WYPR: Midday with Dan Rodricks Podcast

As author of the “Frugal Traveler” column for the New York Times, Matt Gross traveled the globe more times than he can count. In a candid and colorful new memoir, The Turk Who Loved Apples: And Other Tales of Losing My Way Around the World, Gross shares his more memorable globetrotting moments, along with what it’s like to travel for long periods of time on the cheap, and the meaning of travel in today’s increasingly connected world.

One way to measure water quality in the Bay and any of its tributaries is with a simple test: Can you swim in it safely? A look at what remains of swimmable Chesapeake waters with Midday on the Bay contributor and Bay Journal reporter Rona Kobell; Anne Arundel County councilman Chris Trumbauer, who serves as river keeper for the West and Rhodes rivers; Billy Moulden, science teacher and avid swimmer who runs a summer camp for kids; and Jon Divine, senior attorney of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

In much of the developing world, pregnancy and childbirth are among the leading causes of death for women, especially for those in conflict zones. Jhpiego, affiliated with Johns Hopkins University, has worked for 40 years to improve health for some of the poorest in the world. Our guests:Dr. Ron Magarick, vice president for Technical Leadership Projects and Special Projects for Jhpiego; Sheena Currie, a midwife who has worked with the government of Afghanistan to increased the midwife workforce there; Dr. Edward Luka, program manager for a section of Jhpiego’s South Sudan program; and Dr. Bulbul Sood, head of Jhpiego programs in India.

Baltimore Sun TV critic and Midday on the Media contributor David Zurawick is back with his latest observations on television and the news media, including lay-offs at PBS, former WJZ reporter-anchor Adam May moving to Al Jazeera America, HBO's Summer Documentary Series, including the debut this week of, "Love, Marilyn," and the Season Six finale of AMC's, "Mad Men."

Americans pay far more for almost every interaction with the medical system than patients in any other country, and the nation’s breathtaking $2.7 trillion annual health care bill may have more to do with the cost of ordinary services, such as colonoscopies, than extraordinary ones. Our guest: Elisabeth Rosenthal, reporting on the high cost of U.S. medical care for The New York Times.

Rick Atkinson, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and historian, discusses the drive from the coast of France to Berlin in the last year of World War II. Atkinson is the author of The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945, the third book in his World War II trilogy, hailed by the Los Angeles Times as “a masterpiece of deep reporting and powerful storytelling.”

Today is the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision declaring Bible reading in public schools unconstitutional. At the center of the case was Madalyn Murray O'Hair, the famous atheist. We hear about O’Hair’s successful challenge of the Baltimore school board from Mark Graber, associate dean and professor of law and government at the University of Maryland School of Law; Michael Meyerson, professor of law at the University of Baltimore and author of Endowed by Our Creator: The Birth of Religious Freedom in America; journalist and novelist Dan Fesperman, who covered O’Hair’s later years for The Baltimore Sun; and Ann Rowe Seaman, author of The Most Hated Woman in America.

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake wants to attract 10,000 new families to Baltimore by 2020. How’s that going, and what can be done to accelerate the economic investment that creates job and recruits new residents? Members of regional Federal Reserve banks are meeting in Baltimore this week to hear and share strategies. Our guests: Matthew Martin, senior vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond; and Jeremy Nowak; community redevelopment consultant, co-founder of The Reinvestment Fund, and chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.

On the Midday Weekly Review: Sun columnist Jean Marbella and reporter Matthew Hay Brown on Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning and National Security. . . . Brenda McKenzie, president of the Baltimore Development Corporation, and City Councilman Carl Stokes discuss the city's proposed $107 million infrastructure investment in the development of Harbor Point near Inner Harbor East.

A look back 50 years to the civil rights demonstrations and riots that erupted in Cambridge, Maryland in mid-June 1963. Among our guests: Gloria Richardson Dandridge, the leader of the demonstrators, and WYPR's own senior news analyst, C. Fraser Smith, author of a history of civil rights in Maryland.

Deborah Hicks grew up in a working-class family in rural North Carolina. In The Road Out: A Teacher’s Odyssey in Poor America, she weaves a narrative of growing up in Appalachia with her experiences as an educator trying to help a group of troubled girls in inner-city Cincinnati. Hicks works at Duke University’s Social Science Research Institute, and is the founding director of PAGE, an educational partnership supporting girls and young women in Appalachia. Original air date 04/15/13

After World War II, Baltimore had numerous social and pleasure clubs for the working man; it seemed like there was one on every corner. But as manufacturing declined and people moved to the suburbs, many social clubs disappeared. Today, however, some are enjoying a resurgence and looking to rejuvenate their ranks with a new generation. We talk with members of the Arch Social Club on Pennsylvania Avenue; Ducky’s Pleasure Club in Canton; and the Polish Home Club in Fells Point. (Original Air Date: April 25th)

From delivering ultimatums to shopping with brand loyalty, a conversation about the many irrational ways we try to rationalize our decisions -- with journalist, blogger and psychology nerd David McRaney, author of You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself. (Original Air Date: January 8th)

The famed fictional sleuth was renown for his amazing powers of concentration, observation and deduction. Journalist and psychologist Maria Konnikova explains the thought-processes at work behind such clear thinking and gives tips on achieving similar levels of concentration in a world bristling with distractions. Konnikova is the author of Mastermind: How To Think Like Sherlock Holmes. (Original Air Date: February 6th)

Author Charlie LeDuff examines the gritty past and present of his once-prosperous hometown in Detroit: An American Autopsy. LeDuff, a Pulitzer-winning former staff writer for The New York Times and former reporter for The Detroit News, is currently a television reporter for Detroit's Fox 2 News. (Original Air Date: February 21st)