Midday

Today, we're going to talk about Title IX . What's Title IX? It's a statute within the Education Act passed by the US Congress in 1972 which states that: "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance." That has...

Last month, to the surprise of many, the United States Senate passed, by voice vote, a measure that would keep Daylight Saving Time year round. No more falling back in November and springing forward in March. The bill still has to clear the House. Neither Speaker Nancy Pelosi nor President Biden has said whether or not they support it. We tried this once before. In 1974, Congress tried permanent D...

It's time again for a visit with Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck , who joins Tom each week with her reviews of the regional stage. Today Judy spotlights a new production of playwright Kate Hamill 's 2016 adaptation of Jane Austen's classic novel, Sense and Sensibility , live on stage at Baltimore's Everyman Theatre. Hamill's spirited but faithful adaptation of the 1811 best-seller follows th...

The 2022 Session of the Maryland General Assembly came to a close last night in Annapolis, at midnight, with most of the business of the legislature wrapped-up before Sine Die and the bang of the final gavel. Governor Larry Hogan called this year’s session the best he’s had in his eight years in office. Senate President Bill Ferguson agreed that it was successful. He described it as &l...

It's the Midday Healthwatch , our monthly focus on public health issues with Dr. Leana Wen . For weeks, the state testing positivity rate for COVID 19 has been below 2%. But it’s starting to creep up again. As of this morning, it stands at 2.42%, nearly twice what it was three weeks ago. At last week’s Gridiron Club dinner in Washington, about a dozen political A-listers, including Att...

I’m not going to talk about it. I’m going to be clear up top, I’ve talked about it enough. I kept talking about it. I kept thinking about it.  I don’t want to talk about it, and you can’t make me talk about it... But I have a question…Do you want to talk about?..." -- The comedian and actor Jerrod Carmichael , in his SNL monologue last week. “The Sla...

Today, a conversation about problems with Baltimore’s water system. Aging infrastructure, ineffective accounting and billing, and high costs to rate-payers are just some of the challenges facing the City's Department of Public Works (DPW). Two weeks ago, problems got worse. The Maryland Secretary of the Environment, Ben Grumbles, ordered that the authority over the operations of the Back Riv...

It's time again for a visit with Midday 's theater critic, J. Wynn Roususk , who joins us every week with her reviews of the regional stage. Today's she tells us about Pretty Woman: The Musical, the touring company production of the hit Broadway show that's currently lighting up the stage at Baltimore's Hippodrome Theatre. Based on the popular 1990 movie of the same name (which starred Richard Ger...

Tom's next guest is Young Vo , a Baltimore-based artist, animator, and illustrator whose new children's picture book, Gibberish , has just been published by Levine Querido . Vo's debut story of a young Asian immigrant who struggles to understand the language of his newly adopted home country mirrors Vo's own experience after coming to the United States as a young refugee from Vietnam. Young Vo joi...

It's Midday with the Mayor, and Baltimore City Mayor Brandon Scott joins Tom Hall for another of their monthly live conversations about key issues on the mayor's and the city's agenda. In today's installment, they discuss the major points in Mayor Scott's State of the City address, the $45 million in state anti-crime funds, the problems at two of the city's wastewater treatment plants, a new city...

One of these days, it’s gonna get warm and sunny, and when it does, a lot of us will head Back to the Garden .    That's what we're doing today on Midday , in another of our seasonal conversations about what we're all growing around our homes, in our yards and our community gardens.  And joining us once again with answers to all of your plant and gardening questions is Carrie...

Yesterday, Governor Larry Hogan signed into law a revised map with new boundaries for Congressional districts, after a judge in Anne Arundel County threw out the original map drawn by Democrats last December. When MD Attorney General Brian Frosh changed his decision to appeal that ruling, the Governor agreed to the new maps , saying in a statement, that the maps, quote, “weren't, in my opini...

The American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore has garnered international attention as a unique, national museum and education center dedicated to "intuitive, self-taught" artistry. It is the brainchild of Rebecca Hoffberger , its founder and director for the past 27 years. Last summer, Rebecca announced that she would be retiring as the museum’s director and primary curator. Earlier this mo...

