Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck joins Tom for her weekly review of one of the region's thespian offerings. Today, she spotlights Fallout , the play by Laura King that's being staged by Baltimore's Vagabond Players as part of the Baltimore Playwrights Festival . It's directed by Audra Mains Mullen , and stars Gareth Kelly as David and Ryan Gunning as Anna, two strangers with issues, who seek refuge from an unknown menace in a fallout shelter, a relic of the nuclear holocaust paranoia that

It's another edition of Smart Nutrition, our regular series of bi-monthly conversations with the Nutrition Diva , Monica Reinagel . Today, she and Tom talk about whether there's any such thing as a "disease proof" diet. We’ve all heard the expression: we are what we eat. Study after study suggests that if people would only eat more of this and less of that, they would be less likely to develop cancer, diabetes or heart disease. But what if someone eats all the right things but still develops

Eighteen years ago, the state of Maryland deregulated its electricity market with the idea that a free market would give consumers cheaper rates. This has since led to the proliferation of retail electricity suppliers competing for the attention and affection of consumers. With renewable energy production currently on the rise, these suppliers have also been touting what they call “green electricity” plans. Have consumers made the switch toward these alternative energy plans? Has deregulation

Today, a conversation about criminal profiling and how it came to be standard procedure in police investigations. Today, we take it for granted that when crimes occur, particularly serial crimes - think Ted Kaczyinski or David Berkowitz or Jeffrey Dahmer - that police will consult with experts who are able to provide a likely profile of these perpetrators so police can figure out who and where they are. Despite 19th century literary figures like Sherlock Holmes, who was fond of saying that

It's the Midday News Wrap , with guest host Nathan Sterner sitting in for Tom Hall. Among the stories Nathan spotlights in this week's review: the drama of competing healthcare bills, the wrangling and chaos within the Republican Party, and the still-unfolding puzzle of possible Russian ties to President Trump's inner circle. Early in the week, Senate Republicans lacked the votes for their latest proposal to replace the Affordable Care Act. By Tuesday, President Trump announced, ----We'll let Obamacare fail.---- The confusion deepened later in the week with proposals to Repeal without Replace and Repeal with Delayed Replace. Also this week, there was the drip, drip of revelations about exactly who else was in the room in June of 2016 when Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort, the Trump campaign chief at the time, attended a meeting where they were promised Russian government help for their campaign and some dirt about Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Then on Thursday came the

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Roughly a fifth of the US population -- and a third of the under-30 crowd -- say they have become disaffected with traditional religious institutions and they're telling pollsters that they don't identify with any particular church or religious faith. They're called ----nones---- -- as in ----none of the above,---- but most say they still believe in God. So why are growing numbers of Americans turning away from the traditional church, synagogue, and mosque? And what are they looking for? Senior Producer Rob Sivak sits in for Tom Hall as host of today's edition of Living Questions , our monthly series examining the role of religion in the public sphere, produced in collaboration with The Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies. Joining Rob in Studio A are the Reverend Joseph Wood , assistant rector at Baltimore's Emmanuel Episcopal Church ; Joshua Sherman , program associate at Repair the World at Jewish Volunteer Connection; and Terrell Williams , associate organizer for Baltimoreans

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Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck joins Senior Producer Rob Sivak in the studio today with her review of the musical Spring Awakening , produced by the Spotlighters Theatre . It tells the story of a group of 19th century German teenagers trying to discover more about one another and themselves, under the intense scrutiny and repressive control of the adults in their lives.

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We have seen the videos from cell phones, surveillance footage and police cameras. In the moments before and sometimes after police shootings of black people, it sounds like the police and the black people are speaking from completely different social realities. The shootings are the horrific tip of an iceberg. According to a GenForward survey done by the Black Youth Project at the University of Chicago, two-thirds of African-Americans under the age of 30 say they or someone they know has experienced violence or harassment at the hands of the police. Twenty-four percent of black men between 18 and 34 report that they have been mistreated by the police in the last 30 days, according to a Gallup poll .

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Cal Ripken and Lou Gehrig are forever linked in history as the two great ----iron men---- of baseball. For decades, Gehrig's record of 2,130 consecutive games-played seemed an insurmountable mark until Cal Ripken met it, and surpassed it by more than 500 games. By the time Ripken retired in 2001 the age of 40, he and Gehrig were the only two of 17,000 players in the major leagues who had played more than 2,000 games in a row. The history of their amazing achievement is chronicled in a new book The Streak: Lou Gehrig, Cal Ripken, and Baseball's Most Historic Record by Baltimore sportswriter John Eisenberg , who fills his account with stories not only of Ripken and Gehrig , but of the other ironmen who endured injuries and the vagaries of managers to make their marks as tenacious, every-day players.

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Cal Ripken and Lou Gehrig are forever linked in history as the two great iron men of basebal