Midday

Today, we continue our series of Conversations with the Candidates who will be on the June 26th primary ballot here in Maryland. Tom's guest is Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz. He is one of nine Democrats running for Governor on the ballot this June. The winner will go up against Republican Gov. Larry Hogan int he general election in November. Kevin Kamenetz is one of three major candida...

It's Thursday, and that means it's time for Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck and her weekly review of the region's noteworthy thespian offerings. Today, she spotlights the new and unusual staging of William Shakespeare's Othello at Baltimore Shakespeare Factory. What's distinctive about this production of the classic tragedy is its use of ----Original Pronunciation,---- or O.P., which employs...

Today a conversation about the interplay of music and medicine. Parkinson's disease is a chronic degenerative brain disorder that affects about 3% of people over the age of 60. That’s the average age of people who develop the disease, but Parkinson’s has been diagnosed in people as young as 18. The Parkinson’s Association reports that about 60,000 Americans are diagnosed with the disease every yea...

Todd Marcus is an acclaimed bass clarinetist, composer and arranger. He’s also a community activist who has lived and worked in the Sandtown- Winchester neighborhood of West Baltimore for more than 20 years. He’s about to release a new CD, inspired by that historic neighborhood, called On These Streets: A Baltimore Story and recorded with a quintet of some of the area’s finest players. The disc in...

Four days after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., with more than 100 cities across the country engulfed in riots, Congress passed a landmark piece of legislation known as the Fair Housing Act, prohibiting discrimination in housing based on race, religion, national origin or gender. Today, a conversation about equality and equity in the housing market, 50 years after President Lyndo...

A little later in the show today, Josh Kurtz joins Tom. He is the editor and co-founder of Maryland Matters, a website all about Maryland government and politics. They’ll be sizing up some of the key races for the State Senate and the House of Delegates that will be on the primary ballot in June. But first, we focus on one of those key races, as we continue our series of ----Conversations with the...

Baltimore is one of six US cities now competing for a $30-million federal grant that city planners hope will launch a major redevelopment project in East Baltimore. More than 1,300 public housing units and a school might be demolished in what could eventually be a $1 billion transformation of a 200-acre tract between Harbor East and Johns Hopkins Hospital, in the Perkins-Somerset-Oldtown neighborh...

Tom speaks with Brittany T. Oliver, activist and founder of the Baltimore grassroots movement, Not without Black Women. Ms. Oliver was recently appointed to the Baltimore City Commission for Women, and this weekend she will be participating as a panelist, at the 2018 Women of the World Festival, presented by Notre Dame of Maryland University. Email us at midday@wypr.org, tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or...

Today, we continue our series of Conversations with the Candidates who will be on the June 26th primary ballot here in Maryland. Tom's guest is Sen. Richard S. Madaleno, Jr. He is one of nine Democrats running for Governor on the ballot this June. The winner will go up against Republican Gov. Larry Hogan in the general election in November. Unlike several of his Democratic opponents, Sen. Madaleno...

Tom speaks with Dr. Brittney Cooper about her latest book, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower; a trenchantly argued and provocative look at the status, expectations, and barriers that Black women face in contemporary American society Email us at midday@wypr.org, tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

It's Thursday, and Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck joins Tom with her weekly review of a production lighting up one the region's many stages. Today, it's Hoodoo Love, a bluesy play (and one of the earliest works) by Katori Hall, being produced by Baltimore's Arena Players, the oldest continuously operating African American community theater in the United States. Email us at midday@wypr.org,...

Tom's guest for the hour today is Jay Heinrichs, an author, lecturer, and consultant in the art (and science) of rhetoric. In a new book, he points out that while the word “debate” comes from the same latin word for “battle,” an argument is not a fight. In a fight, you try to win. In an argument, you try to win over. Email us at midday@wypr.org, tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

Regular Midday listeners know that every couple of Mondays, we check in with The Afro-American Newspaper, the venerable news operation just down the road from WYPR. Today, The Afro’s managing editor, Kamau High, joins guest host Rob Sivak to spotlight some of the stories the paper is covering this week. They include the second of a two-part series by Morgan State U. professor and Pulitzer Prize wi...

