What is Smalltimore Homes and how did it start?
I started investing in Baltimore real estate in 2014. I was fixing and flipping homes, and I was very intentional in selling to first-time homeowners, because, to be honest, I wanted those homeowners to look like me. Over time, it morphed from investing in the city and building up black homeowners to addressing people who are experiencing homelessness, which is something that impacts our community in a big way because two out of three people experiencing homelessness in Baltimore are black. So Smalltimore Homes was founded in February 2018 because I decided to start an affordable housing nonprofit and that would provide tiny homes outfitted with sleeping bags, clothes, and other supplies to people experiencing homelessness.

Why microshelters?
I think transitioning out of homelessness starts with having an address and a place to rest your head. Because how do you think about anything else if you don’t know where you’re going to sleep at night? I plan to partner with groups that provide things like job training and education to attack each piece of the issue so that someone can start by living in one of these microshelters, get the resources they need, and then work up to finding a room for rent and acclimate themselves back into life.

What kinds of challenges has Smalltimore Homes faced so far?
Because of their wheels and size, our first three microshelter models are not legal dwellings in Baltimore. But through volunteer builds, donations, and grants from the community, we’re able to continue improving the design and having conversations about how this will help homelessness in the city. Within the year, I’d like to create at least three microshelter communities with anywhere from two to five of the shelters for people to visit and experience. By the end of that year, I plan to acquire a piece of land to build the final, allowable model that people will be staying in.

How does Baltimore compare to other cities that have started micro-shelter communities?
We’re unique compared to other cities that have these kinds of shelters because we have blight and vacant buildings. I hope to partner with an organization that’s breaking down these vacant homes, take what’s salvageable, and use those materials to create new tiny dwellings.

What kind of feedback have you received from potential tenants?
One volunteer brought a homeless woman he knew to one of our monthly builds. I gave her some supplies and I asked her for her feedback on the homes. I asked her if she would sleep in one, and she said yes because, at the time, she was sleeping standing up in a corner of the Lyric every night. So I asked if she would stop if she had one of the microshelters as an option, and, if not, what would she change about it. All she suggested was bigger windows. And I was like, “I can do that! Someone give me a saw!”

What are your long-term goals for Smalltimore Homes?
In three to five years, I want to have a permanent plot of land with at least 15 tiny homes for people who were experiencing homelessness. I want it to be temporary housing for them, no more than three years, which will give them time to get back on their feet, save some money, and, hopefully, find a place of their own. On the plot of land, I’d love to implement a vertical garden that tenants can contribute to. If we could have a whole city block with no blight and full of microshelters and sustainable living for people experiencing homelessness, that would be bliss.

Why do you think this idea will work?
I think it’ll work in Baltimore as long as we can address blight as part of this initiative. A lot of people have said, “How can you start something like this when there’s so many abandoned buildings in the city?” But people can’t move into those places. That’s the thing that I recognize is unique about doing this project in Baltimore—we can address both issues at the same time. Overall, I think if we can contribute to this growing ecosystem of people and programs working to help people transition into society then this city will be a much better place.

You started at WTMD in 2006 as the host of Baltimore Unsigned, not long after you started covering arts and entertainment at The Sun. How old were you at the time?
I was 22, so I was basically making it up as I went. The bands I was talking to in those first years of the show were all of these talented Baltimore musicians, like Monarch, who became Wye Oak, and J. Roddy Walston & The Business. It was just a matter of being in the right place at the right time. I’ve been really lucky to watch and report on the Baltimore music scene for the last 10 years, because it’s exploded. Right now, the Baltimore music scene is the most popular and most influential it’s ever been.

What’s led to that?
I think it’s a couple things. When I first started covering music here, there was a trend, especially in hip-hop, where a really promising rapper would attract some mainstream label interest, sign a record deal, move away, and chances are you’d never hear from them again. Baltimore bands had a similar pattern—they’d move to New York or L.A. to try and chase fame. Sometimes it would work out; sometimes it wouldn’t. So there was this drain in the arts and music scene.

What changed was when the Wham City arts collective moved here in 2005 or 2006. They started making some noise and you started to see other bands get interested. Rolling Stone did a piece saying that Baltimore’s music scene was the best in the country, and all of a sudden, people were coming here to be part of it. No one was leaving. Future Islands still lives here. Beach House still lives here. Dan Deacon still lives here. And because people refuse to leave, you’ve got this music scene unlike what we’ve had in the past.

Those big artists create a nest egg for all the up-and-comers.
You’re seeing that in hip-hop, too. You’ve got this extremely talented younger generation of rappers—Bond St. District, Abdu Ali, TT The Artist—who are proud that they’re from Baltimore. They’re staying here, and that sends a message.

Something else has changed, too, and some people will say this is for the worst, but when I first started covering Baltimore music, there were not a lot of legitimate places to see live shows.

And many of those DIY venues would get busted and be shut down.
But since Station North has started to come online, you see legitimate clubs like Metro Gallery, The Windup Space, The Crown, Joe Squared, and that’s been really good for the scene. I was talking to Abdu Ali about this recently—for the first time in a long time, it feels like we’re living in a city, because competition has gotten really fierce. Some nights, you don’t know which club to go to, and that’s really exciting. Fells Point was a similar setup in the 1970s, with live music on just about every corner. It was a lot of bar bands, a lot of blues bands; that’s what we were known for at the time. So it’s happened before, but not in a while.

What’s exciting about a lot of the Station North venues is that they are so open to a variety of genres.
One of the characteristics that sets Baltimore’s music scene apart, and I think that makes it one of the best in the country, is the willingness to experiment. Across genres, Baltimore musicians are fearless, and you don’t always know what you’re going to get. These musicians are doing something new, and you can’t say that about a lot of other cities.

Some of the bands that came up when you started are now selling out shows at major venues across the country.
But they’re still approachable. Future Islands can play a festival in front of thousands of people in England and then you run into them at The Crown. Oh, and there’s Alex and Victoria from Beach House. And there’s Dan Deacon, just having a drink. That doesn’t happen in other cities. You don’t just walk up to some of the most popular musicians at a bar or club in Seattle, but you do here, because like the rest of Baltimore, they are unpretentious. Baltimore is too small of a town for people to get big egos.

What was WTMD like when you first started?
We were in the basement of the media center at Towson University. There were no windows. The studios would occasionally have minor flooding. National touring musicians would come in and ask us what year we were in college, which was kind of a bummer. So when we moved into this gorgeous new space, where we’ve been since 2013, it changed everything. We’ve been able to do these live radio shows with studio audiences, which I’m pretty sure doesn’t really happen anywhere else.

Radio stations have not had performance studios since, like, the 1930s, and if they do have performances, they don’t broadcast them live. There’s a level of energy and excitement that you get because you’re live on the radio. There might be a couple hundred people in the room, but there are tens of thousands of people listening in.

It’s been 10 years since the beginning of Baltimore Unsigned, which eventually evolved into today’s Baltimore Hit Parade.
The problem with Baltimore Unsigned was that, as the music scene grew, the artists started getting signed. We changed the name around the same time we moved into our new space in 2013. We’re trying to introduce Baltimore listeners to the diverse voices of Baltimore’s music scene, not only live on the radio but at our performance space. We’re trying to bring people together, in different ways, in different parts of the city, in different musical genres. That’s what I hope I’ll be able to do for another 10 years.

Who are some of the artists you’re most excited about right now who are just emerging?
Every year I say to myself, this year couldn’t possibly be any better than last year, and each year, the Baltimore music scene proves me wrong. Just when you start to wonder if it might be starting to peak, or fall off, another Bond St. District comes along. I think they have the best chance of being the next breakout star from Baltimore. They are singular, nobody sounds quite like them, and DDm is a star in the making. You can feel his presence in the room.

How was it seeing events like WTMD’s BSO Pulse indie-orchestra concerts at the Meyerhoff and BWI Live baggage claim concerts come to life?
I was on the verge of tears for most of Wye Oak’s Pulse show. Ten years ago, they were guests on Baltimore Unsigned for one of their first radio interviews ever, and then they sold out the Meyerhoff! And performed with the BSO! It felt like everything had come full circle. And then Jenn Wasner goes from that to playing a free show in the baggage claim of the BWI airport, which goes back to the open-mindedness and unpretentiousness of the Baltimore music scene. Where else are you going to see that?

What’s next for WTMD in 2017?
There’s a generation of young people who have grown up listening to WTMD. They started when they were in or right out of college, then they got married, and now a lot of them have young kids. In my travels, I kept hearing people say, ‘I love WTMD but I can’t come to any of your shows because they’re not at kid-friendly times.’ Live Lunch is really close to naptime, and while you see a lot of kids at First Thursdays, that’s also the witching hour. We’re going to be offering a kid-friendly concert series, once a month for the first three months of 2017, at 10 on Saturday mornings. Milkshake did our first one last year. We had snacks and milk and it was a huge success.

Well here’s to the next year, or ten.
In 10 years, the station has gone from being perceived as a college radio station to being part of the fabric of Baltimore’s arts and music community. It really feels like we’re starting to hit our stride. But there are still plenty of people to reach.

Baltimore Inspiring Connections Outdoors (BICO) has been providing free outdoor education to Baltimore City youth for 20 years. What do students gain from these trips?
Results run the gamut from students becoming interested in hiking or recycling to learning new things like how to ride a bike, how to cook outside, or how to put up a tent. I’ve had five or six kids get their scuba certification after one of our trips. It could lead to a job opportunity for this child who now has a new skill over the majority of the planet. It’s about making those kinds of connections for the kids and being the push that makes it happen.

You’re also a teacher at Digital Harbor, where you’ve created onsite outdoor spaces for students, such as the school garden. What motivated you to start it?
A few years ago, there were kids in my class who said they were allergic to tomatoes but would eat pizza or ketchup. They didn’t have the knowledge to know that ketchup is made from tomatoes. There were lots of kids who really didn’t have any idea of where their food came from, and it made me interested to find out why kids thought what they thought. Now there’s an on-campus place for kids to grow things and start to see themselves and their world differently.

In 2016, you helped Digital Harbor earn its Maryland Green School certification for its environmental sustainability efforts. Why does that certification matter?
Authentic science and biology always win in my book. In a Green School, students are learning about things like recycling through the lens of science when they write about it or do a service-learning project. It’s also an equity piece. As a parent myself, I want the same things for the students at this school that I want for my kids, whether they live in Baltimore City or not. There shouldn’t have to be a Green School certification to ensure that everyone is learning about these topics, but if that’s what it takes, then that’s what we’ll do.

What’s the value of teaching environmental science?
I remember teaching about the importance of water quality to kids in 2004, and I told them then that there would be wars over access to clean water in their lifetime and that they will pay more for water than ever before. I’ve seen past students since then who have told me, “I thought you were crazy when you said that, but now it’s 2019 and it’s not so ridiculous.” If kids are not made aware that there are major climate and environmental issues going on, then we’re not helping them. If they don’t learn about it [at school], who is going to teach the next generation?

How do students apply lessons learned in the classroom to their outdoor experiences?
We were walking through a field once and there was a toad on the ground. One of my students noticed him and said, “That’s camouflage!” I could’ve cheered. Those are kind of connections and experiences we need more of. They may not think [science] is palatable, but depending on how you present it, they’ll realize they’re learning about what’s around them.

You’re a Baltimore Police Academy instructor as well as a published poet. Which came first: police work or poetry?
I’ve always loved writing and reading, and I’ve always been fascinated by service. I started poetry in college, and in retrospect I wish I’d been an English major, but I became a history major because my plan was to become a military officer. I was in the Reserve Officers Training Corps at George Washington University, but I got injured, so when I graduated I looked toward education.

So you were a teacher before you joined the police force?
My first two years were in Baltimore City Public Schools, right out of college. I’d never been to a public school in my life. It was very much a fish-out-of-water situation. I had never seen an inner city. I had never seen a housing development. I had never seen that type of violence. It was nonstop culture shock, but it was very educational.

What kinds of situations did you face as a teacher that surprised you?
I would talk to the kids about what it was like to be in college, and I remember one student saying to me, “Did you have to fight a lot of people?” I said I didn’t fight with the people in college—I just went to class. There’s this moment of him staring at me like, “Why don’t you understand what I’m talking about?” and me saying, “Why would you ask that?” But, of course, I had to understand that a big part of his existence was establishing yourself through violence.

How did you transition into police work?
In 2011, I was in Johns Hopkins’ Master of Liberal Arts program and working for the university’s Success For All Foundation. One day I sat down to do my work, and my officemate said, “Hey, a plane hit the World Trade Center.” The second plane hit, and I thought, “Okay, I think this is my time to do something different.” 9/11 really got me focused. Four years later, I finished my master’s, I got my black belt, and I was in the first class of 2005 at the police academy. Now, I train officers. I teach classes on implicit bias, police legitimacy, hate crimes, white supremacist extremists, and sovereign citizens. I teach recruits about policing in Baltimore and the history of the city—good and bad.

How does your line of work influence your poetry?
Police work has worked its way into my writing quite a bit. I look for the poetry in the things that I see around me; there’s great raw material that just lays out in front of you. Milan Kundera, who wrote The Unbearable Lightness of Being, said that every culture has its kitsch and its shit. You can see both in doing police work. It’s like, here’s the human condition: What do you make of it?

How would you describe your three poetry collections?
The first two [Masala Tea and Oranges and On the Later Addition of Sancho Panza] are pretty free-flowing. My best friend read my work, and he said, “Your work tends to be about myth, violence, and sensuality.” And those two books flow through those three big themes. The third one is named Socorro Prophesy after a place in New Mexico that I found particularly fascinating, and it’s about myth, legend, and the culture of mythic storytelling.

Does being a poet make it difficult to relate to other police officers?
Police work includes such a diverse group of people. I’ve definitely had situations in which I didn’t relate well. I worked in one unit where there was a set idea amongst some officers that there are these cultural shibboleths that you must have to be an officer—or a male officer, or a black male officer—and if you don’t put those things forth then you can’t be included in the tribe. Whereas I’ve met other cops that read a lot. Once you scratch the surface, it’s amazing the backgrounds you find here. I’ve met artists and photographers, other writers, rappers. It’s a neat learning environment because it is so diverse.

What on-the-job moments have stood out as visual or auditory poetry?
I was walking up to the library at Penn North and there was a woman sitting there. I leaned down and said, “Are you okay?” She spoke to me in that muted tone of a hearing-impaired person, and she used sign language to say, “Yes, I’m fine. I’m waiting, thank you very much.” As we were talking, a trans woman walked up and started talking to us. Then, this young man with a sketch pad—it’s almost as if someone ordered this very diverse group of people from central casting—walked up and said, “Hold still, I’m sketching all of y’all.” And I thought, I want these people, all these people who are so diverse and so flawed and beautiful, to feel like they’re safe.

How did you begin working with children’s museums?
I started out in the for-profit world, specifically corporate banking and then marketing and communications. I was involved with the children’s museums in Minneapolis and Richmond before I ended up in Baltimore and started at the Cloisters children’s museum, but I was still pursuing my for-profit career during that time.

What influenced you to leave the for-profit world and work at the children’s museum full-time?
I had always seen and believed in the power of a children’s museums’ place in a community. I really believed in what children’s museums were doing. I had the opportunity to take a six-month leave from my “real job” to help start Port Discovery, and it turned into my passion because I love what we do here. For me, this role combines my for-profit and non-profit background in a way that comes together beautifully. I feel very lucky.

