Sheilah Kast

One out of five adults in the U.S. lives with mental illness and research shows that 40 to 50 percent of people with severe disorders like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are not receiving any treatment.  On average, people with serious mental illness die younger than others; some research points to two decades of lost life span.

A few weeks ago on this show we looked at the potential impact of cuts in the O’Malley and Hogan budgets that would affect reimbursements and salaries of behavioral health providers in Maryland. Today we’re digging into what access to mental health treatment looks like for consumers with insurance and at some of the concerns of providers themselves. 

One hundred fifty years ago, President Abraham Lincoln stood on the East steps of the U.S. Capitol and delivered one of the greatest speeches in American history: his second inaugural address. Many of us know the last part of it that begins: "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in." That message of mercy is only part of what Lincoln packed into his brief 703 words. We've asked Richard Striner, professor of history at Washington College in Chestertown and author of several books about Lincoln, to discuss Lincoln’s second inaugural.

A new report from the Justice Policy Institute and Prison Policy Initiative says that, as of 2010, 458 people from Baltimore's Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood or neighboring Harlem Park were in a Maryland prison. It's the largest number of any census tract in the state. We talk about it with Marc Schindler, Executive Director of the Justice Policy Institute. And, we visit two men in Sandtown who have been to prison and back. Antoine Bennett is the director of Men of Valuable Action, or MOVA. Anthony Warren is MOVA’s Community Service Project Coordinator.

The yellow bus has long been an icon of public school systems, but in many big cities, tens of thousands of students make their way to and from school without the yellow bus. They navigate public transit. And more school systems are switching from yellow bus to public transit services to save costs. About 30,000 Baltimore City Public School students regularly ride the city bus to and from school. And, getting those kids to school on time can be difficult. Middle and high school students can apply to attend any school they want in the city regardless of how close it is to where they live. Producer Jonna McKone explores how much we know about youth transit patterns and the issues these young people face getting to school. 

James Madison, James Madison. Fourth president. James Madison. What else springs to mind? One of those powdered-wig guys in knee breeches from revolutionary times. Something to do with the Constitution. War-of-1812 president. What else?

A whole lot else, fluently laid out in Maryland historian David O. Stewart’s latest book, Madison’s Gift: Five Partnerships that Built America.

How do journalists bring important stories to light? Sometimes a a well-placed source spills the beans. Sometimes a whistle-blower comes forward. Another important way may be less familiar to you: Public Information Act requests. They allow a journalist, non-profit, a business, or anyone, to request information held by the state and local governments.  Maryland’s Public Information Act was enacted in 1970. That was before email, before desktop computers, way before thumb drives. It hasn’t seen a major update since then. But, some journalists and advocacy groups want to reshape it.

The educational institution we know as  Bowie State University celebrates its 150th anniversary this year. The university started as a one-room school house in Baltimore right after the Civil War and over 15 decades has evolved into a university of close to 6,000 students.  We’ll learn some of its early history – and why it moved from Baltimore to Bowie from archivist Katy Hayes, who’s with me in the studio.  But first, we hear from a woman who lived part of Bowie State’s history,  Beatrice Payne. She graduated from Bowie in 1928.  We visited Mrs. Payne a couple weeks ago. 

Novelist Laura Lippman spent 20 years reporting for The Baltimore Sun.  Her 20th novel, "Hush Hush", is the 12th in a series following private investigator and protagonist, Tess Monaghan.  The last time we got a peek at Tess Monaghan she was solving a mystery while on bed rest for a difficult pregnancy. That was four years ago. Now, both protagonist and author are mothers. Laura Lippman joins host Sheilah Kast to discuss her new novel.

It’s Baltimore, 1861. Picture the city, gripped by recession, many of its citizens out of work. The president-elect, Abraham Lincoln, is on his way to Washington to be inaugurated, intends to have his train stop in the Monumental City on February 23rd. But, the election of an anti-slavery president, far from triggering a bipartisan wave of hope, has sparked the secession of seven Southern States. Baltimore, south of the Mason-Dixon line, is a hotbed of Confederate sympathizers. What happens next is laid out in detail by author Michael Kline in his book "The Baltimore Plot: the First Conspiracy to Assassinate Abraham Lincoln". He joined us on the phone in 2009 to talk about it.

  Five years ago, if you lived in Maryland and wanted to gamble at a casino, you had to leave the Free State to do so. Now, Maryland has five casinos where you can try your luck. However, revenue from the casinos in Maryland hasn't matched estimates on what the state expected for the past four years. We talk about why with gaming industry analyst Alan Woinksi and The Baltimore Brew's Mark Reutter.