Dr. Leana Wen joins Tom for Midday Healthwatch, where they discuss issues affecting the health and well-being of Charm City residents.

Wen discusses the ongoing outbreak of measles, and a new movement of parents organizing around wariness to vaccines and processed foods. Plus, could the CDC change its guidance on vaccines?

Dr. Wen is a former health commissioner of Baltimore. She’s a columnist on health matters for the Washington Post, a medical expert at CNN, and a scholar at George Washington University and the Brookings Institution.

Scott Shellenberger, the State’s Attorney of Baltimore County, was first elected to the position nearly 20 years ago.

Recently, state lawmakers have made changes to criminal justice policy. Last week, Governor Wes Moore signed several criminal justice bills into law that Speaker Adrienne Jones suggested would address the state’s “inequitable criminal justice system.”

How do those reforms change the job of Schellenberger and other State's Attorneys?

Midday at the Movies is our monthly focus on new films and film-industry trends, with our regular movie aficionados, Jed Dietz, founding director of the Maryland Film Festival, and Ann Hornaday, film critic for the Washington Post.  

We discuss recent horror films including Sinners and The Shrouds in addition to the compelling documentary Ain't No Back to a Merry-Go-Round.

More people called Baltimore home in 2024 than in the previous year. For the first time in a decade, more people moved into Baltimore City than moved out. The increase was small with only about 800 additional residents, but after years of steady decline a little growth is a sign of hope.

Meghan McCorkell, the Executive Director of Live Baltimore, joins Midday to discuss attracting and retaining more Baltimore homeowners.

The 40th Annual Fallen Heroes Day ceremony will take place at Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens in Baltimore County tomorrow. This event honors Maryland's first responders who have died in the line of duty.

Mike Dunn, a retired Senior Officer with the Maryland Transportation Authority Police and Tom Kimbel, former Baltimore County Fire Department Battalion Chief, join Midday to express the significance of this event.

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott joins Tom to talk about issues in the city.

We ask about federal cuts which may impact the mayor's anti-violence initiatives, and new parking rules in the popular Fells Point neighborhood.

An during his State of the City address, Mayor Brandon M. Scott announced the launch of the Mayor’s Office of Arts, Culture, and Entertainment (MOACE.) The office is tasked with organizing Baltimore’s live events, creative workforce and nightlife.

Spell Freedom: The Underground Schools that Built the Civil Rights Movement tells the moving story of the civil rights activists who offered “citizenship classes” to African Americans throughout the South from 1955-1970.

Author Elaine Weiss joins Midday to discuss the work, her third of narrative history. Weiss wrote about the Woman’s Land Army of World War I in Fruits of Victory and the women's suffrage movement in The Woman’s Hour.

The story centers around Septima Clark, whom Martin Luither King, Jr. called “the mother of the movement,” and three others who worked tirelessly and at great personal cost to develop a system of secret schools. Esau Jenkins, Bernice Robinson, and a white activist, Myles Horton are not household names of the civil rights movement, but this book makes the compelling case for their underappreciated influence.