On The Record

As she came to know more about Virginia Hall, the World War II spy who outwitted Nazis occupying southern France, Annapolis writer Erika Robuck  was intimidated. She wanted to like Hall, who had been raised in Baltimore. But Hall’s self-control and tenacity made her seem scary. Then Robuck’s research led her to a declassified war report. Robuck fell in love with the modest heroine...

The whole world has been waiting for Covid-19 vaccines. Now that some are available, where are the doses going? Bioethicist  Ruth Faden  of  Johns Hopkins Berman Institute , explains the complexities  and inequities of the global rollout. Even with the current delays and chaotic distribution in the U.S., she says for much of the world, the wait will be much longer, “We&rs...

African-American women claim credit for much of the organizing, and voting-rights vigilance behind Democratic wins in the last election. You can find roots of that tradition in historian  Martha Jones ’s  latest book.  She describes how African-American women strategized, organized, preached and marched for the vote--sometimes alongside white suffragists, sometimes alone. They...

Each February the U.S. celebrates Black History Month to commemorate successes and struggles of the past.  Hotel Revival ’s  Jason Bass  plans to turn that on its head. Not to dispel the importance of African-American icons, but to hold up changemakers of the present. We get a preview of the community conversations happening this month, that highlight local Black business owne...

Here's a Stoop Story from  Mike Molina  about the power of words, and the power of forgiveness. You can hear his story and many others at  stoopstorytelling.com  or on the stoop podcast. 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...

More doses of vaccines are coming to Maryland--but only for adults. No Covid vaccine yet exists for anyone younger than 16.    University of Maryland pediatrics professor Dr. James Campbell, an expert on infectious diseases and testing vaccines, predicts there could be a vaccine for younger teens later this spring and for grade-school-age kids in the summer. Meanwhile, he urges adults to...

Governor Hogan wants public schools to move into hybrid instruction by next month, bringing more students and staff back to classrooms. Jim Sellinger , Chancellor of Education for the Archdiocese of Baltimore, tells how the system’s Catholic schools are managing full-time in-person instruction.  Brian Kohler , principal of Archbishop Curley High School in Baltimore, says he’s obse...

When boxes and papers and family heirlooms take over, it can be hard to find a path forward. For nearly two decades, social worker  Elaine Birchall  has been helping clients with compulsive hoarding disorder. In her book, “Conquer the Clutter” Birchall identifies ways to help people recognize the consequences of hoarding and create a plan to reclaim their space.  Origina...

The  Healing Youth Alliance is an ambitious project that trains Baltimore City teens about mental wellness and how to talk to professionals about what it’s like to be in young people’s shoes. The ultimate goal is a better path to healing for them, and their peers. Founder and director Professor Kyla Liggett-Creel and faculty member Nia Jones , from the Black Mental Health Alliance...

In recent weeks we’ve profiled the  2020 Class of Open Society Institute-Baltimore Fellows , and you’ve heard about their trailblazing work--like mobile kitchens, urban nature centers, mentoring programs. Today we speak with OSI-Baltimore director  Danielle Torain , at the helm for one year. She says the nonprofit is focused on ways to disrupt patterns of underinvestment in s...

Here is a Stoop Story from  Jennifer Mendelsohn  about finding family. You can find information about the Stoop - including upcoming live events and the Stoop podcast -  here . Today would have been the 68th birthday of Dr. Alan Kleiman, a podiatrist who practiced for 40 years in Hampden and made house calls far and wide. He died about six weeks ago. His family tells us he treasured...

Where does the Republican Party go from here? We ask  Michael Steele --past chair of the Republican National Committee and Maryland’s former lieutenant governor, the first African-American elected statewide. Steele sees Donald Trump still in charge of the party of Lincoln, and no sign of fellow Republicans holding him to account. Do you have a question or comment about a show or a story...

We meet two Open Society Institute fellows working to make Baltimore healthier and safer in 2021. Troy Staton  is leveraging the trust between barbers and clients, and creating a network of hair salons that will bring health care screenings and other resources to their neighborhoods. And attorney  E.V. Yost  is recruiting LGBTQ volunteers to staff a hotline and mobile team to respon...