Today, a conversation about the power of history. The struggle for civil rights that we’ve remembered in the life and death of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other leaders of the movement a half-century ago is a struggle that continues today. But how much do we really know about what happened in Montgomery and Selma and Memphis back in the 1950s and 60s, and about how to connect Dr. King’s w...

On this latest installment of our series of Conversations with the Candidates, Tom's guest is Jim Shea, a Democrat who's running to be his party's nominee for Maryland Governor. Shea is one of nine Democrats who'll be on the gubernatorial ballot for the June 26th primary. The winner will face Republican Governor Larry Hogan in the November general election. Shea announced his candidacy last summer...

It's Thursday, and that means we welcome to the studio Midday's far-ranging theater critic, J. Wynn Rousuck, back from our western frontier and an evening at Frederick's Maryland Ensemble Theater, which is currently staging a new production of playwright Gina Gionfriddo's feminist comedy, Rapture, Blister, Burn -- a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Drama. MET's program describes it as ----a...

Today, a look at what was accomplished by our legislators in Annapolis during the 2018 MD General Assembly, which ended on Monday night. Governor Hogan has signed more than a hundred bills into law since then, and he’s let several become law without his signature. More than 3,100 bills were introduced this year, a record number. Tom talks with two Republicans and two Democrats this afternoon to ge...

Today, a reflection on the work and legacy of the late Winnie Madikezela-Mandela, a fierce advocate for social justice, considered by many South Africans to be the mother of their nation. She is revered in South Africa and around the African continent for her relentless fight against the South African apartheid system which, for nearly 50 years, subjected the native Black population to violence, i...

Today, a conversation about new breakthroughs in cancer research. Nearly 1.7 million people are diagnosed with cancer in the U.S every year, and nearly 600,000 of those people die from the disease. Those who survive often face difficult surgeries, and long rounds of chemotherapy, radiotherapy, or costly immunotherapy. Cancer is one of the world’s leading killers because it’s usually discovered too...

Tom is joined in Studio A by, internationally acclaimed classical soprano, Marquita Lister and the conductor and keyboard virtuoso Lester Green. They are Artistic Director and Music Director, respectively for this production of Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadows at Morgan State, which opens next week. The Opera and its libretto were written by the composer, Steven M. Allen. It is suffused with Dunbar’...

(This story originally aired on April 5, 2017) Today, an archive edition of Midday on Ethics. A year ago, HBO and Oprah Winfrey brought the story of Henrietta Lacks to television. The film, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” based on the book of the same name by Rebecca Skloot, is still available for streaming on the HBO website. You may already be somewhat familiar with the story of Henrietta...

It’s the Midday News Wrap. The Maryland General Assembly wraps up its 2018 session on Monday at midnight. So far, more than 3,100 bills have been introduced in this session. Today, a tally of what legislation has passed, and what is likely to pass -- or fail -- between now and “sine die.”First, Tom takes a look at one of the most controversial bills of the session: Senate Bill 122, the Comprehensi...

It's Thursday, and that means our peripatetic theater critic, J. Wynn Rousuck, is back with her weekly review of one of the Baltimore region's thespian offerings. Today, she spotlights the new production of Cecelia Raker's play, La Llorona, now on stage at Baltimore's Cohesion Theatre Company. La Llorona plays off a popular Mexican legend about the loudly lamenting ghost of a woman scorned in love...

It’s Midday at the Movies, our monthly focus on new films and film-industry trends, with our regular movie afficionadoes, Jed Dietz, founding director of the Maryland Film Festival, and Ann Hornaday, film critic for the Washington Post. They join Tom to consider how new filmmaking and distribution technologies are changing the definition of ----a movie.---- In her piece in the Washington Post last...

Today, we mark the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., with a reflection on his work, legacy, and a discussion about the state of Civil Rights in America today. Fifty years later, what has changed for people of color and economically underserved populations in our country? Tom is joined in Studio A by, Rev. Dr. Heber Brown, Senior Pastor of Pleasant Hope Baptist C...