How do you see Port Discovery’s role in the community?
When the museum first opened in 2008, we used the expression, “If you can dream it, you can do it” and we still believe and work by that today. Our role is to open doors for kids and open their minds and their families’ minds to new possibilities. For example, we’ve had so many teachers tell us that they could talk about Egypt all day in the classroom with little response from the kids, but when they walk into a sarcophagus and see inside a mummy in our Egypt exhibit, then it means something to them.

We strive to be a gateway experience—meaning that if they love the Egypt exhibit here, then maybe they’ll visit the Egypt exhibit at The Walters Art Museum next. Given everything that’s happened in Baltimore over the past couple of years, it makes me believe even more in the possibilities that we can make for the children and families who live here. We’ve barely made a dent, and we’ve got a lot of good work to do.

The museum is in the midst of a $10.5 million capital campaign. What can visitors expect to see as a result?
We’ve had more than five million visitors since we’ve opened, and, as you can imagine, five million little hands touching and pulling on everything takes its toll. We thought a lot about how families, teachers, and members use the museum, and we surveyed them about what they needed from us. Our big additions will be the port exhibit and the new four-story SkyClimber [climbing structure].

We’re also adding more seating and gathering places throughout the museum, as well as simple upgrades to bathrooms and nursing areas. A lot of the research has come out in the past few years about how kids learn and process, and we want to put that new information into play at the museum.

How does that apply to the new port exhibit?
We think of the Port of Baltimore as a metaphor for how kids learn—things come in, things go out—and we use [the port] as a way for kids to learn about processes that happen outside of their neighborhood but impact their everyday lives. We start with a simple question like, “How did you get the sneakers that are on your feet? What are all of the jobs involved with making that happen?”

We’re all about teamwork, imagination, and curiosity, and we want kids to think about how things came together using simple geography. It’s about using the exhibit to open up their eyes to new possibilities—we want them to walk in and picture themselves being the captain of that ship or being a stevedore.

During your time as president, you’ve launched several initiatives to make the museum more accessible to underserved communities. Where did that motivation come from and why is it important?
I’ve always felt strongly that the role of a children’s museum is to be accessible to as many people as possible. Some people can’t afford to buy a ticket or may not feel that a museum is a place for them, but if they can come here and feel engaged then we can act as an entryway to other institutions in the city. Access is in our DNA in terms of who we are as an institution, and if you walk through the museum on any given day, you feel that this is a place for everyone.

How did you get started in radio?
Completely by accident. I had no intentions of doing anything in radio. I have a master’s degree in conflict resolution so I thought I was going to be studying religious conflict in the Middle East. I started working as a content producer for an independent radio show called Interfaith Voices that’s housed at WAMU in Washington, D.C.

As a content producer, I was advising on stories and writing scripts. It was a very small staff so everybody pitched in and did a little it of everything. They taught me about the audio side of things and I learned that I liked that equally as much as I liked storytelling.

What drew you toward the audio side of storytelling?
For me, it was a new platform for creativity. I love mixing interesting sounds and the fact that you can tell a story in a unique way through audio. Plus, it’s a really intimate medium. Listeners are most likely listening [to podcasts] while they’re driving or at the gym. Either way, you’re alone with one person’s voice in your ear. It’s a new medium, but it’s also an old-school way of storytelling.

WYPR’s podcast The Noir and Bizarre explores strange local stories with an emphasis on Baltimore’s spooky history. Where did this idea come from?
Last fall, we had an internal podcast committee to look at ways that we could develop in-house podcasts. All of the producers had a chance to pitch ideas, and I was really interested in doing something that would bring out the quirkiness of Baltimore. I wanted to play with historic topics that would tell new, interesting stories and give listeners a real sense of place. Baltimore is a weird city—we all know a strange local story—and I wanted to bring those out for everyone to hear.

How does the podcast discuss familiar topics, such as the life of Edgar Allen Poe, in a new way?

I find that, while people might be familiar with the general idea of an aspect of Baltimore’s history, they may not know all of the details. I’m not just interested in telling people facts, but exploring bigger questions, such as why are we still reading [Poe]? Why does his work continue to resonate with people after so many years?

Tell us how you approach storytelling in the podcast.

I try to walk a line between being serious and being campy. . . .I don’t want to freak people out, and I’m not into horror, but I do like weird, off-the-beaten-path stories. I like adding a dose or suspense or an eerie vibe to an episode, but I’m not here to scare anybody. A lot of the creepy things that we’re interested in surround bigger questions that are really important. I think people respond well to it because it’s a safe way to play with ideas like death and mortality.

What do you want listeners to take away from the podcast?
I want people to appreciate the city and its history, even the weird parts. And I hope it encourages people to go places like The Walters Art Museum, The Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Peabody Library—these historical resources are right here, and they’re amazing. These spaces have so much history. Every piece of art in the museums and every book in the library was put there for a reason, and there’s a story behind each one.

Going forward, what do you think the distinction between regular programming and podcasts will look like for local radio stations?

One big difference is that podcasting is on-demand. One of the beauties of radio is that, when you turn on the dial, you don’t know what’s on and there’s a serendipitous nature to it. But for podcasts, you have to seek it out on your own. You inherently have a more motivated listener because they have to find it themselves. I think that since there are so many podcasts nowadays, if radio stations can tie [their shows] to something local and tangible, it will be more appealing to listeners.

What do you see for the future of The Noir and Bizarre?

This podcast was an experiment and I’m glad it’s going well—I think it gets better with each episode. I don’t think we’ll run out of creepy or interesting things in Baltimore to cover, and I hope I can keep exploring them for as long as possible.

In 1992, you had a life-changing experience that ultimately led to the creation of Project Pneuma, a program that teaches middle school boys how to work through anger and into positivity. How did that come to be?
I was at Coppin State University on a wrestling scholarship, and I went home to East Baltimore one night to have dinner with my family. Near my house, I felt someone behind me. I turned around and two guys were there. Words were exchanged, and I remember the shorter guy pulling the trigger. Even now, I can still vividly see the sparks and the fire that came out of the gun. They turned and ran, and then my stepdad came out of the house and saw me walking toward the house with the hole in my [chest]. The worst part of it wasn’t the gunshot, even though it hurt tremendously once the adrenaline stopped pumping. It was watching my mother rock back and forth on the bed.

Where were you shot?
I was shot an inch above my heart, and since I was shot at point-blank range, the bullet ricocheted and cracked my sternum, broke three ribs, punctured my lung, and lodged under the nerves of my right arm. I had never felt like less of a man and I just got angrier by the day. I lost my faith, I lost my scholarship, and I lost 20 pounds in four days from the loss of muscle mass. I felt like everything had been taken away from me because of a bullet, and I didn’t know why.

How did you recover?
That took four years, two months, and 18 days. During that time, I became the person that nobody recognized. I was argumentative, the guy who always wanted to fight, always ticked off at the world. Then, on December 31, 1996, I decided I couldn’t take the pain anymore. I was planning to kill myself. Back then, we weren’t told about seeking help or treatment. In my mind, I was doing the best thing possible for myself.

What stopped you?
My friends rang my doorbell that night and begged me to go to church with them. I drove separately to the church because I was planning to sneak out the back as soon as they closed their eyes to pray. They took me to New Pleasant Grove Missionary Baptist Church, which is about two blocks away from where I was shot. Reverend Michael Coles did the sermon that night, and he recited from the Book of Psalms: “For his anger endures but a moment; in his favor is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.” I’ve never been an emotional person, but I remember breaking down and running up to the front of the church. I’m ruining pastor Robert Haynes’ robe with tears and he told me, “I don’t know what you’re going through, but you have to let it go.” That was the moment that, even though I still didn’t know who shot me or why he did it, I decided I was going to forgive him.

What happened next?
I went back to college and got my degree. Then I went to seminary and got a master’s degree in theology. During that time, I met Chaplain Wallace who, at the time, oversaw all of the prisons in Baltimore, and I started volunteering in the prison system, working with a group of guys to help prepare for life outside of prison. Unbeknownst to me, I had been mentoring the guy who shot me.

How did you discover this?
Our job was to build trust with these men, because they didn’t trust anyone in the system, and I took interest in one guy who kept saying things about where he lived and how he came up because his life mirrored my life leading up to the shooting. Chaplain Wallace allowed me to talk with him, but I could only ask open-ended questions. He had come to know me and trust me, and I asked him if he had committed any crimes that he wasn’t convicted of. I listened to him tell me three things that he had done, and on the fourth one, I sat there with my mouth open and listened to his vivid retelling of how he shot me.

How did you react?
I told him that he shot me. He turned beet red, and everyone in the room was dumbfounded. I remember standing up and unbuttoning my white dress shirt and tie to show him the hole in my chest that is still there. I got up and walked around to his side of the table and, it was hardest thing I ever did in my life, but I told him I forgave him. I forgave the man who would’ve taken me away from my children, my wife, everything.

What did you do with this information?
I couldn’t destroy his life over this. . . . He aligned himself with people who weren’t good for him and they steered him wrong. What he did to me was a stupid and horrible thing, but he was a kid who got mixed up with the wrong things. I made it my business, and so did everyone in the room, to never tell anyone who this guy was. He’s now out of prison, he has an associate degree from Baltimore Community College, he has two kids, and he’s active in his men’s ministry. We talk every Saturday.

How did you translate this experience into Project Pneuma?
I wanted to help young people who are going through the same kinds of things that the guy who shot me was going through.

How did you get the program up and running?
With the grant money [a $10,000 BMe Leader Award], I took the idea to Cross Country Elementary School and I asked them for a cohort of young men who weren’t doing well in school—fighting, cursing, cutting class—and a cohort of young men doing exceptionally well to help break the barriers between the two groups. We started with 25 boys in 2014, and, as of today, we have 101 boys and a waitlist of more than 300 kids.

What kinds of activities do they participate in through the program?
We use martial arts and wrestling because they’re both team sports, but when it’s time to compete, you have to learn to stand on your own feet. We also do yoga and mindfulness training, where they learn to center themselves. We also have the Pneuma STEM Academy. They’re reading books, they’re learning different languages; we want them to do everything that an ordinary kid from the city isn’t doing. We want to expose them to what life is so they’re not just trying to survive—they’re flourishing in life.

Project Pneuma also has a long-standing partnership with the Baltimore City Police Department. How do the boys interact with the BPD?
Twice a week, the boys and the police academy recruits meet to work on academics and then on the physical activity of the day. What we weren’t ready for was how the kids would help the police recruits. A lot of them come in with issues, too. You might see a young man break down because he’s having issues with his father, for example, and then see an officer trainee in tears because he had the same issues. Now both sides see each other as humans and not as adversaries. When they come into the academy, it’s not a place of fear or concern. It’s a place where everybody knows they’re going to be safe and loved and respected.

How has Project Pneuma impacted your life?
It’s almost as if the bullet saved my life. I was angry, bitter, and lost. But until I let that go, I couldn’t heal. I think I wanted the world to show forgiveness and compassion to me. When I see these young men or those police academy recruits letting those things go, that’s the reward. When you can help change the trajectory of someone’s life in a positive way, that’s the reward. Hopefully these kinds of programs will stop our city from needing organizations that deal with people once they’ve already made a mistake and are in the justice system. If we can help the young boys now, we won’t need those institutions later.

In 2011, Lawrence Burney started a local music and arts blog by the name of True Laurels. As a Baltimore native, he saw a hole in the city’s ever-evolving media landscape and in no time evolved his web-only format into an indie zine and now today’s integral print publication, featuring compelling photography and both first-person and reported stories on Baltimore’s black creatives. On the eve of True Laurels Issue 04, we sat down with Burney to talk about his musical upbringing, his gig at Vice, and the importance of giving back to the place where he grew up.
 
 

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How did you get into writing? 

My interest didn’t start until like my 12th grade year. I got into a lot of trouble in school. I was suspended for behavior-related things. I had this one writing teacher at City in ninth grade and we never liked each other. We always clashed. In the 11th grade, I had him again for college writing. We got into altercations—all this crazy stuff—but in the midst of all that, I still got As and Bs on all of my assignments. That’s something I kept in the back of my head: I must be pretty okay at writing if this guy, who has every reason to fail me, is still giving me As and Bs.

When it was time to start applying for colleges, I decided I was going to go to school for journalism. It wasn’t like a thing I did since I was a little kid; I stumbled into it because I needed to do something with my life.  

Do you come from a creative family?

My mother is a writer. She actually went to University of Baltimore at the same time I did, for creative writing. She’s also a musician. She and my grandfather were in a jazz-funk band together, Wolf Pack, so I would travel with them to local gigs and be in studio sessions with them. We all lived in the same house for a good part of me growing up, so my alarm clock was my grandfather playing his guitar. He toured with George Clinton for like two tours as the drummer, and my mother opened up for Gil Scot-Heron one time on Charles Street when I was probably eight. I didn’t know who he was at the time, but I knew he was important by the way people talked about him. 

So music was a part big of your upbringing.

In high school, my reputation amongst my friends was just knowing a lot of music. I would make them mixes and just impose my will on making them like the music that I liked. It’s basically what I’m still doing now. Then my daughter was born when I turned 20. I was feeling pressure from that. I had to do something. I had to gain some clarity on my life’s path. So I just combined those interests—the writing and the music. It was the end of 2011 when I made the True Laurels’ WordPress.  

What was the rap scene like back then?

It was constructed in a completely different way at that time. Growing up, it was just battle rappers. Baltimore was more of a club music city. This whole rap scene really started in 2014 when Young Moose and Lor Scoota got hot. Before that, some artists like Los, Skarr Akbar, and Comp had some national success, but because technology wasn’t as sophisticated as it is now, people didn’t look at it as “the Baltimore scene.” Even when I started True Laurels, that wasn’t the case. When I went to UB was the first time I even started learning about central Baltimore. That part of town was not a place that most black people from Baltimore really knew too much about. We’re on the east and west sides.  

Whereas, for at least the last decade, the local and national media has considered Baltimore’s “music scene” to be headquartered in Station North. Station North was just North Avenue when I was growing up. There was a Tyrone’s Chicken that I would go to with my grandfather after we played basketball at Druid Hill. He knew about the Copycat and all that because he was a musician, but I was never exposed to it. It was all new to me. The Windup Space. The Ottobar. It was an exciting time because I was being put in a new environment. I didn’t ever party with alternative types of black people or artsy white kids. I didn’t hang out around queer people or anybody who thought a little differently. That just wasn’t my upbringing. But I was learning about a new part of Baltimore while staying in tune with what was coming out of the parts of the city I was familiar with and bringing it all together.    

You founded True Laurels as a music and arts blog in 2011. 
I wanted to document the scene but also really try to paint a full picture of what inner-city, black Baltimore is. If you left it up to a place like the Urbanite, where I interned in 2012, you’d think Baltimore was only Hampden, Charles Village, Station North, and Mt. Vernon. This is still a struggle in the perception of Baltimore. When I’m in other places, people only know about the crime, the drugs, The Wire. That’s people’s main point of reference. And The Wire is a good show—mostly accurate in my opinion. I resisted watching it until I was in my 20s, but I ended up watching and it actually helped me make more sense of my own life. Even this whole Gun Trace Task Force can be tied back to things that were talked about on that show.  

