Midday

Maryland Humanities is a nonprofit organization founded nearly 50 years ago that creates and supports educational experiences in the humanities. Among its most popular programs are Maryland History Day and One Maryland One Book.

Maryland Humanities recently elected a new leadership team. Last February, Phoebe Stein left the organization after serving more than 11 years as its Executive Director. In May, she became the director of the Federation of State Humanities Councils.

In August, Lindsey Baker was appointed to succeed her as Maryland Humanities' new Executive Director.

Mary Hastler is the CEO of the Harford County Public Library. She was elected this past November to become chair of the Maryland Humanities board of directors.

Mary Hastler and Lindsey Baker join Tom on Zoom to discuss Maryland Humanities' priorities for the challenging new year ahead.

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

Over the past eleven months, the COVID-19 pandemic has taken the lives of more than 353 thousand Americans and upended the economic livelihood of millions more. The number of Americans who struggle each week to put food on their tables has climbed to nearly one in 8 – an estimated 26 million people, according to the Census Bureau. Even before the pandemic, more than a quarter of a million people in Maryland faced chronic food insecurity.

Tom's first guests today are on the front lines of the battle against hunger in our state. Michael J. Wilson is the director of Maryland Hunger Solutions, an initiative of the non-profit Food Research and Action Center. (FRAC).

Carmen Del Guercio is president and CEO of the Maryland Food Bank, a non-profit organization that’s been providing food assistance to people in need for the past 40 years.

Carmen Del Guercio and Michael Wilson join Tom on Zoom.

For a list of links to community food resources in Maryland, click here.

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

As of Saturday, a dozen Republican Senators had promised to join about 140 Republican members of the House in voting against certifying that Joe Biden has been elected President. That vote is scheduled for Wednesday.

Yesterday, the Atlanta Journal Constitution and the Washington Post released a tape and transcript of a call between President Trump and his White House legal team and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his legal team, in which the President said, quote, “So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”

‘I just want to find 11,780 votes.’

This call lasted an hour. The President repeatedly pressured Raffensperger to overturn the will of the people in GA. The votes have been counted three times, and the results, like those of all 50 states, have been certified.

The President’s attempt to have GA officials change the outcome of the election follows similar attempts to have officials in MI and PA do the same thing.

Joe Biden will be inaugurated on January 20, but there is a real possibility that it will not be a completely peaceful transfer of power. At Donald Trump’s urging, his supporters are assembling in Washington prepared to protest, perhaps violently, the congressional vote on Wednesday and Biden’s inauguration two weeks later.

In 2017, a year after Donald Trump’s stunning victory, EJ Dionne and Norman Ornstein, two of America’s most highly respected political observers, along with Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution, published a persuasive and important book called One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate and the Not-Yet Deported. The book includes prescriptions for fixing our electoral system and formulating what they call a new Patriotism, a new Civil Society, and a new Democracy.

Today on Midday, with the Trump Administration in its twilight, and with Congressional calls for a criminal investigation into the President after this latest episode, we’ve invited EJ Dionne and Norman Ornstein back to our show to reflect on this unprecedented Presidency, and the way forward for our country.

Norman Ornstein is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and a contributing editor and columnist for The National Journal and The Atlantic.

E.J. Dionne is a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, a syndicated columnist for The Washington Post, and a professor at Georgetown University. He also offers commentary each week on NPR’s All Things Considered.

They join us on Zoom…

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

(Originally broadcast November 12, 2020)

On this archive edition of Midday, Tom talks with Evan Osnos, a staff writer for The New Yorker, about his latest book, Joe Biden: The Life, the Run, and What Matters Now.

Tom spoke with Mr. Osnos about a week and a half after the election, on the day that several media sources had added Arizona to the win column for President-elect Joe Biden. Later that day, the state of Georgia was also called for Mr. Biden, as a hand count in that state got underway. By the following day, most media outlets had declared Mr. Biden the president-elect.

