Midday

This Thanksgiving, as many Americans forego travel due to the pandemic, large gatherings of friends and families will give way to more intimate feasts.

Whether you're cooking for one, two, or ten - today, we're sharing recipes and tips to help make your Thanksgiving dinner a delicious and memorable affair.

Chefs David Thomas and John Shields are with us once again to talk you through any questions you might have and to share their favorite dishes.

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

Today on Midday, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, we’re going to take a break from news about the pandemic, or our recalcitrant president, or the intractable murder rate here in Baltimore City. Instead, we are going to take some time to show Baltimore a little love.

It is easy to complain about our town. It takes only a mild dash of cynicism to point out what’s wrong with Baltimore. But as veteran journalist Ron Cassie’s new book demonstrates, it’s also easy to celebrate our town, and the many characters who populate it, and the many places in it where sometimes downright magical stuff happens.

Ron Cassie is a senior editor at Baltimore Magazine. These days, when you turn to the final page of BMag, you are treated to a column by Ron called “You Are Here: Life in Baltimore Observed.” His new book is a collection of columns like these, which he began writing in 2008...

From the last days at the Bel Loc Diner and Bethlehem Steel, to a High Heel Race at the Baltimore Pride Festival and the Baltimore Marathon, from an oven called “the Duchess” to the Dome, a famed East Side basketball court, Cassie profiles senators and swim teachers, pitchers and preachers, bunnies and bon-vivants, in a collection that creates a vivid portrait of our town, and its engaged and engaging people.

We welcome listener calls and comments today. What are your favorite spots in Baltimore? Your favorite memories? Your most memorable experiences?

The book is called If You Love Baltimore, It Will Love You Back: 171 Short, But True Stories. Ron Cassie joins us on Zoom...

Ron Cassie will be discussing his new book - and providing a brief video tour of his home - at a special "Writers Cribs!" virtual event hosted by the Enoch Pratt Free Library, next Wednesday, December 2, from 7-8pm. For information on registering for this free event, click here.

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A third pharmaceutical giant, AstraZeneca, announced this morning that late-stage clinical trials of a COVID 19 vaccine in the UK and Brazil show more promising results. The London-based company joins the American companies Pfizer and Moderna in expressing confidence that an effective vaccine will be available soon. But in the meantime, the coronavirus continues to surge here in Maryland and across the country. The CDC is urging Americans NOT to travel and NOT to congregate with anyone outside their immediate households this Thanksgiving. People are also being encouraged to get tested for COVID, and although the state of Maryland has expanded the number of testing centers, people have had to endure long lines in recent days. At the Baltimore Convention Center, for example, they are testing three times the number of people every day that they were testing during the summer. Two weeks ago, the Maryland Department of Health launched MD COVID Alert, a smartphone-based notification system for people who have been exposed to the virus. So far, more than a million Marylanders have subscribed to the system. <--break-> Later this hour, Tom talks with Dr. Katherine Feldman about MD COVID Alert. She’s the Maryland Health Department’s chief public health scientist and the director of its Contact Tracing Unit. But Tom's first guest is Dr. Crystal Watson. She’s a senior associate at the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Earlier this year, as the pandemic was first taking hold, Dr. Watson co-authored a report for the national association of US public health agencies that described what a comprehensive contact tracing program - directed nationally by the federal government - should look like. Nine months later, with a quarter-million Americans dead so far and more than 12 million more infected by COVID-19, is the federal contact tracing program up and running? Dr. Crystal Watson and Dr. Katherine Feldman join us today on Zoom… If you have questions about MD COVID Alert, please email them to: [email protected] or call the Maryland Department of Health Call Center at 877-319-1525. The Call Center is open Monday – Friday, 8:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. and is closed on the weekends.

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

Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck joins Tom with a look at a couple of new streaming-arts endeavors helping to entertain and inspire us as the raging COVID-19 pandemic keeps most of the nation's theaters and movie houses dark.

She leads off with a review of HBO's new all-star adaptation of writer Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, the testimonial he published in 2015 about the realities of being Black in America and growing up in Baltimore, written as a letter to his son. Based on a 2018 adaptation and staging of the book at New York's Apollo Theater, the HBO special combines elements of the Apollo production and dramatic readings from Coates’ book, with documentary footage from the actors’ home life, archival footage, and animation. It premiered on HBO November 21st and is now streaming on demand. For more information on the HBO Special, click here...

Judy also spotlights a four-play virtual festival of works by acclaimed African-American playwright Adrienne Kennedy, produced and streamed by Round House Theater in Bethesda, Maryland. The first play, which began streaming Nov. 14, is Kennedy’s newest work for the stage, a two-person show about an interracial relationship in the 1940s. The next play, co-written with Kennedy’s son, is a semi-autobiographical account of the family’s experience with police brutality and has a cast of 12. It began streaming on Nov. 21. For more information on Round House's The Work of Adrienne Kennedy: Inspiration and Influence, click here.
Streaming performances will be available for ticketed viewing through February 2021.

Also, though there was no time to mention it, we do so here: tonight at 7pm, Baltimore's historic Hippodrome Theater is hosting a live, virtual celebration of its 106th anniversary. For more information on the event, click here.

