Midday

Today on Midday, a conversation about prison reform.

In March 2020, as the COVID-19 crisis began and as part of the CARES Act passed by Congress, Attorney General William Barr allowed certain low-level offenders to serve their sentences under home confinement, a move intended to decrease prison populations and cut down transmission of the coronavirus.

For 76-year-old Gwen Levi, who had been incarcerated for 16 years on a drug dealing conviction, this opportunity allowed her to be with her sons and care for her 94-year-old mother. She also became a volunteer with several prison advocacy organizations, and she went back to school to better her skills for a life outside of prison walls. While attending a computer class, she thought she had permission to turn her phone off. When officials couldn’t immediately find her during that class, she was sent back to prison.

She’s back home now, continuing to serve the remainder of her sentence under home detention. She joins me to talk about a new threat that she and other prisoners face of returning to prison.

Also joining us is Kevin Ring, a former congressional staffer and federal lobbyist who served 16 months in federal prison for his involvement in the Jack Abramoff scandal in 2011. He is now the President of FAMM, Families Against Mandatory Minimums.

Listener questions and comments are welcomed.

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A note about a benefit concert that’s happening tonight. The singer-songwriter Carly Troyer has assembled a group of women performers who will sing to support Turnaround, Inc., a local organization that works with survivors of intimate partner violence, sexual violence and human trafficking. Turnaround provides therapy services, case management services and crisis response. The concert is called “Sing Out Against Domestic Abuse.” Carly Troyer will do a set, and she’ll be joined by Kate Fleming, Mia Ye, Little Lungs, Janet Herbert and Katyrah Love. The show is at 7:00 tonight at the Recher Theater in Towson. For more information, click here.

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

K-12 students and teachers across the country will be returning to in-person learning in the next couple of weeks. The CDC recently issued guidelines for making schools safe as the nation experiences a significant uptick in COVID-19 cases, particularly in the south. But mandates and requirements for masking and vaccination vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

To better understand the science behind school health policy options, we turn to Dr. Odis Johnson, the executive director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Safe and Healthy Schools and a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of social policy and STEM equity.

Dr. Odis Johnson joins us on Zoom.

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

Now, we turn to our good friends, Aaron Henkin and Wendel Patrick. They are the creative team behind WYPR's award-winning podcast series, Out of the Blocks.

The premise of the series is genius-simple: the producers pick a block, here in Baltimore, or elsewhere, they interview and photograph the people who live and work in that block, and they edit together a collage of profiles of those people and their stories. Aaron edits the collages. Wendel composes music to fit the voices of everyone whose stories we hear.

The series comes to a close tonight, when the final episode of the podcast will be posted on-line. You can hear an excerpt from the episode on Thursday morning during Morning Edition... The series garnered a national Edward R Murrow award in 2018. It introduced us to folks from around the city of Baltimore, and also let us meet people in communities well outside of Baltimore.

Aaron Henkin has been hosting another great podcast, The Daily Dose, throughout the pandemic. He has started a new project here at WYPR that is so new, it doesn’t have a title yet. Wendel Patrick is a performing musician, a faculty member at the Peabody Institute, and the host of Artworks on MD Public Television.

On Thursday night, August 26, Aaron and Wendel will hold an event to talk about the series, and offer tips on DIY interviewing, on the hill at Patterson Park. That event starts at 6:00. For details, click here.

Aaron Henkin joins Tom in Studio A, and Wendel Patrick connects with us on Zoom.

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

It’s the Midday Newswrap. Tom's first guests today are two members of the award-winning WYPR news team: Emily Sullivan, who covers Baltimore city Hall and all things Baltimore; and John Lee, who is our Baltimore County correspondent.

We discuss their coverage of the recent controversries over efforts to oversee the work of local Inspectors General. Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski's proposal to create an oversight board for the county's Inspector General's office was withdrawn after a firestorm of criticism that it would have compromised the IG's independence. A new plan is reportedly in the works. And Baltimore City's IG has been in the news as well, as she pushed back on an evaluation of her office's work by an advisory panel that included some members who were also associated with an IG investigation.

The reporters also discuss the complex challenges local school boards are facing as the start of the new school year approaches. Rising COVID infection rates and the new threat posed by the delta variant are fueling public debate over masking and vaccination requirements for students, teachers and staff.

Emily Sullivan and John Lee join us on our digital line.

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

In her 2018 book, How To Be Alone, If You Want To, And Even If You Don't, the comedian, writer and actor Lane Moore describes herself as a hopeless romantic. “When I tell men I’m a hopeless romantic,” she writes, “they look at me the same way they do when I tell them I have food allergies: It’s not a dealbreaker, but they’d rather it wasn’t a thing. And you know what? Me too, in both cases!”

Lane Moore has done what many who are looking for love have been unable to do: she’s turned it into a profitable venture. She is the creator of Tinder Live! With Lane Moore, a show in which she turns dating on the popular app into performance art.

Moore also fronts a rock band she formed in 2015 called It Was Romance. Here’s a bit from their widely praised first single, Philadelphia, which BuzzFeed included in its "Songs You Need In Your Life This Month" list. And here's the video she produced for another hit track from the band's self-titled debut album, called Hooking Up With Girls.

Moore will be performing Tinder Live! next Thursday, August 19, at Union Stage in Washington DC. It’s part of a 30-city tour that will include a stop at the Ottobar here in Baltimore in mid-October.

