Midday

It’s Midday on the Media. Today: NPR Media Correspondent and author David Folkenflik joins me to talk about President Trump’s trip to Helsinki. Was it a Diplomatic Debacle or as some Fox News hosts said last night, did the media simply go into a meltdown like it always does when it comes to the President? Email us at midday@wypr.org, tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

This program originally aired on July 16, 2018. It has been a little more than three years since the city of Baltimore was convulsed with violence following the funeral of Freddie Gray, who died in police custody on April 19, 2015. After the National Guard went back to their barracks, after the fire at the CVS Drugstore at the corner of Penn and North was extinguished, and after the curfews were l...

It’s the Midday Newswrap. Today, a look at some of the big stories of the week on the international, national and local scenes. With the showmanship that usually attends a reality TV show, former reality TV star Donald Trump announced his latest nomination to the Supreme Court. Federal Circuit Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh is the President’s second pick for the highest court in the land, and it is q...

It’s Midday at the Movies. Joining Tom in the studio for our monthly look at new films and film industry trends are our favorite movie mavens: Jed Dietz, founding director of the Maryland Film Festival, and Ann Hornaday, film critic for the Washington Post. A recent study finds that nearly 78% of movie reviews last year were written by white men. How does the paucity of diverse perspectives affect...

Today on Midday, theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck ventures a bit beyond Charm City, as she shares her thoughts on the roster of new plays at the 2018 Contemporary American Theater Festival at Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, West Virginia -- about a 90-minute drive from Baltimore. This year's CATF is featuring six powerful new plays, each portraying aspects of contemporary life through tragedy,...

Today, a conversation about sports, kinda sorta. Not the World Cup. Certainly not the Orioles, God help us. Not the Ravens, who start training camp a week from Thursday, but instead, we’re going to talk about a simple question, that when applied to certain moments and historical realities in sports can lead to some delicious fantasizing. That question is “What if?” What if Billie Jean King had LOS...

Today, a panel of immigration lawyers joins Tom to discuss the Trump Administration’s ----zero tolerance---- immigration policies. Today is the court-ordered deadline for the government to re-unite migrant children under the age of five with their families, most of whom were detained for crossing the US border illegally. It’s a deadline that will not be met for at least 40 of the more than 100 inf...

Today we continue our Conversation with the Candidates series with guest Allan Kittleman, county executive of Howard County, elected to that position in 2014, and also discuss the future of Old Ellicott City. On July 30, 2016, Old Ellicott City was ravaged by what was called at the time a once-in-1,000-years flood. The historic downtown was largely rebuilt. And less than two years later, on May 27...

It's time for another visit from our well-traveled theater critic, J. Wynn Rousuck, who join us each week with a review of one of the region's many theaterical offerings. Today, she's spotlighting the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company's new production of the Bard's romantic farce, A Midsummer Night's Dream, being performed on the outdoor stage at the PFI Historic Park in Ellicott City. A Midsummer Ni...

On this holiday in which we celebrate independence and the courage of our revolutionary heroes, a word about a different kind of revolutionary, and her exercise of the free speech and religious practice the founders fought for. Elizabeth McAlister has lived at Jonah House, on the West Side of Baltimore, for most of the last 50 years. She and her husband, the anti-war activist Philip Berrigan, foun...

This conversation with Derek Thompson originally aired on May 25, 2018. Today, Tom speaks with Derek Thompson, a senior editor at The Atlantic, where he writes about business and technology, and hosts the new podcast Crazy/Genius. He is also the author of Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in the Age of Distraction. In his best-selling book, Thompson takes a scientific approach to understanding...

Today, a conversation about American exceptionalism when it comes to our cherished tradition of free speech. Tom’s guest is the acclaimed legal scholar, Floyd Abrams, a distinguished constitutional lawyer who has litigated some of the most consequential 1st Amendment cases of our time, including the Pentagon Papers case and Citizen’s United. He is the author of the 2017 book, “The Soul of the Firs...

Today, in this installment of Midday Culture Connections with Dr. Sheri Parks, the Press and Public Trust. For three years, since he announced his candidacy for President in 2015, Donald Trump has pounded a steady drumbeat of claims that major news outlets promulgate fake news. A recent poll indicated that 61% of Democrats and 89% of Republicans agree with him. Mr. Trump and other political leader...

