Midday

Today is Midday at the Movies, our monthly focus on new films and film-industry trends, with our regular movie aficionados, Jed Dietz, founding director of the Maryland Film Festival, and Ann Hornaday, film critic for the Washington Post.

Jed Dietz and Ann Hornaday recap WYPR's New/Next Film Festival, where local filmmakers showcased their work. Plus, will music documentaries save theaters as movie production remains halted and new releases are delayed? And the latest from the picket line as workers in Hollywood continue to struggle for better pay.

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Baltimore City lost more than $10 million in housing grants, according to reporting by Hallie Miller and Emily Sullivan of the Baltimore Banner. They joined Tom in studio to explain how this error occurred.

Also, breaking news on former Baltimore City Mayor Sheila Dixon's plans to run for office again in 2024.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

Midday speaks with Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott for our monthly conversation on Baltimore City. 

Tonight, he will hold a community meeting with residents of Brooklyn to talk about the After-Action report following the mass shooting at the Brooklyn Homes public housing complex two months ago, in which two people were killed and 29 injured.

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James McBride, an acclaimed author, screenwriter and musician, joined Midday.

In 2013, McBride won the National Book Award for his best-selling novel, The Good Lord Bird, which was made into a streaming series. In 2015, President Obama awarded him the National Humanities Medal. As a journalist, McBride’s work has appeared in The New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post and other major publications.

He has written five novels, a biography of James Brown, a collection of short stories, and a memoir, The Color of Water.

James McBride’s latest novel is called The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store. Set in the 1930s and 40s, it explores with exquisite insight the dynamics of communities of African Americans and Jewish immigrants in Pottstown, PA. 

James McBride will be speaking about The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store tonight, Sept. 6, 2023, at the Enoch Pratt Library.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

Our guest today for another edition of Midday Healthwatch is Dr. Leana Wen.

The uptick in COVID cases that began during the summer is continuing. Other than anecdotal evidence how do we know how much COVID is out there? What, if anything, should we do about it?

A new COVID vaccine should be available in just a few weeks while RSV and the flu vaccines are available now. We look to Dr. Wen for guidance on who should get them and when. 

We also talk about the health dangers of extreme heat. 

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For more, visit https://www.wypr.org/show/midday 

Tom's guest on this encore edition of Midday is writer and journalist Jonathan Eig, whose latest book is a comprehensive new biography of the slain civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Eig's book — called, simply, King: A Life — is the first biography of the iconic social activist in more than three decades.

Jonathan Eig's book incorporates research material unavailable to previous biographers, including hundreds of pages from the files of a close aide to U.S. President Lyndon Johnson — documents that were first made available only last year.

One of the book's revelations is that a widely-circulated quote in which King appears to criticize Black Muslim activist Malcolm X was faked. Eig's research discovered that portions of the published transcript of King's controversial interview for "Playboy" had been completely fabricated.

Eig reminds us that Dr. King’s career as the public face of the civil rights movement was tragically brief. He was gunned down on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis in 1968, just 13 years after he had burst onto the scene as the leader of the Montgomery bus boycott.

The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. is an iconic figure, revered around the world. It’s easy to forget that in 1963, when he delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech during the historic March on Washington, nearly 80% of Americans disapproved of the mass gathering, as it was happening. Eig's new biography helps us understand Reverend King, in our time.

Jonathan Eig joined Tom in Studio A in May.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

For more, visit https://www.wypr.org/show/midday 

(This conversation was originally broadcast on July 3, 2023.)

Americans love to eat, without doubt, but we also have a terrible penchant for throwing away a lot of food. About 4% of all the world's climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions comes from the perfectly edible food we routinely toss into landfills — some $400 billion dollars worth every year.

Tom's guests on this encore edition of Midday are Margaret and Irene Li. A few years ago, these Chinese-American sisters, along with their brother Andrew, wrote an award-winning cookbook called Double Awesome Chinese Food.  The sisters grew up in Boston, and with brother Andy, launched a successful restaurant group and dumpling business. Mei Mei Dumplings are sold at farmer’s markets throughout New England, and later this year, they’ll be available to order online nationwide.

