Roughly Speaking

Donny Hathaway and Roberta Flack scored major pop hits in the 1970s with their duets, “Where Is The Love?” and “The Closer I Get To You.” But Hathaway, a gifted soul singer and song writer, was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, a severe form of mental illness that extracted a heavy toll on his music career and his personal life, culminating with his suicide at age 33 in 1979. At Baltimore Center Stage this month, Kelvin Roston Jr. portrays Hathaway in “Twisted Melodies,” a one-man play Roston wrote and reworked over the last 10 years.Today Dan speaks with Roston (3:03) about Hathaway and the play, and about mental illness. Then, Dr. Mark Komrad (17:26), Baltimore psychiatrist, gives his impressions of “Twisted Melodies.” Komrad, a contributor to conversations about mental health on Roughly Speaking, is the author of, “You Need Help: A Step-by-Step Plan to Convince a Loved One to Get Counseling.”Links:http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/arts/artsmash/bs-ae-arts-story-0324-20170320-story.htmlhttp://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/arts/artsmash/bs-ae-twisted-melodies-review-20170330-story.htmlhttp://www.komradmd.com/Mark_Komrad_MD/Welcome.htmlhttp://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/dan-rodricks-blog/bal-roughly-speaking-trump-anxiety-story.htmlhttp://www.youneedhelpbook.com/You_Need_Help/Overview.html

"Nothing has left me feeling more aggrieved than the sudden realization that in much of America, I will never be more than a second-class citizen," writes Baltimore economist and consultant Anirban Basu in an op-ed for The Baltimore Sun. "All of a sudden, being of Indian descent and brown-skinned feels like a disadvantage. It never felt quite like this before." Today, on being dark-skinned in Trump's America. Our guest is racial justice activist and writer Deepa Iyer, the author of "We Too Sing America: South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh Immigrants Shape Our Multiracial Future." Iyer, who was born in India and moved to the U.S. with her parents, served for a decade as the executive director of South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT), focusing on community building in post-9/11 America. She teaches in the Asian American studies program at the University of Maryland. She will speak at the Maryland State Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped in Baltimore on April 18 as part of the Pratt Library's Writers LIVE series.Links:http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-american-experience-20170402-story.htmlhttp://deepaiyer.com/http://calendar.prattlibrary.org/event/writers_live_deepa_iyer_we_too_sing_america_south_asian_arab_muslim_and_sikh_immigrants_shape_our_multiracial_future

Paul Francis Sullivan, host of the Sully Baseball podcast, talks about the 2017 Orioles and sizes up the top contenders in the American and National leagues. Sullivan, a California-based writer and TV producer who started his daily podcast in October 2012, ended that run on Sunday; he will continue to host a weekly podcast about baseball. Today, Sully’s take on Baltimore’s team and his predictions for the playoffs.Links:http://www.sullybaseball.com/

2:28: Paula Gallagher, Baltimore County librarian (and Sean’s wife), recommends a good book, “Truffle Boy: My Unexpected Journey Through the Exotic Food Underground,” by Ian Purkayastha, who comes to Towson next Sunday (April 9) for an appearance with Gertrude’s chef Doug Wetzel as part of the month-long BC Reads program.10:26: Are your documents safe in the cloud? Last week, a security researcher discovered a serious problem with Docs.com, Microsoft’s free document-sharing site tied to the company’s Office 365 service: Its homepage had a search bar. Not a big deal, except that hundreds of users of Office 2016 and Office 365 apparently were unaware that their documents could be shared publicly. Sean Gallagher, Baltimore-based IT editor of Ars Technica, nosed around and found a significant number of documents shared with sensitive information in them—some of them obtainable by just entering “passwords” or “SSN." Also on the show: What Congress and President Donald J. Trump are planning to do with our web surfing data. They’re going to make it easier for Internet providers to sell customer browser histories to advertisers and other companies.Links:https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/ian-purkayastha/truffle-boy/9781478909903/https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1?ie=UTF8----text=Ian Purkayastha----search-alias=books----field-author=Ian Purkayastha----sort=relevancerankhttp://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/dan-rodricks-blog/bal-doug-wetzel-survives-life-threatening-heat-stroke-and-he-still-makes-a-pretty-good-donut-20151204-story.htmlhttp://www.bcpl.info/bcreadshttps://docs.com/en-ushttps://arstechnica.com/security/2017/03/doxed-by-microsofts-docs-com-users-unwittingly-shared-sensitive-docs-publicly/https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/for-sale-your-private-browsing-history/

Seventy days into his presidency, Donald J. Trump gets the nod of approval from only 35 percent of Americans, the all-time lowest approval rating of any president in his first year. The latest Gallup poll also shows his approval rating among men falling from 51 percent to 44 percent during the month of March. The traditional honeymoon enjoyed by most presidents during their first 100 days has not happened. In fact, says political analyst Herb Smith, Trump is having the presidential "honeymoon from hell." Smith, longtime professor of political science at McDaniel College in Westminster, talks about Trump’s struggles and how it could affect Republicans in the 2018 elections. And, fresh from a McDaniel roundtable on the subject, Smith talks about "fake news" and "alternative facts," and he compares the dystopian prophecies of Orwell's "1984" with Huxley’s "Brave New World."Links:http://www.gallup.com/poll/207518/trump-approval-rating-unusually-low-unusually-early.aspxhttp://www.gallup.com/poll/207497/gender-gap-shrinks-trump-loses-support-among-men.aspxhttp://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Maryland-Politics-and-Government,674904.aspxhttp://www2.mcdaniel.edu/Poli_Sci/facsmith.htmhttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/13/books/review/which-dystopian-novel-got-it-right-orwells-1984-or-huxleys-brave-new-world.html?_r=0