Speaking of the task force, your profile of local rapper Young Moose in Issue 03 was a great piece of journalism. 
The problem is there hasn’t been someone who is actually a black person from the inner city writing these stories, with the nuance to show that black people from Baltimore are a very diverse group. This is an almost 65 percent black city, so not everybody is going to be living on a block that’s mostly vacant. That’s a lot of people’s reality, and part of my life I lived in those kinds of neighborhoods, too, but it’s not everything. There’s diversity that needs to be depicted, and I’m trying to pull all of those pieces together.     

You are also a staff writer for Noisey, the online music publication of Vice, where you’ve written a number of stories on Baltimore artists. Do they give you a lot of creative freedom? They put a lot of trust in me. Through Vice, I’ve been able to tell stories about Baltimore that just don’t get told. I think stories like the one I wrote on Young Moose help people understand what it’s like for a person like him to grow up in a city like Baltimore—how they’re perceived by institutions, and how that trickles down into every part of their life. I do want to expand my voice and speak to different audiences, but if I can’t speak to the people that I come from, that’s not a win. That’s not enough for me.  

You’ve recently done deep dives into the youth-driven music scenes of other cities like New Orleans and Johannesburg. Does that inform the work you do in Baltimore, or vice versa? 
True Laurels has helped me form what I want to be as a journalist. Because I’m from a city like Baltimore—misunderstood and oversimplified— I’m really interested in regionality and how the politics of a city affect the way that the young people there operate. I have a lot of curiosity about how things work, here and around the world. To me, the music is not just the music. Music is the best introduction to any society. That’s why it has to be taken seriously.  

You live in Brooklyn, but you come back to Baltimore every week? 
At the very least, I’m here every 10 days, spending time with my daughter, trying to stay updated on what’s going on. I’m constantly in communication with the younger musicians on Instagram and YouTube. I’m 27 now and I realize that I am in some ways an elder statesman for these young people. Lor Choc’s 19. Deetranada’s 16. Young people drive culture, so you have to embrace them. Even when changing True Laurels from a fan zine to a more conventional magazine, I had to ask myself: what would a 17-year-old Lawrence think about this? In hip-hop culture, presentation and looking fresh matters. But there are artists here who are now starting to get traction and make it believable that you can actually get somewhere. And that’s why I feel encouraged to keep going—who knows what could happen next?  

You’ve talked about True Laurels existing as documentation—a physical record of black culture in Baltimore. 
You have to know the history and apply that to the present to know what’s coming next. That’s why, every week, I’m trying to post archival black Baltimore-related footage on the True Laurels Instagram. It’s important to inform people there has always been cool shit going on in this place for a long time. It’s helping me paint an even broader picture of Baltimore, and like The Wire, it’s helping me make sense of my own life.  

Issue 4 comes out in June. Who are you really excited about right now? 
Lor Choc is one of my favorite artists. I’m super impressed by her creativity. She’s a great storyteller, which I really enjoy. She has her own approach. But it’s not just artists. . . . I’m excited to see any young person from this place make strides on the national stage. Coming from here, a lot of people don’t think they can make it. The whole crab-in-the-barrel thing has become the narrative that people accept. I want people to recognize how amazing Baltimore is. If I can play any role in having less people settle, that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to do publications. I’m trying to do film. I’m trying to do movies. The same way [film director] Ryan Coogler incorporated Oakland into the Black Panther, I want to do that for Baltimore. I’m trying to diversify the perception. I have no finish line for what True Laurels can be. I want to push it to every height that it could possibly achieve.  

The Milton Inn has been a restaurant for 70 years. What’s the secret to its longevity?
This building—even though it’s almost 300 years old and has its challenges—is charming. It has charm you really can’t replicate in a new restaurant. You also have to be a little crazy to be in the restaurant business. This is not a normal life. This really is a lifestyle. I live and breathe the restaurant, and everything else is secondary. It really does take that much dedication. If you see a restaurant that’s been in business for 20 years, someone is working their butt off. It doesn’t happen by itself. 

Did you ever see yourself working here that long?
I came to eat here in probably 1980-something. I sat in that dining room with the hearth and I said to myself, “I’d love to own this restaurant one day.” And not even trying, it kind of fell into my lap. It’s weird, right?  

How do you keep up with Baltimore’s growing food scene?
Consistency is a huge part of the ingredients that make this place successful. But we also try to make gradual changes. You have to slowly evolve. If you don’t, you will go out of business.    

How do you decide what changes to make?
That’s always the hard part. What do we get rid of and what do we keep? I basically just look at the numbers. Okay, what’s selling and what’s not selling? Because of that, we’re a pretty traditional restaurant. My food is straightforward. It’s not smoke and mirrors. I don’t like trendy at all. Trendy doesn’t last.

You’ve made a big shift toward small plates at the restaurant. 
The small-plate menu has become a really important piece of our business. One of the things we saw was that people weren’t eating the same way they used to. You have to take your cues from your customers. Fridays and Saturdays are the busiest times, when people are going out on date nights, and it doesn’t cost them an arm and a leg. The moment you say “Milton Inn,” most people think “expensive and far away,” but I’m on a quest of changing people’s opinions of what we are. 

Leading up to the 70th anniversary, you spent $600,000 in renovations last year, which included your circa 1740 lounge. 
Doing things like renovations are necessary to keep you healthy. People are willing to spend money in a restaurant, but they’re not willing to spend $50 and look around and see everything looking shabby. That’s not going to cut it. We’ve always been willing to put money into this business. What used to be an empty lounge is now full. 

What changes have you noticed over the years in the local food scene? 
Dress codes are just completely gone. I got rid of ours years ago now—I’m a realist. I was probably one of the first fine-dining restaurants to say, “We’re not winning this battle.” Sometimes you just have to say, “How many people am I going to turn away before I change how I do something?” 

What’s one of your personal favorites on the menu?
The Filet of Chesapeake—it’s delicious. Filet mignon and a crab cake with béarnaise sauce, Jack Tarr potatoes, and fresh vegetables. It is a really simple dish, but it’s our best seller, and has been for the past 20 years. 

What’s next for you and the Inn?
I’m slated to be here until 2040.  

That’s a long time. 
It’s not really that far away, believe it or not. It all happens so quickly. Twenty years goes by in no time. I picked that date because I wanted to be here for the anniversary of the 300th year of the building, so that’s only 23 more years. Hopefully I can survive that long. [Laughs.] But that’s the plan.

With two consecutive championships, how does it feel to be part of a successful sports team like the Baltimore Blast?
It feels great, I can’t complain. When you’re playing any sport that you love, as a professional, you want to succeed. We’ve been back-to-back champions—I’ve won three of the five since I’ve been here—but the reality is, we put in a lot of work to be where we are. 

Last season makes nine wins for the Blast. How did this championship game compare to others in the past?
At the championship in Mexico, they scored on us with 18 seconds left in the game. They had won the first game, so that meant they would win the championship if they beat us. We scored back with five seconds left. Then we went into overtime, and then second overtime, and we won. We still can’t believe we did that. 

How do you feel about the team moving from the Royal Farms Arena to the Towson SECU Arena this fall?
Wherever the team goes, we are going to play. As a goalie, for my personal game, I prefer a bigger field, but we won the last two championships in really tiny fields, which makes me think this will be a good move. It’s a transition, but it’s definitely going to be for the best. Our fans are going to be closer. It’s going to be really loud. 

What do you think sets the Blast apart from the rest of the league?
We play as a unit. Everybody knows that when you’re playing against the Blast, you’re going to have trouble, because of our teamwork. We are so committed to playing as a team. There’s not a single player that is going to outshine the rest.

How is being a goalie different from other positions?
Goalkeepers are always the most pressured player. You can’t really make mistakes. But I love playing under pressure. I like playing away games because all of the fans are against you and I love that atmosphere. The goalkeeper also works really hard during the week but we don’t do much when we perform in the game. You make a couple saves here and there, but you have to be more mentally prepared than physically. 

The Blast has a very loyal fan base.
This is another huge thing that makes us different—and makes people love us. They will likely only meet a Ravens player once in a lifetime, or take a selfie with them and never see them again, but they can be in touch with us easily. They can chat with us and see us after the games. It’s also a family environment. It’s a safe place to let your kids roam and enjoy themselves. 

You’ve been a Fan Favorite for the Blast for five years in a row. Why do you think that is?
When people come to the games and watch me play, they can see how much I care. I really, really love what I do. This was my dream as a kid, and I think I show that side of myself when I play. 

Tell us about your journey with soccer.
I was born in Brazil, and in Brazil, it’s a religion. I started when I was four, and by the time I was seven, I was playing for a travel team and became goalie. I didn’t like to run much, so that worked better for me [laughs]. You had to be a little quicker, smarter, and a little crazy. I moved to a professional team when I was 13 for seven years, and then moved to Italy, where I now have dual citizenship. I was playing for Italy in the 2011 World Cup. The Blast coach saw the game and everything went from there. 

Your team is comprised of men from all different backgrounds and countries.
It’s fun. We have a lot of Brazilian players on this team right now, so we are really close. I played with Elton [de Oliveira] back in Brazil when we were 13. I played with [Jonatas] Melo in Italy when we were 21 or 22. Melo played with Daniel [Peruzzi] in Italy. Soccer is a small world. We are all really good friends. Portuguese is the second language of the Baltimore Blast [laughs]. 

You also coach at Johns Hopkins, McDonogh School, and the Baltimore Celtic Club.
Coaching is very special. It gives you the chance to teach somebody based on the knowledge you have. You watch the improvements and you’re just really proud—I’m like a proud papa. You also get so nervous coaching. It’s worse than playing. You can’t do anything about the outcome. You’re just on the sideline watching. It drives me nuts sometimes, but I love it.

What do you tell kids to motivate them to play?
Play what you love. You have to be happy when you’re a kid. I sometimes think parents forget that and put too much pressure on the kids. I really want them to have fun. The teamwork in soccer is very special. 

What motivates you every day?
I dreamed of being a soccer player and I am a soccer player. How blessed am I? I wake up every morning and go for my dream. Money is important, but for me, happiness is the most important thing. I really, really love this sport, which starts to worry me, because at some point, I’ll have to stop. 

What will you do then?
A friend of mine became a huge soccer player. He stopped playing two years ago and now he does skydiving. He said it’s the same pre-game feeling—the adrenaline. So now I think I’m going to be a skydiver, too!

How did you start making mirror art?
I’ve always loved art, but it all started when I saw a single strand of double mirrors hanging in someone’s yard, just shining in the sun. There they were, just moving around, and I’ve been making them myself for about 12 years now. I just have a ball, and it’s really very simple. You just need a board to keep the mirror in place when you score the glass, and a simple pair of convex pliers. There are no shards, no splinters; it’s not messy at all. You can cut all kinds of different shapes in all different colors. You just have to figure out what it is you want to do, like my mirror neckties, or flower vases, or “flashies.” Mirrors are just easy to work with and you can make beautiful things out of them.

You have a few prominent works at the American Visionary Art Museum, including The Universal Tree of Life outside of the main building and the mirrored Oceanus.
The Universal Tree of Life was one of the first things I made with my neighbor, Rick Ames, who is an artist and a dear friend. It sat out in my yard for two and a half years until Rebecca Hoffberger saw it and asked if the museum could have it. It’s been outside on the street there ever since, through 11 Baltimore winters, and it looks as good now as it did when I put it in. On a sunny day, it puts on a great show. 

At AVAM, you also have a non-mirror work on display—the now permanent “Flatulence Post,” or farting exhibit, located in the basement gallery. What was the inspiration behind this piece?
Well, I’ve been farting all my life. [Laughs.] Actually, it was inspired by this joke radio program from the 1940s called “The Great Crepitation Contest.” It was a farting competition between two contestants with a British announcer that was presented as if it was a sports event. It was very, very funny, but not for broadcast, so it circulated on a set of 78s—we didn’t have CDs back in those days. During World War II, our military heard it and loved it so much that hundreds of thousands of copies were made for our soldiers and sailors to give them something to laugh about.

But it’s really just a very funny subject—Mark Twain wrote about it, as did Benjamin Franklin, and William Shakespeare—and people really do enjoy it. About six years ago, AVAM’s big show of the year was What Makes Us Smile? The entire second floor of the museum was dedicated to that topic and the biggest hit was a big bench lined with Whoopie cushions.

You teach workshops at the museums a few times a year, too. Besides that, do you make it down to the museum often? 

Every Saturday, I spend three hours at the museum, talking to people from all walks of life. AVAM is such a fabulous place. Baltimore is so lucky to have it, and I’m very proud to be a part of it. Fine art is very valuable, but these works are by untrained people who felt compelled to create something different and found a way to do it.

Your love of art actually began with a different medium—music. 

The mirror art is only a small part of what I do. I’ve been writing classical music reviews for more than 20 years. All my life I’ve loved classical music. My father took me to concerts when I was very young and it made a lasting impression on me. Over half a century ago, I had this house built around a perfect room just for music. It has an 84-inch television screen with full surround sound, and when you listen to something up there, it’s better than being in a concert hall.

You also had a more than 40-year career in radio. 

People seem to think my voice is pretty good. When I first came to Baltimore after the war, there was a public radio station just starting out called WBJC. I volunteered for them and the next week, I started announcing three nights a week. Later, I worked as the chief announcer and program director for a commercial classical radio station called WFDS, which was later bought by WBAL. For 14-and-a-half years, I did classical music there until they realized they could make more money with other genres, which is when they created 98 Rock. And then when 88.1, the Johns Hopkins station, started, they hired me to do classical music on the weekends. WYPR is a wonderful station.

At home, you’re currently working on an “Infinity Mirror House,” similar to the Infinity Mirrors installation by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, which should be open this fall. 

It’s going to be in my back yard. I’ve ordered a pre-fab, A-frame house, just like mine, and once it arrives and gets assembled, my neighbor, artist Rick Ames, and I are going cover the whole inside with mirrors. When you step in, things will be reflected over and over again hundreds and thousands of times. It will be like stepping into outer space.

When did you start working at the Maryland State Fair?
My first year was 1946. I was 11 and [hired to be] the office boy in the draft horse department. Every morning when I got to the fair grounds, I swept out the office and passed out the numbers to the exhibitors. In those days, they had a fair catalogue, which listed every exhibitor and every animal in every class. They cost 25 cents. When we had time in between other duties, we could sell programs, and when you sold a program, you got to keep a nickel of it, so, we were rich! I’ve worked at the state fair ever since. 

How did you first get involved?
My family bred Clydesdale horses, and before World War II, many of our animals were shown under Shirley & Son, which was my grandfather and father. I guess it’s in my blood, but I’ve been lucky enough to meet and get to know a lot of wonderful people—and a lot of awful good horses and ponies. 

You’re known as one of the “voices” of the fair, having been a horse show announcer for many years. What are some of the biggest changes you’ve seen over time?
Oh boy. [Laughs.] The spectators. In the ’40s and ’50s, it was largely a rural, agricultural audience. People were coming to the fair to see what the grand champion cow looked like so they could go home and compare it with their cattle, or they were coming to the draft horse show to look at the Percheron stallions to decide who they might want to breed their mares with. The vast majority of attendees are now suburban or even urban people, and they’re coming out for some of the other exciting things at the fair like the carnival.

There was always a good-sized midway, too, probably not as big as it is today, but to a young fella like me, I thought it was pretty exciting. Many food stands were run by local churches. The food was nothing we would consider gourmet. There were no crab cakes or crab soup—just good food that we farm kids were used to, like roast beef sandwiches, hamburgers and hot dogs, potato salad and coleslaw. They would actually serve dinners with homegrown vegetables. That’s the way it was back then. 

