Midday

Tom's next guest is the legendary singer, Johnny Mathis.

He has been touring and recording for 65 years, and in that time, he's recorded 79 original albums of love ballads, many of which have become part of the American song book.

Mathis, who turns 86 on September 30th, is currently on his "65 Years of Romance" tour across the country. He’ll be appearing at the Music Center at Strathmore in North Bethesda, Maryland this weekend (Sat. Sept. 11).

Johnny Mathis joins Midday on the phone from his home in Los Angeles, California.

For more information on his Strathmore concert, click here.

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

In 2013, the Human Rights Campaign started tracking violence against the Transgender community in the United States. Violence against trans people has increased in recent years. In 2020, more trans people were victims of hate crimes than at any other time. So far this year, nationally, more than 30 trans people have been victims of homicide.

Today on Midday, conversations with trans activists who provide services and support to Transgender people in Baltimore.

Tom's first guests are Iya Dammons, the founder and executive director of Baltimore Safe Haven, a non-profit organization that advocates for a higher quality of life for TLGBQ people in Baltimore City; Melissa Deveraux is the organization’s chief of staff.

Later in the program, Tom is joined by Paula Neira, JD, MSN, RN, CEN, FAAN, the Clinical Program Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Transgender Health.

Our guests join us today on Zoom.

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

(This conversation was originally aired on July 23, 2021)

Welcome to an archive edition of Midday. Tom's guest on this Labor Day broadcast is a country music artist from Baltimore. Brittney Spencer has been making her mark on the country music scene of late. Spotify and Pandora call her an artist to watch. She’s been featured in national media, and her debut EP, Compassion, has garnered rave reviews.

Country music is all about storytelling. Brittney Spencer tells her stories authentically and with a compelling openness. This is an artist who says what she means and means what she says. Here’s a clip from her new single, a tune she co-wrote with the award-winning singer-songwriter couple Nelly Joy and Jason Reeves. It’s called Sober and Skinny:

Brittany Spencer’s songs encourage us to be as reflective and honest in our journey as she is with hers. As a performer, her vocal delivery is often subtle and always powerful, and her talent has helped cement her spot as a Country star in the making.

Brittney Spencer made her debut at the Grand Ole’ Opry last May. She and Tom spoke on a July afternoon when she was preparing for another appearance on that hallowed stage that night. She joined us on Zoom, from Nashville.

This conversation was pre-recorded, so we aren’t able to take any new calls or comments.

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

(This conversation was originally aired on August 3, 2021)

On this archive edition of Midday, Tom's guest 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 Misdiagnoses and Unnecessary Tests, published in 2013. Today, we’ll listen to a conversation about her latest book, a critically acclaimed, important and timely reflection on her life, her career, and the state of public health in America. It’s part memoir and part prescription for elevating and improving public health.

Leana Wen has long been one of this country’s most imaginative and innovative thinkers about public health policy; this book demonstrates the ways in which her masterful grasp of the pressing issues in public health is informed by a host of challenging personal experiences, a searing intellect, and unyielding compassion.

It’s called Lifelines: A Doctor’s Journey in the Fight for Public Health.

Because this conversation was previously recorded, we aren’t able to take any calls or comments.

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

(This conversation was originally aired on March 3, 2021)

Good afternoon and welcome to an archive edition of Midday. My guest is the author, George Saunders. He’s published hundreds of short stories, and he’s the winner of the Man Booker Prize for his first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo. Saunders’ short stories have been published in The New Yorker, Harper’s and many other magazines, and collected in best-selling books like The Tenth of December, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and which Time Magazine called one of the ten best books of the decade.

Tom describes George Saunders as "a wholly original, surprising and powerfully imaginative writer whose work is unlike anything I’ve read before. His writing," Tom adds, "seems to re-invent the rules for how fiction is structured and re-imagine how storytelling can unfold."

In 1997, George Saunders joined the faculty of his graduate school alma mater, Syracuse University. Earlier this year, he published his 11th book, which is a fascinating peroration that draws on his experience in the classroom. Saunders has chosen seven stories by a quartet of famous Russian authors: Chekhov, Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Gogol. He examines, explains, and riffs on each story, and in the process, with joy and wonder and delight, he offers insight into how we read, and how great authors write.

It’s called A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Masterclass on Writing, Reading, and Life.

George Saunders joined us on Zoom. Our conversation was recorded in early March, 2021. Because this is a re-broadcast of Midday, we aren’t able to take any new calls or comments.

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

(This conversation was originally aired on July 6, 2021)

Today, on this archive edition of Midday on Politics, a look back at last year’s chaotic and unpredictable Presidential election cycle.

In a new, comprehensive study of the 2020 race for the Democratic nomination, journalist Edward-Isaac Dovere reports that after losses in early primaries in the beginning of 2020, a despondent Joe Biden thought that his dream of becoming President was once again slipping away.

