Midday

Tom's  Midday Newsmaker   is Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown.  In the 2023 session of the state legislature , lawmakers gave the Attorney General’s office expanded powers to prosecute police-involved killings, and to prosecute and remediate civil rights violations. The expansion also created the Environment and Natural Resources Monitoring Unit in Attorney General Brown's office to investi...

Writer and journalist Jonathan Eig is  the author of a new biography of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr . The book is the first biography of the civil rights icon for more than three decades. Jonathan Eig incorporated research material unavailable previous biographers, including hundreds of pages from the files of a close aide to U.S. President Lyndon Johnson, made available last year. One of the book'...

The great jazz guitarist and vocalist  John Pizzarelli  released his first album 40 years ago. It was called  I’m Hip (Please Don’t Tell My Father).   His father, by the way, was the great jazz guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli, who passed away in 2020. Since the release of that album, John has toured the world and established himself as one of the great interpreters of the Great American Songbook. He’s...

WYPR is proud to announce the  New/Next Film Festival , a weekend-long celebration of film culture, is taking place August 18-20 in Baltimore. Sam Sessa is the Director of Events & Community Engagement for WTMD and WYPR. Eric Allen Hatch is the curator of films for the New Next Film Festival. They joined Tom in Studio A to share news about this exciting cinematic event. Email us at midday@wypr...

Cara Ober   covers the latest in Baltimore's vibrant art scene. She is the founder, editor and publisher of  BMore Art , a magazine that explores the arts in Baltimore. Their latest print issue, The Migration Issue, came out last week. It features several international artists who now call Baltimore home. Email us at midday@wypr.org, tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

An array of fictional documents that take us behind the headlines of important historical events in Alexandra Petri's " US History: Important American Documents (I Made Up )" Petri  is a terrific political satirist and  humor columnist for the Washington Post . The fictitious documents run the gamut from “top toys for Puritan parents” and “John and Abigail Adams try Sexting to” Aaron Sorkin’s “Get...

It's time again for a visit with  Midday  theater critic  J. Wynn Rousuck , who joins Tom each week with her reviews of Maryland's regional stage. She joins Tom to tell us about  Life is a Dream  at  Baltimore Center Stage , which runs until May 21, 2023. Email us at midday@wypr.org, tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

Reports indicate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is soon to  officially announce his candidacy for the Republican nomination for U.S. President . He trails in the current polls behind former President Donald Trump, as does the rest of the growing field. The first caucuses and primaries don’t take place until February. DeSantis has preceded his run for the White House with months of TV appearance focused...

Baltimore Banner reporters  Clara Longo de Freitas  and  Ryan Little   explored  the access to pharmacies for Baltimore City residents. Analysis from the Banner found majority-Black and minority-majority neighborhoods in Baltimore have less access to pharmacies than majority-white neighborhoods. Email us at midday@wypr.org, tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

The story of modern food is a fascinating tale captured in a new book by physician and historian of science, medicine, and food,  Dr. Lisa Haushofer . Her research reveals the connection between nutrition with money, business, conquest, and colonization. The new book is  Wonder Foods: The Science and Commerce of Nutrition . Haushofer makes a compelling case that the way we relate to food has been...

Title 42 , the Trump era effort to restrict asylum seekers that was continued during the first two years of the Biden Administration,  ended last Thursday . With the policy's end, immigration experts expected a surge of migrants at the U.S. southern border. Bu that hasn’t happened. Last week, before the regulation was rescinded, U.S. Border Patrol agents apprehended as many as 11,000 migrants a da...

The Baltimore Peace Movement is  a community-based non-profit group that works to end violence in Baltimore . On Mother’s Day weekend and three other weekends every year, they hold events to encourage all of us to act peacefully, and to help those who are in danger or in mourning. On the Mondays following each Peace Movement weekend, we check in with the group’s co-organizers. Letrice Gant  is one...

U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin has been a fixture on the Maryland political scene for 56 years, and a member of the United States Senate since 2007. Earlier this month, he announced that he will not seek re-election when his term expires on January 3, 2025. As the Chair of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, a long time member of the Foreign Relations Committee, the Finance Committee and the...