What makes the fair so significant today?
It’s keeping people aware of how important agriculture is to the state, and to the world. When you sit down to eat three times a day, you should be thinking about the farmer because that’s where your food is coming from. We do tend to lose track of that in today’s world. Some people think they make the food at the supermarket. Certainly the most important thing the state fair does is educate people on where their food comes from. 

You’ve been at the epicenter of all the political news in Washington since President Donald Trump’s election. What has that been like for you?
It’s a lot. The uptick is extreme, and we’ve never had an uptick like this before. I’ve been in the middle of watching politics for 20 years in Washington, but this is definitely different. We’re bombarded with everything now. Typically, during the course of the day, there would be two to three stories that would circulate, but now it’s everywhere, everything, all day, all night, and on weekends. And Twitter is now more relevant than ever before. I was talking to a friend who actually has an audio alert for when the president posts something. As I’m talking to you, that reminds me that I need to do that.

As someone who’s covering the news, what do you make of this change?
The way we used to cover news is no more. I grew up in the era of Walter Cronkite where you didn’t know the journalists’ political persuasions. You trusted them. There was no social media; we didn’t have to think about Twitter, or the internet. I remember in college they told us, “Be ready for the information superhighway,” and now it’s here. They should have told us not just to be ready, but beware.

It’s extreme, and there’s a hunger now for immediacy, be it news, or responses from people. And that has caused the news cycle—the news machine—to go into overdrive. This is the first time in history where a newsmaker, a high-profile person, can talk directly to their constituency, their fan base, without going through the filter of the media. We used to be the ones who would ask the questions that we heard from the groundswell of Capitol Hill. And now, you don’t have to read the story because you can watch it happening.

Trump seems to have taken it to another level. You could argue that Barack Obama had access to the same type of technology.
But the issue is we didn’t see him tweeting everything. He didn’t watch a TV show and tweet about it, or tweet something that would throw firebombs everywhere and people were scrambling to determine if it was real, if it happened, what does it mean. He wasn’t a president who would be his own press secretary. Now, you have the day’s activities set, then all Trump has to do is send out a tweet and the whole day has changed. And these are big news pieces, so then the question becomes, what do you as a journalist focus on? It’s tough.

It also seems like there has to be scrutiny of what the White House is saying.
This president doesn’t believe in being politically correct. He goes from the gut, and what he thinks comes out. And this is what some people love about him—the realness of him. He is one of the people, but there’s a flip side, too, because your words can change markets. It can cause anxiety from other world leaders. Words mean something.

You’ve been in the news yourself lately, whether that was when Trump asked you to set up a meeting with black lawmakers, or reality TV star Omarosa Manigault claimed you were being paid by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Obviously that’s not something that normally happens with journalists covering the White House. What has that been like for you?
[Laughs] It’s been rough. I choose not to talk about the particular situation that happened between me and Omarosa, but what I will tell you is there were plenty of people who saw it. Yes, we had been friends for 20 years. Yes, during the summer she had asked me to be in her wedding, but yes, also in October, she started sending me these crazy emails saying things that were not true. It’s about my career, my journalistic integrity, that I’ve built for 20 years. And I’m not going to lose that for someone who comes back to Washington who’s trying to smear the media. This is all part of a campaign, but for a friend to do this to a friend? That’s a problem. You don’t want them asking questions? You don’t want them being a part of the White House press corps? The press is a part of the framework of this country. We were built into the Constitution by our founding fathers. It makes no sense to me.

Nationally, it seems like respect for journalism is on the rise, with readership at The New York Times and The Washington Post increasing. Still, it must be difficult to continue working with what appears to be an increasingly hostile White House.
I do the job that I’ve been doing. I talk to my sources and newsmakers, people from other presidential administrations, Democrats and Republicans. It’s the same job, we’re just under attack. Why? I’m still trying to figure that one out. There’s anxiety, but you know what, I still have a job to do. My company is 1,000 percent behind me, flatfooted. It means a lot to have that support.

I wanted to talk about your book, At Mama’s Knee, which looks at race relations through the lessons that mothers teach their children. How did it come to be?
Since I was a kid, there was something in my spirit about writing a book, but that didn’t come back into my mind until I started working at the White House. A friend of mine who really inspires me and he’s been a mentor to me—his name is Norman Hall and he works at The Associated Press—said to me once, “You cannot sit next to the seat of power and not write a book. You see things and experience things other people will never experience.” And he was right. So I started writing my first book, The Presidency in Black and White, and it took about 17 years to write.

History hit me hard personally, not just at the White House, because I had to talk to my children about race. They attend a predominantly white, wealthy school where people don’t normally have to talk about it. But that school, along with other schools in the area, closed early because of what happened after the funeral of Freddie Gray in 2015, and I had to talk to them. I can’t just talk to presidents of the United States or newsmakers and leaders around the world about issues of race. I would be remiss if I had not talked to my children and told them why they were being dismissed from school early and why this was happening. It really started one day when I was at work and my baby daughter called me and said, ‘Mommy, is it true that a kid got killed because he was playing with a gun?’ And the reason she called was because my aunt told her to bring her toy Nerf gun in the house because she did not want it to be misconstrued as a real gun because of what happened [to Tamir Rice in Cleveland in 2014.] My 6-year-old’s mind did not understand the dynamics, and I had to explain to her that this was very real. She was nervous, she was scared, and she didn’t believe me. I had to show her the video, walk it through with her. But I also had to tell her that at the end of the day, there was hope.

The day of Freddie Gray’s funeral, I was watching what happened in the White House. I was screaming, ‘That’s Mondawmin Mall, that’s Monroe Street!’ These were the haunts I used to go to as a kid—I remember going to piano practice on Tioga Parkway, next to Mondawmin Mall. This is my town. My family kept telling me, ‘Get home, get home, get the girls.’ So I drove home, with tears in my eyes. I was so scared that night. The next day, I decided not to go to work, and sure enough, school was let out early again. So we drove up the street to the local grocery store and I tried to keep it light, set a tone that we were going to be ok. Then I saw this Confederate flag on the back of a pick-up truck, brandishing around in the wind as the truck was driving around this maze of a parking lot. I looked out the window at these other women who were by the store, and I said, ‘Is that what I think it is?’ My oldest daughter did not know what it was, so I had to tell her, and she started to cry. I tried to get a picture of this person and the license plate and I called the police. By waving that flag, they were adding fuel to a fire. I believe in freedom of expression, but this was not the time. Wisdom was needed. And I was very fearful that something could erupt. I still have pictures of it in my phone.

How have things changed for you and your family since Freddie Gray’s death?
My kids are more aware now. I love the way my oldest approaches it. She has friends from every walk of life, but when there are questions from other communities, she breaks it down in a non-threatening but informative way, as a 14-year-old. I’ve had teachers from her school call me and tell me how they’re so happy at how she is able to talk to kids from other communities who don’t understand. It makes me feel great that my kids understand that we live in the world that we live in, but that there’s still hope. They have Jewish friends, Asian friends, white friends, black friends. And I love the fact that they are able to come together and say, ‘Hey we’re different but we celebrate each other.’ That’s the world that I hope for. That’s the United States that I’m desperately hoping for.

Did you ever consider leaving Baltimore, especially since your work is in D.C.?
I did. But my family and my friends are here. Baltimore’s a real town. I love Baltimore. I’ve been here pretty much my whole life. . . . We have a lot of hurts in Baltimore, but we also have a lot of greatness. And there will be a time, I believe, that Baltimore will have its renaissance. Yeah, we’ve got Band-Aids on some of the ugly things, but we are rising. And that’s one of the reasons why I won’t leave. 

Do you see any other books in your future?
Yes. [Laughs] It won’t be a surprise when it comes out, but it will be a page-turner, that’s all I’m going to say.

Thanks to its location between the mountains and the bay, Baltimore has a surprising number of outdoor offerings, doesn’t it?
We have 4,600 acres of parkland. We have three major trail systems—bike and pedestrian—going through West, Central, and East Baltimore—four, if you include the harbor promenade. The water is a completely and totally under-utilized resource in Baltimore. We have miles and miles and miles of waterfront, and tons of publicly owned waterfront parks. There are just so many resources and a lot of people don’t realize they’re here.

Why are so many of these outdoor opportunities still unknown?
Outdoor recreation has traditionally been something that has been passed down generationally. You had somebody in your family or very close to you that was a fisherman or boater, but as people moved away from those types of activities, they stopped being passed down. 

There’s also this other phenomenon called the “bro-ification” of the outdoors. Whether its mountain biking or climbing, outdoor recreationists have traditionally been white affluent males. Now, there are more single female heads of household, so you have to make sure women have access to these skills, too.

The other big one is [access to] equipment. Recreation & Parks owns a fleet of bikes for getting people out on the trails, we own a fleet of kayaks for use, and we have an excellent staff of trained instructors.

With Baltimore City Recreation & Parks, you’re tasked with running a medley of outdoor programs throughout the city. Why is it so important to educate people on the environment?
If you don’t have people connected to these natural resources, they don’t seem to be interested in them. You’re not going to care about the rivers and the streams in Baltimore unless you start spending time on them. You can lecture people about the urban issues in watersheds and stream valleys, but you take them there, and you have them fall in love with fishing or kayaking, and it means something very different. I think Baltimore has a really unique opportunity to provide that.     

At what point did you realize this was what you wanted to do?
I have known since I was a small child that I needed to stay outside. I grew up on a horse farm in Baltimore County, almost somewhat feral. For me, escaping into the streams and woods and running along the trails was like my entire existence. It didn’t matter what the weather was—snow, rain—you had to drag me inside. I went to environmental high schools. I went to a college for adventure sports. I’ve always had outdoor jobs, like ski resorts, Living Classrooms Foundation, and Outward Bound.

With Baltimore, it really hit home when I first moved back. I was having a hard time being in the city because I needed that green space. I needed to be outside, and all of sudden, I felt like I was surrounded by concrete and it was because I did not know about the park system. Once I learned about what was going on here and how to use it, I started sharing it with other people as much as I possible.

What is your biggest goal with these programs?
I want to work myself out of a job. At the end of the day, I want to make sure we have given everyone such a good foundation that you don’t need me anymore. You don’t need me to go for a hike or a bike ride, because you have enough confidence and skill that you went out and bought your own. Everyone should have their own bike. Everybody should have their own kayak. Everybody should find whatever their passion is and be able to do it here in Baltimore.

What is your favorite program?
The sunset paddle. Sometimes you get “wow” sunsets that are just unbelievable. There’s this capstone of sitting around, floating in the middle of Baltimore City, but it’s so quiet because you’re on the water and watching the sky light up in all of these crazy colors. And every once in awhile, because we’re down near M&T Bank Stadium, the next thing you know, you look over and it has erupted in purple fireworks. It’s like a fireworks display just for us.

What is the most rewarding part of your job?
In the wintertime, I do a lot of my planning and office work and meetings. It’s really tough to be part of a city agency advocating for something that’s a somewhat new concept in an urban area. Sometimes the bureaucracy of it all is really challenging. But when you get to have an 8-year-old in your canoe for an afternoon paddle, and they’re looking at you, telling you it looks like there’s a thousand stars in the water because they had never really seen sunlight glistening on the waves before, it melts you to the point where it makes all that frustration of trying to explain to people what you do, and why it’s important, worth it.

You recently started Young at Heart, a kids’ radio show that airs Saturday mornings at 7 on WTMD.
My goal for the show is to offer music that is family-friendly but—and this is an important thing to me—music that anyone can enjoy. I’d like to think we’re at our best when we’re young at heart, when we have a youthful outlook on life no matter what our age. I still like to ride the Ferris wheel, jump in rain puddles, and eat ice cream cones, don’t you?

It can be nerve-wracking being natural.
It’s so hard! But I’m getting it. When I got the green light, I reached out to the “kindie” industry, as it’s called, or “kid indie,” and I’ve been barraged by all these bands sending me CDs. But I don’t envision it just being kindie guys. I also want to play adult rockers that have put out kid-friendly music, so we’re doing this standing feature called Adult Kids. I am finding that there are a lot of bands that have done kid records or even just kid songs. Rhett Miller from the Old 97s recorded “Ziggy Stardust” by David Bowie for this compilation that benefits LGBTQ kids.

That’s amazing. So it’s much more prolific than even you would think.
There’s also Lisa Loeb, and Chris Ballew from the President of the United States of America—he’s doing nothing but music for kids! And Danny Weinkauf from They Might Be Giants.

Fifteen years ago, you decided to start your very on side project for kids called Milkshake, after you and your Love Riot bandmate Mikel Gehl each had children. That’s a long side project!
Milkshake started as an experiment. It was very defined, at least in my mind, like, okay, we’re going to put out a CD every couple years reflecting the growth of our children and the experiences we are having with them. And once they’re older, that’s it—no more Milkshake; we’ll just go back to writing songs for adults. That almost happened, but it hasn’t yet.

We thought we’d just go back to playing Love Riot, but I’m having a hard time doing that and it might just be the whole idea of doing a band I’ve done before. I don’t want to repeat myself. I listen to the songs from Love Riot and I’m like, ‘Damn, that’s a good song!’ But that doesn’t mean we just do it all over again. I’m doing a lot of things, all of them still connected to music and kids, and Milkshake continues to plod along without much effort from me [laughs].

It seems like your audience only continues to grow.
Which is a good and scary thing. We’ve had fans grow up with us. We have some of the most amazing stories. We go to children’s hospitals and special needs schools and we always do the Down’s syndrome and autism walks. I think that’s one of the things that makes this important—music can reach these kids. It just makes them so happy. It has become our raison d’être.

The gift you’re able to give these children must make it easy to put on as many shows as you do.
Absolutely. Still, some days, I wake up like, ‘Oh, how can I keep doing this?! I’m old, and I’m wearing a tutu!’ At least Mr. Rogers could still wear a sweater with dignity, you know! How long can I keep wearing this with dignity? But the thing is . . . kids don’t care! I don’t think they see the wrinkles on my face. To them, I’m a princess.

Do you think their happiness and excitement has infused you throughout the years?
I’m definitely young at heart because of that. When we play, I’m out with the kids, dancing and having fun. There’s a huge difference between playing in Milkshake and playing in an adult rock band. When I was in Love Riot, I had my guitar on and there was this invisible wall. I’m the cool band, and you’re the cool audience. I’m going to play, and you’re going to listen, and I’m going to move your hearts, and that’s about it.

You’ve also become a teaching artist with Wolf Trap. I don’t know how you keep up.
I think you have to change and evolve. Milkshake evolved out of love—out of me having a baby. I didn’t want to go into smoky bars anymore, so the music just changed. The palette was totally different than what I used to sing about—not like love and all its different machinations—but, like, counting, and ABCs. There’s so much more to sing about when you’re writing for kids! I’ve always tried to write music that reflected the state of being a kid, about things that they care about, even if sometimes that might seem trite to adults.

But your music transcends age. You’ve carved out a special career.
Oh man, I feel so blessed and I’m not even religious. Let me tell you, we’ve had an amazing 15 years. I had no idea it was going to be successful. It was just Mikel coming over and saying we have to keep making music, while I was like, ‘I’ve got this baby to worry about!’ But we kept doing it. We have stayed together so long because it has been so much fun. It’s been crazy fun, and I have no regrets. Milkshake might never end.

