Rob Sivak
Contributing producer, MiddayRob Sivak is a contributing producer for Midday, with host Tom Hall. Recently retired after a seven-year stint as Midday's senior 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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Two lawyers taking part in an upcoming University of Baltimore School of Law symposium on Maryland's first Black jurists join us to remember the contributions of these little-known legal pioneers. -
Charles "Choo" Smith, a youth coach and former Harlem Globetrotters star, joins us, with Baltimore Banner neighborhood reporter Jasmine Vaughn-Hall, to discuss his vision for a new "Communiversity" in a NW Baltimore neighborhood. -
Author and Our Body Politic host Farai Chideya offers perspective on President Biden's energetic, wide-ranging address to Congress Tuesday night, and the telling response he got from fractious Republicans in the chamber. -
As right-wing lawmakers and conservative educators across the nation move to ban or restrict the teaching of Black studies in our public schools, we talk with three Black educators about how they're responding to these challenges to free thought and historical truth. -
Erricka Bridgeford and Letrice Gant, co-organizers of the Baltimore Peace Movement — formerly Baltimore Ceasefire 365 — assess the impact of the group's February 3-5 "Peace Promise Weekend," the first under its new banner. -
The outspoken public health advocate joins us for our monthly conversation about important health and health policy issues of the day, and to answer your questions about public health. -
Theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck spotlights a poignant play about family, loss, grief and emotional connections. -
Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday and Maryland Film Festival founder Jed Dietz join us for our monthly roundup of the best (and worst) in cinema. -
Re-elected in 2022 for a second term to work on HoCo's issues, County Executive Ball is also taking the reins of a statewide county association that looks to solve local problems with regional solutions. -
Gov. Moore's address to the General Assembly laid out his priorities in education, public service and state workforce development, among other goals for this year's legislative session. WYPR News Director Matt Bush unpacks the governor's major policy directives.
