Midday

On this month's edition of Midday with the Mayor , Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott joins Tom to discuss the city's latest response to the increasing COVID-19 infection rate and efforts to get more Baltimoreans vaccinated against the virus, plus plans for allocating the funds from the American Rescue Plan , local prospects for federal infrastructure assistance, how the city is preparing for the end o...

Now, we’ll try to sort-out the back and forth that’s been going on with the new order issued Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) conditionally extending the moratorium on housing evictions. It’s been quite a rollercoaster ride, with the White House throwing it in the lap of Congress late last week, just before the previous CDC order expired on Saturday...

It's time once again for a visit from Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck , who joins us today with her review of An Almost Holy Picture , the Pulitzer Prize-nominated 1995 play by Baltimore playwright Heather McDonald, which is getting a new virtual production by Baltimore's Everyman Theatre . Noah Himmelstein directs Everyman's resident company star, Bruce Randolph Nelson, in this reflective o...

During the year and a half that Americans have been homebound by the COVID 19 pandemic, pet adoptions soared, and sales of houseplants have gone through the roof, increasing tenfold in some parts of the country. It makes sense: With unusually long stretches of time at home, many of us have discovered the simple joys of living things: be they four-legged, or placed in pots. Plants bring color and t...

Tom's guest today is Dr. Leana Wen , an emergency room physician who is the former Health Commissioner of Baltimore, a columnist for the Washington Post, a professor of public health at George Washington University, a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a medical analyst for CNN. She is also the co-author of a book called When Doctors Don’t Listen: How to Avoid Misdia...

Tom's Newsmaker guest today is Maryland's senior US senator, Ben Cardin . Back in March, President Joe Biden had a big victory when Congress passed his enormous $2 trillion dollar American Rescue Plan . Since then, Democrats have suffered setbacks with legislation around voting rights and police reform. But Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has expressed confidence that an infrastructure bill can make...

It has been a week in which the Asian American community has been in the news for reasons both triumphant and sorrowful. Sunisa Lee, the 18 year old Hmong-American gymnast, won an Olympic gold medal yesterday in Tokyo. On Tuesday, the man who murdered eight people in metro-Atlanta spas was sentenced to four life terms in prison in four of those murders. Seven of his victims were women of Asian des...

Donald Trump continues to cling to the fabrication that he won the 2020 election, and his embrace of this pernicious and outrageous lie has cost him nothing. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R, Calif.), thirsty to regain power, is shunning Liz Cheney (R, Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R, Ill.) as “Pelosi Republicans,” a truly bizarre bit of oxymoronic branding by a Trump sycophant who...

Yesterday, during nearly three and a half hours of raw, emotional, and often irate testimony, four police officers who were on the front lines of the January 6th battle with pro-Trump rioters at the US Capitol gave the House Select Committee investigating the insurrection detailed accounts of their harrowing experiences on that fateful day. Their remarks were punctuated by video montages that demo...

In a series of three press events on Friday, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott unveiled his Comprehensive Violence Prevention Plan , which seeks to re-position violent crime as a public health epidemic, along with the health problems of COVID-19 and opioid overdose deaths. It is organized around three pillars: a public health approach to violence, engaging the community and coordinating efforts of man...

Tom's guest today is country music artist Brittney Spencer , a Baltimorean who is now making her mark on the Nashville country music scene. Online music platforms Spotify and Pandora call her an artist to watch. She’s been featured in national media, and her debut EP has garnered rave reviews. Country music is all about storytelling. Brittney Spencer brings authenticity and openness to her s...

Today, we go Back to the Garden with Carrie Engel , the veteran Greenhouse Manager and plant specialist at Valley View Farms Nursery in Cockeysville, Maryland. It’s been pretty hot lately, and despite a few torrential downpours, it’s been a dry summer so far. How’s your garden looking? What’s poppin’ and what’s floppin’? What are you planting and what are...

It's time for another visit with Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck , who joins Tom today with her review of Cockpit in Court Summer Theatre 's new live production of And Then There Were None , an adaptation of novelist Agatha Christie's classic who-done-it. Ten strangers are invited to attend a gathering on a remote island mansion and then, one by one, they are murdered by an unseen killer. Th...

Tom's next guest today is Dr. Gigi Gronvall . She’s an immunologist and a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and an Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health . Dr. Gronvall discusses the reasons for the rising COVID infection rates and the urgency of the campaign to persuade...

For 10 days in a row, the state of Maryland has been reporting more than 100 new cases per day of COVID-19. As we heard WYPR's Nathan Sterner report this morning, the state health department announced that Maryland has confirmed 244 new cases of the coronavirus since yesterday. The last time the state recorded more than 200 new cases in a single day was on May 30th. Maryland’s average testin...

Today, a conversation about Nancy Pelosi , the most influential and powerful woman in American political history. Born and raised in a tight-knit Italian family in a home on Albemarle Street in the Little Italy neighborhood of Baltimore, Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi is the daughter of a three-term Baltimore Mayor, and a politically savvy and adroit mother. She learned politics early on, but she...

Baltimore Center Stage is streaming a new virtual production called “A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction.” It’s a timely world premiere by playwright Miranda Rose Hall (who happens to be the daughter of Midday host Tom Hall), that tackles the urgent issue of climate change with both personal passion and scientific rigor. The one-woman play, directed by Taibi Magar and s...

Joining Tom now is Brittany Young , the founder of an organization called B-360 . She offers STEM education to local kids by showing them what they can learn about Science, Technology, Engineering and Math when they ride and study dirt bikes. Her goal is to inspire confidence and responsibility in the young people, and interrupt the school-to-prison pipeline. Ms. Young and B-360 were recently awar...

Tom's first guest today is an artist and community organizer named Errigh Laboo, Jr. , better known in the Baltimore dance community as Neek . He’s the CEO and founder of B More Than Dance , a non profit organization that coaches and inspires young people to elevate their dance talents to art and monetize it in some form of artistic enterprise. He’s one of the people featured in the Ne...

Today, on this archive edition of Midday, Tom Hall's conversation with Michelle Zauner , a terrific composer and musician who has written a wonderful book. One could also say she’s a compelling writer who has a great and popular band. The band is called Japanese Breakfast. The book is called Crying in H Mart. Her band is good because her music speaks to universal notions in a unique and univ...

On June 19th, 1865 , Major General Gordon Granger issued General Order No. 3 in Galveston, TX, declaring that all slaves were free, two months after General Robert E Lee had surrendered to Gen. Ulysses S Grant in Appomattox, VA. Tom's guest on this archive edition of Midday is the author and historian Annette Gordon Reed . She has written a beautiful peroration about the meaning of the holiday tha...

(This interview was first broadcast on May 31, 2021) Next on this archive edition of Midday: a conversation about one of the darkest chapters days 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, which had come to be known as “Bl...

Today, on this archive edition of Midday , we begin with a conversation Tom had a few months ago with Anna Malaika Tubbs , the author of a book about three fascinating 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-recognition and historica...

Tom's guest is the journalist and best-selling author Lionel Shriver . Born in North Carolina, she divides her time today between London and New York. A regular columnist for the Spectator in Britain and Harper’s Magazine in the United States, Ms. Shriver has also written commentary for the New York Times, The Guardian, and The Wall Street Journal, among other publications. She has written m...

Tom's guest today is the internationally acclaimed writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie . She is the author of the novels Americanah , Purple Hibiscus , and Half of a Yellow Sun . She has also published best-selling collections of essays and short stories. She has won several prestigious awards, including the Orange Prize, a National Book Critics Circle Award and a MacArthur Foundation fellowship. Chi...