The images from Ukraine are shocking and horrifying. Civilians bound and murdered, left on the streets of Bucha. A ghostly parade of bombing survivors in Mariupol, ash covered, reminiscent of people fleeing lower Manhattan after the 9/11 attacks. A family gunned down on the street as they fled across a burned-out bridge over the Irpin River. Children, numb with fear after days on end hiding in dan...

Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck , who brings us her reviews of the regional stage each week, joins Tom today to spotlight The Folks at Home , a new comedy now getting its world premiere at Baltimore Center Stage. Written by Baltimore's own R. Eric Thomas (whose other new play, Crying on Television , is premiering at Everyman Theatre next month), The Folks at Home is a TV sitcom-inspired romp...

As Ukraine continues its war with Russian invaders, tensions in the Middle East are once again on the rise. Eleven people have been killed in terror attacks in Israel and the West Bank during the past week-and-a-half. Several others were severely injured. Today on Midday, a conversation with a Jewish progressive advocate for peace in the Middle East. Tom's guest is Daniel Sokatch . He’s the...

Today, it’s another installment in our series of Conversations with the Candidates: 2022 . Tom's guest is Maryland Congressman Anthony Brown (D. , Dist. 4 ) who has announced that he will not stand for re-election to the House of Representatives, but rather, run in the Democratic primary for Maryland Attorney General. The incumbent, Democrat Brian Frosh , will retire at the end of this term....

Tom's next guest is a scholar of Urban Education who is the creator of the Hip Hop Ed social media movement , which explores the intersection of hip hop and education. Dr. Christopher Emdin is the author of several books, including the New York Times best-seller, For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood and the Rest of Y’All Too , and STEM, STEAM, Make Dream . Dr. Emdin is a Professor of Educat...

Today, a conversation about racial inequality in the practice of medicine. A few months ago, a friend of Tom Hall, Ruby Hearn, put him in touch with a physician named Dr. Richard Reynolds . In the 1950s, as a young resident at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Dr. Reynolds and the Chief Resident, Dr. Wilbur Mattison, were the first to admit African Americans to the Whites-only ward at Johns Hopkins. Ruby th...

Primary elections in Maryland have been delayed until July 19. Last week, a judge in Anne Arundel County Circuit court rejected the lines for new Congressional districts drawn by Democrats in the MD General Assembly. This morning, Speaker of the House Adrienne Jones and Senate President Bill Ferguson introduced a new map to a joint hearing of the Senate and House of Delegates. Judge Lynne Battagli...

Before we begin the latest installment in our series of Conversations with the Candidates: 2022, a word about the redistricting plan created by the Maryland General Assembly: it ain’t happening, at least for now. On Friday, Judge Lynn A. Battaglia ruled in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court that the map for new Congressional districts submitted by the Democratic-controlled legislature is unco...

It's time again for a visit with Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck , who joins Tom each week with her reviews of the regional stage. Today, she spotlights two new community theater productions. The first is A Doll's House, Part 2, playwright Lucas Hnath's modern-day, 2017 sequel to Henrik Ibsen's iconic 1879 play about a married woman's quest for self-fulfillment in a male-dominated world, on...

Today on Midday , we are going to talk about the case of Keith Davis, Jr. , who is accused by the Baltimore State’s Attorney of murdering Kevin Jones in 2015. Mr. Davis has already been tried four times for this murder. Two of those trials ended in hung juries. The other two, including the most recent one, ended in guilty verdicts that were overturned. Mr. Davis remains in jail while awaitin...

Today on Midday , we continue our election-year interview series, Conversations with the Candidates: 2022 . Tom's guest is Ivan J. Bates . He announced last November that he is running in the Democratic primary for Baltimore City State’s Attorney . Last Monday night, Thiru Vignarajah announced that he is joining the race. It is assumed that the incumbent, Marilyn Mosby , will seek reelection...

Tom's Newsmaker guest on Midday today is Baltimore City Police Commissioner Michael S. Harrison ... The scourge of violence in Baltimore continues. Since the beginning of the year, the number of homicides and non-fatal shootings has outpaced the horrific numbers from last year. The FBI has mandated that the city change the way it collects crime data. Will that change improve the efficacy of the fi...