Midday

Three games into the Raven's season and some are already calling it a wash. They stand 1-2 with a game this weekend against the Kansas City Chiefs.

Gabe Ortis joins Midday for a roundup of the Ravens. Ortis is a WYPR's afternoon host, a former political consultant and the station's resident sports guru.

It’s Midday on Education.

One measure of the quality of a public-school education is how well it prepares students to succeed in the real world after they graduate.

To that end, the Baltimore City Public School System has embraced a state-wide vocational training program called Career and Technical Education, or CTE. Basically, the program offers multiple pathways for high school students, grades 6 to 12, to explore their interests and begin honing career skills.

Students pursuing these CTE pathways learn through hands-on training in industry-standard labs or simulated environments, and they gain experience through internships, apprenticeships, and other work-based learning opportunities.

The CTE program partners with more than 300 Baltimore businesses and non-profits, employers who help prepare young people for success beyond the classroom.

Tom's guests today all play important roles in making the CTE program tick.

Joining Tom in Studio A is Shawn Somerville, a veteran teacher and administrator who joined Baltimore City Schools in 2001. She currently serves as the Director of Career Readiness in City School’s Office of Secondary Success and Innovation.

Donald Manekin is here as well. He’s co-founder of Seawall Development Company, a Baltimore real estate firm. Donald is a businessman with life-long interests in Baltimore education and the teaching community. He served as interim chief operating officer of the Baltimore City Public School system from 2000 to 2002. Today he serves as co-chair of a local advisory council helping to build community support for City School’s Career and Technical Education program…

Later in the hour, Tom speaks with Michael Rosenband, co-founder and executive director of the Requity Foundation, a non-profit that trains and employs CTE students and young professionals in redevelopment projects, and with Justin Pittman, a 2025 graduate of the Carver Vo-Tech High School and now a working member of the Requity team.

Acclaimed author Ian McEwan's What We Can Know is an adventure into the future, into a tumultuous world shaken by climate disaster. The novel, like McEwan's Atonement, follows characters and events separated by many years.

What We Can Know is suspenseful, complex, funny and more than a little frightening. It is a brilliant peroration about how history is often a distorted prism through which we view ourselves in the present moment.

McEwan joins Midday to discuss his new work, its inspirations and how he incorporated climate change and elements of science fictions into his writing.

The British writer is the author of 19 novels, including The Child in Time, which won the 1987 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award, The Cement Garden, Enduring Love; Amsterdam, Atonement and Saturday.

On September 17, 1787, six years after fighting stopped in the war for independence, delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia signed the document that has endured as the most influential exemplar in the world of government by and for the people.

The U.S. Constitution is an extraordinary document. A new book by the historian and journalist Jill Lepore is an insightful, sweeping masterpiece following the twists and turns of the Constitution's life.

We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution reveals how central the amendment process is to the founding document, and makes the case that decades of political gridlock, and a lack of amendments, is part of the problem we face today.

Jill Lepore is a professor of American history at Harvard University. She also teaches law at Harvard law school, and she is a staff writer for the New Yorker, and the author of more than a dozen books.

At sundown tonight, Jewish people around the world will begin the observance of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Next week is Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. The High Holidays are a time of connecting to Jewish heritage and traditions, and a time of reflection, self-examination and repentance.

Today on Midday, we speak to the author of a new book that explores these ancient themes in the context of a modern horror; Israel's war in the Gaza Strip.

Peter Beinart, an acclaimed journalist and public intellectual, is an observant Jew who has thought deeply about strife in Israel and Palestine.

His book explores what it means to be a Jew at a moment in history when Israel is isolated and criticized because of its conduct of the war in Gaza, a war that it has expanded to include attacks in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran and Qatar.

Peter Beinart’s latest book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning, is piercing and personal. For years, Beinart was one of Israel’s staunchest defenders. He now finds himself at odds with family, friends and fellow congregants over the moral dimensions of the war that has seen the death of thousands of Israeli soldiers and citizens, and tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians and Hamas combatants.

The Piano Lesson continues at the Everyman Theater (located at 315 West Fayette Street, Baltimore, MD 21201) until Sunday, September 28.

Baltimore City Council President Zeke Cohen joins Midday every month to gives us a look at the happenings inside City Hall.

Today, will Baltimore receive funds to expand Maryland Transit administration bus service? City leaders urged state transportation officials to prioritize that funding in their plans for the next half decade. Cohen provides an update.

Plus, a series of police shootings of Baltimore residents experiencing mental health crisis launched a deeper look into the city's crisis response programs. Months after those tragedies, what changes have been enacted?

And the council is taking at look at whether the city's largest educational and medical institutions should make more into the budget. Community organizers say the current PILOT (payments-in-lieu-of-taxes) agreement sets the payments too low.

Joining Tom now in Studio A is Stefanie Mavronis, the director of the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement, or MONSE, here in Baltimore. Her agency's mission is to implement the City’s public health approach to safety through Mayor Brandon M. Scott’s Comprehensive Violence Prevention Plan. MONSE works with Baltimore residents, community-based groups, institutions, businesses, and other city agencies to curb urban violence and to address its root causes.

Also with us in the studio is Jeremy Biddle, the director of Violence Reduction Policy and Programs at the University of Pennsylvania's Crime and Justice Policy Lab and founding director of MetroPEACE, a consulting firm dedicated to curbing urban violence. Mr. Biddle has served as an advisor to MONSE and Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott.

Tom's first guest today is Congresswoman April McClain Delaney, a Democrat elected in 2024 to represent Maryland's sprawling 6th district, which includes all of Garrett, Allegany, Frederick, and Washington counties as well as a portion of Montgomery County.

In Congress, Rep. McClain Delaney serves on both the House Agriculture Committee and the House Science, Space and Technology Committee.

Rep. McClain Delaney lives in Montgomery County with her husband John and their four children: Summer, Brooke, Lily, and Grace.

Ivan Bates, the State’s Attorney for the city of Baltimore, joins Midday today.

State’s Attorney Bates took office in 2023. Over the past two years, the city has seen a sharp drop in violent crimes. According to the State’s Attorney’s office, 2,600 violent repeat offenders have been incarcerated, and the office has won more than 270 homicide convictions.

But being safe and feeling safe can often be two very different things. The State’s Attorney says “quality of life” crimes are causing people to feel unsafe. He said tackling those types of crimes, like robbery and carjacking, is a priority.