Last Monday, President Donald Trump flew to the Middle East to address Israeli lawmakers at the Knesset. He then flew to Sharm Al-Sheikh in Egypt for a signing ceremony of a ceasefire agreement, which included Egypt, Qatar, and Turkiye, countries which helped mediate the deal. The ceasefire has held for the most part, although there is much uncertainty about the deal. A condition of the agreement requires Hamas to eventually disarm, which some analysts have called unlikely. Today on Midday, perspective from Ramsey Hanhan, a Palestinian-American poet who lives in Maryland, and Earl El-Amin, the Resident Imam at the Muslim Community Cultural Center of Baltimore. The Muslim Community Cultural Center of Baltimore is hosting an open house this weekend, with exhibits and events focusing on Islam and the African-American experience. Ramsey Hanhan is a former physics professor and author of Fugitive Dreams, a personal memoir illustrating life and conflict in Palestine. His forthcoming book, Palestine Bleeds For You, is a collection of essays and poetry about history, culture, religion and the hope for a better future.
Time now for another visit with Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck, who joins Tom in studio every week with her reviews of the Baltimore regional stage. This week, she spotlights the new Chesapeake Shakespeare Company production of Jane Austen's Persuasion. In Sarah Rose Kearns' new adaptation of Austen's classic 1817 novel, directed for CSC by Megan Behm, audiences follow Anne Elliot through a world of social intrigue, family drama, and romantic love. The period play is set against the backdrop of elegant, Regency-era England in the early 1800s, and buoyed by Austen's renowned wit.
Tom's next guest is Jeff Kinney. The Maryland native and University of Maryland grad is the author and illustrator of the best-selling children’s book series, Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Expanding on his original online comic strip, Kinney launched the award-winning book series in 2007. He’s published a new installment nearly every year since, and the books, written for pre-teen readers, have now sold more than 300 million copies worldwide. The 20th installment in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, Partypooper, hits bookstands on Tuesday, October 21. Kinney is coming to Baltimore’s Dumbarton Middle School the night before — on Monday, October 20 — as part of his international Partypooper Book Tour. Monday's Partypooper Show is a ticketed event that gets under way at 7pm.
Baltimore City Council President Zeke Cohen joins Midday to share his perspective on the pressing issues facing city legislators. Cohen talks about the relocation the Sisson Street Waste Facility, and pushback from neighborhood organizations and environmental groups. Plus, now the council will oversee the city’s response to the opioid crisis. Cohen wants better oversight of how the more than half a billion dollars in settlement will be spent. And a package of zoning and bills designed to make housing more affordable, but which has garnered substantial opposition. Cohen supports the legislation, does he think it will make a difference.
Award-winning investigative reporter Jayne Miller, the host of The Maryland Capital Podcast, joins Midday to talk about Maryland's nascent gubernatorial race, the prospects for new Congressional districts and challenges to two sitting Congressmen.
Joining Tom in the studio now are two long-time Maryland educators and two of the state’s leading advocates for fostering improvements in student behavior and community-building through a social-science approach called “Restorative Practices.” David Hornbeck is the founding chair and executive director of the non-profit Voices for Restorative Schools. He served as Maryland’s Superintendent of Schools from 1976 to 1988, and later spent 6 years as Philadelphia's Superintendent of Schools. David is also the father of Tom's other guest today, Matt Hornbeck. For the past two decades, Matt has served as principal of the Hampstead Hill Academy, a pre-K thru 8th grade charter school in Baltimore. HHA is one of a group of six charters run by the Baltimore Curriculum Project within the City School system. It’s one of the system’s top-performing elementary and middle schools…and it’s also one of the schools where restorative practices have been used to build an inclusive student community and to reduce conflict.
A new initiative seeks to jump-start one of Baltimore’s biggest and most controversial redevelopment projects. The 28-acre State Center site was the subject of development efforts and lawsuits that go back more than 20 years. Could a new plan, backed by Gov. Wes Moore, see wider use for the property? Maryland's Secretary of the Department of General Services Atif Chaudry joins Midday to share the latest.
Maryland is among the top 10 states with the largest spike in reports of online scams and fraud in recent years. According to an analysis of FTC data by the investment website BrokerChooser, Maryland saw a 53 percent increase in reports over the past 5 years. Shari Greene joins Midday to discuss the work of the Older and Disabled Persons Unit in the Economic Crimes Division at the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office. You can find information about contacting her office on their website. Plus, we hear from WYPR host Raquel Razan about her own run in with a scammer, and what she learned from the experience. And then, two experts share tips and insights on how to protect yourself and your loved ones from frauds and scam. Ted Meyerson, AARP Maryland’s lead fraud volunteer, and Clay Campbell of consumer protection organization Greater Maryland Better Business Bureau join the show and bust myths about scams and fraud.
There are about 50 public charter schools in Maryland, educating roughly 24,000 students. 30 of these schools, over half of the total number, are in Baltimore. For some time, there has been a heated debate about funding formulas for public charter schools. Charter schools are independently operated under a contract, or charter, with individual public school systems. Last May, a group of charter schools said they were in danger of closing because some of these systems withheld funding. Will McKenna, the former co-chair of the Maryland Alliance of Public Charter Schools, recently worked with the state education officials, including State Schools Superintendent Carey Wright, to create a better deal for the state's charter schools. He joins Midday to discuss those negotiations and what they mean for the future. McKenna is founder and the executive director of Afya Baltimore, which operates two charter schools in Baltimore.