His campaign was broke and in disarray, and he appeared unable to navigate the chaotic nature of a crowded field. But then, with a boost from Congressman James Clyburn, Biden won the South Carolina primary, the first primary he had won in three tries for the Presidency, a victory that propelled him to the nomination.

In the general election, even though Biden was facing off against a candidate with a lengthy list of well-known negatives, Isaac Dovere reports one Democratic operative described Biden as “a rowboat with 7 holes in it. We’ve got to hold on tight and hope he gets across the ocean.” So, why did Biden prevail and why did so many others falter? And even more importantly, is this the best way to choose a President?

Edward-Isaac Dovere is a staff writer and lead political correspondent for The Atlantic. He has written a sharp and terrific book about the 2020 campaign. It’s replete with great reporting and vivid descriptions of the machinations that took place behind the scenes and insights into how each campaign handled the unprecedented vagaries of this unusual race.

It’s called Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats’ Campaigns to Defeat Trump. Isaac Dovere spoke with Tom about the book in July on our digital line from Washington, DC. Because their conversation was recorded, we can’t take any new calls or on-line comments.

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

(This conversation was originally broadcast on June 18, 2021)

Tom's guest on this archived edition of Midday is the author and historian Annette Gordon Reed. She is best-known for her study of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson. Her book, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, won sixteen book prizes, including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

Her latest book is a beautiful peroration on the meaning of the holiday known as Juneteenth, which marks the anniversary of a significant historical event: on June 19th, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger issued General Order No. 3 in Galveston, Texas, declaring that all slaves were free, two months after General Robert E Lee had surrendered to Gen. Ulysses S Grant in Appomattox, Virginia. Juneteenth celebrations of this belated emancipation originated among African American communities in Texas, and now take place around the country.

Gordon-Reed's book is at once an homage to her home state of Texas, and a wholly original and fascinating exploration of how history and legend and myth all shape what we learn when we’re young, how our understanding evolves as we grow older, and how social dynamics inform the evolution of societal understanding.

Professor Reed writes with erudition and grace, authority and humility, weaving a touching personal memoir into the stark reality of a harsh historical record.

Her book is called On Juneteenth. Annette Gordon Reed joined Tom on Zoom from her home in New York. They spoke just a few days before President Biden signed a congressional act making Juneteenth a federal holiday.

Because the conversation was recorded earlier, we can’t take any calls or comments.

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

(This conversation was originally aired on July 12, 2021)

On this archive edition of Midday, Tom's guest 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.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was raised in Nigeria. She splits her time between Nigeria and the US, where she has a home here in MD.

Her latest book is profoundly sad and consummately beautiful. It is a meditation on the nature of grief, occasioned by the unexpected passing of her beloved father, James Nwoye Adichie, who died in June of last year, at the age of 88. After the book was published, Chimamanda and her five siblings suffered another tragedy, when their mother, Grace Ifeoma Adichie passed away in March of this year at the age of 78. A favorite aunt had died suddenly in London a year before that. Another Aunt died shortly after her father. It’s been a rough year for the Adichie family.

The book is called Notes on Grief. It expands on the series of essays she wrote last year for The New Yorker.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie joined Tom from her home in Lagos, Nigeria.

Their conversation was pre-recorded, so we aren’t able to take any calls or comments today.

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

(This conversation was originally aired on July 20, 2021)

Welcome to this archive edition of Midday. 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 didn’t hold elective office until her mid-40s. First elected to Congress in 1987, she was elected Speaker of the House 20 years later; second in line to the Presidency, and the first woman to hold that position.

Her moral compass was shaped by her Catholic faith, and her political instincts were honed by her experience of motherhood. Democratic allies marvel at her mastery of the behind-the-scenes machinations of political sausage making.

Republicans, not so much. In 2018, the GOP spent more than $65 million dollars in ads attacking her, and during the insurrection at the Capital this year, Trump supporters chanted her name and ransacked her office.

Speaker Pelosi is the subject of an assiduously reported, fascinating and best-selling book by Susan Page, the award-winning Washington Bureau Chief of USA Today. Page interviewed Pelosi in ten different sessions, and she spoke to more than 150 others to compile a portrait of the Speaker that is revelatory and insightful. The book is called Madam Speaker: Nancy Pelosi and the Lessons of Power.

Susan Page joined Tom on Midday’s digital line from Washington, DC, in July.

Because our conversation was pre-recorded, we aren't able to take any new comments or questions.

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

(This conversation was originally aired on May 31, 2021)

Welcome back to this archive edition of Midday. Our program continues with a conversation about one of the darkest chapters 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 “Black Wall Street” was destroyed. At least three hundred African Americans were killed. Hundreds more were injured and thousands were left homeless.

Carole Boston Weatherford is an award-winning author of books that chronicle important events in African American history. She has written a book for children that tells the story of this horrific event. It is beautifully illustrated by Floyd Cooper, who is also a multi-award winner. It’s called Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre.

Carole Boston Weatherford joined us on Zoom…

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