She operated a tower crane at the Bethlehem Steel plant. When the call came one night to cover a coworker’s shift, she had no option for childcare--so she bundled up her infant and kept the baby with her on the tall crane as she worked. That’s just one of the stories, with photos, on big panels along Key Highway that make up the Baltimore Museum of Industry’s first outdoor exhibi...

Even in pre-school,  Jessie Dunleavy’s  son Paul struggled to learn. His disabilities forced him to switch schools over and over. He turned to poetry, and eventually, after several mental-health diagnoses, to drugs. After he died of an overdose, his mother found a poem alluding to his addiction as a moral disgrace. In her memoir, "Cover My Dreams In Ink," Dunleavy recounts the sobe...

Creativity is like a muscle--it gets stronger and more flexible with daily exercise. That’s what the 100 Days Project is after. The online community is all about dedication to making something each day -- and sticking with it, even if you feel you’ve run out of ideas.  Facilitator Lindsay Jean Thomson notes that daily practitioners  of creativity hit the same dry patches of b...

Racial injustices ignited a wave of protests that swept the globe last year and inspired a generation of young people with a lot to say about what they want to make right with the world. We talk with two youth activists:  Destini Philpot  is a co-founder of  Good Kids, Mad City , and  Lynnea Davis  is with  The Intersection . They participate in a panel discussion cel...

Democrats and Republicans are starting the new session of the General Assembly expecting to find common ground on helping Marylanders slammed by the pandemic--like the kinds of subsidies and tax help Gov. Hogan wants them to enact. But Democrats are more inclined than Republicans to blame the Hogan administration for the shambles in unemployment insurance. And Republicans oppose the Democrats' aim...

Many Americans are finding the pandemic has reshaped their sleep schedule, for better or worse. GBMC sleep and pulmonary medicine physician Stephanie Wappel details the side effects of both too little or too much sleep. One habit to avoid-- screen time before bed. And then, artist Landis Expandis is making music videos on everything from an out-of-whack sleep schedule to social distancing. How do...

To make sense of history we often turn to books to help illustrate life in the past. But today we talk with someone who brings history alive by taking it to the streets -- of Baltimore. Historian and author John Muller gives us a preview of his walking tour: The Lost History of Frederick Bailey Douglass. He believes the well-worn stories of the abolitionist’s loftier accomplishments don’t portray...

That was a Stoop Story from Elissa Weissman about her wrapping-paper escapades in London and how to commemorate Hanukkah against all odds. You can hear her story and others at stoopstorytelling dot com, or on the stoop podcast. You can catch a live show coming up, ‘The Stoop Virtual Holiday Hoo-Ha: An evening of seasonal stories, comedy sketches, and music.” It unfolds a week from Saturday, Dec. 1...

When it comes to adding new perspective to the struggle for racial equality, poet Kondwani Fidel is uniquely suited for the job. His latest book is “The Antiracist: How to Start the Conversation About Race and Take Action.” Fidel reflects on his losing friends and family to gun violence in East Baltimore, and on uncovering how poverty and segregation are the intended consequences of embedded racis...

Hunger and isolation are two devastating side effects of the pandemic. But eager volunteers are stepping up. Quinton Askew leads 2-1-1 Maryland, the state’s health and human-services hotline. Volunteers have answered 36,000 calls a month, on average, since March. He describes how 2-1-1 helps seniors grocery shop, take their medications, and navigate telehealth appointments. You can connect by dial...

As hundreds, even thousands, of Maryland residents are diagnosed each day with Covid-19, health workers around the state try to interview them and offer help, ask who they’ve spent stretches of time with recently, and contact those people to warn they may have been exposed. Contact tracing can be a powerful tool to control spread of the virus, but the system is stretched. We hear about it from Dr....

In the midst of the off-the-charts unpredictability of this year, we turn to Amy Webb, founder of the Future Today Institute. She doesn't predict the future. But she’s spent decades analyzing trends and intuiting signals that help governments and global companies plan for the long range. How is the pandemic opening a market for clothing that doesn’t physically exist? Which huge corporations will e...