Dr. Hahrie Han is a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University and the inaugural director of the SNF Agora Institute. Her research focuses on civic and political participation, organizing to social change. Last week, she was named to the 2025 class of MacArthur Foundation Fellows. She and 21 others were each awarded an $800,000, no-strings-attached grant, often called 'genius grants.'
The executive director of the Baltimore Jewish Council reacts to Monday's release by Hamas of the remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza, amid a fragile ceasefire agreement and uncertainty about an Israel-Palestine peace.
Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck joins Tom now for another of her weekly reviews of Baltimore regional theater. Today, she spotlights Hamlet/Black Parade, now on stage at The Mercury Theater, an artist-run performance space in the heart of Baltimore's Station North Arts District. Produced by the creative team of Motte & Bailey and adapted and directed by Hannah Fogler, Hamlet/Black Parade is a unique musical interpretation / mash-up of William Shakespeare's "Hamlet" and alt-rock band My Chemical Romance's classic "The Black Parade" album.
Tom's first guest today is Shankar Vedantam, the creator and host of Hidden Brain, a weekly podcast and radio show heard every Sunday afternoon at 2:00 here on WYPR. Shankar is coming to the Lyric Theater in Baltimore Saturday night with his Hidden Brain Perceptions Tour, a live event that's traveling cross country to celebrate ten years of this award-winning program. The animating question since the inception of Hidden Brain has been: Are there parts of our minds that are hidden from us? Shankar joins Tom on Zoom from Washington, DC, to share some of the insights he's gained from a decade of Hidden Brain explorations. If you have questions or comments for Shankar, you're welcome to join us! Email us at midday@wypr.org or call us at 401.662.8780. The Hidden Brain Perceptions Tour comes to the Lyric Theater in Baltimore Saturday night. The show starts at 7pm. For ticketing information, click here.
Carole King was a 19-year-old songwriter from Brooklyn when she wrote "Take Good Care of My Baby" for the pop singer Bobby Vee. In 1961, the song would become one of nineteen Top-Ten hits Carole King would go on to write for other artists over four decades. Ten years after that hit, King recorded an iconic album as a performer that garnered multiple hits for herself. Tapestry was an international sensation. It won four Grammy awards, and established Carole King as a force in pop music whose impact and influence are boundless. Welcome to Midday. Tom's guest for the hour is journalist and author, Jane Eisner, who has written a scrupulously detailed and illuminating new biography of one of most influential American singer-songwriters of the 20th century. The book is called Carole King: She Made the Earth Move.
Recent reporting shed light on a forgotten graveyard in Prince George’s County, part of a dark chapter in Maryland history. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the cemetery was the final resting place for young people held at the House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children—a detention center for Black youth. The property is now home to a number of state buildings, including the Cheltenham Youth Detention Center. State Sen. Will Smith, a Democrat from Montgomery County, was part of a delegation of lawmakers who visited the site recently. He joins Midday to talk about what he saw.
A proposal by the Trump administration to severely limit the number of legal refugees, people who have been vetted and who have followed the rules to enter the country properly, would be a huge setback for thousands of people hoping to escape difficult conditions in their home countries. Meanwhile, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have continued their crackdowns on immigrants living in the United States without legal status. For insights into the latest immigration news Midday is joined by Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the President & CEO of Global Refuge, a refugee resettlement organization based here in Baltimore.
Each year, Baltimore’s 14 largest nonprofit institutions, places like Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland Medical Center, contribute an annual payment to the city referred to as PILOTs, or Payment in Lieu of Taxes. Because nonprofit entities are not subject to taxes, these nonprofits make voluntary payments which have, for the last several decades, been negotiated with the city every 10 years. Last week, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott announced that the city had negotiated a new PILOT agreement for five years that will gradually increase the annual payments to $12 million a year by the end of the agreement. But some say the increase is still not enough considering the huge wealth these institutions steward. And questions have been raised by critics who say this new agreement was not reached transparently. Baltimore City Councilwoman Phylicia Porter Midday to discuss the agreement and what it means for the city. Porter sought to create a PILOT taskforce to study what an agreement could look like. The Mayor signed a deal before the bill creating the task force was put to the council for a vote.
Katie Pumphrey became the first person to complete the 24-mile swim from the Chesapeake Bay Bridge to Baltimore’s Inner Harbor in 2024. She previously swum around the Island of Manhattan and three times across the English Channel. Her love of the open water inspires her visual artistry. A new exhibit at the Creative Alliance through October 11 is called “Swimming Pool."
In a Midday exclusive, Rep. Johnny Olszewski (D., Md 02) discusses the government shutdown, and the bill he's introduced to help the state's federal workers weather the shutdown's financial storm.
On today's Midday Healthwatch, Dr. Leana Wen, an emergency room physician and health columnist for the Washington Post, counters government claims of Tylenol-autism links, and discusses recent changes in federal vaccine policies.