Midday

Midday guest host Matt Bush talks with WYPR's Baltimore County reporter John Lee about the competitive campaigns to replace outgoing Baltimore County Executive Katherine Klausmeier this November.

J. Wynn Rousuck reviews 'Wicked,' on stage at Baltimore Hippodrome Theatre and the play's movie adaptation, 'Wicked: For Good.'

Movie mavens Jed Dietz and Max Weiss join Tom to compare notes on their favorite movies of 2025, and talk about the latest trends in the film industry.

Author and word-nerd Stefan Fatsis shares his experience as a lexicographer-in-training at America's most famous dictionary publisher, Merriam-Webster.

Dr. Leana Wen joins us to discuss controversial changes to childhood vaccination schedules, rising flu and measles cases in the US and her concerns about the efficacy and safety of medical cannabis.

Writer Marion Winik talks about the 30th anniversary reissue of her powerful memoir of love and loss, featuring a new introduction by the author, and a new audiobook.

WYPR's Scout Maucione was at a rally of Maryland residents opposing the US military attacks on Venezuela.

WYPR's Nathanael Miller has the latest on plans for massive data centers in Western Maryland.

CES is one of the biggest consumer technology conferences in the world. Tech insider Jason Michael Perry gives a preview live from Las Vegas, Nevada.

The second installment of author Rick Atkinson's "The Revolution Trilogy" describes a difficult, pivotal phase of the American war of independence from Britain.

Prize-winning historian Martha S. Jones's The Trouble of Color explores the way racial classifications in America have impacted Black families and identity.

Bohannon's best-selling 2023 book, now out in paperback, delves into ancient mysteries about the evolution of the female body and its impact on the human species.

(This episode of Midday originally aired on April 23, 2025.) Best-selling writer, Amor Towles, is the author of three novels, including A Gentleman in Moscow, which was adapted for a television series on Paramount+ starring Ewan McGregor. Towles joins Midday to discuss the writing of his latest work, a brilliant compilation of six short stories set in New York, and a novella set in the golden age...

(This interview was originally broadcast on April 23, 2025) Journalist and author Ruth Franklin joins Midday. Her biography of the writer Shirley Jackson won the National Book Critics Circle Award nine years ago. Franklin's latest book, The Many Lives of Anne Frank, is another biography. She writes about Frank, the young Jewish girl whose diary, published years after she perished in a Nazi death c...

(This conversation was originally broadcast on November 25, 2024) Best-selling author Ann Patchett joins Midday to talk about her most recent book, an annotated edition of her 2001 popular novel, Bel Canto.   In the latest version, Patchett walks us through what she wrote, page by page, and comments on what she thinks could be improved. She shares insights into her creative process with the same k...

(This episode originally aired on Midday on May 12, 2025.) Internationally-acclaimed writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie joins Midday to discuss her latest novel. Dream Count is her first work of fiction since Americanah, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award 12 years ago. Adichie's latest novel is a rumination on friendship and feminism, and a study of what makes relationships work and why...

Midday host Tom Hall remembers some of his remarkable Baltimore friends and fellow travelers who departed this Earth in 2025.

Helicon & Friends join Midday in Studio A for a preview of their live Winter Solstice Concerts Saturday at Goucher College's Kraushaar Auditorium.

Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck reviews "Deceived," Everyman Theatre's production of a 2024 adaptation of the classic play, "Gas Light."

Tom's guest today is the president of the Baltimore City Council, Zeke Cohen. He’s been a strong advocate for a package of zoning bills that originally enjoyed wide support from the council, but now it appears that some members are having second thoughts.      Tom and the council president discuss what kind of input from the community council members have received in recent weeks, and what that me...

What happens when a predominately-white evangelical megachurch in the Midwest creates a program to address racial inequity? Dr. Hahrie Han followed the journey of Crossroads Church in Ohio, where Pastor Chuck Mingo said he felt called by God to combat racial injustice, within the church and their wider Cincinnati community. Han's book, released in September 2024, is called Undivided: The Quest for...

If you walked into a Baltimore night club in the 1980s or 1990s, you were likely to hear something like I Got The Rhythm by Sounds of Silence. Baltimore Club Music featured fast-paced, repetitive beats, low-fidelity vocals, a dizzying array of samples and raunchy humor. The influential genre of electronic dance music blossomed in places like Odell’s Nightclub or Club Fantasy into a beloved symbol...

Midday on Music continues as Tom is joined in the studio by Geoffrey Himes. Himes is an award-winning author, music journalist and podcaster who wrote about music in the Washington Post for 23 years. He has also written for Rolling Stone, the New York Times, Downbeat, Jazz Times, and many other publications. His books include In Law Country: How Emmylou Harris, Rosanne Cash, and Their Circle Fashi...

In an era of acute political and social polarization, it's tempting to think of people in America and around the world as sequestered in insular camps, talking over each other and rarely achieving a meeting of the minds that can lead to cooperation and progress. But separating and isolating ourselves from each other attenuates or destroys any chance we might have to grow together from the collecti...

Jane Leavy's latest book is a fact-rich pitch for new rules in baseball to bring more fairness — and fun — back to "America's pastime."