Midday

We are delighted today to welcome back to Midday the writer Elizabeth Strout . She is the best-selling author of nine novels and many short stories. In 2009, she won the Pulitzer Prize for a terrific book, Olive Kitteridge . A film adaption of that book on HBO starred Frances McDormand and won eight Emmy Awards. Elizabeth Strout has revisited two of her iconic characters in subsequent books. We me...

Queen Elizabeth II , who died September 8 at the age of 96 , was honored in a state funeral Monday morning in London, attended by leaders from around the globe. Hundreds of thousands lined the streets; millions more viewed the somber ceremonies on television, as the Queen's regally bedecked casket was driven from Buckingham Palace's Westminster Hall to its final resting place at the royal family's...

Joining Tom now is journalist Jack Brewster. He’s a senior analyst for NewsGuard , a media monitoring organization based in New York. In this month’s edition of Newsguard’s Misinformation Monitor, he and his colleagues report about misinformation on Tik Tok , an Internet domain that is wildly popular with young people in particular, and which, according to the report, is chock-full of posts that i...

Election day in Maryland is less than two months away. Early voting starts Oct. 27. Election day is Nov. 8. If you are requesting a mail-in ballot, you have until Nov. 1 to request one by mail, and Nov. 4 to request one on-line. Today, the Sarah T. Hughes Center for Politics at Goucher College released a wide-ranging poll, commissioned by WYPR and the Baltimore Banner, that shows the Democratic ca...

Tom's next guest is Jenenne Whitfield , the newly appointed director of AVAM, the American Visionary Arts Museum. She comes to Baltimore from Detroit, where she headed the Heidelberg Project. She succeeds AVAM’s founding director, Rebecca Hoffberger, who led the museum for three decades. If you’re not familiar with AVAM, it’s worth the trip to Key Highway here in Baltimore to check it out. It’s de...

Today, we begin the hour with another edition of Midday with the Mayor , Tom's monthly conversation with Baltimore City Mayor Brandon Scott , about key issues facing the city. Today's topics include: lessons learned during the E. coli contamination incident and the DPW response; the Squeegee Collaborative Community Conversation ; and Gov. Hogan's proposal to hand over the State Center complex to B...

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 Everyman Theatre 's world-premiere production of Dinner and Cake , a debut work by Vietnam-born playwright/actor Tuyết Thị Phạm about race, politics and a family's struggle to bridge deep cultural divides. Paige Hernandez directs...

Today, it’s Midday on the Family.   How can we raise children to value diversity and equity? And why do some kids grow up to be adults who are racist? When the American Psychological Association met this summer for their annual conference in Minneapolis, one of the panel discussions was about the Science of Racism . Researchers and clinicians discussed how racism is studied, who is studying it, an...

Today on Midday , we’re going to talk about sex. Tom's guest is Deborah Roffman , a human sexuality educator and consultant who has been talking about sex to kids and their parents and teachers for 50 years. She’s a longtime faculty member at the Park School here in Baltimore, and she has worked with more than 400 schools and community groups across the country, helping kids with their needs aroun...

After the passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 , Black student enrollment in college grew exponentially, from fewer than 300,000 students in 1966 to two and half million in 2010. But in the decade between 2010 and 2020, overall college enrollment fell, and Black enrollment plummeted even more. The Supreme Court will take-up two affirmative action cases this term, which beg...

Today, a conversation about race and real estate. Tom's first guests are here today to talk about an experience they had that demonstrates the continuing problems that Black homeowners and homebuyers encounter in the housing market. Dr. Nathan Connolly and Dr. Shani Mott teach at Johns Hopkins University. Nathan Connolly is an Associate Professor of History who studies, among other things, redlini...

On today's special edition of Midday , a remembrance of Queen Elizabeth II , who died Thursday at the age of 96. Britain's longest-reigning monarch, she served for 70 years as the matriarch of the Royal Family and Britain's ceremonial head of government. She is succeeded on the throne by her son, now King Charles III, who addresses the nation on Friday at 1pm (Eastern). Tom gets perspectives on th...