Dan comments on what happened over the past few days in Washington — the botched Republican attempt to overhaul the Affordable Care Act, the enduring domestic achievement of President Obama repeatedly dismissed as a disaster by President Trump and others who vowed to repeal and replace it. But the effort was doomed from the start: Obamacare can only be fixed by those who support it, not those who oppose government involvement in delivering health care for all, and certainly not by those who seek to wipe out President Obama’s legacy.Links: http://www.latimes.com/politics/washington/la-na-essential-washington-updates-201703-htmlstory.html

2:06: The Sun’s Washington correspondent, John Fritze, talks about the Republican splintering over the House GOP’s repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act. 16:42: Can a city that loses population and struggles with violent crime afford to require a $15 minimum wage? Luke Broadwater, who covers Baltimore government and politics, talks about that issue and offers perspective on the first 100 days of Mayor Catherine Pugh.36:26: Erin Cox, State House bureau chief of the Sun, catches us up on news from the General Assembly as it heads into the final two weeks of the 2017 legislative session. 48:28: Almost live from Florida: The Sun’s Orioles beat writer, Eduardo Encina, gives his views of the Orioles as they prepare to come north for Opening Day on April 3. 1:08:59: Book critic Paula Gallagher recommends a coming-of-age novel set in the 1970s, "Setting Free the Kites," by Alex George.

2:08: Book critic Paula Gallagher recommends a foodie book, this one called, "Eating Korea," by British writer Graham Holliday, a chip off the ole Bourdain. 7:15: With St. Patrick’s Day a week away, Dan welcomes Henry Hong and John Shields for a lesson in making corned beef from scratch. If you’re going to make your own corned beef in time for the Irish holiday, you’d better listen up and get started right away. While corned beef and cabbage is considered the traditional dish, John says it’s not so in Ireland, and he offers a recipe for what he had there on St. Patrick’s Day: Irish Bacon and Cabbage. John Shields is a cookbook author and proprietor of Gertrude’s restaurant in the Baltimore Museum of Art. Henry Hong, aka The Food Nerd, is food and beverage manager of the Baltimore Country Club.24:35: Laura Byrne, founder and director of the Baltimore Irish Arts Center, talks about Irish music in Baltimore on St. Patrick’s Day and the upcoming Baltimore Irish Trad Fest.30:38: Peter Brice, executive director of New Century American Irish Arts Co. in Annapolis, tells the back-story of an old Irish tune that years later became the school song of Morgan State University. Dan tells about the Morgan teacher who adopted “Believe me, if all those endearing young charms” into “Fair Morgan,” the university’s alma mater. The segment concludes with the Morgan choir singing the song. Special thanks to Maryland Public Television for providing the recording.Links:http://www.gertrudesbaltimore.com/http://www.bcc1898.com/http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/irish-bacon-cabbage-with-mustard-saucehttps://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1018642-homemade-corned-beefhttps://www.harpercollins.com/9780062400765/eating-koreahttps://www.laurabyrne.com/biographyhttp://www.baltimoreirisharts.com/tradfest.htmlhttp://www.newcenturyirisharts.com/biographies/peterbrice/http://www.newcenturyirisharts.com/http://www.morgan.edu/academic_affairs/university_convocation/the_alma_mater.html

6:31: Maryland’s Republican governor, Larry Hogan, faces re-election in 2018, but he remains highly popular in a predominantly blue state where President Donald J. Trump is deeply unpopular. Who among the state’s leading Democrats will emerge to take the Hogan challenge? Could Maryland voters, unhappy with Trump, turn against Hogan in the mid-term elections? With the Maryland primary election 13 months away, Dan talks politics with Erin Cox, the Baltimore Sun’s State House bureau chief.1:40: Paula Gallagher, Baltimore County librarian and Roughly Speaking critic, calls “Pachinko,” a family saga from novelist Min Jin Lee, a tour de force.Links:http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/politics/bs-md-jealous-governor-20170228-story.htmlhttps://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/min-jin-lee/pachinko/9781455563937/

Justin Fenton, the Sun's criminal justice reporter, took a deep look at the Baltimore court where deals are made, breaking through the "white noise" of bench conferences to hear how prosecutors, defense attorneys and a judge work out plea bargains of criminal cases.

Our favorite tech-splainer, Sean Gallagher, Baltimore-based IT and national security editor for Ars Technica, is back, this time to explain how Twitter and Facebook were used by Russian operatives in an effort to influence the 2016 presidential election.

Links:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/bs-md-ci-baltimore-plea-bargains-peters-20171023-htmlstory.html

https://arstechnica.com/

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/10/twitter-drops-hammer-and-sickle-on-rt-sputnik-ad-buys-over-election-shenanigans/