In his nearly fifty-year career in public service, Joe Biden has played influential leadership roles in the US Senate and served eight years as vice-president in Barack Obama's White House. Along the way, he has also endured deep personal losses and high-profile political missteps and disappointments, events that have given Mr. Biden a humility and an empathy for others in hardship uncommon in career politicians. And though he brings almost unparalleled experience to the nation’s highest office, Mr. Biden faces unprecedented challenges, exacerbated by a recalcitrant predecessor.

On this archive edition of Midday, veteran journalist Evan Osnos -- a winner of a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award, and a fellow at The Brookings Institution -- joins Tom for the hour to talk about what kind of president Joe Biden will be.

He joined us on Zoom.

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

(Originally broadcast on November 17, 2020)

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy implored Americans to “ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”

Twenty years later, Ronald Reagan won election by asking Americans, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” Not if the country was better off; if you were better off.

In a fascinating, compelling and wholly original new book, The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again, the political scientist Robert Putnam and social entrepreneur Shaylyn Romney Garrett assert that from the Gilded Age of the late 19th century to the present moment, America has oscillated between a society framed by colossal income inequality and political polarization to a more progressive notion of concern for the common good and political cooperation...

Putnam and Romney Garrett observe that following the inequality and political polarity of the Gilded Age a decades-long era began in which Americans embraced the need for cooperation to confront the existential challenges of an economic catastrophe in the 1930s and a World War in the 1940s, and civil rights legislation and safety net programs in the 1960s.

But then the tide shifted, and deep polarity returned.

Two scholars quoted in this new book note that political rivalry can devolve into partisan hatred, and that losing has somehow ceased to be an accepted part of the political process. Instead, it has become a catastrophe.

As the Trump administration comes to a close, the factions of the electorate remain separated by a wide, gaping hole. Can President Elect Joe Biden’s aspiration of uniting the country be achieved in this climate?

In this archived edition of Midday, Robert Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett make the case that it can. They joined Tom Hall on Zoom.

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

(Originally aired October 15, 2020)

Today, Tom’s guest for the hour is the award-winning novelist, literary scholar, and artist, Charles Johnson.

Dr. Johnson is bestknown as the author of Middle Passage, the epic novel about the 1830s slave trade for which he won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1990. At the time, he was only the second African-American man to have won the honor after Ralph Ellison. Johnson's other novels include Night Hawks, Dr. King’s Refrigerator, Dreamer, and Faith and the Good Thing.

In 1998, Dr. Johnson received a MacArthur Fellowship, the so-called "genius grant." In 2002, he received the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Dr. Johnson began his career in the 1960s as a cartoonist, creating comic strips and editorial cartoons for various publications, including The Chicago Tribune, Ebony and Playboy. In addition to his novels, Charles Johnson has written numerous screenplays, essays, and children’s books.

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

(This program was originally broadcast Sept. 17, 2020.)

Tom's guest today is Robert B. Reich. He’s a busy and distinguished guy. He served in three administrations, including as Labor Secretary during Bill Clinton’s presidency. He’s a professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, a columnist for Newsweek and The Guardian, an award-winning filmmaker, the founder of the non-profit educational enterprise called Inequality Media, and a frequent presence on television and in the blogosphere.

He’s also the author of 18 books, the latest of which is called The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It. It's a kind of open letter to Jamie Dimon, the CEO of the largest bank on Wall Street, JP Morgan Chase. Dimon is also the Chair of the Business Roundtable, a group of nearly 200 of the nation’s most powerful and influential CEOs. Mr. Dimon and his fellow bankers were largely responsible for the economic catastrophe that gripped the US and the world in 2008, in which the total net worth of American households dropped by $11 trillion dollars...

The net worth of Mr. Dimon has not suffered at all, nor has his influence in the halls of Congress. Robert Reich asserts that Dimon and his fellow members of the Business Roundtable should use their outsized influence to create a society in which no group of people or corporation is as rich and powerful as they currently are.

The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, was published in March by Alfred A. Knopf.

Tom's conversation with Robert Reich was pre-recorded via Zoom, so we aren’t taking calls today, but comments via email and Twitter are welcome.

