On The Record

Art has the power to inspire us … can it also be an agent of social change? Randi Pupkin , founder and executive director of Art with a Heart, believes it can. One of the nonprofit’s programs, the Art of Leadership, brings together diverse high school students to learn about empathy and creative problem-solving---giving them first-hand experiences with Baltimore’s successes and...

The COVID pandemic did not end the HIV-AIDS epidemic; it may have obscured it for a while, raising hurdles to getting tested for HIV. This virus pummels the Black community: Among people newly infected with HIV in 2019, African-Americans showed up at three times their share of U.S. population. Ahead of Black HIV-AIDS Awareness Day next week, we talk to Dr. Sarah Schmalzle , medical director of the...

Here’s a Stoop Story from Ta’Von Vinson about turning his HIV diagnosis into a calling. A note - this story talks about thoughts of suicide. Find more Stoop Stories here , and check out upcoming live events .  Do you have a question or comment about a show or a story idea to pitch? Contact On the Record at: Senior Supervising Producer, Maureen Harvie she/her/hers mharvie@wypr.org...

Advocates are renewing a push in Annapolis to amend Maryland’s constitution so that it would guarantee a right to a healthful environment--and a right to sue over threats to the environment. Staci Hartwell, climate-justice chair for the NAACP Maryland State Conference , says it’s about racial justice. Monica Brooks tells how an amendment might have boosted citizen efforts in Wicomico C...

110,000 Marylanders have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. More than twice that many care for them. And both numbers are growing. In June last year, the FDA approved the first new drug in 17 years to treat Alzheimer’s. University of Maryland neurologist Dr. Paul Fishman says sophisticated new scans can detect in the brains of more people the abnormal proteins that mark Alzheimer...

Stroke can be debilitating. Many survivors live with reduced mobility even after long, intensive therapy.  Dr. John Krakauer  is chief medical advisor at MindMaze, a digital neuro-therapeutics company that harnesses the brain’s natural ability to heal. He hopes to improve the odds for patients in rehabilitation: “What we’re trying to do is to create something compliment...

Long-distance love can be a challenge. Long-distance love across continents -- well that’s another story. A story told through eight hundred and seventy four letters that singer, composer and writer Alexandra Palting is turning into a musical -- with the apt title: eight hundred seventy four.  It’s the story, the love story, of her Filipino immigrant grandparents. But Palting also...

Here's a Stoop Story from Robbin Lee about family heritage, family grudges and the power of forgiveness.  Do you have a question or comment about a show or a story idea to pitch? Contact On the Record at: Senior Supervising Producer, Maureen Harvie she/her/hers mharvie@wypr.org 410-235-1903 Senior Producer, Melissa Gerr she/her/hers mgerr@wypr.org 410-235-1157 Producer Sam Bermas-Dawes he/him...

Today: our monthly installment of Pass the Mic, when we invite a host to choose the guests and direct the narrative.  Journalist Lisa Snowden-McCray talks to Kelly Davis , wife of Keith Davis Jr., who has been jailed since 2015 on murder charges. Four trials have produced two hung juries and two convictions that were overturned. Kelly talks about why education is key to her unrelenting advoca...

Half a century after the 13th Amendment ended slavery, people who had been slaveholders continued to serve in Congress. Washington Post reporter Julie Weil describes her research into the more than 1700 Congressmen who were enslavers at some point in their lives . Check out the WaPo Q&A about this research. One of those members of Congress was Charles Carroll of Carrollton. We hear from curato...

Covering politics for decades for NPR, Mara Liasson juggles the clues that signal what voters are thinking: polling about who approves and disapproves of the job President Biden is doing, factors that worry them, like Covid surges and soaring inflation, and patterns of past rejections of the party in power. But Liasson says now she sees more caustic polarization than she ever has--sharpened, in he...

Nearly 40 million Americans suffer from migraine attacks. They’ve been viewed as a ‘middle-aged white woman’s malady,’ but research shows otherwise. Dr. Courtney White  talks about racial disparities in treatment and why the syndrome is misunderstood: “People think it’s just a bad headache and that you can tough through it -- take some over the counter medi...

