WYPR: Midday with Dan Rodricks Podcast

Need advice on a smart phone, tablet, a new game device or computer? Mario Armstrong, WYPR tech commentator, joins Jim Barry of the Consumer Electronics Association to answer listener questions about the latest and greatest gadgetry on the market this holiday season. Original airdate 1/4/12

She died eight years ago, but Julia Child's influence on American food and appetites lives on. French chef, public television pioneer, author and cult icon, Julia Child is the subject of a new, 500-page biography by Bob Spitz, our guest. Spitz is the author of “Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child.” Original airdate 12/4/12

Redefining what masculinity looks like in the 21st century, with Carlos Andres Gomez, author of “Man Up: Cracking the Code of Modern Manhood. Original airdate 10/10/12

Maryland made history on Election Day by becoming, with Maine and Washington, the first states to make same-sex marriage legal by ballot. Nine states and the District of Columbia now allow gay and lesbian couples to be married. But there’s still a very different story in the South. Author Bernadette Barton says the Bible Belt is full of gays and lesbians trying to live ordinary, spiritual lives, but the conventions of small town life, Southern attitudes and the political power of Christian institutions smother them with both passive and active homophobia. Barton is the author of, “Pray the Gay Away: The Extraordinary Lives of Bible Belt Gays.” Original airdate 11/19/12

Midday on Health contributor Dr. John Cmar gives an insider’s tour of how a hospital works. Original airdate 12/3/12

What was health care like in early America, before and after the revolution? Elaine Breslaw, retired professor of history at Morgan State University, provides a fascinating and skin-crawling chronicle of the 18th Century -- the practitioners and their practices, from purging to pain relief, and the whole realm of alternatives to the infection-fighting medicine that was being developed in Europe. Breslaw, a visiting scholar at the University of Tennessee, is the author of “Lotions, Potions, Pills, and Magic: Health Care in Early America." Original airdate 11/13/12

Baltimore native Thurgood Marshall is an American legal legend for his role in the landmark Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education, and for later becoming the nation’s first black Supreme Court justice. In Young Thurgood: The Making of a Supreme Court Justice, University of Maryland law professor Larry S. Gibson delivers the definitive look at Marshall’s Maryland years. Original airdate 12/12/12

Lawrence Blum, acclaimed philosopher and professor at the University of Massachusetts, taught a course on race and racism over four years at an ethnically and economically diverse high school in Cambridge, Mass. He's written a book about his surprising and sometimes humorous conversations with uninhibited teenagers -- the new face of America. Blum, who speaks at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore Tuesday evening, is the author of "High Schools, Race and America's Future: What Students Can Tell Us About Morality, Diversity and Community." Original airdate 11/27/12

With the number of Americans in poverty at its highest level since the 1960s, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges and cartoonist Joe Sacco chronicle poverty's advance in four areas of the country -- a native American reservation, an impoverished New Jersey city, a rural mining region, and the farms where migrant workers toil under harsh conditions. Hedge's vivid commentary and Sacco's trenchant illustrations are published in Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt by Nation Books. Original airdate 11/29/12

As Barbara Ehrenreich did to chronicle the lives of the working poor, Tracie McMillan took jobs picking produce in California, stocking lettuce in a Walmart in Detroit and working as an "expo" in a busy Applebee’s in Brooklyn to tell stories about how the country eats. The result is an odyssey through the food industry, and through class and American culture. McMillan is the author of "The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee’s, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table." Original air date 11/16/12

"Even the translation of a single word can be a minefield, and a misstep can lead to disaster," says interpreter Nataly Kelly, who provides a look at the surprising and complex ways translation affects the practice of religion, global commerce and medicine. Kelly, a certified court interpreter, gives language lovers an inside look at how translation affects the Internet, international politics, sports and culture. She and translator Josh Zetzsche are co-authors of "Found In Translation: How Language Shapes Our Lives and Transforms The World."Original airdate 11/19/12

One week after we learned of the horror of Newtown, we talk about it on the air, from 12-2 pm. Culture commentator Sheri Parks on "the nurturing heroism of the female teachers." Psychiatrist Gordon Livingston on the psychological implications of America's long love affair with the gun and with violence in general as a solution to human problems. Also joining us: singer Milla Hniang with an original song about and for the children of Sandy Hook.

In our December edition of Midday on the Bay, environmental reporter Rona Kobell presents case studies in failed planning and bad ideas that haunt people and places in the Chesapeake region today: The unleashing of a home-building frenzy on Kent Island without a public septic system; the construction of a highway over the Jones Falls in Baltimore; the design of a stormwater system that protects our basements but delivers loads of pollutants to our rivers and streams. Plus: The significance of a fisheries commission decision to cut the Atlantic coast harvest of menhaden by 20 percent.

Civil rights activist Rev. Jesse L. Jackson was in Baltimore recently to protest the state’s plans to build a $70 million juvenile detention facility here. The facility, supported by the O'Malley administration, would hold teenagers who have been charged as adults. These teens are now being housed at the Baltimore City Detention Center, in the same building where adult inmates are held. We report the state's position on the need for the jail and hear from two activists who oppose it: the Rev. Heber Brown, pastor of Pleasant Hope Baptist Church, and Tyrone Barnwell, a full-time organizer for the city’s Safe and Sound Campaign.

Frank James MacArthur, a Waverly resident and a cab driver who frequently tweets, blogs and broadcasts online, gave the play-by-play of his own standoff with Baltimore police after barricading himself in his basement. A look at the intersections of social media and news, and the "social media event," with Baltimore Sun media critic David Zurawik.