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Now, it's another edition of Smart Nutrition, with our good friend Monica Reinagel — a licensed nutritionist and host of the Nutrition Diva podcast, one of the most popular health and fitness podcasts on the Web. Monica is also the author of several books, including Nutrition Diva’s Secrets for a Healthy Diet. She's also the co-host of a new podcast launched in March called Change Academy, which focuses on the science of behavior change…

We are also joined today by Dr. Jade Wu. She’s a sleep psychologist and researcher at Duke University, and the host of the Savvy Psychologist podcast. Today, Dr. Wu brings her expertise to a discussion of one of the challenges many people are facing during this pandemic: disruptions to their normal work, play and sleep schedules. As we hear, inadequate sleep can make it harder to maintain a healthful diet, and that can make it harder to keep the pounds off.

Dr. Jade Wu and Monica Reinagel join us today on Zoom.

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

As the country falls deeper into a morass of a surging pandemic, the President has ignored the coronavirus and most of his other presidential duties, and instead -- through hundreds of Tweets -- has attempted to rile up his supporters around unfounded allegations of massive, Democrat-directed election fraud. He fired Christopher Krebs, a respected Department of Homeland Security professional who was in charge of cyber security in the election, in apparent retribution for telling the truth about the integrity of the election. And in a press conference yesterday, Rudy Guiliani and other members of the President’s legal team carried on for more than an hour and a half with claims that aren’t even close to true. Even some of the personalities on Fox News attempted to distance themselves from the claims. <--break-> We begin today with the Friday Newswrap, and we'll discuss President Trump's increasingly desperate - and dangerous - election challenges with Elie Mystal, a legal scholar and justice correspondent for The Nation magazine. He joins us on Zoom from New York City.

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

Our Newsmaker guest today is Baltimore City Police Commissioner Michael Harrison.

The COVID-19 pandemic has crippled businesses across the city and forced many to close, but it has had no appreciable effect on the number of murders in our city this year, which stands at 294 as of today.

Yesterday, the Baltimore Police Department announced the arrests of 14 people who are believed to have been involved in several car-jackings in the Northwest District.

And on October 29th, Judge James K. Bredar said in a quarterly hearing about the Consent Decree that, “there now is solid leadership in the Police Department, and there is beginning to flow real and substantial progress in achieving Consent Decree objectives.” This is from the Judge charged with overseeing the implementation of the Consent Decree between the Department of Justice and the Police Department. It is widely seen as a clear message to incoming Mayor Brandon Scott that he should not contemplate changing police commissioners. Mr. Scott has indicated so far that Mr. Harrison’s job is safe, at least for the moment. But the Mayor-elect has indicated that BPD will likely face significant budget cuts. And he campaigned on a promise to re-imagine the city’s approach to public safety.

Police Commissioner Michael Harrison joins us on Zoom from his office at Police Department Headquarters in Baltimore…

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

Today, on Midday, the complex decision facing school administrators in Maryland and across the country: when and how to reopen schools for in-person learning.

Dr. Darryl L. Williams, the Superintendent of the Baltimore County School System, and Dr. Sonja Santelises, the CEO of Baltimore City Schools, discuss who’s in school a building now, who’s staying home, and why.

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

Yesterday, at a news conference at the State House in Annapolis, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan gave a somber summary of the scope of the COVID 19 pandemic in the state. Some hospitals in Western Maryland are at or near capacity. For three of the past five days, the state has reported more than 2,000 new cases, as the country sees new infections surpass 140,000 every day.

Hogan announced that effective Friday, all bars and food establishments in the state will be required to close at 10:00 PM. This decision is based on the fact that compliance with coronavirus protocols tends to diminish substantially after 10. The Governor stressed, with no effort to hide his anger, that compliance must improve, and that local jurisdictions must do more to enforce the orders to wear masks and physically distance. Hogan said that retail businesses, fitness centers, religious institutions and other establishments will revert back to Phase 2 capacity restrictions.

Mr. Hogan announced that tomorrow, he will take part in a Governor’s Call with President-elect Joe Biden and his transition team...


Also yesterday, amid encouraging news about not one but two promising COVID-19 vaccines, President-elect Biden again called on the Trump Administration to ascertain the election, and to begin sharing information about distribution of vaccines when they are ready.


Joining Tom is Asma Khalid, a political correspondent for NPR and a co-host of the NPR Politics Podcast. She’s covered the Biden campaign; she’s now covering the transition. Asma joins us on the line from Washington, DC.

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

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 their 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 David Putnam and the 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 era of concern for the common good and political cooperation. The authors observe that following the Gilded Age, a decades-long period began in which Americans acted collectively and cooperatively to confront the existential challenges of an economic catastrophe in the 1930s, a World War in the 1940s, and civil rights legislation and safety-net programs in the 1960s.

But then the tide shifted and a deep polarity returned, and it defines our politics to this day.

As the Trump administration comes to a close, the factions of the American electorate remain separated by wide, seemingly unbridgeable gulfs. Can President-elect Joe Biden’s aspiration of uniting the country be achieved in a climate where political rivalry can devolve into partisan hatred, and losing ceases to be an accepted part of the political process and instead becomes a catastrophe?

In The Upswing, co-authors Robert Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett make the case that it can. They join us on Zoom.

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