Bundle up! The Natural History Society of Maryland is gearing up for outdoor expeditions this weekend. Professor Vanessa Beauchamp leads a tree identification tour at Towson University’s Glen Arboretum and says you’ll be surprised by what a simple twig can reveal. Plus, Naturalist Kerry Wixted says a winter hike along the Patuxent River holds lots of surprises. Growing up, she thought...

Here's a Stoop story by Christina Porter about life lessons she learned as a Lyft driver. You can hear more stories at Stoopstorytelling.com . Do you have a question or comment about a show or a story idea to pitch? Contact On the Record at: Senior Supervising Producer, Maureen Harvie she/her/hers mharvie@wypr.org 410-235-1903 Senior Producer, Melissa Gerr she/her/hers mgerr@wypr.org 410-235-1157...

Millions of borrowers took advantage of the pandemic’s pause on federal student-loan repayment, put in place by the CARES Act two years ago and extended by President Biden until May 1st. What happens when that pause ends? Danielle Douglas-Gabriel covers the economics of higher education for The Washington Post . She warns that the return to repayment may be bumpy. And Sean McEvoy , Maryland&...

Since the huge voter turnout in 2020, many states are making it harder to vote: Dozens of new laws restrict who can vote; and how, when and where they can do it. University of Baltimore law professor Gilda Daniels , author of Uncounted: The Crisis of Voter Suppression in America , says she’s not surprised.  “It is consistent with history. Which is that we have these cycles of prog...

When millions of African Americans moved from the rural south to northern cities, exclusionary zoning and restrictive covenants worked to constrain their space. Over time, these practices evolved into lending discrimination and then into urban renewal projects that displaced Black communities. Georgetown law professor Sheryll Cashin argues that geography is central to the American residential cast...

This morning, we mark Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday by speaking with local leaders who have taken extraordinary steps during the pandemic to support their neighbors. Bishop Antonio Palmer heads the nondenominational Kingdom Celebration Center in Anne Arundel County. From food distribution to child care, he talks about answering the community’s call for aid. Find information about the...

The Covid-19 omicron variant has thrown the US into another wave of confusion -- how to mask, when and how to test, when to isolate.  Dr. Zachary Berger , a physician at Johns Hopkins and Catholic Charities ‘Esperanza Health Services Clinic,’ shares his thoughts about the current surge in infections … and also ways he see the pandemic further exposing inequities in access t...

Here's a Stoop Story from the founder and president of Heart Smiles , Joni Holifield about punching above your weight class, and winning. Do you have a question or comment about a show or a story idea to pitch? Contact On the Record at: Senior Supervising Producer, Maureen Harvie she/her/hers mharvie@wypr.org 410-235-1903 Senior Producer, Melissa Gerr she/her/hers mgerr@wypr.org 410-235-1157 Produ...

On Monday about one third of Baltimore City Public Schools switched to virtual learning due to spikes in positive covid tests -- to the surprise of many parents across the city. Dr. Sonja Santelises , CEO of the Schools District, walks us through what factored into the last-minute decision … and where things are headed.  And Baltimore Teachers Union president Diamonté Brown tell...

A year ago tomorrow the U.S. House voted to impeach then-President Trump, alleging he had incited insurrection at the Capitol a week earlier, and Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin was immersed in organizing and leading the legal arguments for conviction. It was the hardest thing he’d ever done professionally, Raskin writes in his memoir, "Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of America...

The General Assembly convenes tomorrow, amid a surge in COVID infections. Baltimore Sun state politics reporter Pamela Wood and Maryland Matters editor Danielle Gaines join us to preview issues lawmakers are expected to tackle. Crime is at the fore. While Gov. Hogan pushes a $500-million-dollar increase for law enforcement , Gaines says Democrats think funds would be better spent another way, "The...

Genius is about more than being smart. Journalist and historian Walter Isaacson has written biographies of geniuses from Leonardo da Vinci to Steve Jobs … to Nobel Prize-winning  biochemist Jennifer Doudna. Isaacson, who’ll be speaking in Baltimore tomorrow, says he’s learned genius is more about curiosity … and the creativity that surrounds you. He says some cities...

We typically offer our listeners a Stoop Story each Friday -- We’re diverging from that pattern … to offer you one today. And it’s a perfect fit because this tale comes from a recent Stoop show called: “Didn’t see that coming! Stories about shocks, surprises and real life plot twists!” Here’s a Stoop Story from Mark Gunnery about words spoken to him by a...