Roughly Speaking

“Make no mistake about it, I believe President Trump is causing damage to our country, primarily to the values America stands for.” Sen. Ben Cardin, the Maryland Democrat, stopped by the Sun’s studio to talk about the first 100 days of the Trump presidency. Cardin explains why he believes Donald Trump is damaging the country, but also where he thinks Trump could notch some achievements should he choose to act in a bipartisan manner.

Film historians consider “High Noon” to be a Western, but it’s more than that — the story of one man’s moral courage in the face of overwhelming odds. In the 1952 film, a town marshal, played by Gary Cooper, is about to retire his badge and his gun and move away with his new bride, played by Grace Kelly. But the marshal learns that a man who hates him, a vicious outlaw named Frank Miller, is coming back to the town to kill him — and he’s arriving on the noon train. High Noon is a Hollywood classic, but it was made during the post-World War II Red Scare, when Congress was looking for suspected communists among the film industry’s producers, writers, directors and actors. The screenwriter of “High Noon” was Carl Foreman, and in the middle of the film’s production he was forced to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee about his former membership in the Communist Party. Refusing to name names, he was eventually blacklisted and fled the United States. Author Glenn Frankel, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, is our guest today. He has written a book, “High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of An American Classic.” He joins us in conversation with our film critics, Linda DeLibero and Christopher Llewellyn Reed.Links:http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/high-noon-9781620409480/

Book critic Paula Gallagher strongly recommends, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” by David Grann, a staff writer for the New Yorker and author of “The Lost City of Z.” His new book is about the mysterious murders of Native Americans in Oklahoma in the 1920s, and the birth of the FBI.Kevin Shird, a Baltimore native and drug dealer-turned-youth advocate, talks about the unrest that hit Baltimore two years ago today, on the day of Freddie Gray’s funeral. Shird is the author of two books, “Lessons of Redemption,” about his tough early life and his 12 years in prison, and “Uprising in the City,” about the civil unrest that hit West Baltimore on April 27, 2015.Links:http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/208562/killers-of-the-flower-moon-by-david-grann/9780385534246/http://aalbc.com/authors/kevin-shird.htmlhttp://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/investigations/bs-md-ci-gray-investigations-20170419-story.html

Are Maryland farmers and Baltimore entrepreneurs missing a big economic opportunity by not growing and processing hemp for the commercial market? A report commissioned by the Abell Foundation concludes that hemp-marijuana confusion, along with a federal prohibition, form obstacles to a new branch of environmentally-friendly agriculture that could augment the income of Maryland farmers and spawn new businesses. Kentucky has already moved forward with growing hemp, despite the federal ban against the fibrous cannabis. Rona Kobell, reporter for the Chesapeake Bay Journal, joins Dan to talk about hemp’s potential. She wrote the Abell report. "Hemp offers opportunities for new products, good jobs, wellness, an improved environment and healthier soils," the report says. "It can help farmers diversify and keep their land in agriculture. It can jump start entrepreneurs who want to build businesses that process and transport hemp. And it can keep more Baltimore college graduates in the city to pursue careers in botanicals, textiles, pharmaceuticals and manufacturing."Links:http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-fine-hemp-marijuana-legalize-20140626-story.htmlhttp://www.abell.org/publications/hope-hemp-misunderstood-plant-prepares-its-comebackhttp://bittersoutherner.com/kentucky-hemp/#.WQB22lPyvow

The Coca-Cola Bottling Co. gave its secret recipe for Coke to an Atlanta rabbi, who helped the company make its popular soft drink kosher. On today’s show, Roger Horowitz, a food historian, tells the tale of Rabbi Tobias Geffen in a new book, "Kosher USA," about the keeping of the Jewish dietary law in the modern industrial food system. Among his stories: How Oroes became kosher, and how and why Manischevitz became one of the most popular wines among African-Americans. Horowitz is director of the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library in Delaware. He is the author of "Negro and White, Unite and Fight: A Social History of Industrial Unionism in Meatpacking and Putting Meat on the American Table: Taste, Technology, Transformation."Links:https://cup.columbia.edu/book/kosher-usa/9780231158329

2:07: Paula Gallagher, Baltimore County librarian, says readers who liked JD Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy” will enjoy a new novel, “The Animators,” about the friendship of two artistic women from poor backgrounds who become the talk of the indie film world.6:43: Leila Atassi, City Hall reporter for The Cleveland Plain Dealer, talks about Cleveland’s effort to curtail illegal dirt biking by building a $2.3 million dirt bike park. Baltimore’s so-called “12 O’Clock Boys” have taken to the streets — and sometimes the sidewalks — of the city for years, prompting citizen complaints and a police crackdown (On episode 155 of the podcast, Dan interviewed Wheelie Wayne, considered the godfather of the 12 O'Clock Boys). While a private group studies the feasibility of building a dirt bike park in Baltimore, a divided Cleveland City Council has moved ahead with the controversial idea. Atassi fills us in. 17:42: Political analyst Herb Smith talks about the effect the Trump presidency has had on the American tourism industry, and what special congressional elections suggest about the 2018 mid-terms. Smith is professor and former chair of political science at McDaniel College.https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062300546/hillbilly-elegyhttp://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/533931/the-animators-by-kayla-rae-whitaker/9780812989281/http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2017/01/a_divided_cleveland_city_counc.htmlhttp://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/bs-md-ci-dirtbike-arrests-wheelie-wayne-20170221-story.htmlhttp://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/dan-rodricks-blog/bal-roughly-speaking-wheelie-wayne-story.htmlhttp://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2017/01/shouting_match_threat_of_lawsu.htmlhttps://www.ft.com/content/d8d3402a-1540-11e7-b0c1-37e417ee6c76http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-house-race-georgia-20170418-story.html

