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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Benjamin Orr — founding president and CEO of the Maryland Center on Economic Policy — joins us to survey some of the bills passed in the 2023 Maryland General Assembly, and assess their impact on Baltimore City. -
A new report issued by an international group of public health experts is critical of how the United States handled the COVID pandemic. -
People around the world turned their attention to London's Westminster Abbey this past weekend for the coronation of King Charles III. But what role will Britain's new king be playing on the world stage? -
Theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck reviews two classic plays now on stage in Baltimore; "Hamlet" at the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, and "Harvey" at the Everyman Theater. -
Midday movie mavens Ann Hornaday of the Washington Post and Jed Dietz of the Maryland Film Festival join us to discuss the writers' strike and what's new at the movies. -
Writer/podcaster/comedian Lane Moore's latest book — part memoir, part self-help — has tips, dos and don’ts and funny insights on making and keeping friends — and punting the ones who are no longer doing what friends need to do. -
The director of Hopkins' Berman Institute of Bioethics discusses how medical tech is impacting the ways we make our babies. An estimated 2% of US-born babies are now conceived in labs, as part of an in-vitro fertilization industry worth more than $23 billion. -
A Maryland appellate court has ordered the reinstatement of Mr. Syed's recently reversed conviction for the murder of Hae Min Lee. Baltimore appellate lawyer Steven Klepper discusses what's next. -
The Haaretz reporter and author discusses the recent upheavals in Israel's domestic politics and its US relations. Plus, Putin's war on Ukraine's Jews. -
The poll by the Sarah Hughes Center for Politics at Goucher College, in partnership with The Baltimore Banner, surveyed 800 Marylanders by phone in April. Fifty-three percent approve of Gov. Wes Moore's performance so far.