Today, another in Midday's series of Conversations with the Candidates. Tom's guest is Maryland Comptroller Peter Franchot. He’s been the state’s fiscal chief since 2007, after firsxt beating the incumbent, William Donald Schaefer, in the 2006 primary. As comptroller, Franchot is a member of powerful Board of Public Works in Annapolis. And he is vice-chair of the State Retirement ---- Pension Syst...

Today, several perspectives on the murders at the Capital Gazette Newspaper. On Thursday afternoon, a 38 year-old man from Laurel shot five people dead and injured two others at the offices of the Gazette on Bestgate Avenue in Annapolis. A little later in the program, WYPR’s Dominique Maria Bonessi will join Tom on the phone with the latest on the investigation into the shooting. Tom also speaks w...

Today on “The Midday Healthwatch,” Dr. Leana Wen, the Health Commissioner of Baltimore City, joins Tom to talk about issues in public health. Dr. Wen discusses the long-term psychological and physical trauma being visited on the thousands of children who have been separated from their immigrant parents by US border officials in recent months. Following Tuesday's primary election, the political bat...

Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck joins Tom each week with a review of one of the region's many theatrical offerings. Today, she's spotlighting the new production of Avenue Q at the Community College of Baltimore County's Cockpit in Court Summer Theatre. Avenue Q is an American musical in two acts, featuring music and lyrics by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx, and a book by Jeff Whitty. The coming-...

In the end, the race to become the Democratic nominee for governor wasn’t very close. Ben Jealous won every county in Maryland except Prince George’s, the home base of County Executive Rushern Baker, and Calvert County, which Jealous lost by 48 votes. In Baltimore County, it couldn’t be more close. Three Democrats, former Del. Johnny Olszewski, Jr., Sen. Jim Brochin and County Councilwoman Vicki A...

[It’s Primary Day in MD. We’ll have complete coverage of the results of today’s election tonight at 9:00, with the WYPR News Team deployed throughout the region at various campaign headquarters, and analysis with Jean Marbella of the Baltimore Sun, John Willis of the University of Baltimore, and political strategist Catalina Byrd. Tomorrow, we’ll break-down the results with Jayne Miller of WBAL Te...

And now, it’s time for The Afro Check-In, a regular feature here on Midday where we sit down with our colleagues at The Afro-American Newspaper to talk about some of the important stories of the day. St. Frances Academy is a high school in East Baltimore that over the past few years has become a football powerhouse. Ranked 4th in the country, they finished last season with a perfect 13-0 record an...

morrow is Primary Day in MD, and here in Baltimore the race for State’s Attorney features three Democrats who are conducting vigorous campaigns. Our original plan was to pause our series of Conversations with the Candidates once early-voting had begun. A week of early voting ended last Thursday. But, given that the race for Baltimore State’s Attorney is one of the most contentious in the city’s hi...

On today's show, Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh joins Tom in Studio A. Yesterday was the first official day of summer. Violence in our city, and cities around the country, sometimes spikes in the summer months. The Mayor recently announced plans to address that possibility. We’ll also talk about the search for a new police commissioner, a new grant program that is targeted to community development...

It's Thursday, and that means our theater critic, J. Wynn Rousuck, joins us with her review of a little musical you might have heard of: Hamilton. The popular show, now on stage at The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., uses rap, hip-hop, R----B, and a variety of other musical styles to tell the story of the American Revolution through the lens of one its most charismatic and ill-fated architects...

Today, a conversation about cultivating start-up businesses in Baltimore. What does it take in terms of money and people to bring an idea for a new product or service to the market? A recent survey of cities with the most start-up activity ranked Baltimore near the bottom. Cities like San Francisco and New Yok continue to attract young entrepreneurs. How can we get them to bring their talent here?...

It's time for another edition of Smart Nutrition with the Nutrition Diva, Monica Reinagel. If you are looking to improve your eating habits, perhaps the most important first step is to track what you’re eating. If you are tracking what you eat with an app, the New York Times recently featured four apps that do a good job. We’ll talk about those. A report about one of the most well-known and popula...