Rob Sivak
Interim senior producer, MiddayRob Sivak is interim senior producer for Midday, with host Tom Hall. Recently retired after a seven-year stint as a Midday producer, Rob joined WYPR in 2015 as senior producer of Hall's previous show, Maryland Morning (which aired its final broadcast on September 16th, 2016). Before coming to the station, Rob enjoyed a 36-year career at the congressionally funded global broadcaster, Voice of America. At VOA, he honed his skills as a news and feature reporter, producer, editor and program host.
After reporting assignments at VOA's New York City, United Nations and Los Angeles bureaus, Rob spent two decades covering international food, farming and nutrition issues for VOA's 180-million worldwide listeners, and created and hosted several popular VOA science magazines. At Midday, he continued to pursue his passion for radio and his abiding interests in science, health, technology and politics.
Rob grew up as an ex-pat "oil brat" on the Persian Gulf coast of Saudi Arabia, and studied and traveled widely in the Middle East, Europe and Africa. He attended Hofstra University in New York and Boston University's School of Public Communications. Rob and his wife Caroline Barnes, a writer, live in Silver Spring, Maryland, where they've raised three daughters.
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Guest host Dr. Carla Hayden, ex-Librarian of Congress and former CEO of Baltimore's Enoch Pratt Library, explores Black history books, talks with the Pratt's current CEO and meets members of a youth literacy group. -
Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck reviews Lena Waithe's debut play, "trinity," at Baltimore Center Stage -
American journalist and author Wil Haygood discusses his new book, "The War Within A War," about the Blacks who served in Vietnam and confronted racism both in the ranks and on the home front. -
Longtime newspaper columnist, talk-show host and playwright Dan Rodricks talks about current events and his new play, No Mean City, the last in his trilogy of plays about Baltimore. -
Each week here on Midday, it is our practice to read the names of the people who have lost their lives to violence in Baltimore City. -
Baltimore City's Inspector General Isabel Mercedes Cumming joins us to discuss the lawsuit she's filed in her records-access fight with Mayor Brandon Scott. -
Updates on Maryland's contentious redistricting efforts from WYPR State House reporter Sarah Petrowich, and WYPR's Scott Maucione on the Maryland AG's suit to block a DHS detention center in Washington County. -
Two news guild chairs — Dan Belson of the Baltimore Sun and Ariel Wittenberg of POLITICO's E&E News — discuss their concerns over the Baltimore Sun's trial use of AI to write two recent news analyses. -
NPR Climate Desk correspondent Rebecca Hersher examines how Maryland is responding on several fronts to the urgency of climate change. -
Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck reviews "Fences," August Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1985 play, in a new production by Chesapeake Shakespeare Company.
