Midday

(This conversation was originally aired on May 31, 2021) Welcome back to this archive edition of Midday.  Our program continues with a conversation about one of the darkest chapters in American history. One hundred years ago this past May 31st, a white mob rampaged in a two-day campaign of terror that wiped-out a thriving black community in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Greenwood section of that city,...

  (This conversation was originally aired on April 9, 2021) On this archive edition of Midday, we revisit Tom's conversation last Spring with the author of a book about three accomplished Black women: Alberta King , Louise Little and Berdis Baldwin . It’s part biography of these women, and part clarion call for recognition of all Black women. Anna Malaika Tubbs writes that erasure, mis-...

Today on Midday , a chronicle of stand-up comedy. Tom's guest is Wayne Federman . He has been a touring comedian for nearly 40 years. He has appeared on the Tonight Show multiple times, and he was a writer for Jimmy Fallon . Federman has written a book that traces the evolution of standup comedy, from the 19th century when lecturers offered thoughts on serious subjects that they peppered with the...

(This conversation was originally aired on March 22, 2021) Welcome to an encore edition of Midday .  Tom's guest today has written a thoughtful and insightful book on the subject of racial inequality. Heather McGhee is the former head of the think tank, Demos, an organization that focuses on inequality. She is now the Chair of the board of Color of Change , an on-line racial justice advocacy...

(This conversation was originally aired on July 13, 2021) Tom's guest today is the journalist and best-selling author Lionel Shriver . She is the author of 14 novels, including We Need to Talk About Kevin , an international hit that was awarded the Orange Prize in 2005, and made into a movie starring Tilda Swinton. Her novel, So Much for That , was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2010. H...

In April and May of this year, 7.6 million people quit their jobs . It’s been dubbed The Great Resignation . In a poll released last month, Gallup reported that almost half of employed Americans are thinking about changing jobs. The report suggested that The Great Resignation might better be called The Great Discontent. This, despite some very shaky economic times caused by the COVID-19 pand...

It's time for another visit with Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck , who joins Tom today with her review of Steel Magnolias , Robert Harling's popular 1987 play that's getting a notably live production at Baltimore's Everyman Theatre — the company's first live on-stage presentation since the pandemic forced theaters to close in March 2020.** The play, directed at Everyman by Casey Stangl...

And now, an update on the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan . Reports from the area outside Karzai Airport describe ongoing chaos and danger for those who are attempting to leave the country, as the US and other countries rush to evacuate their citizens and Afghans who assisted NATO forces over the last 20 years. After the Taliban gained control of Kabul on Sunday, the scene at Karzai Airport...

In a press conference in Annapolis yesterday, Gov. Larry Hogan announced new vaccine protocols for people who work in hospitals and in nursing homes. They will be required to show proof of vaccination or submit to regular testing. And, those who are not yet vaccinated will need to act fast. All employees of hospitals and nursing homes have until September 1st to get their first dose of the vaccine...

And now, an update on Afghanistan . On Sunday, the President, Ashraf Ghani, fled the country as the Taliban made their way into Kabul. He and his family have re-surfaced in the United Arab Emirates. Officials there said they welcomed him on “humanitarian grounds.”On the real ground in Afghanistan, the situation remains tense and unpredictable. Yesterday, the Pentagon announced it had s...

We begin today with   the challenge of digital equity in Baltimore City. Forty percent of Baltimore’s 243 thousand households lack wired internet service. What would it take to get those homes connected, and to connect all of the city’s public institutions, our public housing units, our recreation centers, and our small businesses? What other cities can serve as paradigms? What wo...

Today on Midday , a conversation about prison reform. In March 2020, as the COVID-19 crisis began and as part of the CARES Act passed by Congress, Attorney General William Barr allowed certain low-level offenders to serve their sentences under home confinement, a move intended to decrease prison populations and cut down transmission of the coronavirus. For 76-year-old Gwen Levi , who had been inca...