What have the first two months on the job been like for you?
I still get up in the morning excited and I still go to bed at night with all these ideas. Simply put, I’m loving it. I’m so glad to be here. I am loving the fact that I remember what the original vision was for this museum, when we didn’t have land, we didn’t have a building, we didn’t have anything. I remember when we had our first gala and we had to have it at the Meyerhoff because we didn’t have a place to have it, and we raised $1 million. To think now about what we were trying to do just to get the building open in 2005, and now 11 years later, [we’re] looking at how do we take this museum forward in the next decade. Our mission is education, so how do we educate now as opposed to how we thought we would in 2005? How do we reach our audiences now, how do we determine and target audiences now? So much has changed since 2005. Looking at the museum through the eyes of 2016 and beyond, and for me, I just see endless possibilities.

Do you the mission of the museum has changed during that time?
I think the mission is the same, but I think how you execute and implement that mission has changed. If you just look at how much technology has changed. When we opened, we didn’t have a Facebook page, or a Twitter or Instagram account. When we opened, our children didn’t have access to all of that either, and their methods of learning have changed based on technology. We now need to have the same vision and mission, but we need to figure out how to do it in the context of where we are today.

Have you thought through any specific ideas?
We’re looking particularly at our permanent collection, because that’s where our history lies, and asking how we make that come alive. We’re identifying specific items in that collection and figuring out how we tell their stories. Will there be tablets, will there be an app, will there be videos? One of the things I just looked at that’s a cool idea is we would get a hologram built of Reginald Lewis that would tell his story because his story is so relevant, even today. I had some friends of mine from a technology center in New York come in and they said it could be done, but building it is going to cost $300,000, not including the computerization. So, that’s something we can work towards, not something we can do now. But I’m thinking about when VHS tapes first came out and how much VHS players and recorders cost, and I’m thinking eventually, holograms are going to cost a lot less, too.

You’ve talked about the permanent collection, and how you want to make that an emphasis of the museum. How do you envision that taking place?
We think the third floor will continue to showcase the permanent collection. We want to make sure that the permanent collection stays preserved, and help people understand and share the excitement of the permanent collection because that will always be our history, that will not change. Looking at that history, we can make that relevant.

Are there any particular items that you would like to see displayed that aren’t now?
I know that we have an extensive African-American art collection, and our curator definitely thinks we have enough to put together an exhibit. We have Billie Holliday’s piano—how great would it be to build a collection around that?

After Freddie Gray’s death, you held events and exhibits that furthered the discussions of race and the role of law enforcement in the city. How do you see balancing the historical collection while also addressing what’s happening in the city now?
We have one of the greatest advantages in that we have 82,000 square feet. We have lots of space to address current and relevant issues and maintain our history in our permanent collection. We should own some of these issues. For instance, we’ve had conversations with the police commissioner about having cadets come here and learn about some of the African-American community’s [cultural differences]. The museum is a safe haven where you can discuss ideas. If you try to have that discussion in a particular community, people may not want to go to that community, or to the police department. But we’re neutral territory.

That kind of work seems that it’s very much on the front lines of current events, and other museums and institutions don’t share that approach.
We should own some of these issues. For instance, we’ve had conversations with the police commissioner about having cadets come here and be trained and learn some of the nuances of dealing with the African-American community. You have lots of people who have no experience dealing with the African-American community, and there are very subtle nuances that may be an affront that either side would know.

[The museum] is a safe haven where you can discuss ideas. Because sometimes if you try to have that discussion or in a particular community, you may not be able to get people to cross that line—they may not want to go to that community, or to the police department. But we’re neutral territory.

Are you looking to increase your resources?
Right now we have good staff people who have been here a long time. We have other resources other than hiring staff, and I think it would be more collaborative, because we do have to be fiscally responsible. Ideally, I’d like to bring in all these exhibits, I’d like to bring in more staff, I’d like to have a chief of operations, I’d like to have that hologram. But then reality sets in, and one of my strengths is the business side and I those things we want to do will really not generate the revenue to cover the cost. And like any business, if you aren’t doing that, you can’t do it.

So I really have to put on my reality hat and say this is the size of the pot, and then look creatively and see how we can maximize the pot. I want to have an east coast seminar on entrepreneurship for our African-American college students. I don’t really have to have someone on staff for that, I have entrepreneurs who will help me do that.

I’m sure you’re looking to increase the pot.
I would love to. Everybody wants to increase the pot [laughs]. We are bringing in a development director, we are looking to increase our corporate and our individual and family memberships, we are looking to increase our retail sale operation. We’re hoping to generate more foot traffic into the museum, which would increase our café revenue. We’re hoping more people come and rent this facility, which would also give us exposure. There’s this awesome Harriet Tubman exhibit that we really, really wanted. But right now, until we raise the money for that exhibit, we can’t have it. That doesn’t mean we won’t get that exhibit, because, you know, my beg hat is big. And I’m new so I don’t know any better. My theory is you can only say two things, yes or no. If I don’t ask, you want say anything.

What are your thoughts on your attendance? Has it grown?
Our pattern is weekends are better, and we want to make them even better. The capacity of this building is significant. We do get most of our attendance on the weekends, and we are extending invitations to schools to have kids come in during the day. This is a building that can be used pretty much all day and half the night, so we’d like to see school kids and regular museum visitors in here during the day. We love what we see on weekends, but also we’d like to see visitors using this building in the evening after we’re closed.

Our initial projections were that we would have 100,000 people a year in this building. Then the economic downturn happened. We are now working back toward that. Now, it’s about 30,000 to 35,000 a year. And I would like to see 20,000 school kids come here in 2017—right now we have a little less than 10,000. I think this is the time for it to happen, because one of the things the new National Museum of African American History and Culture [in Washington] has done is create interest in African-American museums. People go there and get interested, or go there and can’t get in [because it’s been so popular], and then come here.

The Lewis museum is an affiliate of the Smithsonian, and your former curator is now on the staff of the new National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington, D.C. Do you anticipate that there will be collaboration between the two institutions?
We’re looking at sharing exhibits, items, information, expertise. . . . I think there’s a larger audience that hasn’t experienced this museum than those who have. And with the addition of the African-American history museum, more people know what it is. If you’re going to the children’s museum, or the streetcar museum, you know what it is. But what is African-American culture, and who is Reginald Lewis? There are a lot more questions about this and now, people will have more of a vision of what to expect when they do come. And that makes all the difference in the world.

Nicholas Hersh joined the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in 2014 and, along the way, has brought youthful energy and enthusiasm to the organization. We talked to him about how his age affects his work, how to attract younger audiences to the symphony, and how he made the musicians feel like rock stars.

You started your music career as a cellist. How did you end up becoming a conductor?
I started playing the cello in elementary school, and technically, I still play now, though I don’t have as much time to practice. In high school, I was in a youth orchestra called Midwest Young Artists in the north suburbs of Chicago. That got me more interested in the symphony repertoire as I realized how complex and amazing that music was. Though I’d decided that I wanted to go into music professionally with the cello, I bought my first baton senior year of high school on a lark. And one of the great things about the music department [at Stanford University] was that they allowed undergraduate students to dabble in conducting. I took some private lessons, put together groups of friends to conduct, and from there, I really had the bug. I applied for grad school, got into Indiana University, and was there for four years before I auditioned and got this job.

It seems like it would be a big transition going from playing cello to conducting a whole orchestra.
There’s a different mindset, for sure. A lot of conductors in the past were pianists, but in my case as an orchestral cellist, I saw what other conductors did that worked and didn’t work. One of the hardest things to learn how to do as a conductor is rehearse—to learn what things to say to all these professional musicians and what not to say, and what kind of words and gestures work.

Directing seasoned performers must be difficult, especially when you’re 28, as you are.
As an assistant conductor, you’re expected to work at a professional level, and you’re also expected to not know nearly as much as anyone else on the stage. There’s a learning curve, and the mentality for this kind of job has to be one of confidence and also great humility. You have to be able to go up there and do your work, but also to learn what these great musicians have to offer.

And how do you do that?
It’s very hard. The best thing you can do as a conductor is just know the piece you’re conducting so well. It shows that you put in the time, take this really seriously, and can say thoughtful and constructive things to an orchestra so it doesn’t just seem like you’re flailing up there. Orchestras can easily see through a show of bravado. It’s important, too, to be a human being off the podium. I consider myself friendly with a number of the musicians and just having a conversation with them about what it’s like to make music can be incredibly enlightening.

You were 26 when you auditioned for this job. Do you view your age as a benefit or a detriment?
I consider myself very fortunate to be where I am, when I am. This was a great first job out of grad school and this was a huge get for me. From a public relations stand point, there is something exciting for an orchestra about having a young person up there to connect with people of my generation, which is honestly one of the most underrepresented demographics in the concert hall these days. That ties in with what we do with [the concert series] Pulse. As a millennial, I know where a lot of my peers are coming from. I wouldn’t say I’m the most socially aware person, but I’m sort of current on what’s trending, and I can work that in to connect the orchestra to the audience.

How did you get involved with Pulse?
The initial concept was crafted after a meeting with Toby Blumenthal, who at that point was the director of rentals at the Meyerhoff. In his line of work, he had contact with all of the bands that wanted to use our stage, and he came to me and said, ‘It’s a shame that we have all these acts coming through here and we don’t get them an opportunity to perform with the orchestra.’ So we started throwing out ideas about having a concert with both a band and the orchestra doing what they do best and then a collaboration between the two. We wanted to make the Meyerhoff unintimidating, unstuffy. We wanted it to be a really cool, fun, social place to gather and really make it feel less like our grandparents’ orchestra hall and more like the amazing, vibrant cultural hub that the Meyerhoff is and should be. We structured the concert in a way that would seem almost familiar to people who had been to shows before, where the main act comes on second and the orchestra basically opens for them. But it’s much more than that. I choose each piece the orchestra plays incredibly carefully to make sure that there’s some connection between the band and this particular composer. It’s a way of saying, ‘If you like this band, then you’re really going to like this piece of music.’ I guess it’s a ploy in that way to get people interested in orchestral music.

A lot of the orchestral works that you’ve performed at Pulse have been relatively recent compositions.
And that’s intentional. We wanted to make the point that these aren’t composers who died hundreds of years ago, [so people can’t say] ‘Why should we care?’ This is music that’s happening currently, that’s happening within our lifetimes, and it shows that orchestral music is much more than hearing music that’s become associated with a high-class, elitist mentality. It’s much more alive and much more current than what you might think it is.

What are you impressions of Pulse so far?
Overall, Pulse has been extremely successful. We’ve sold it not only to our audiences and to our management, but our musicians as well. I remember one of them walking off stage after the Dr. Dog show and telling me, “This is why rock and rollers do drugs—they want to re-create the high of having thousands of people on their feet, absorbed in every moment of what you’re doing up there.”

Why do you think younger people aren’t connecting with the symphony?
It’s a difficult question. I think a lot of it is that music education skipped a generation or two, and we were the ones who got left out. I was lucky enough to be raised by parents who were more interested in classical music than the norm. But coming through school, there wasn’t nearly as much emphasis on how to listen and experience these great Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, and Mahler pieces. In the same way that you take English class to be able to analyze the Bronte sisters or F. Scott Fitzgerald, you need this music education in order to experience a lot of these high-level pieces. It’s not that you need to be spoon-fed everything—in fact, a lot of pieces work better if they aren’t spoon-fed to you—but having the patience and mindset. That’s what we’ve tried to do at Pulse—give the audience the context that allows them to enjoy these pieces. I remember our first concert last year, [we played] Philip Glass, which is very difficult to listen to. I remember that audience being one of the most attentive and pin-drop-silent audiences that I’ve ever experienced. There’s something to be said for re-contextualization, for giving people the means to experience these monumental testaments to human ingenuity.

Is a lack of younger audiences the biggest issue the symphony is facing right now?
What we’re lacking right now are audiences, especially diverse audiences in terms of race, ethnicity, and age. For me, in an ideal situation, an orchestra, and really any cultural institution, would have the same fan following—the fierce fandom, that sports teams like the Orioles and Ravens have. Because we are a world-class orchestra, we have some of the best players in the world, and people should want to come to every concert and follow the orchestra’s every move —have pride when the orchestra succeeds and weep when the orchestra does not. And in order to get to that level, we have to start thinking differently about the concert experience, we have to experiment. We should also be open to things like allowing cell phones in the hall and be open to what our patrons, our community would want and what would make them want to keep coming back.

Where do you see yourself going in your career?
You can’t be committed to one path, not in my business, anyway. I’m constantly applying for music directorships of professional, regional orchestras, say in a smaller city. That’s a good logical step for me to take. In the end, I like teaching. I think my ideal gig would be one where I would teach at a university level and have the opportunity to work with professionals regularly as well. I love traveling, and conductors have an opportunity to do that when they reach a certain level. I want to travel the world doing what I love—bringing the music I make to different parts of the world and experiencing the music they make and learning from that. That’s the dream. It’s a hard job, and it can be hard to get a job like this, but in the end musicians and conductors have some of the highest job satisfaction. You’re doing what you love constantly, and each performance is new and fresh. That keeps your soul in a good place.

You grew up in a rural town outside Pittsburgh. How does that inform your perception of politics?
I had a firsthand view of what blue-collar America looks like. My dad worked in a plant and my mother was a bank teller and then branch manager. You see why pocketbook issues resonate with people. You also realize what “experts” miss is that there are differing opinions and factions within groups. You can’t paint everyone from the same place, the same demographic, with a broad brush. That’s what I try to get students to understand.

Since launching the Goucher Poll in 2012, you and your students have been surveying Marylanders, not just on candidates and races, but on the issues.
It makes me cringe when politicians dismiss polls, as if what the public thinks doesn’t matter. I think politicians have to do what they believe is best, but you can’t disregard public sentiment. Larry Hogan knows how to tap into that sentiment.

How do you determine what questions to ask in a poll?
If I ever hear a politician say something like, “The vast majority of the people in the state support this”—well, we’re going to test that.

You’ve written about the gender gap. Essentially, voters are equally willing to vote for female candidates, but there’s a shortage on the ballots?
Yes. The GOP in particular needs to recruit more. But there’s still an ambition gap. If I ask students in one of my classes if they’d consider running for office, a couple of boys will raise their hand. The smartest girl often will respond, “I can see myself working for a politician.” And I’m like, “No, you should run for office.”

Where do you live? Are you someone who gets involved in community issues?
Federal Hill. And yes, I’m the crime and safety chair for my neighborhood association. My husband is also now vice president of the Federal Hill South Neighborhood Association, and I’m so proud to be a politician’s wife. [Laughs.] Well, community activist’s wife.

Fifty years ago this month, the Baltimore Orioles swept the defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers to win the 1966 World Series. Beloved first baseman (and BBQ master) Boog Powell reflects on that remarkable moment.

After 50 years, you reunited with your 1966 teammates at Camden Yards earlier this season. How was the reunion?
It was everything I expected and more. I was really looking forward to seeing some of my old teammates. Of course, you know, we’ve lost so many, and it just made it that much more special to visit with the ones who were coming back. I was just hoping I could remember what everybody looked like because I hadn’t seen them in so damn long.

It seems like you guys genuinely got along well.
You know, we hung around a lot with each other. It wasn’t like we’d rush off after the game. We had a lot of discussion about what happened that night and learned a lot about our teammates. There was very little animosity between anybody on that team. We didn’t have any fistfights. There was no downright, mean-spirited, “I-hate-you” kind of thing. We all just had one goal in mind, and whatever it took to get it was what we’d do. We just went out and did our job. We just played ball. And there’s the key word right there: play.

