Midday

The Phoenix Recovery Academy in Frederick is the only high school in Maryland dedicated to supporting and educating teenagers who are battling substance use disorders and co-occurring disorders. The academy is a part of a network of about 45 Recovery Schools across the country, which strive to maintain high quality educational environments while encouraging student recovery. The school opened in 2...

On  Midday Healthwatch ,  our monthly conversations about public health with  Dr. Leana Wen , we ask about the uptick in COVID-19 cases in Maryland and across the country. Should we be avoiding gatherings of people inside? Is it time to return to the precautious behavior from earlier in the pandemic? Plus,  how to manage hypertension, the ‘silent killer’ disease , which can be exacerbated by expos...

The power to take a life, professor and social commentator  Roxane Gay writes, receives greater constitutional and culture value than a women's right to the pursuit of happiness. Gay is the author of the  New York Times  best-selling books  Bad Feminist  and  Hunger . Her latest work includes the essay  Stand Your Ground: A Black Feminists Reckoning with America's Gun Problem . From the firearms i...

Mayor Brandon Scott speaks to Midday about the recent death of DPW employee Ronald Silver II. Email us at midday@wypr.org, tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

Host Tom Hall speaks with Dr. Julia Marciari-Alexander , who for the past eleven years has been the Executive Director and CEO of the Walters Art Museum . Walters Art Museum named two interim co-directors to replace Marciari-Alexander as the organization seeks a new leader. Marciari-Alexander announced she is set to leave next month to take a new position as the President of the Samuel H. Kress Fo...

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott joins Midday to discuss his policy plans for the city's biggest challenges. We ask Scott about decreases in violent crime and car thefts. What is working, according to the mayor, and where is there room for improvement? Plus, are city agencies doing enough to prepare and train city workers? On Friday afternoon, solid waste worker Ronald Silver II was finishing his col...

Baltimore City Police Commissioner Richard Worley joins Midday to discuss historic lows in homicide, violence reduction and the ongoing federal consent decree. Over the weekend, the Baltimore Peace Movement held its quarterly Peace Promise weekend. While Baltimore is seeing an uptick in murders, a tragic annual occurrence during the warmer summer months, homicides are at decade lows. The first hal...

Theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck joins Midday  to share another weekly review of a local theatrical production. Rousuck takes a look at Grand Horizons , presented by Cockpit in Court at Community College of Baltimore County Essex through August 4. The dynamics of one family are central to the play, and the story is part domestic comedy, part domestic drama. (Photo by Trent Haines-Hopper) Email us at...

Today is Midday at the Movies,  our monthly focus on new films and film-industry trends with movie aficionados Jed Dietz,  founding director of the Maryland Film Festival , and Max Weiss , film critic and Editor-in-Chief of Baltimore Magazine . This week we talk summer films, including Twisters and Longlegs . What are your favorite movies of the summer? Email us at midday@wypr.org, tweet us: @Midd...

Judith Krummeck 's The Deceived Ones reinterprets the classic Twelfth Night in a contemporary Baltimore setting. Her new novel chronicles the journey of twins, Vira and Sevastyan, a brother and sister from Ukraine who escape their war-torn homeland and come to Charm City. Vira is a talented musician, who becomes begins working on a new opera at the Peabody Institute in the Mount Vernon neighborhoo...

Slow Time is Antje Rauwerda 's debut novel. The Goucher College professor set her story in Govans, the northeast Baltimore neighborhood she calls home. The setting comes alive in Rauwerda's story and is as vibrantly described as the characters who live there. At the outset of the story, the book’s protagonists, Danny and Em, know each other only in passing. As their connection deepens, we learn ab...

WTMD’s First Thursday Festival returns tomorrow. The homegrown affair takes place every summer at the Canton Waterfront Park and features artists from Maryland. Tyler LaPorte , afternoon host and WTMD Interim Program Director, joins Midday to discuss the the upcoming event and what visitors can expect. (Photos by Cary Evan/CE Imagery and David LaMason.) Email us at midday@wypr.org, tweet us: @Midd...

