Midday

The power to take a life, professor and social commentator Roxane Gay writes, receives greater constitutional and culture value than a women's right to the pursuit of happiness.

Gay is the author of the New York Times best-selling books Bad Feminist and Hunger. Her latest work includes the essay Stand Your Ground: A Black Feminists Reckoning with America's Gun Problem.

From the firearms invention in more than 500 hundred years ago, to the writing of the 2nd Amendment in 1787, to America's current epidemic of gun violence, Gay follows the social forces that shaped our current reality. The piece is personal, describing Gay's thoughts about owning a gun, and what gun ownership means to Black feminism.

(Photo by Reginald Cunningham)

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Mayor Brandon Scott speaks to Midday about the recent death of DPW employee Ronald Silver II.

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Host Tom Hall speaks with Dr. Julia Marciari-Alexander, who for the past eleven years has been the Executive Director and CEO of the Walters Art Museum. Walters Art Museum named two interim co-directors to replace Marciari-Alexander as the organization seeks a new leader.

Marciari-Alexander announced she is set to leave next month to take a new position as the President of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation in New York.

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Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott joins Midday to discuss his policy plans for the city's biggest challenges. We ask Scott about decreases in violent crime and car thefts. What is working, according to the mayor, and where is there room for improvement?

Plus, are city agencies doing enough to prepare and train city workers? On Friday afternoon, solid waste worker Ronald Silver II was finishing his collection route when he collapsed and then later died. According to reporting from WYPR's Emily Hofstaedter, the Baltimore Office of the Medical Examiner has confirmed that Silver died of hyperthermia, colloquially known as heat sickness, which happens when the body’s temperature climbs too high.

Scott regularly joins the program to discuss the latest from city government, though the interview series was suspended during the Democratic primary.

After winning his party's nomination, the Mayor does have an opponent in the general election, Republican Shannon Wright. Wright is not actively campaigning for Mayor, save for a couple of Facebook posts. She does not have a functional campaign website or a staff, and she has signed an affidavit stating she does not intend to spend or raise any money before the November election. Wright joined Midday's “Conversations with the Candidates” series earlier this summer.

(Photo by Kaitlin Newman)

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Baltimore City Police Commissioner Richard Worley joins Midday to discuss historic lows in homicide, violence reduction and the ongoing federal consent decree.

Over the weekend, the Baltimore Peace Movement held its quarterly Peace Promise weekend. While Baltimore is seeing an uptick in murders, a tragic annual occurrence during the warmer summer months, homicides are at decade lows.

The first half of 2024 saw 89 killings, the second-fewest since 1970, and a more than 50% decline from two years ago. According to reporting from the Baltimore Sun, each six-month period since the first half of 2020 has seen a decline.

Meanwhile, the Baltimore City entered into its seventh year under federal consent decree. The judge overseeing the consent decree has found the department fully compliant with two requirements of the agreement, including a health and wellness program that has become a paradigm for law enforcement agencies in the United States and abroad.

(Photo courtesy of the Baltimore Police Department)

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Theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck joins Midday to share another weekly review of a local theatrical production.

Rousuck takes a look at Grand Horizons, presented by Cockpit in Court at Community College of Baltimore County Essex through August 4. The dynamics of one family are central to the play, and the story is part domestic comedy, part domestic drama.

(Photo by Trent Haines-Hopper)

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Today is Midday at the Movies, our monthly focus on new films and film-industry trends with movie aficionados Jed Dietz, founding director of the Maryland Film Festival, and Max Weiss, film critic and Editor-in-Chief of Baltimore Magazine.

This week we talk summer films, including Twisters and Longlegs. What are your favorite movies of the summer?

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Judith Krummeck's The Deceived Ones reinterprets the classic Twelfth Night in a contemporary Baltimore setting. Her new novel chronicles the journey of twins, Vira and Sevastyan, a brother and sister from Ukraine who escape their war-torn homeland and come to Charm City.

Vira is a talented musician, who becomes begins working on a new opera at the Peabody Institute in the Mount Vernon neighborhood. Inspired by Shakespeare, Krummeck weaves a fun and poignant tale, replete with mistaken identities, heartfelt ardor, and a bit of mischief.

This episode originally aired May 7, 2024.

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Slow Time is Antje Rauwerda's debut novel. The Goucher College professor set her story in Govans, the northeast Baltimore neighborhood she calls home. The setting comes alive in Rauwerda's story and is as vibrantly described as the characters who live there.

At the outset of the story, the book’s protagonists, Danny and Em, know each other only in passing. As their connection deepens, we learn about their pasts, what they have lost and how they have coped with those losses.

(This episode originally aired on May 7, 2024)

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WTMD’s First Thursday Festival returns tomorrow. The homegrown affair takes place every summer at the Canton Waterfront Park and features artists from Maryland.

Tyler LaPorte, afternoon host and WTMD Interim Program Director, joins Midday to discuss the the upcoming event and what visitors can expect.

(Photos by Cary Evan/CE Imagery and David LaMason.)

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