That camaraderie must have been pivotal in what happened that season.
Not only that, but we had Frank Robinson, who won the Triple Crown, and Brooks Robinson, Paul Blair, Curt Blefary, Luis Aparicio. You go right down the list and you can’t take anybody out of that equation. We were all a part of it. It was a lifetime experience and the single biggest thrill I ever had as a teammate. I’ve had some good personal moments as far as swinging the bat, but as a team . . . I still get goose bumps when I think about it.

The stars aligned.
Exactly. We had this thing called Kangaroo Court after every game we won. It was a little court session for about five minutes after the game with just the players and coaches. No press was invited. If you thought you had a case, against one of your teammates or some trivial thing as silly as saying hello to somebody in the stands, we talked it out. Frank Robinson was the judge, and he wore an old mop on his head and had a gavel and brought the court to order. It was mock seriousness, and we just had a ball with that. It was something we looked forward to every night, because we only had it when we won, and we didn’t want to lose! Of course, when we lost, we just got dressed and went home.

What was the Kangaroo Court like after you won the World Series?
Well, we didn’t have it! That was the only time we didn’t have it, because we were too busy accepting the trophy from the commissioner of baseball. We had a great celebration, and the city of Baltimore joined right in with us. Everywhere we went, it was like, come on in, dinner’s on us. That wasn’t the idea, you know, but everybody wanted to be a part of it.

We still celebrate it to this day.
You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff I hear when I’m at the ballpark doing my pit beef. Five or six people a night come up and say, ‘Hey man, we really appreciated you guys in ’66. You were special. We’ll never forget you.’ And I just say, ‘Thank you for remembering, because if you didn’t remember, it wouldn’t count.’ It wouldn’t be nearly as special. Those are my exact words, and I really do mean it—I mean it from my heart.

Even with that iconic lineup, you guys were considered the underdogs against the Dodgers. How did it feel leading up to the series? Were you nervous?
We weren’t nervous at all. We considered them a good team—we knew they were a good team. They had the two greatest pitchers of all time: Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale. But that was the question of the day: How are you guys going to deal with it? And I said, I don’t know but we’re going to deal with it! And that was it. We were not intimidated, and we were not afraid. And they were a good team! We beat a damn good team, but we were a damn good team, too.

What was your favorite moment?
When Paul Blair caught the last out. They flied it out to center field and he caught that ball, it was like—wow! This is really something.

There’s that famous moment, now photograph, of Brooks leaping into the air.
Trick photography. Gotta be trick photography. I joke with Brooksy all the time about that. To this day, some 50 year later, it still gives us a good laugh. There’s also a great picture of me holding a Colt 45 with Brooksy standing in the back and Gene Brabender standing on the other side, and that pretty much explains it all. We were feeling really good.

You eventually went off to play with Cleveland, and even Los Angeles, too. What was it about Baltimore that brought you back to Maryland?
Well, my heart never left. I grew up here—I signed with the organization when I was 17, played three years in the minor leagues, and then finally got to Baltimore when I was 20. I did a lot of growing up in this town. All three of my children were born at Union Memorial. We lived right down the street and I felt like we were part of the community. Back in the day, none of us were making enough money to take the winter off so we all had jobs here. I think Jim Palmer worked for a clothing company. Steve Barber worked at a jewelry place. Dave McNally worked at a bank. I worked for a wholesale liquor company, and I had the time of my life working in the wintertime, just going around to different places. I had a family to take care of, and a son, and then in ’66, my wife, Jan, got pregnant with my daughter. She went to L.A. with us, and she was in her eighth month!

Oh my gosh—what a year.
That’s what we were saying! Worrying about how any minute now we’re going to get a call that she’s going to the hospital. But Jan wouldn’t hear it. She wanted to go, she wasn’t going to miss any of the fun, and that’s all there was to it.

What day was your daughter born?
November 3.

That’s pretty close!
She could’ve come at any time.

This year’s team—in first place for a while, now a close second. A lot of people have been comparing your lineups.
It’s kind of hard to compare one team to another just because of the time that’s passed, but they’re awfully good. There’s no doubt about that. But we stack right up. We had Davey Johnson at second base; they’ve got Jonathan Schoop and he’s a hell of a ball player. Then myself and Chris Davis at first base. Of course Luis Aparicio at short, who stacks up pretty good with J.J. Hardy. And then Brooksy at third with Manny Machado. Brooksy is still the greatest third baseman I ever saw. I have a lot of respect for Manny and I might say that about him someday, but not right now though. And of course the outfielders.

What do you think about the prospects of them making the playoffs?
You know, baseball was played a little different back then. Now the pitcher pitches five innings—five and fly, we call it—and then the relievers come in. Back then, you had to get a wrecker to go out and get Jim Palmer out of the game. None of the guys wanted to come out. And I appreciated that and I liked that. It was a different time and a different ballpark. We played in Memorial Stadium. The field was rock hard. This field is like playing on a billiard table. There aren’t any bad hops.

But I think we all had the same thing in mind, and just like these guys, it’s obvious that they’ve got team chemistry. I’m not sure if Buck [Showalter]’s responsible for that or not, but whoever is, it’s working.

You came to Hopkins in 2009 and now your contract has been extended through 2024. That’s a long time!
The board invited me to extend my term at Johns Hopkins, and I jumped at the opportunity. My wife and I love Hopkins and Baltimore, and couldn’t be happier knowing that we will be able to spend the next eight years being part of this amazing place, including, of course, strengthening Johns Hopkins’ relationship with Baltimore.

How do you approach your role as president of such an influential institution?
People have charitably referred to Hopkins as the 800-pound gorilla in Baltimore. Just by virtue of our size, the number of employees, the number of our campuses, we’re a very important entity within Baltimore. As I’ve said on a number of occasions, the fate of the university is inextricably linked to the fate of Baltimore. For me, that’s been one of the really exciting parts of my job—just seeing the extent to which we’re able to bring the intellectual, moral, and political imagination of Johns Hopkins to bear on a number of important and interesting issues that effect the community at large. I don’t see it as a role that is beset by deep contradictions. I’ve found that there are a number of areas in which we can do well for the city and well for Hopkins simultaneously. And in fact, as we strengthen the city, we’re simultaneously strengthening Hopkins.

What would you say are your guiding principles when determining responsibility to the city?
It’s a sense that there’s a moral responsibility but also a sense that in discharging that responsibility, we have significant capabilities that we can share. A lot of the issues Baltimore grapples with— concentrated poverty, problems with access to good health care, challenges in the performances of our K-12 system, lack of green space—are issues that I think universities are uniquely poised to be able to contribute to. And then I think, it’s also having a sense of the importance of humility and modesty in how you go about bringing these strengths to the broader community, recognizing that a lot of the people who you’re hoping to be able to help have very clear views about what they need, the kinds of supports that are desirable, and the kinds of interventions that are less so.

Hopkins is such a sprawling organization—encompassing medical schools, Peabody, and the arts and sciences—there must be disciplines that you are much more familiar with than others.
My background is as a legal academic, so the one school that I know the best—I led a law school for more than a decade—we don’t have at Johns Hopkins. So, I’m in the interesting position of leading a university that actually lacks a school dedicated to my discipline. By definition that makes me a generalist, and actually that’s a great part of my job, being able to be a bit of an intellectual dilettante.

Hopkins received a $350-million gift from the school’s most famous alum, Michael Bloomberg. What has resulted from that gift?
Mike’s gift was to create 50 $5 million endowed chairs that we call the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor Program. What’s distinctive about it is that each of the professors appointed into one of these positions has his or her appointment in two or more schools of the university. The idea for it came from a simple but challenging reality for us at Hopkins, which is, we’re not a university on one contiguous campus, we’re spread across multiple campuses in Baltimore, in Washington, in Montgomery County, and then have campuses outside the United States, as well. Given that we’re geographically distributed, how could we encourage interdisciplinary collaboration? The idea was, if we can’t have geographic proximity, then we would use faculty to constitute human bridges and link different disciplines of the university together. So that program has now resulted in almost 30 appointments. It has just been so energizing to be able to engage in what has been, for the last three years, this international Star Search, where the university’s faculty has had the ability with these chairs to look out across the nation and beyond and ask the question: Who is the very best person who could tackle this issue or link these disciplines? And then recruit them to Hopkins.

Like who?
Kathy Edin is a scholar who is appointed to the Department of Sociology in the Krieger School of Arts & Sciences and also to the Bloomberg School of Public Health. We recruited her from Harvard. She recently wrote a book, $2 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America, which has received significant attention. Her interest is in urban poverty and the role that government can play in supporting the development of cities, in particular by looking at the least advantaged members of the community. She is playing a role in developing our 21st Century Cities Initiative. That has led to important collaborations with a program that collects data that has been supported by Bloomberg philanthropies that, in turn, has developed ties to city leadership in Baltimore and other cities.

We’ve got Kathleen Sutcliffe who was appointed to Carey Business School and to the School of Medicine. She’s someone who has an interest in the business of health care and comes from the University of Michigan’s business school. Her principle interest is in the way in which hospitals and other health care organizations organize their activities and ensure that they’re responsive to the interests of the patients. She has been a very important catalyst for work that straddles a number of different disciplines in the university but also, again, has very direct bearing on policymaking and hospital administration here at Hopkins.

You just mentioned two women and Hopkins Hospital, which just hired its first female president earlier this year. I suppose the question is why did it take so long and what does it mean now that she’s there?
Redonda Miller’s appointment as head of the Johns Hopkins Hospital was obviously a very important statement. She’s an extraordinarily talented physician and administrator and, in a lot of ways, was a very obvious choice to succeed Ron Peterson. But I think you’re right. This is a time when we’re seeing a lot of opportunities for the recruitment of new leadership and we are working hard at being very mindful of the need to think about opening avenues for underrepresented minorities and for women in positions where they previously haven’t had an opportunity to lead. And that’s something that we’re also working hard at in our standard faculty recruitment across the university, to think about how we build broad, diverse pools so that we’re reflecting the richness and the complexity of the society of which we’re a part.

The Supreme Court just upheld that institutes of higher education can use race as a determining factor in admissions. Does that change anything for Hopkins?
We were supportive of the University of Texas in the litigation and thought it was important that the Supreme Court’s prior reasoning, which saw a role for race in admissions decisions, be preserved. At Hopkins, we have experienced a truly spectacular increase in the quality of our student body over the last several years. This is measured by SAT scores, by class standing, by GPA averages, in the numbers of applications, acceptance rate, yield rate, and by attracting more students who are leaders in their schools and communities. This has also coincided with a significant increase in the percentage of underrepresented minorities in the first year class. What this affirms for me is the idea that you can have a very diverse study body while, at the same time, one need not compromise on its excellence.

You’re from Canada originally, right?
Yeah. [I’ve been in the United States] for 11 years. Just this past year, I became an American citizen. I had a green card for several years and ultimately decided that given my commitment to Hopkins and to Baltimore, I really wanted to be able to vote in national, state, and municipal elections. That, combined with the fact that I want to have the ability to get a security clearance so that I can be properly involved in the management of the Applied Physics Lab [in Laurel], which I’ve been sequestered from for the last several years because of my inability without American citizenship to get a clearance.

Wait! Let me get this straight. So there was stuff that they were working on at the Applied Physics Lab that they couldn’t tell you about because you weren’t an American?
You got it. In fact, when I came to Hopkins, the trustees had to basically do a reorganization of the Applied Physics Lab, which had previously reported into the president of the university. Instead of reporting into me, it had to report into the chair of the board of trustees who was an American citizen and was capable of getting a security clearance. So I’m on the path to become involved for the first time in this billion-dollar-plus research organization, which, for the last seven years, has been out of my line of sight.

Wow I guess they take it seriously there. That’s good to know.
There was a sense early on that maybe there’d be some way to get a clearance through some reciprocal recognition arrangement with Canada and the United States but, alas, that just had to wait until I could get American citizenship.

Now though, they can show you the really cool stuff.
They have indicated there will be a number of things that I will be interested to learn of that are happening at the lab that are deeply connected to Johns Hopkins but which I have not been exposed to.

Wow. Very euphemistically stated. I’m even more intrigued now. If they tell you where the aliens are, I want to know.
[Laughs]

In a few short years, local rapper Abdu Ali has become an important fixture in the creative community of Baltimore. On the heels of a brand-new album and the anticipated rebirth of his Kahlon party, the young talent talks about his personal growth, positive message, and the future of our city’s arts scene.

You were just featured by Teen Vogue as one of the “coolest queers on the Internet.” Teen Vogue! How did you hear the news?
It was early in the morning. Somebody tweeted me and I didn’t believe it. The writer wrote about my—for lack of a better word—rants, or monologues, on social media and I realized, ‘Whoa, people are really paying attention.’

It’s especially awesome because there’s so much stuff out there now.
It’s really exciting. 2016 has been the year of me getting over a hump, coming into myself, and self-actualizing both my music and my identity—being queer, and black, and from Baltimore. Because of those pieces of my identity, I face a lot of challenges, especially in the music industry, especially rapping, which is such a heteronormative scene.

Being from Baltimore creates challenges, because for a long time, people in other cities like New York or D.C. ignored the Baltimore music scene, so we had to work so hard to give the city national weight. There are also the challenges of just being a creative in this city, trying to combat these archaic, deep-rooted institutions where older writers, editors, gallery owners, academic leaders don’t want to move forward and let young people, black people, women come through and do their thing. We’re working with so many challenges being from Baltimore, but Baltimore has so much potential, it has so much talent. We see who we could be.

What are some of the things that you’d like to see done?
For a long time, the media wasn’t really giving us platforms, which is so important, not just for artists but also for the community to be introduced to new voices and ideas. It creates progress and gets Baltimore out of that old, dry environment. We also need more support from city government, and not just for straight white artists but more marginalized creatives, like they do at The Contemporary with the GritFund. The city needs to realize it already has a good thing going [with the DIY scene]—something that makes the city beautiful—and they should put more money towards those things than tourism.

A number of local musicians have mentioned that the lack of venues is a major issue.
Space is very limited, but since I started touring, I realized that’s not just a Baltimore issue—it’s national, it’s happening all over, with gentrification. We need more venues like The Crown, and collectives like Balti Gurls, and events like Kahlon. One of the constant struggles is how do we get bigger audiences? How do we get new people to come out? Because at this point, it’s just a bunch of artists supporting artists.

As a leader of the local music scene, from your perspective, is the arts community as close-knit as it seems to be?
There’s starting to be a web—the Freddie Gray unrest definitely helped ignite some creative solidarity. It created a lot of sparks and inspiration for people to come together and be more active. It was a significant landmark in Baltimore history that catapulted impossible change. Baltimore will never be the same because of it. We saw so many positive things happening during that time, but there’s still a lot more work that needs to be done.

I think the mainstream has success, but the alternative and underground needs help. The visual arts scene is severely lacking in cultivators, a missing piece that could help create a kind of artistic renaissance in Baltimore. They need more than just Bmore Art. This is a big city. There are 600,000 people here, and that’s not including Towson or the county or surrounding areas. There are definitely a lot of people we can attract. And black artists specifically are still not getting the audiences they deserve. It shouldn’t be hard to get people to come out on a Saturday for a $5 show. It’s kind of crazy how hard it is.

That’s interesting, given that Kahlon, your bi-monthly DIY party at The Crown, always had a line out the door. What was it about that show that inspired such turnout?
We put in the work to put that party in people’s faces. We put flyers at MICA, Morgan, Towson, and had this massive email list. These days, people are just using the internet, which might work in New York City, but in Baltimore, you still have to be visible—and physical. We put ourselves out there not just in URL, but IRL. We had to prove that Kahlon was something that people should be a part of. We had to make it more than just a show; we had to make it an experience, where people felt welcome, and like they were witnessing something different and new and exciting.