Lane Moore spoke with Tom last week, on our digital line, about the comedy show, her book, and the state of pandemic dating.

Because the conversation was pre-recorded, we’re not able to take any calls or comments today.

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

The barrage of books on Donald Trump continues. The Guardian newspaper counts as many as 4,500 tomes about the megalomaniac former US president, including nearly 20 that Trump claims to have written himself.

In just the past few weeks, the huge opus of extended works on Trump has grown by three. Michael Wolf released Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency. Michael Bender, the senior White House reporter for the Wall Street Journal, published a crisp and compelling account of the 2020 campaign from the perspective of Trump World called Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost.

And Pulitzer-Prize winning Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker have offered I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year, which completes their chronicle of the Trump Presidency that began with A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America, in which they examined the first three years of Trump’s term. (The authors spoke with Tom about the updated edition of that book on the February 26, 2021 Midday show.)

Tom is taking a pass on the new Michael Wolf book. But he spoke with Mike Bender a couple of weeks ago about his experience in Trump World. And today, he welcomes back to Midday Carol Leonnig, to talk about this latest book that she and Philip Rucker have contributed to this vast oeuvre.

Leonnig and Rucker’s books on the mercurial and self-obsessed 45th President are invaluable for the depth of their reporting, their thoroughness, and their first-rate analysis of one of the most divisive and unique figures in American politics. I Alone Can Fix It takes us behind the scenes of Trump’s astonishingly inept handling of the Coronavirus pandemic, his losing effort to win a second term, his bungling of the Republican party’s attempt to retain control of Congress, his second impeachment, and his culpability in the insurrection at the Capital that left several people dead, scores of police officers and rioters injured, and a country torn apart by partisanship that has wandered into a whole new realm of untruth and malicious fabrication.

Carol Leonnig joined Tom earlier this week, speaking on our digital line from Washington, D.C.. Because their conversation was pre-recorded, we’re not able to take any calls or on-line comments.

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

It's time for another visit from Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck, who joins Tom today with her reviews of two popular William Shakespeare classics now in live production in our region.

The first is Twelfth Night, the Bard's gender-bending comedy, in an original and eclectic production by a newly formed theater troupe called Her Majesty and Sons. Adapted and directed by Séamus Miller, this 1970s-themed romp features music by Tori Boutin, and a cast that includes DC theater artists Anna DiGiovanni and Rachel Felstein. It's being performed live at the DC War Memorial on the National Mall now through this Sunday, August 15. The 90-minute performances start at 7pm.

The second is Romeo & Juliet, Shakespeare's tragic drama of star-crossed lovers, in a production by Endangered Species Theatre Project. The show is designed for a mixed hearing and Deaf audience, with the shadow voices of Romeo and the Friar played by Joe Mucciolo and Greta Boeringer, respectively. ESP’s DASL Neil Sprouse and director Christine Mosere adapted the Bard's script to accommodate both languages. Romeo & Juliet is being performed live on stage as part of the 2021 Frederick Shakespeare Festival at Hood College’s Outdoor Hodson Theater in Frederick, Maryland, now through Monday, August 16.

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

Tom's guest today is a MacArthur award-winning physician who is the founder and director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity. Dr. Lisa Cooper is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Equity in Health and Healthcare, and Professor of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She is also the author of the new book, Why Are Health Disparities Everyone’s Problem?, in which she makes a compelling argument for ending racial health inequities not just as a matter of moral imperative, but as a matter of political and social urgency as well.

Dr. Cooper has done extensive research in a field that many in medicine ignore or marginalize. She has studied the dynamics between doctors and patients, and how those dynamics change when those interactions occur between people of different races. Why Black patients are less likely to trust their physicians, and what stigmas need to be overcome for healthcare to be allocated more effectively and fairly.

A highly respected epidemiologist and public health expert, Dr. Cooper’s perspective as a physician has been shaped by her childhood in Liberia, and her family’s experience during that country’s years of unrest and instability.

Dr. Lisa Cooper joins us on our digital line…

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

We are delighted to welcome back to the show Dr. Carla Hayden. She was the CEO of the Enoch Pratt Library here in Baltimore for 23 years, and in 2016, President Barack Obama appointed her as the 14th Librarian of Congress, the first woman and the first African American to hold the distinguished position as head of the nation's library.

The Library of Congress is the country’s oldest cultural institution, and at its helm, Dr. Hayden has had to navigate changes brought on not only by the COVID 19 pandemic, but by the dramatic evolution of libraries in general: how they serve their communities, and how they are responding in an increasingly digital world.

Today's conversation, which we are broadcasting coincidentally on Dr. Hayden's birthday, was recorded last week, so we aren’t able to take any calls or comments today.

Dr. Carla Hayden joined us on our digital line from her office in Washington, DC.

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

The US Senate worked through the weekend — for the second week in a row — to try to come to agreement on an infrastructure bill. Senator Rob Portman of Ohio and Senator Kirsten Sinema of Arizona led a bipartisan group of 10 Senators to stitch together an agreement. The final vote tally on Tuesday morning — 69 ayes to 30 nays — included 19 Republicans who joined Democrats to support the measure.

Democrats will now move on a larger, companion bill that Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said is part of a “two-track” strategy to address the nation's physical and human infrastructure needs.

For an update on the bill and what it might mean for Baltimore and for Maryland, we begin today with Maryland's junior senator, Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who joins us on Zoom from the US Capitol in Washington, DC.

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