K-12 students and teachers across the country will be returning to in-person learning in the next couple of weeks. The CDC recently issued guidelines for making schools safe as the nation experiences a significant uptick in COVID-19 cases, particularly in the south. But mandates and requirements for masking and vaccination vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. To better understand the science be...

Now, we turn to our good friends, Aaron Henkin and Wendel Patrick . They are the creative team behind WYPR's award-winning podcast series, Out of the Blocks.    The premise of the series is genius-simple: the producers pick a block, here in Baltimore, or elsewhere, they interview and photograph the people who live and work in that block, and they edit together a collage of profiles of th...

It’s the Midday Newswrap.   Tom's first guests today are two members of the award-winning WYPR news team: Emily Sullivan , who covers Baltimore city Hall and all things Baltimore; and John Lee , who is our Baltimore County correspondent. We discuss their coverage of the recent controversries over efforts to oversee the work of local Inspectors General. Baltimore County Executive Johnny...

In her 2018 book, How To Be Alone, If You Want To, And Even If You Don't , the comedian, writer and actor Lane Moore describes herself as a hopeless romantic. “When I tell men I’m a hopeless romantic,” she writes, “they look at me the same way they do when I tell them I have food allergies: It’s not a dealbreaker, but they’d rather it wasn’t a thing. And y...

The barrage of books on Donald Trump continues. The Guardian  newspaper counts as many as 4,500 tomes about the megalomaniac former US president, including nearly 20 that Trump claims to have written himself. In just the past few weeks, the huge opus of extended works on Trump has grown by three. Michael Wolf released Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency.    Michael Ben...

It's time for another visit from Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck , who joins Tom today with her reviews of two popular William Shakespeare classics now in live production in our region. The first is Twelfth Night , the Bard's gender-bending comedy, in an original and eclectic production by a newly formed theater troupe called Her Majesty and Sons. Adapted and directed by Séamus Miller...

Tom's guest today is a MacArthur award -winning physician who is the founder and director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity. Dr. Lisa Cooper is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Equity in Health and Healthcare, and Professor of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She is also the author of the new book, Why Are Health Disparities Everyone’s Problem? , in which s...

We are delighted to welcome back to the show Dr. Carla Hayden . She was the CEO of the Enoch Pratt Library here in Baltimore for 23 years, and in 2016, President Barack Obama appointed her as the 14th Librarian of Congress, the first woman and the first African American to hold the distinguished position as head of the nation's library. The Library of Congress is the country’s oldest cultura...

The US Senate worked through the weekend — for the second week in a row — to try to come to agreement on an infrastructure bill . Senator Rob Portman of Ohio and Senator Kirsten Sinema of Arizona led a bipartisan group of 10 Senators to stitch together an agreement. The final vote tally on Tuesday morning — 69 ayes to 30 nays — included 19 Republicans who joined Democrats t...

This past weekend, August 6th through 8th, was a Ceasefire Weekend , one of four observed each year by Baltimore Ceasefire 365, the grassroots, community-led non-profit organized in 2017 in response to Baltimore's epidemic of violence. The Weekends, held annually on the Mother's Day weekend in May and the first weekends of February, August and November, are designed to galvanize community interest...

Almost everybody these days has a horror story about the US Postal Service. The medication that was late arriving, or which never arrived at all. The New Yorker magazines that arrive three at a time, months after their publication dates. The Christmas card, the Mother’s Day card, the birthday card that arrives weeks or months after being dropped in the mail. Once the most popular institution...

We begin today with another edition of Midday at the Movies , our monthly look at films and the filmmaking industry. Tom is joined once again (on Zoom) by our movie regulars: Ann Hornaday , a film critic for the Washington Post and author of the bestselling movie-goers’ guide, Talking Pictures: How To Watch Movies , and Jed Dietz the founding director of the Maryland Film Festival, and the r...

We open this segment with a recording of internationally acclaimed opera star Denyce Graves , singing "American Anthem" in the Rotunda of the US Capitol at the memorial service for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg in September of last year. Justice Ginsberg was a big fan of opera, and a big fan of Denyce Graves, and in that regard the Justice is most certainly not alone. Denyce Graves has sung in the m...