On this episode of Roughly Speaking with Dan Rodricks, a dive into data about health, housing and community trends across the city — which neighborhoods are struggling, which ones are hot, which will be hot in the coming months and years, and which neighborhoods are the most ethnically and racially diverse.2:45: Seema Iyer measures Baltimore life in all kinds of ways. She’s associate director of the Jacob France Institute at the University of Baltimore, and each year for the past 15 years, the institute, in partnership with the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance, has published Vital Signs, a statistical portrait of the city, measuring everything from unoccupied homes to high school dropouts and teen pregnancy.29:26: We get the latest on the general health of Baltimoreans from Meredith Cohn, the Sun’s health and medical research reporter, and Dr. John Cmar of Sinai Hospital.42:32: A look at Baltimore housing market trends with representatives of LiveBaltimore, Annie Milli and Steve Gondol.1:02:21: Seema Iyer describes a new project to measure the vitality of city neighborhoods in terms of art, culture and civic engagement. It’s a cool project called the Baltimore GeoLoom, launching this summer.Links:http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/dan-rodricks-blog/bs-md-rodricks-0329-20170328-story.htmlhttp://bniajfi.org/http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/investigations/bs-md-sun-investigates-neighborhoods-20170401-story.htmlhttp://www.baltimoresun.com/business/real-estate/bs-bz-march-home-sales-20170411-story.htmlhttp://www.baltimoresun.com/features/female-trouble/bs-female-trouble-annie-milli-20170404-htmlstory.htmlhttp://www.baltimoresun.com/business/bs-bz-live-baltimore-gondol-20170301-story.htmlhttp://www.geoloom.org/

1:43: Paula Gallagher, a Baltimore County librarian and Roughly Speaking book critic, recommends "Mozart's Starling," a non-fiction look at the great composer's relationship with a bird and how starlings, once favored as pets, came to be considered a nuisance in the United States.5:43: The General Assembly has authorized the state attorney general, Brian Frosh, to sue the Trump administration to protect Maryland’s interests — and Frosh is now empowered to do so without first getting the permission of the Governor. In his story about this in today’s Baltimore Sun, reporter Ian Duncan says the assembly left behind “a kind of night watchman” to keep an eye on Washington while the legislature is in recess. But what actions by the Trump administration would prompt Frosh and other Democratic attorneys general to go to court? We’ll also hear of efforts to stop price gouging by pharmaceutical companies and how the state legislature reformed a bail system that Frosh believes would ultimately have been found to be unconstitutional.Links:https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/lyanda-lynn-haupt/mozarts-starling/9780316370875/http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/politics/bs-md-frosh-success-20170411-story.htmlhttp://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/politics/bs-md-attorney-general-powers-20170416-story.htmlhttp://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/editorial/bs-ed-drug-prices-20170326-story.htmlhttp://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/bs-md-bail-frosh-20161011-story.html

Remember Toya Graham, the ‘Baltimore Mom’ during the unrest that hit West Baltimore on the day of Freddie Gray’s funeral in 2015? She was videotaped grabbing, berating and slapping her teenaged son in an effort to pull him away from the other teenagers who threw rocks at police near Mondawmin Mall. Graham’s actions were praised as heroic, but our guest today, Stacey Patton, offered a dissenting opinion in the Washington Post. In 2008, Patton, a journalist and assistant professor at Morgan State University, wrote a memoir, That Mean Old Yesterday, about how, as a foster child, she had survived a childhood of abuses, including whippings at the hands of her adoptive mother. Patton did not expect to write about corporal punishment in black families again, but, because of Toya Graham, Patton is back on the subject with a new book, “Spare The Kids: Why Whupping Children Won’t Save Black America,” an important and convincing argument against a common and widely accepted practice.Links:https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/29/why-is-america-celebrating-the-beating-of-a-black-child/?utm_term=.0b99a9adc97a

Today’s guest, Firmin Debrabander, is a professor of philosophy at the Maryland Institute College of Art, an author and social commentator. He’s at work on a book about privacy and wonders if it really matters any more. He thinks Americans like to say they cherish privacy in the Internet age, but actually do little to protect it and pay only lip service to the evils of surveillance. Between online consumerism and shameless social media posts, people seem to actively eschew privacy for being part of the digital community. DeBrabander has written on the subject and in today’s show he dares listeners to define privacy and why it matters.Links:https://www.mica.edu/About_MICA/People/Faculty/Faculty_List_by_Last_Name/Firmin_DeBrabander.htmlhttps://aeon.co/essays/how-baring-and-sharing-online-increases-social-conformity