Midday

Tom's guest today is LaFontaine Oliver, the current president and CEO of Your Public Radio . His achievements here in Baltimore over the past three years are significant. Since his appointment in 2019 as general manager of WYPR , he has merged this station with Towson-based public music station WTMD and engineered a unique partnership between WYPR and the online news organization, the Baltimore Ba...

Tom's Newsmaker guest today is Erek L. Barron . He is the US Attorney for the District of Maryland , which makes him the chief federal law enforcement officer in our state . He supervises a staff of nearly 100 attorneys who investigate and prosecute national security threats, terrorism, narcotics trafficking, organized crime, gang violence, public corruption, cybercrime, financial and healthcare f...

Now, a conversation about maintaining our mental health in this holiday "season to be jolly." The thing is, not everybody feels jolly, despite one song’s assertion that it’s the most wonderful time of the year. With the days at their shortest, and the pressures that the holidays can bring, it can be a challenge keeping things in perspective and staying psychologically healthy. Joining Tom now is D...

Happy Hanukah! In every election cycle, candidates for offices at the statewide and local levels promise to fund their legislative and programmatic priorities, in part, with savings from identifying waste, fraud and abuse . In recent months, audits have found plenty of waste in various state and local agencies. In October, our colleagues Rachel Baye of WYPR and Brenda Wintrode of the Baltimore Ban...

On 88.1, WYPR, broadcasting and streaming live from the performance studio of our sister station, WTMD in Towson, it’s the annual Midday Holiday Concert with Helicon and Friends . On Saturday, Helicon and a host of other traditional artists will present their 37th annual Winter Solstice Concerts at Goucher College's Kraushaar Auditorium , with shows at 3:30 and 7:30 pm. For many of the past 37 yea...

It's time for another visit with Midday theater critic, J. Wynn Rousuck , who joins Tom each week with her reviews of Maryland's regional stage. \ Today, she tells us about the North American touring company production of Jagged Little Pill , now on stage at Baltimore's Hippodrome Theatre . Based on singer Alanis Morissette 's hit 1995 album of the same name, this new Tony and Grammy Award-winning...

How important is customer service to you? In addition to valuing the quality of the product you’re buying, how much do you value the quality of service you received when buying that product? Tom's first guest today developed a research tool that is used to track people’s overall satisfaction with their consumer experience. Claes Fornell is the Distinguished Donald C. Cook Emeritus Professor of Bus...

Today on Midday , it's Reporters' Notebook , and Tom catches up with three reporters to discuss some of the great reporting they have done about vacant housing, climate change remediation, and education. Tom's first guest is Justin Fenjustin fentonton , from our news partner, the Baltimore Banner.   He’s been writing about the swarm of foreign investors who are buying some of Baltimore’s huge stoc...

Today on Midday, it’s Midday on Cars, with our good friend, John Davis , the creator, producer and host of MotorWeek, now in its 42nd season. MotorWeek is the longest running automotive show on TV. It's produced by Maryland Public television (MPT) and syndicated on more than 90% of PBS stations across the country. Gas prices are coming down. From a peak of $5 per gallon in a lot of places earlier...

Joining Tom now is Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh. After serving in the Maryland House of Delegates for eight years and the Maryland Senate for 20 years, he was elected to be the state’s chief legal officer in 2014, the same year that Gov. Larry Hogan was elected governor. Frosh, a Democrat, has not always seen eye-to-eye with the governor, and just a couple of months ago, he was involved i...

The Baltimore City Fire Department has been reeling lately following revelations contained in a damning internal report about a vacant house fire on Stricker Street last January that claimed the lives of three firefighters, the sudden resignation of Chief Niles Ford , and a meeting last week with the City Council in which department heads told members of the City Council that its fleet of vehicles...

Midday on Music continues now in the studio of our sister station, WTMD in Towson, where we are fortunate to be joined by members of the Mount Vernon Virtuosi Cello Gang . The founder of the Virtuosi is Amit Peled , an internationally acclaimed ‘cellist and conductor and, for the past two decades, a professor at Hopkins' Peabody Institute conservatory. Peled founded the Mount Vernon Virtuosi five...

