports that national housing underproduction s...

It’s Midday on Ethics. Dr. Jeffrey Kahn is the director of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. In addition to directing the Berman Institute, Dr. Kahn teaches in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Jeff Kahn joins us from time to time to talk about some of the thorny ethical issues facing scientists and people throughout society. We...

Otis Rolley, the new president and CEO of the Baltimore Development Corporation, the city's economic development agency, discusses the challenges ahead to prosperity and growth.

It’s Midday at the Movies, our monthly look at films and filmmaking... Elissa Blount Moorhead joins us today… She’s an artist, curator, mother of a budding filmmaker, and a producer. She is the founder of Seven Stories Inc., a production company which creates films, television programs, and time-based-installations. She has been a major force in the creative life of Baltimore for more than 11 year...

Midday theater critic J Wynn Rousuck joins the show for weekly theater reviews. Today, a look ahead to the upcoming theatrical season in Maryland. Baltimore's Hippodrome Theatre built a reputation for launching national tours. Rousuck takes a look at two of the new tours starting out here this season, Water for Elephants and The Great Gatsby. Plus, a preview of Santa Claus is Comin’, Baltimore Cen...

As the new school year gets underway, a look ahead to the next leader of the Baltimore City Public Schools. Dr. Sonja Santelises has been at the helm of the BCPS since the summer of 2016. She is set to leave the post next summer after ten years, making her the longest serving Schools CEO in almost 80 years. Now, the search for her successor is underway. Robert Salley, the chair of the Baltimore Sc...

It’s Midday with the Mayor, our monthly conversation about city affairs with Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott. Mayor Scott joins Tom live on Zoom from his office in City Hall to discuss his response to President Trump's recent calls to deploy National Guard soldiers to Baltimore streets to fight crime. He also talks about his administration's progress in reducing crime in the city, and his controvers...

Robert McCullough, Baltimore County Chief of Police, joins Midday to discuss key issues at within his department including police officer retention and training, the use of drones in policing and more. In 2021, McCullough retired after 35 years with the County Police Department. Two years later, he came out of retirement to lead the agency that serves Maryland's third-largest jurisdiction. He is t...

A conversation about the future of public media on Midday today. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting will close its doors by the end of this month, leaving some big financial holes in the budgets of public radio and television stations across the country, including WYPR and WTMD, the two stations that comprise Baltimore Public Media. Maryland Public Television, which broadcasts from its studio...

It’s the Midday Healthwatch with former Baltimore City Health Commissioner and Washington Post columnist, Dr. Leana Wen. Last month, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy, Jr. canceled almost $500 million worth of grants that funded research into mRNA vaccines, technology that is credited with saving millions of lives during the height of the COVID pandemic. In announcing the move,...

The final First Thursday Festival of 2025 is this week. The homegrown concert hosted by WTMD takes place every summer at the Canton Waterfront Park and features artists from Maryland. September's performing artists are Uncle Kunkle’s One Gram Band, a funk-rock group based in Maryland, and four-piece jam band Eggy. Tyler Laporte, afternoon host and Assistant Program Director, joins Midday to discus...

Last month, the Maryland Drug Affordability Board decided to label a pair of Type 2 diabetes medications unaffordable for state and local governments. The PDAB is an independent agency created by the Maryland legislature in 2019 to conduct in-depth reviews of drug costs. The board was one of the first of its kind in the nation. By law, the PDAB can set upper payment limits on what state and local...

(This program was originally broadcast on July 3, 2025) In this encore edition of Midday, we reprise Tom Hall's conversation earlier this summer with the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, Rick Atkinson. After a 20-year career as a reporter, foreign correspondent and editor at the Washington Post, in 1989, Atkinson — the son of a US Army Officer — began writing about military history, including a t...

(This conversation was originally broadcast on April 2, 2025) In today's encore edition of Midday, we revisit Tom Hall's conversation last April with Dr. Jeanne Theoharis, a historian and Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College, and the author or co-author of 13 books on the American civil rights movement. Her latest book makes the case that some of Dr. King’s most signifi...

(This program was first broadcast on April 30, 2025) On this encore edition of Midday, we’ll listen to Tom Hall's conversation last spring with author and journalist Elaine Weiss. Her latest book tells the inspirational story of the civil rights activists who offered “citizenship classes” to African Americans throughout the south from 1955-1970. The story centers around Septima Clark, whom Martin...

(This program first aired on March 4, 2025) In this encore edition of Midday, we listen to a conversation Tom Hall had last spring with Dr. Martha Jones about her latest book, The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir. Jones is a former lawyer, a celebrated historian, and the author of several award-winning books. Her latest book is unlike any of her others: while it is a work of history, it...

(This interview was originally broadcast on April 23, 2025) Best-selling writer, Amor Towles, is the author of three novels, including A Gentleman in Moscow, which was adapted for a television series on Paramount+ starring Ewan McGregor. Towles joined Midday last April to discuss the writing of his latest work, a brilliant compilation of six short stories set in New York, and a novella set in the...

(This interview was originally broadcast on April 23, 2025) Journalist and author Ruth Franklin joins Midday. Her biography of the writer Shirley Jackson won the National Book Critics Circle Award nine years ago. Franklin's latest book, The Many Lives of Anne Frank, is another biography. She writes about Frank, the young Jewish girl whose diary, published years after she perished in a Nazi death c...

Today, Midday is focused on mental health maintenance. Guest host Farai Chideya explores the ongoing work of checking in with ourselves and others for optimal mental health. Farai's guests — Kerry Graves, the executive director of the Metro Baltimore chapter of NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and Dr. Ernestine Briggs-King, the vice-president of Kennedy Krieger Institute's Department...

Why do women live longer than men? Is the female brain much different than the male brain? Cat Bohannon, a researcher and author with a Ph. D. from Columbia University in the evolution of narrative and cognition, joins Midday to discuss the human female body and its unique 200 million-year history. Her award-winning 2023 book, Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution, is...

Author and historian Kellie Carter Jackson explores how Black women fight against white supremacy, showcasing both their loud and quiet forms of resistance.

Award-winning author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie returns after 12 years with her latest novel, chronicling the hopes and aspirations of women in "Dream Count."

Midday revisits a 2025 interview with Ann Patchett, who released an annotated version of her 2001 novel, "Bel Canto."

As of August 1, homicides in Baltimore are down 24.3% compared to 2024. Mayor Brandon Scott says says many different sources deserve credit for the reduction, including the police department and the Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement (MONSE). But what role does the City State’s Attorney’s Office play in curbing the violence? Additionally, how are community groups working directly with ne...

Midday guest host Gabe Ortis gets the latest news on Baltimore sports with Cordell Woodland from 105.7 The Fan, who joins the show live from Camden Yards. They discuss the current state of Orioles baseball and the upcoming preseason game between the Ravens and the Dallas Cowboys.