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

This program originally aired on Tuesday May 14, 2019.

Frederick Douglass is one of the most gifted and admired figures in American history. He was enslaved for the first 20 years of his life. By the time of his death in 1895, he had become the world’s most photographed man, a counselor to President Abraham Lincoln, an unparalleled public intellectual, and a super-star speaker.

David Blight’s acclaimed biography of Frederick Douglass, the winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for History, offers trenchant and sweeping insights into the particulars of Douglass’ many gifts, and how he changed the arc of the American story.

David Blight joins Tom to talk about Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom.

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

Hello and Happy Holidays! Welcome to the Midday Christmas Eve Special, with host Tom Hall.

Today, we’ll spend the hour listening to some music and some poetry of the season, plus, a story by Baltimore writer Raphael Alvarez.

We've put together a playlist of our selections, and you can find them below (when you've clicked into this article) in the order you'll hear them in the program...

1. MUSIC: I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In. A carol arranged by Robert Shaw and Alice Parker.

(from a 2010 CD recording by the Baltimore Choral Arts Society, "Christmas at America’s First Cathedral," Tom Hall, conducting.)

2. POEM: Ring Out Wild Bells, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (read by Midday producer Cianna Greaves)

3. MUSIC: A Clean Heart. A motet for a cappella chorus by James Lee, III. He’s on the faculty of Morgan State University, and his music is performed all over the world. This is a setting of a text from the Psalms, Create in Me a Clean Heart. (from "Christmas at America’s First Cathedral.")

4. MUSIC: Ogo ni fun Oluwa, by the great African American composer Rosephanye Powell, sung by the Baltimore Choral Arts Society. This is an African Praise Song, on a text from the Yoruba tribe in Nigeria. The title means "Rejoice! Glory be unto the Lord." (from "Christmas at America’s First Cathedral.")

5. READING: "Aunt Lola," written and read by Baltimore writer Raphael Alvarez.

6. MUSIC: Ring the Bells, by Rosephanye Powell, commissioned by Tom Hall when he was the Music Director of the Baltimore Choral Arts Society. (from "Christmas at America’s First Cathedral.")

7. MUSIC: Have You Seen the Baby Jesus? by Rosephanye Powell, with soprano Janice Chandler Eteme. (from "Christmas at America’s First Cathedral."

8: READING: A Chinese proverb, read by WYPR Digital producer, Jamyla Krempel.

9. MUSIC: Precious Gifts. Music by Dave Brubeck; text by his wife Iola. Most people know Dave as one of the most iconic pianists in the history of jazz. But Dave was also a frequent composer of choral music, in collaboration with Iola. This is one of their beautiful, a cappella gems, in its world premiere recording, featuring the Baltimore Choral Arts Society.

10. POEM: The Journey of the Magi, by T. S. Eliot. Read by Tom Hall. The poet was born in St. Louis in 1888, but he moved to Britain as a young man and eventually became an English citizen.

11. POEM: "Twas the Night Before Christmas," by Clement Moore; a classic reading by Louis Armstrong.

We hope you enjoy this hour of holiday inspirations. Thanks for listening!

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

Tom's guest today is the New York Times best-selling author, Jess Walter. He is the author of seven novels, a short story collection, and a nonfiction book. His 2012 novel, Beautiful Ruins, was on the Times best-seller list for more than a year.

Jess Walter's latest novel is called The Cold Millions. It's an expansive and beautifully crafted chronicle of the nascent days of the labor movement in the west in the early 20th century. It takes place in Walter’s hometown of Spokane, Washington, and it incorporates figures both historical and imagined...

The central events in the novel are the “free speech” riots that took place in Spokane, as the Industrial Workers of the World, whose members were known as “the Wobblies,” attempted to end a corrupt system perpetrated by the rich, and advanced by the police and employment agencies.

The book is suspenseful, gripping, poignant, and funny, and its historical themes resonate with the turbulence of our present day.

Author Jess Walter joins us from Spokane, on Zoom…

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