Sheilah Kast

Baltimore’s Civilian Review Board aims to provide a check on police misconduct by allowing citizen representatives to review the public’s complaints against police. Last month, the Justice Department’s report noted the board’s effectiveness was limited by a lack of resources. We speak to Kisha Brown, director of Baltimore City's Office of Civil Rights and Wage Enforcement, which oversees the CRB, and Keisha Allen, chair of the board, about how the board investigates complaints and the obstacles it faces.

The young adult novel “All-American Boys” takes on police brutality from the perspective of two teenagers: one black, one white. Jason Reynolds, who is black, and Brendan Kiely, who is white, wrote the book as a call to action. We’ll talk to the authors about how their conversations about race brought them together and what action they hope will be sparked by their depiction of two teens coming to grips with a police beating.

True crime procedurals like the Netflix documentary "Making a Murderer" have shone a spotlight on the problem of wrongful convictions. How true-to-life are these stories? How hard is it to overturn a wrongful conviction? And what’s it like to serve time for a crime you didn’t commit? We talk to a man who served five years for murder before he was exonerated, and to his lawyer, about the hard road to proving your innocence once you’re no longer presumed innocent.

Baltimore ranks second in the country - behind Detroit - in the number of tenants threatened with eviction. In any given year, about 6 percent of Baltimore’s renters face eviction; most likely of all are black women with children. We’ll talk to Zafar Shah, staff lawyer with the Public Justice Center, and Karen Wabeke, senior staff attorney with Homeless Persons Representation Project, about how public policies work against tenants in rent court, what’s changed recently and what changes they’d like to see.

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, the first in this season’s Baltimore Speaker series, shares his thoughts on what it takes to compromise.

Around the world, 65 million people have been forced from their homes by wars and other disasters--the biggest humanitarian crisis since World War II. Humanitarian agencies are calling for a new approach to aiding refugees. We’ll talk to Sean Callahan, incoming president of Catholic Relief Services, one of the international nonprofits based in Baltimore which took part in a meeting this month at the United Nations.

Early this summer more than 80 people were being held in county and city jails in Maryland, even though courts had said they needed in-patient mental-health care. Now the number is about a dozen. We ask Van T. Mitchell, Maryland Secretary of Health and Mental Hygiene, what changes have made it more likely detainees will get mental-health services, and what challenges lie ahead. Does the state have enough mental-health workers, and enough beds to meet its obligations? We also talk about Maryland’s growing epidemic of overdose deaths related to heroin and fentanyl.

Today we get the backstory from the co-founders of The Stoop Storytelling Series, live performances in which ordinary people in Baltimore tell true stories from their lives. The Series is about to start its eleventh season. What makes for a good story? What makes for a good storyteller? Do you have to be an extrovert? Jessica Henkin and Laura Wexler share their thoughts. Then, Paula Poundstone, Emmy-Award winning stand-up comedian and a regular panelist on the weekly news quiz show "Wait Wait...Don’t Tell Me!", will cruise through Maryland this weekend as part of her current stand-up tour. Sheilah chats with her about her new book and what running for class president in the 6th grade taught her about politics.

Paula Poundstone, Emmy-Award winning stand-up comedian and a regular panelist on the weekly news quiz show "Wait Wait...Don’t Tell Me!", will cruise through Maryland this weekend as part of her current stand-up tour.  Sheilah chats with her about her new book and what running for class president in the 6th grade taught her about politics.