The Li sisters' new cookbook draws on their experience in the restaurant and food industry discovering and perfecting ways to avoid wasting large volumes of food. It’s called Perfectly Good Food: A Totally Achievable ZERO WASTE APPROACH to HOME COOKING.

The authors joined Tom in studio when they were visiting Baltimore for a book event at The Ivy Bookshop.

Because the conversation was previously recorded, we won't be taking calls or emails.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

For more, visit https://www.wypr.org/show/midday 

(This conversation was originally broadcast on August 7, 2023.)

Tom Hall's guest on this encore edition of Midday is Tom Hanks.

You know his work over a performing career that has spanned 46 years. You know that he has made dozens of iconic films, and that he has won a gazillion awards.

On this episode of Midday we’re not going to talk about any of that, we’re going to talk instead about his first novel, The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece.  It was published in May. It follows a collection of Tom Hanks' short stories called Uncommon Type: Some Stories, which came out in 2017.

Hanks' new novel is about a fictional writer-director who transforms a 1970 comic book into a modern-day super-hero movie. It's a fascinating look behind the camera at the legions of people who are involved in the process of creating a big-budget Hollywood blockbuster. And it’s a bright explication of the simple observation offered up by Hanks’ protagonist when he says, “Making movies is more fun than fun.”

Tom Hanks is a gifted writer, and this novel is funny, poignant, insightful, and, most of all, loving. It’s an homage to movie-making and movie makers. 

Tom is a member of the Screen Actors Guild, which along with members of the Writers Guild of America, is on strike. We are not going to talk about his movies while he and his union are striking.

Tom Hanks joined us on Zoom from Greece.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

For more, visit https://www.wypr.org/show/midday 

(This conversation was originally broadcast on January 27, 2023.)

Tom's guest on this archive edition of Midday is Pico Iyer, who for more than 50 years has been acclaimed as a compelling, insightful and thoughtful writer. He has published widely as a journalist, and he’s written novels, but he is perhaps best known as a travel writer. He has journeyed to the far corners of the globe, and written with a deep sense of wonder, compassion, sensitivity and radiant kindness.

Since 1992, Iyer has divided his time between western Japan and a Benedictine hermitage in California.

Born in Oxford, England in 1957, Iyer was raised in England, India and the United States. His parents taught philosophy and religion at Oxford University, and at the age of 17, his father introduced him to His Holiness, the Dali Lama. Iyer became the Tibetan Buddhist leader's frequent traveling companion, and in 2008, he published his biography, The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama.

He’s taught writing, literature and journalism at Harvard and Princeton. He’s been a columnist for Time Magazine. He’s published 15 books that have been translated into 23 languages. He’s given numerous TED Talks, which have been viewed more than 10 million times.

Pico Iyer's latest book examines how different cultures conceive of, understand and pursue spiritual fulfillment, and the connection of different places to the quest for inner and outer peace. It’s called The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise.  He joined us on Zoom from Santa Barbara, California.

Because today's conversation was previously recorded, we won't be taking any calls or emails.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

(This conversation was originally broadcast on July 6, 2023.)

For more, visit https://www.wypr.org/show/midday 

Welcome to this encore edition of Midday.  Tom's guest today is Wesley Lowery, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and former correspondent for the Washington Post, Boston Globe and CBS news, who is currently Executive Director of the Investigative Reporting Workshop, an innovative training program at American University in Washington DC. Lowery has just published a thoughtful, imaginative and sobering book about the rise of white nationalist violence.

While violence against people of color has long been a staple of the American story, Lowery examines the pernicious increase in racial violence since the years of the Obama presidency.

He explores about a half dozen incidents of racial violence all over the country in which people of color were brutally and fatally attacked, illuminating and honoring the suffering of the victims and those close to them, and chronicling why the perpetrators carried out these heinous acts.

It's an insightful look at our national story and our national shame, replete with original reporting and original thinking about what Lowery calls “the defining force of our time.”The book is American Whitelash: A Changing Nation and the Cost of Progress.  Wesley Lowery joined Tom in Studio A in early July, when he was in town for an appearance at the Enoch Pratt Library.Because this conversation was recorded earlier, we won't be taking any calls or emails.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.