Today, it’s Midday on Music.  A little later we’ll hear from the ‘cellist Amit Peled and his Mt. Vernon Virtuosi ‘Cello Gang . But we begin with the composer and flutist Allison Loggins Hull.                                                       This Sunday afternoon, the celebrated singer-songwriter Toshi Reagon will team-up with the contemporary music ensemble Alarm Will Sound to present the wor...

In his new book, Stop the Road:  Stories from the Trenches of Baltimore’s Road Wars , retired city planner E. Evans Paull tells the story of transportation plans that were overtly racist, and disastrously short-sighted. Had it not been for the tenacious efforts of neighborhood activists, some of Baltimore’s most cherished and beloved historic neighborhoods would be very different places today. Tho...

Mobile sports betting has arrived in Maryland . On November 23rd — just in time for the Thanksgiving onslaught of football and the World Cup — Marylanders were allowed to place wagers on their phones. In these early weeks of legalized mobile betting, from TV to Twitter, we have been bombarded with ads trying to entice us to register with one or more of seven “sportsbooks,” as the betting apps are...

Tom's Midday Newsmaker guest today is Maryland’s senior senator, Ben Cardin.  The senator is a longtime member of the Foreign Relations Committee. He was at the COP 27 Climate Change Conference last month in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, alongside House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as they led their respective US congressional delegations at the summit. When President Joe Biden addressed the gathering, he pledg...

It’s the Midday Healthwatch , with Dr. Leana Wen. COVID numbers are up , compounded by big increases in rates of influenza and RSV. Is there a full blown COVID surge on the way in the US? Experts fear that there may be a surge in China . Will highly transmissible Omicron variants prove to be too much for China’s zero-COVID policy to handle? And the advances made in telemedicine during the pandemic...

It's time again for a visit with Midday theatre critic J. Wynn Rousuck , who joins us each week with her reviews of Maryland's regional stage. Today, Judy shares her thoughts on Macabaret , the whimsically macabre musical revue now on stage at Baltimore's Stillpointe Theatre . Written by Scott Keys and Rob Hartmann, Macabaret is a collection of darkly humorous story-songs dealing with everything f...

Today, we begin the hour with another installment of Midday at the Movies ,  our monthly convo about films and filmmaking. Tom's guest is one of our favorite film aficionados: Jed Dietz , the founder and former director of the Maryland Film Festival and Parkway Theater ,  who joins us on Zoom. (Our other regular movie maven, Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday , was unable to join us today, b...

Joining Tom now is Democratic Congressman and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer . He has represented southern Maryland's 5th District in the House since 1981 and was just re-elected to his 22nd term, making him far and away the longest-serving member of Congress in Maryland's history. And he has also earned an important place in American history. He has been an influential and consequential part of Demo...

Once again, murders in our city continue to be committed with alarming, frightening and painful frequency. As you’ve undoubtedly heard, more than 300 people have been killed in Baltimore for the 8th consecutive year. The horrible count stands at 308 as of this morning. That’s exactly the number of people killed up to this date last year. 652 people have been wounded by gunfire in 2022, three fewer...

The elections this month produced historic results as regards representation of African Americans in the electoral hierarchy of Baltimore City and the state of MD. The governor, attorney general, state superintendent of schools and state treasurer are all accomplished Black men. Here in Baltimore City, Black male leaders include the Mayor, the City Council President, the comptroller, the city stat...

And now, another installment in our occasional series, Midday in the Neighborhood , which we are producing in conjunction with our partners at the Baltimore Banner . Today, we turn our focus to Little Italy , a historic neighborhood filled with great places to eat, and families whose legacies extend back for generations. Joining Tom in Studio A is Baltimore Banner neighborhood reporter Clara Longo...

Last week, for the eighth consecutive year, Baltimore reached the grim milestone of more than 300 homicides in the year, with a month still to go. There are those who insist on telling the story of our city by focusing on the number of murders. But to tell it only through the lens of crime is, of course, to tell our city’s story incompletely, and it does a disservice to those who help make Baltimo...

(This conversation first aired on September 28, 2022) Good afternoon and welcome to an archive edition of Midday.  This past Wednesday - the night before Thanksgiving - a beloved Baltimore television newsman made his final appearance in a newscast, before retiring after a 52-year career. Stan Stovall is an award-winning news anchor who has been a fixture on local television for decades. In 1971, a...