Midday

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

Today, we discuss vaccine boosters. U.S. Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dropped the recommendations for COVID boosters for healthy children and pregnant women. Plus, HHS has changed the way vaccines are tested.

Meanwhile, the CDC reported that the year-to-date total of pediatric deaths from the flu has risen to 235, the only worst flu season on record since 2009.

And Baltimore has a new health commissioner. Mayor Brandon Scott announced last week that Dr. Michelle Taylor, a pediatrician who directs the Shelby County, TN Health Department, will take the reins of the Baltimore Health Department on August 4.

We discuss these stories and more with Wen. 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.

When jazz singer Ethel Ennis married Baltimore Sun reporter Earl Arnett in Colorado in 1967, they became one of the region's most prominent interracial couples.

Ennis passed away in 2019 and as a tribute to their life and marriage, Arnett is releasing his autobiography, "A Jazz Romance: Ethel Ennis, Baltimore and Me."

In words and photos, the memoir tells the story of their great life and love in a marriage that lasted more than 50 years.

In Baltimore City, 3rd District Councilman Ryan Dorsey is advocating for a package of bills that seek to increase housing density and affordable homes. He joins Midday to explain how these bills will help potential homebuyers and bring more residents to Baltimore City.

Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck joins the show to share her review of "John Wilkes Booth: One Night Only" at Baltimore Center Stage.

Matthew Weiner, who has credits from "Mad Men" and "The Sopranos," makes his playwriting debut in this show which tells a unique story set in Maryland. The play is a story from the past that has an eerie relevance to modern days.

A new exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Art showcases human connections to nature amongst environmental change and social upheaval.

Ekow Eshun is the curator of a new exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Black Earth Rising: Colonialism and Climate Change in Contemporary Art. It features the work of renowned artists who are responding to the challenges of the environment.

The paintings, sculptures and media in the exhibitions are created by contemporary African diasporic, Latin American, and Native American artists.

In this time of deepening political bifurcation, it is difficult to find consensus among friends, family or neighbors.

Heather Mizeur has thought a lot about why that is, and what can be done about it. Mizeur was a member of the state House of Delegates for 8 years, and ran unsuccessful races for governor and for the House of Representatives.

She joins Midday to talk about her efforts to bridge political divisions, and how those divisions can often be a product of forgetting basic truths about ourselves.