It's time for another visit with Midday  theater critic   J. Wynn Rousuck , who joins us each week with her reviews of the mid-Atlantic regional stage. Today, she tells us about the new touring company production of Six — now in an eight-performance run at Baltimore's Hippodrome Theatre — in which the six wives of Henry VIII take the stage to spin their infamous 500-year-old heartbreaks into an ex...

Viola da gambist Carolyn Surrick and Grammy-nominated lutenist Ronn McFarlane have joined together again for their latest album "And So Flows The River. " The celebrated artists will perform selections from their new project at a benefit concert at the Church of the Nativity and Holy Comforter in Baltimore on Saturday, May 20, from 3:00 – 4:00pm. For more details, click here. Email us at midday@wy...

Today, it’s Midday on the Arts .  We begin with a conversation about a program designed to help further the educations and careers of young people of color in classical music. It’s called Shared Voices, and it connects students studying at HBCUs with the top schools of music and conservatories across the country. It is the brainchild of Denyce Graves , one of the most acclaimed opera singers of he...

Today is another installment in our series, Midday in the Neighborhood, which we produce in cooperation with our news partners, the Baltimore Banner. The series examines issues facing some of Baltimore’s 278 different communities. Today, we turn our focus to Locust Point, and a community garden that is facing an existential crisis. The Banner’s Cadence Quaranta reports that, “Under Armour owns the...

Today on Midday, a heated impasse over the debt ceiling. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned Congress that the Treasury will soon run out of the “extraordinary measures” currently being employed to maintain the full faith and credit of the federal government. After a meeting on Tuesday with Congressional leaders , neither President Joe Biden nor Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy expressed gre...

Harborplace in Baltimore has been in a steady decline for years, as store after store and restaurant after restaurant closed. Only a couple of places remain open and the entire Light Street Pavilion has been shuttered. Now, the reimagining of Harborplace has begun. Late last year, a local developer named P. David Bramble purchased the property, and pledged to revive this centerpiece of downtown th...

A new installation at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore showcases art from across Asia and the region's Islamic cultures. The new exhibition is called Across Asia: Arts of Asia and the Islamic World . The museum's recent renovations have been a few years in the making. The re-imagined space allows the museum to display more than 90 works from its collection for the first time. Dr. Julia Marciari...

This week, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore signed into law bills focused on economic development . Today on Midday , we discuss some of the other bills passed during the 2023 session of the Maryland General Assembly that could have an economic impact on Baltimore. Tom talks with   Benjamin Orr , the founding president and CEO of the Maryland Center on Economic Policy , a nonpartisan policy think tank. Ben...

On Saturday, people across the world turned their attention to the pomp and pageantry of the coronation for King Charles III in London's Westminster Abbey. We open the show with sound from the site of the coronation , as the Ascension Gospel Choir performed ‘Alleluia’ (O Sing Praises) for the Gospel reading of King Charles III’s coronation. The coronation ceremony drew on traditions more than a th...

What did we learn from our battle with COVID-19? When the next pandemic comes, will we do a better job of handling it? In late April, the COVID Crisis Group issued a report called Lessons from the COVID War . They assessed how the world handled the deadly disease, and they assert, “no country’s performance is more disappointing than that of the United States.” Dr. Alexander Lazar joins Tom to disc...

It's time for another visit with Midday  theater critic   J. Wynn Rousuck , who joins us each week with her reviews of the Maryland-DC regional stage. Today, she talks with Tom about two classic shows currently in town: Chesapeake Shakespeare Company ’s production of Hamlet and Everyman Theatre ’s production of Harvey . Hamlet is widely considered to be William Shakespeare 's greatest tragedic pla...

Welcome to Midday at the Movies ,  our monthly look at films and filmmaking. Today, a look at what's new in movie theaters. Among the film's we'll discuss: CHEVALIER , SHOWING UP and ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT'S ME MARGARET , the new adaptation of Judy Blume's 1970 young-adult novel of the same name . Plus , we'll look at the writers' strike shutting down production in Hollywood . Screenwriters are goi...