In September, a new pilot program is set to help 50 Baltimore City residents , chosen by lottery, receive vouchers ranging from $750 to $2,000 to subsidize the cost of an electric bike. Nearly a quarter of Baltimore households do not have access to a car, but many people just don’t feel safe riding bikes in a city that is way behind in its effort to create a network of bike lanes that are protecte...

Tom explores the Presidential Transition Project known as “Project 2025.” His guest is Anne Kim a lawyer, policy expert, journalist and author of the new book, Poverty for Profit: How Corporations Get Rich off America’s Poor.   Additionally, Kim is a contributing editor to Washington Monthly where she recently published Project 2025 is Even Worse Than You Think where she examines the impact the pr...

Tom talks about a controversial practice being employed to harvest organs for transplant from people who have died called Normothermic Regional Perfusion, or NRP. According to reporting by NPR's Rob Stein, this technique is considered an innovation which produces high quality and less damaged organs for those in need. This innovation is not, however, without ethical concerns. Dr. Jeffrey Kahn is t...

Today on Midday , a conversation about two workforce development programs in Baltimore. One surveys the landscape of programs for young entrepreneurs, while the other targets under-employed residents who face barriers to employment. Those obstacles can include a criminal record, a substance abuse disorder or no housing. Dr. Ronald Williams is an associate professor of management at Coppin State Un...

Today on Midday , a conversation about two workforce development programs in Baltimore. One surveys the landscape of programs for young entrepreneurs, while the other targets under-employed residents who face barriers to employment. Those obstacles can include a criminal record, a substance abuse disorder or no housing. Walter Billips , Executive Director of Vocational Training Center at the Natio...

Many Democrats chose to boycott Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday. Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen spoked to Midday earlier this week about his decision to skip the address. Opposition was strong on the street outside the U.S. Capitol building. Large protests at Union Station in Washington on Wednesday included the burning of Israeli and...

Baltimore plant aficionado Hilton Carter is the host of Planterior on Discovery Plus and Max, a new pilot of a program about making the most of plant life and interior design. Carter joins Midday to discuss the new program, and his thoughts on Summer planting. Email us at midday@wypr.org, tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

A long list of Democratic lawmakers skipped Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's  address to a join session of U.S. Congress on Wednesday . Maryland's congressional delegation was split on attendance. Sen. Ben Cardin served as “senator pro tempore” during the speech. On the other hand, Maryland's  Sen. Chris Van Hollen  boycotted the event. Van Hollen joined  Midday  to explain why, and to...

A recent series of reports from Baltimore City's Office of Inspector General revealed shockingly poor working conditions at the Department of Public Works,  where adequate water and air conditioning were in short supply during Code Red days of record breaking heat . Baltimore City Inspector General  Isabel Cumming  joins Midday to explain what she found, and how mismanagement led to a workplace un...

Theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck joins Midday  to share another weekly review of a local theatrical production. Rousuck takes a look at Cats , presented by Cockpit in Court at Community College of Baltimore County Essex . The classic music of Andrew Lloyd Webber tells the story of the cats and the Jellicle Ball. (Photo by Trent Haines-Hopper) Email us at midday@wypr.org, tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or ca...

Midday's What Ya Got Cookin'?  segment returns. What dishes or recipes have you been obsessed with this summer? We are joined by a pair of heralded local chefs who have recipes that take advantage of Maryland's summer seafood and vegetable offerings. Gwyn Novak  is a professional chef and cooking instructor who owns and operates " No Thyme to Cook ," a cooking school on Solomons Island in southern...

Journalist and best-selling author Erik Larson joined Midday in May to discuss his most recent book. The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War is a granular look at the five months between the election of Abraham Lincoln in November 1860 and the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861. For Larson, this period is consequential for the subseq...

After several weeks of a careful pressure campaign by top Democrat party figures, including former President Barack Obama and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, President Joe Biden announced he would stand aside and allow another Democrat to lead the ticket. Democratic members of Congress, past and present, had voiced concerns over Biden's ability to beat Republican challenger and former President...