Kahlon did a great job at pulling different walks of life together in Baltimore, thanks to its genre-crossing lineups.
I just started making music three-and-a-half years ago and I would go to shows and be the only black, queer, or young person, and I thought, this is too separate. Why not put something together where everyone can go? Inclusivity is the most important thing that made Kahlon different, but we shouldn’t have been the first.

You recently ended Kahlon, but it’s returning as a festival.
November 5 at Bambou. We’re working on a lineup now, with a lot of local artists and more national acts. The Crown was getting too tight. We want to bring it from 200 people to 500 or 1,000. And if this one’s successful, we’ll do more.

And you also recently had tours with the likes of Lower Dens and :3ION.
Those tours made me realize, this is working. That’s why I say 2016 is the year of self-actualization. I’m realizing that what I’m doing is bigger than me. I’m realizing that I am creating representation and inspiration for people like me. I want to go out there and empower and speak positivity for black people and queer people, and women and trans people, and any other identities that cross or intersect with mine.

Your new album, Mongo, carries a lot of those messages and is especially powerful.
I wanted to create something that was raw, real, inclusive, and accessible. On my previous projects, I was thinking too much—that I needed to be very different from everybody else, like I needed to be the future, that my music was a product. I wasn’t thinking about the bigger picture, and I realized that in doing so, a lot of my music wasn’t accessible in many ways.

I started thinking about how I go to art shows and some abstract artists don’t humble themselves when explaining their work. They’re not like, yeah, this is abstract but everybody can get it. They’re elitist, like if you don’t get it, it’s not meant for you. I don’t like that shit. I think art should be for everyone. Music is a universal language and it should be for all people. I think music can create an open dialogue for people to be able to dissect things like racism, misogyny, and transphobia and start to understand how they relate.

You call the album a “black self-care mixtape.” How does the process of creating music help or heal you?
It makes me feel like I exist—like my existence is important and valid. It makes me feel powerful. It brings me purpose. It does something for me that no money, clothes, or material things can do. It helps me survive. And that’s what I want to make people feel like, in Baltimore and beyond. Like, you do exist. Like, you fucking exist. This world is trying to tell people like me that we don’t, and I’ll do whatever little efforts I can to make people feel like living.

Like in your songs “I’m Alive” and “I, Exist.”
I’ve never told anybody this, but I’ve had suicidal thoughts, and that’s not something I should ignore or not talk about. We have anti-bullying campaigns but that’s not fully addressing the problem for those people who need it the most. People will say, well there’s Ru Paul, and there’s Caitlyn Jenner, with her own reality TV show, we are progressing—but just because you see people getting support doesn’t mean it’s easier for the other thousands of people out there. Transgender people still get murdered every day. So I want my music to inspire some queer black boy living in some city where not a lot of people look like him.

You want the music to do for them what it did for you.
You asked me if it helps me heal and it really does. Growing up, I always wanted to be an entertainer or performer, but my fears of being queer and black had me unsure if I really could. But then I just said, ‘Fuck it—let me try this thing out, and see where it takes me.’

It takes a lot of courage to do that.
It does, and while I try to motivate people, I’m not going push somebody who struggles to do so, because it’s hard. It’s hard to be yourself when you’re not a straight white male, because you get challenged at every step of the way for just being you. It’s hard to do things that people like you don’t tend to have the opportunity to do. But music makes me feel like I’m worthy of living, and that there’s love out there for me. When I say ‘I exist,’ I’m speaking to the audience, but I’m speaking to myself.

Even with all these hurdles to overcome in Baltimore—as a city, in the arts and culture community—what is the best thing about being an artist here?
The freedom to do whatever you want to do and not to have to limit yourself. We have an advantage in Baltimore to grow as much as possible within ourselves and for ourselves. In New York, there are a lot of rules. You have to adapt to what’s going on or you’ll be overlooked. But Baltimore is unruly.

You live in Nashville but are originally a Maryland boy.
Yep. I grew up in Berlin and Ocean City, and then I went to Towson [University] and played football. I was a linebacker.

There’s definitely a thread of small-town life that runs through your music—not to mention country music, in general. Is that the Eastern Shore influence?
My biggest influence growing up was my father. He was big into the old country—the Willies and Waylons and Merles. So the first songs I learned, really, were the “three chords and the truth” songs. But the Eastern Shore is just such a beautiful place. There’s kind of a relaxed atmosphere. Everybody is just kind and nice and wants to fish and go out on the boat. And there are a lot of songs that you haven’t heard just yet that I’m recording now for my next album that are summertime, beach songs. It all ties in. It shaped my personality, which, in turn, shapes my music and my writing.

One of your songs, “Superman,” is the anthem for the nonprofit ZERO—The End of Prostate Cancer. How’d that happen and what has the reaction been?
We are all touched by [cancer]. But I really wanted to dive into this [cancer], specifically. So I started reading about it and this guy, Phil Shulka, he was a stage 3 cancer patient who was not given more than, I think, a five percent chance of living, and he beat it and he has been a survivor for over 11 years. So he works for Chesapeake Urology and what he does is, when somebody finds out they have cancer, he goes to their bedside and says, ‘Look, I was not supposed to make it. If you’re only a stage 2, I was a stage 3. This is what you can do. This is what you can expect. These are some of your options. This is what my experience was.’ So he can give them some hope. So I was like, ‘What an amazing thing this guy does every day. Let’s get this guy to Nashville, so we can sit down and talk to him.’ And we did, we brought him into the BMI building right on Music Row and we took him in to a writer’s room—I can’t tell you how many hit songs have been written in the same room—and myself and Goose Gossett, who is another great writer in town and lead guitarist in my band, we sat down and we just listened to him talk for 45 minutes, and we just took notes.

After he was done, we just started writing and about two-and-half hours later we came out with a hit song. And it has really just touched so many lives. We sent it back to ZERO, just as an acoustic rough and they were blown away. They were like, ‘We’ve got people in the office crying right now listening to this. How did you guys do this?’ So that turned into their anthem song and then that turned into creating a music video that I then presented to CMT and GAC and tons of other outlets and everybody picked it up, which is hard to do because they get hundreds of submissions per day. So it premiered with CMT, which was huge for the song, the message, and me as an artist to be able to have that. And then ZERO asked me to become their national spokesman because I did a lot of interviews going into the race and I really studied up and learned about the organization and spoke well and it’s a lot easier for me to get on a morning shows and things like that. It’s more fun, I guess, to talk to a country artist with the story rather than just a doctor trying to get you to come to their urology center, you know what I mean? ‘Hey, you need to come in and get your butt checked!’ You know? Last year I toured the country, and we raised over $3.5 million.

It’s fun to have summertime drinking songs, those things are great, but they’ll be forgotten. But a song like this—the amount of emails and messages I’ve received from people who are going through the battle of their lives. . . . It’s just incredible what a song can mean to them to provide hope.

You were on American Idol, season 9. Do you consider that your big break?
That was probably the most exciting moment of my life, to get a golden ticket to Hollywood on American Idol. [But] it’s not something that, at this point in my career, I necessarily hang my hat on. It’s not something I keep saying, ‘Hey, guess what? I was on American Idol!’ I didn’t win and you’re on to the next thing.

Now, this whole project [the ZERO cancer work and “Superman”] is what I’m most proud of, and I just recently had another song in the Top 40 of NSAI [Nashville Songwriters Association International]. They are the biggest songwriters association in the world and they’re based right here in Nashville. One of my songs, “Cowboy Soul,” was in their Top 40 this year, which is a huge honor. I love that song, but I was surprised it wasn’t “Superman.” Now, I’ve actually just been asked to perform at their publisher’s luncheon and meeting where they have every single publisher, big and small, which is an amazing thing to be able to do, to sing in front of every publisher in town. So that happens [this month], July 21, actually.

You’re also playing shows around the Eastern Shore this month.
It’s important for me to get back there as much as possible. And Fourth of July is a great time for me to do it. We have six shows lined up, the 6th through the 10th. Any excuse I can take to get to the beach and back home, I’m going to use it. They have lakes here in Nashville and the lakes are nice. We’ve got the redneck yacht clubs and we all tie up and get on the rafts, but lakes just ain’t the same as that ocean.

Well, it’s obvious you love it. You even wrote a song about Ocean City.
Yeah, I did. And Baltimore. And Maryland. There’s “Back to Baltimore” and “I Miss My Maryland,” too. Yeah, so I’ve got Ocean City, Baltimore, and Maryland all covered!

What’s BWI’s position in the industry?
We’re the 22nd busiest airport in the country, and that’s out of over 500 commercial airports. Last year, we had a record-breaking year with almost 24 million passengers flying out of BWI, and about 1.1 million of those were international passengers—that was also a record. This year is following suit. So we’ve become more than just a regional airport. We’re the busiest airport in the Washington-Baltimore area. We’re outpacing both Dulles and [Reagan] National in terms of passengers.

Is the growth due to the proliferation of low-cost international carriers?
Exactly. WOW Air, Condor, Southwest Airlines emerging into the international market. Our plan is to continue our position as the low-fare option for this region.

What do you think is the most exotic destination that people can get to from BWI?
We have several. Look at Southwest’s service to Latin America, or anytime you can take a flight [via Norwegian Air Shuttle] to Martinique. I think that’s a pretty exotic place. But, if you want to fly nonstop to Reykjavik [via WOW Air], I mean, that’s a pretty neat place to go to as well.

What about commercial service to Cuba?
I don’t see that happening in the near future. We just had a scheduled charter service to Cuba that didn’t go very well. So we decided to step back, regroup. We’re looking for the right carrier to re-launch that service.

Do you get to go to these places when you’re recruiting business for BWI?
That’s not something I get to do. We do have a personalized air service team who occasionally have to go and kind of kick the tires [of a new partner airport] and get a chance to go to someplace like Costa Rica just to see what it feels like. That’s not a bad job.

Recently, BWI has had local musicians play concerts at baggage claim. What’s that about?
Over the years, we’ve learned that, although people come to the airport to fly, they want to feel a sense of place when they get here. So art in many forms—musical, static, or digital art—that gives the customer something to escape from the angst that comes with rushing through an airport.

What other new projects can travelers expect?
Airports are always under construction because we’re in such a dynamic environment. Today, to try to keep track with Southwest Airlines’ growth—and a number of other carriers—we have to add additional capacity. And so we have our Concourse D and Concourse E Connector. That project will introduce additional gates to accommodate both domestic and some international service. It will also allow us to introduce more food and retail concepts. That should open initially later this year and be completed totally sometime early next year. We also have an expansion to our Concourse E facility. That’s our international facility. We’re adding six gates to that facility to accommodate international service.

Speaking of food and retail, what have customers been demanding? More local food options? More high-end options?
A lot of our customers want local options. People who are coming in from out of town, they want to feel Baltimore and Washington when they come in. People that live in this area, they want to see the taste of their community in the airport, but there’s also a significant segment of the population that wants to see brands that they’re familiar with—so Chick-fil-A, those kinds of brands, we’re planning very soon to bring online. They want healthy options. That’s a growing demand. We try to understand what they want, and we do our best to go out and try to find operates that can bring those concepts here.

BWI airport serves two very distinct metro areas, how do you balance representing both of them?
Generally, our surveys include all of our passengers—D.C. passengers, passenger from the Baltimore metropolitan area, and even passengers from southern Pennsylvania. They are all part of one general survey, so we look at consensus. And that consensus reflects what flyers from all of those populations tend to want. I don’t know that there’s a difference between what someone in D.C. might want as opposed to what somebody in Baltimore might want. So we haven’t had an issue with that. But we do try to make sure, however, that Baltimore-Washington [BWI] reflects D.C. because that’s a battleground market for us. And to the extent that we can have passengers in the Washington metropolitan area feel more comfortable with BWI Marshall, then that makes us a more attractive option for those flyers.

Where were you before you came to BWI?
I started in BWI back in 1990 as the budget manager. I spent a few years there then I bounced around, spent some time in operations, overseeing planning and engineering and marketing, and then I left for a year and a half or so and became the deputy administrator for the Maryland Highway Administration. I stayed there for a couple years then I returned to BWI for about two years when the opportunity to go to Cleveland emerged back in 2006. So I left BWI, went to Cleveland as the CEO there, stayed there for nine years until August of last year and then Governor Hogan asked if I would return home to BWI, and it’s probably one of the most exciting decisions I’ve made in my life.

So are you from Baltimore originally?
Yes, I actually grew up on Whitelock Street, not far from the area where the unrest occurred, Penn North. I went to Baltimore City Public Schools, graduated from Howard University in D.C., went to Loyola University of Maryland in Baltimore. So yes, I am. Baltimore is home.

For people who don’t follow the sport of mountain biking, can you go toot your own horn?
Ha! Sure. I am a two-time world champion, and I won a world cup. And then I’ve also won the X-Games, [competing in] downhill [racing], which is kind of like a downhill ski race, where you start at the top and you end at the bottom and you’re actually by yourself and you race the clock. But I pretty much did every style of cycling event. I raced BMX. I raced road. There are probably 20 styles of mountain biking alone and you add all the regular road riding, so there’s lots of different types of racing. So I won my share of races, but I had a long career—16 years—as a paid professional athlete traveling the world.

I don’t think people realize that there is the variety there is. Why did you like downhill so much?
I started late. I was about 28 when I turned pro. That’s relatively old, compared to the others. I was just a regular student. I went to graduate school. But I didn’t have a big sports background like the other cross-country racers, so I didn’t have that deep base of training. And I didn’t, honestly, have a great VO2 max [Ed note: a measure of the maximum volume of oxygen that an athlete can use], so my dream was to be an Olympic-level cross-country racer because I actually prefer the endurance style of climbing up and down the mountains, but my body was not capable of doing that. I was able to get on the podium in national events but I never had a chance in the world-class events. But right around the early ’90s, the sport of downhill was really taking off, too. It was much easier for me to do well in downhill for two reasons. I’m not really afraid of speed, and it’s not as contingent on a different kind of fitness. Technique is more important than your fitness in downhill. So I was able to win those races pretty early in my career, and I was winning pretty big races.

So how fast do you go in downhill?
I probably got up to about 70 or 80 miles per hour. I think I reached my top speed on the ice-covered bobsled track in Cortina, Italy, which is crazy because we had to have spiked tires and I had to duck for the low awnings. If you didn’t duck at the perfect time, you’d be decapitated, basically. So it was pretty crazy in retrospect, now that I think about it.

You mentioned that you don’t really scare easily.
Not from speed.

Can you recall some of your worst falls and injuries?
There are so many. In the beginning, I was so obsessed with this sport and succeeding that I would just ignore my injuries. And a lot of the injuries were caused because I was already recovering from another injury. But I remember the first year of racing, I broke my right collarbone six times in one year. And finally, I just asked the doctor, I said, “Take it out. It’s not doing me any good.” So he said, “Okay.” So he took it out and now it’s the greatest thing in the world because my shoulder collapses. I can fold it in. So when I fall, I always fall on my right and roll on the right side and I never break anything anymore on that side.

