Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck reviews Lena Waithe's debut play, "trinity," at Baltimore Center Stage

American journalist and author Wil Haygood discusses his new book, "The War Within A War," about the Blacks who served in Vietnam and confronted racism both in the ranks and on the home front.

Longtime newspaper columnist, talk-show host and playwright Dan Rodricks talks about current events and his new play, No Mean City, the last in his trilogy of plays about Baltimore.

Baltimore City's Inspector General Isabel Mercedes Cumming joins us to discuss the lawsuit she's filed in her records-access fight with Mayor Brandon Scott

Updates on Maryland's contentious redistricting efforts from WYPR State House reporter Sarah Petrowich, and WYPR's Scott Maucione on the Maryland AG's suit to block a DHS immigrant detention center in Washington County.

Two news guild chairs — Dan Belson of the Baltimore Sun and Ariel Wittenberg of POLITICO's E&E News — discuss the implications of the Baltimore Sun's trial use of AI to write two recent news analyses.

NPR Climate Desk correspondent Rebecca Hersher examines how Maryland is responding on several fronts to the urgency of climate change.

Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck reviews "Fences," August Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1985 play, in a new production by Chesapeake Shakespeare Company.

Currently, children aged 14 and older in Maryland can be charged as adults for first-degree murder and rape charges. At 16 or older, the list of quantifiable crimes for automatic charging expands to 33.

Our guest for the hour today on Midday is George Saunders, one of the most intriguing, singular, and popular authors on the current literary scene.  He’s written two novels and a novella. In 2017, one of those novels, Lincoln in the Bardo, won the coveted Man Booker Prize.  He is celebrated for six collections of short stories, and works of non-fiction that include a commencement speech on kindness and a master class on Russian short stories. His Substack, Story Club, has more than 300,000 subscribers.  

Recently, Saunders and Midday host Tom Hall had a conversation in the Writer's Live Series at the Enoch Pratt Library here in Baltimore.  They talked about his new novel, Vigil, a fantastic peroration on life and death, accountability and legacy, fate and meaning. 

Vigil is a masterpiece. It resonates with his Lincoln in the Bardo in that spirits are involved, and it confronts big questions in such a unique and incomparable way as to make those questions, even when left unanswered, land freshly and powerfully.

Before the event at the Pratt, George Saunders joined Tom in the Midday studio for an hour-long conversation about Vigil.  Because their talk was recorded earlier, we can’t take any calls or online comments today.