The ongoing water contamination problem in West Baltimore will likely prove to be a rare, acute problem. But Baltimore is not without its chronic problems, too. One of them is the challenge of vacant and abandoned housing . Our city has the third highest rate of vacant and abandoned properties in the country. This is according to a new report from the Johns Hopkins 21st Century Cities Initiative ,...

Welcome to another edition of Midday on Higher Education , our continuing series of conversations with university and college presidents across the state of Maryland. Today, Tom's guest for the hour is Dr. Valerie Sheares Ashby , a chemist and university professor whose tenure as the new president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County began August 1. The first woman to hold the post, she...

And now, it’s the Midday Healthwatch.   Tom's guest is Dr. Leana Wen , an emergency physician and visiting professor at George Washington University . She’s also a former Health Commissioner of the city of Baltimore, and a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution , as well as a commentator for CNN and a columnist for the Washington Post. Her latest book is called Lifelines: A Doctor's Journey in...

It was a rain-soaked Tuesday morning, but for folks in West Baltimore, it was water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink. E. coli bacteria has been detected in part of the water supply, and joining Tom with an update is Jason Mitchell , the Director of the Baltimore Department of Public Works … John Bullock joins us as well. He is the member of the Baltimore City Council who represents the ni...

(The original broadcast of this program on January 7, 2022, featured musical examples of Paul McCartney’s work. Due to copyright laws, we could not include them on this Webpost or on Midday's podcast. The audio we've posted contains the complete conversation between Tom Hall and Paul Muldoon.) Rolling Stone Magazine  called Paul McCartney's "Yesterday"  “the best song of the 20th century.” It’s be...

(This conversation first aired on January 12, 2022) Back in January of this year,  President Joe Biden  and  Vice President Kamala Harris  traveled to Atlanta to speak about the importance of  voting rights ,  and the need for federal legislation to overcome the dozens of state laws that have been enacted and the hundreds of laws that are being considered to restrict voting. Currently, legislation...

(This conversation originally aired on December 8, 2021) The  House Select Committee  investigating the insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 has interviewed hundreds of witnesses and made several criminal referrals to the  US Justice Department  for witnesses who have refused to appear before the Committee. Meanwhile, hundreds of rioters have been indicted and many imprisoned for thei...

(This conversation was originally broadcast on April 26, 2022) Good afternoon and welcome to an encore edition of  Midday . Tom's guest today is  Dorothy Roberts , a professor of law and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of four books, including  Killing the Black Body,   about systemic abuse of African American women, and  Fatal Invention ,  which explores the relatio...

Tom's guest today is  Eric Holder , who served as the 82nd  Attorney General of the United States  during the first six years of the Obama Administration. He was the first African American to serve in that position. Today, he is working to advance voting rights with the organization he founded in 2016 and now chairs called the  National Democratic Redistricting Committee . The NDRC works to remedy...

(This conversation originally aired on April 27, 2022) Welcome to an archive edition of Midday . We’re going to listen to a conversation Tom had in the spring of 2022 with Dr. Terry Anne Scott , the chair of the History Department at Hood College  and a good friend of the  Midday  show. Dr. Scott has written a book that is as difficult as it is important. It chronicles the evolution of mob violenc...

(This conversation originally aired on July 28, 2022) Welcome to this encore edition of Midday.  Tom's guest for the hour is the award-winning author and journalist Mark Leibovich . He was the Chief National Correspondent for the New York Times   for 10 years, before moving to The Atlantic  this past spring. He’s the author of four books, including the number one NY Times bestseller, This Town , ...

(This conversation originally aired on February 22, 2022) Welcome to Midday .  Tom's guest today on this encore edition is Jabari Asim , one of the country’s most imaginative and versatile writers, whose body of work encompasses fiction and non-fiction, poetry, plays and children’s literature. He’s a former editor of The Crisis  ,  the journal of the NAACP , and the Washington  Post,   where he wr...

Today, we revisit a conversation Tom had in May with John Waters . He’s the director of 16 films, a visual artist with museum shows to his credit, a spoken word artist who performs in venues around the world, an actor, and a pitchman for haute couture.  He is also a Son of Baltimore and one of America’s most original and enduring voices in the arts, with a deep artistic palette. Waters is the auth...