But the most painful injury, if you want to talk about injuries, I scratched my cornea once. This was filming. I was featured in an IMAX movie called Top Speed and putting on the motorcycle leathers—it’s so crazy—I just accidentally bent into the Velcro on the sleeve and scratched my cornea, and I had to go to the hospital. It’s definitely strange when you think about it. A little scratched cornea—easily the worst pain. Except for giving birth to children. That was worse. I have two kids, that was worse.

I know you’re very involved with organizations such as Bike Maryland that advocate for increased bike infrastructure in Baltimore, and that you ride with your kids in the city all the time. What’s scarier: mountain biking or riding on the street in Baltimore?
Well, that’s a good question and I used to joke that riding on the streets is more dangerous. Now that I know my techniques and now that I understand how to ride really well off-road, I would say, for me, maybe more dangerous to ride on the streets. Because I rarely fall on my mountain bike anymore and I often joke that the trees never move whereas, on the road, you can’t control that car running a red light. And no matter how good you are, you can’t control someone if they’re texting and putting their foot on the gas. I got hit once, and I believe she was texting. I shouldn’t probably talk too much about it, but she was making a right on red. And you know how some people just roll? They kind of stop and they do it every day to go to work. She was just making a right on red with very little pause and I was coming down a bike lane perfectly legal but it was a contra bike lane, which means that it goes on the left side of the road. But I got hit and someone got killed last year. It’s basically from people not paying attention, so there is a certain amount of danger. You know, half the time, statistically, it’s the cyclist’s fault because they’re riding on a road that has unnecessarily high speeds and they didn’t pick the best route. Or they’re breaking the law. So I also work for Bike Maryland teaching bike safety. Half the time you see cyclists running red lights and that’s how you get hurt. But if you’re following the law, I really believe that it’s not all that dangerous. Even in a car. there’s a certain amount of danger. I think it’s about the same. If you’re riding vigilantly, riding on the proper streets, et cetera, et cetera.

What do think Baltimore needs to have a really safe, robust, operational bike infrastructure?
Well, we need connectivity, bike lanes that don’t just stop. You know, they’re trying. We need infrastructure that’s designed by people that understand cycling and the dynamics of cycling behavior. So good bike lanes for cyclists that aren’t going to get filled with leaves or that cyclists won’t use because they’re afraid of the debris or the car doors opening on them. And you don’t want to ride on Northern Parkway, necessarily, or streets that are really fast. There are lots of statistics about getting hit by a car moving over 35 miles per hours is pretty dangerous. If they’re going under [35 miles per hour] you have a 90 percent chance of being fine but over 35 it actually becomes inverted, so a 90 percent chance of being really hurt or dying.

And they’re doing a good job because more and more, there are lanes popping up out of nowhere. It’s great. Compared to when I was here commuting to graduate school in the ’90s, there were almost no bike lanes. So it’s really come a long way and you see people out there year-round now. The camaraderie, the more cyclists there are out there, the safer it will be because drivers will just get used to seeing cyclists.

I take my kids to school by bike every morning. We have a cargo bike so we can do it year-round and they’re warm inside this little container. And half the people I see on the roads every morning—I see the same cars every morning because we go at the same time—are parents driving their kids to school. We kind of have a little competition with the other parents. I almost always beat them to the school, just because of the traffic. And they just can’t believe it. They’re like, “Ugh!” Soon they’ll figure it.

How many bikes do you have?
I probably have maybe 30. And I have a lot of helmets, over 40 or 50 helmets. And I always tell the kids that I’m proud of my helmets, you know? A lot of kids think it’s not cool to wear helmets.

Where do you go around here if you want to do some trail riding?
I go to Lake Roland Park. That has some fun little trails. It’s a great little park. There’s also Druid Hill, which has some trails, they have paved and dirt trails. Some of the best riding in the whole state would be Patapsco [State Park] and Loch Raven Reservoir. I think Patapsco is as good as it gets, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve traveled all around the world and it’s probably one of the reasons I’m able to live here. And then there’s Loch Raven Reservoir, which I can ride to. I prefer to ride to the trails and not drive because I’m just a little bit of a tree-hugger.

You and your husband have been working on opening a bike shop/restaurant in Fells Point called Handlebar Cafe. What’s the status?
It’s really exciting because a bicycle cafe is the kind of business a retired pro cyclist and a bartender can do together. We’ve been scheming this for about 10 years and we moved to Baltimore because I thought that Baltimore was just ready for this big [cycling] movement. And we think that this is just going to rally everybody together and it’s a nice place where everyone can meet, all the cyclists. Even the bike shops we are trying to partner with. It helps to have more. We’re not necessarily a bike shop so much as a cafe. So it can be a nice meeting place for all cyclists. It’s really exciting. The city is changing. You can see it changing for the better. That’s why we moved here.

What’s the elevator pitch for those not familiar with the idea?
It’s basically an amalgam between a cafe and a bicycle shop. So there’s a bicycle shop inside the cafe and you can buy or get your bike fixed there. You can buy a new bike. You can get advice, encouragement. You can bring your bike in, hang it up and just have coffee if you want. You don’t even have to go to the bike shop. Or you can have beer and pizza. We’ll deliver pizza and beer by bike, as well, within about a mile square radius. You know, it’s a place for everybody. It’s not necessarily for cyclists. There’s a little pizza place that’s owned by an ex-skateboarder [Johnny Rad’s near Patterson Park] and not everyone who goes there is a skateboarder. But it’s a really fun vibe. We want to liven up that area. It’s kind of like the last little spot between Fells Point and Harbor East that hasn’t been gentrified.

It’s in between Fleet and Eastern, right?
Yeah. And we’re right on the bike lane and we’re on the Charm City Circulator route. So it’s a really good location. People thought we were crazy when we first bought the building but the location is awesome. It’s right between the Perkins Homes projects and the water and so we really want to connect with that community, or with what’s left of that community because they’re phasing it out, and engage the kids. You know, I’ve done a lot of workshops for Bike Maryland, and we’re going to try to engage them and get the kids not riding around without helmets and on the wrong side of the street. I can tie that in. We do have Bike Maryland upstairs as one of our tenants, and we also have the barre studio upstairs. So we’ll have a lot activity. We’ll have a lot of people coming up and down all day long. Probably mostly women, honestly. But I want this to be really women friendly, family-friendly. And we’ll have rides. We’ll have full moon rides for women and rides for everybody and all kinds of events.

So what’s your target opening date?
Let’s just say this spring, to be safe.

OneBaltimore was established by the mayor in response to last April’s unrest. Can you explain what OneBaltimore is?
Michael Cryor: Yeah, I’m sure there is some confusion, in part because we are trying to create something that is a bit different, that has a far better chance of being a sustainable response [to the unrest] and potentially transformative. But, fundamentally, at this point, it is a public-private partnership, working very collaboratively to ensure that we are increasing the extent to which all of Baltimore is included, both in matters in economy and matters of education, and that we do underscore the significance that race plays in many of the challenges we face as a city.

Can you give some examples of work the organization has already performed?
MC: I was brought on last June, last May, we were confronted immediately with the challenge of increasing the number of students or young people who wanted a summer job. Five-thousand had been the goal in the past. It was increased to 8,000. Raising $3 million and finding 3,000 additional slots in five weeks was certainly an immediate task. Frankly, it continues to be an immediate task because almost immediately we were looking at the next year and the belief that we would have an even greater demand for jobs the following year. Already we have I think 7,500 or 8,000 have already registered for this summer, which is just amazing. So that was the very first thing.

So that’s part of the plan for addressing economic inequality. What are some of the other parts of that plan?
MC: We started with the whole issue of how do we create a whole work system, not just a job. We have workforce development and we have offices and people hire as they need. What we don’t have is what I would describe as the bootcamps that are working with residents who have had difficulty in various forms in life.

So how are you getting city residents who may have been economically disadvantaged since birth to those jobs? What’s the connective tissue?
MC: I should say that we’re not limited just to the folks who’ve had the most difficulty. We obviously have many residents who are, frankly, down on their luck or just out of work and are looking for ways to connect with new industry for jobs that have greater sustainability. And so, that group represents an important segment of the audience that we’re talking about.

But for those who are most challenged, most of them come through groups like Center for Urban Families on the West Side and Humanim on the East Side. They have a very good track record of identifying people, most of whom come to them because they recognize that they want to make a change. And that process is quite transformative. If you’ve never been to one of the graduations at Center for Urban Families, I really urge you to do it. It’s a pretty special thing. If you go to what I would describe as an intake session, people show up and they have no idea what they’re going through. To come back three or four weeks later to their graduations and see them and their families really transformed by the experience is really heartwarming and gives you a real sense of confidence that change is quite possible.

And how does race factor in?
MC: Race is an important element in the conversation. There are lots of people in Baltimore who need to be heard. There are people who want to be parts of conversations, and the exchange of that conversation is important. But we also need to take a very hard look at where the presence of structural racism has served as an impediment to employment, to education, and to progress. And so you’ll be hearing more about a more investigative review of where race in Baltimore [had a hand in] creating and maintaining the disparities that we currently experience. That has not yet begun, but we will be starting that very soon.

So you’re going to conduct a study?
MC: Well, we won’t, personally, but there will be members of the coalition here in Baltimore—some of our anchor institutions, our colleges and universities and others—who have been doing that work for some time. And now we’re elevating that work and the significance of that work to a much large public platform.

What about education?
MC: Education is something we have been working on as well. Back in September, we were able to acquire about $2 million worth of laptops and distribute those and other pieces of equipment to community groups that are devoted to working with young people. We did that to underscore the importance of digital literacy.

We’ve been working with the schools on what we’re calling continuing Career and Technology Education Pathways (CTE). Those are jobs or curriculums young people commit to because they have an interest or they believe they have an interest in a certain area, be it IT or cosmetology. And I think we have roughly 10,000 students currently in CTE, but there is a real demand for that. We want to increase that. We want to double that number so that more young people are into tracks where they have a better chance for developing skills that will lead to employment. That should not preclude them from pursuing college interest as well, but it does suggest that there are many, many young people who are looking to move to a more technical-oriented career tracks that don’t require two- or four-year degrees.

How does this fit in with the Junior Achievement/Baltimore City Public Schools business park you’ve mentioned in the press?
MC: That’s really exciting. Junior Achievement, as you may know, around the country has developed some very impressive facilities called biz parks and financial literacy parks. It is our expectation that we will build a very large facility here in Baltimore City and the purpose of the business park is twofold. One is to introduce young people in our city to the world of work and the careers that are potentially available to them. It’s also a way to introduce the businesses in our city to young people and to develop an early understanding of the challenges—but more importantly the skills—that they bring. This facility will have the edifices of our major companies in town: the Under Armours, the T. Rowe Prices, what have you. And young people are committed to a curriculum in middle school through high school devoted to understanding the elements of business augmented with frequent trips to the business park where they assume the roles in those companies. They assume to role of the bank teller and the bank manager and they have responsibilities for decision-making and what have you. And it has become a very powerful tool for establishing that mindset for young people. And we’re very eager to have that here in Baltimore.

So are they role-playing or are they actually working?
MC: Role-playing, yeah. It’s very effective. I’m a psychologist, and I know what role lock looks like. I wouldn’t say they get role-locked, but they really buy into the process in a way that’s very impressive and very encouraging.

Do you know where that business park might be built?
MC: Well, I do know that there is a strong demand on the part of the business community that it be downtown. I am aware of a site but I am sworn to secrecy right now because they’re under some negotiations. But it really would be great if this works out.

What about health disparities?
MC: Well health is a biggie. We’ve got an amazing health commissioner. Dr. Leana Wen is amazing and we’ve worked together in bringing some additional money to Baltimore through our federal agencies to increase money for [Operation] Ceasefire and of course, [B’more for] Healthy Babies. The expansion of Healthy Babies has been a big focus of hers.

A big concern that all have in the city is the issue of lead poisoning. Just an extraordinary number of young people who we know are likely to have been exposed to lead paint. I think you will see a very robust commitment to eliminate or reduce the number of facilities in our city with lead paint, but also we’ve got to be thinking once that lead is in a child, it stays with them, but are there things we can and should be doing to reduce the negative consequences of lead paint. I’m not a doctor, but I do chair the medical school at the University of Maryland, which helps a little bit. There is a growing interest in understanding what we can do. I’m certain that many people didn’t fully appreciate that we had so many people affected and that the consequences were severe.

Right. Freddie Gray famously suffered effects from lead poisoning.
MC: That’s exactly right. We know now that lead paint has such a detrimental effect on the health of people that it compromises decision-making and [creates] a greater propensity for violence. If we are treating this purely as a matter of crime and public safety without recognizing the medical and health consequences of it then we would be missing an opportunity and obligation that we have. And so you will be hearing more about that. I’m not quite at liberty to talk about what our own commitments to that will be, but it will certainly be a big focus of ours. And frankly, to the extent that you would recognize Freddie Gray in some way, and what his experiences have meant to the city coming to terms with lots of things, it would be wonderful and important to demonstrate that we got the message.

When announcing the creation of OneBaltimore, the mayor said it will address both the short-term and long-term needs of the communities. What’s on the horizon?
MC: I would describe much of what I’ve just described as early part of Phase I. It’s almost triage. If this were a hospital, much of the work for the first several months has been responding both to the kind of immediate needs that people have expressed.

Phase II gets more into the innovation. It’s looking at how do we use our technologies and other things to create new industry. And of course, it moves to, if we have people working, where do people live? And then how to they get there? So transportation and housing become critical elements. Long-term it’s housing, long-term it’s better health, it’s lead paint. Long-term it’s really seeing more of our young people graduate on time with readiness.

Do you ever feel overwhelmed?
MC: There’s so many things to do immediately. It’s hard to differentiate, quite frankly. And while I think we are eager and committed to doing what we can, it really does require the collaboration of lots of players working not just together, but working differently—be it city or state. We have 602 mentoring organizations in the Baltimore area. You think about how do you deploy them? Where are they? One of the things that I’m really excited about—we’re constantly asked, ‘Well, what can I do?’ I think we’ve got to make that process easy for people. Let’s just say that you want to volunteer, but you only have time on Tuesdays and Thursdays and you would prefer to work with young girls who have an interest in art. So we want to an app where you could put it your own requirements—your time requirements, your skill set, or whatever you want to offer—and then you’d match it up. You’d press the button and here are the four things that come up. I think that would make it a lot easier for a broader community. And then the metrics on that would be measurable. How many people went? Where’d they go? What services are being sought after most? Therefore, here are the services that either need more money or because these services aren’t getting volunteers they need a different kind of allocation. It helps you make some decisions about how you deploy volunteers around the city.

It isn’t so much that everybody needs to fix the problem; it’s that you want more people engaged in some aspect of supporting the city. And I think if you got 20,000 people doing that through a better resource and more information, you increase that 20,000 to 30,000 or 40,000 and that’s a big number. So those are the kinds of things that matter.

For many National Public Radio listeners, his voice is a familiar one, coming across the airwaves to tell stories that explain the world to us a little more and find the extraordinary in the seemingly ordinary. Ira Glass, the host of This American Life, returns to his hometown in March for an appearance at Goucher College. He joined us to talk about This American Life’s two decades, the booming podcast scene, and what he listens to.

This American Life turned 20 last year. Can you believe it’s that old?
I do. And I can’t tell if it’s a good thing or a bad thing from a marketing perspective to tell people that the show is 20 years old. On the one hand, it makes it seem like an institution and, on the other hand, it seems like there’s no show that’s 20 years old. It just seems like that’s for old people then. I worry saying the show is 20 years old is a way of alienating potential listeners who are 19 and 25.

What do you think has been the most successful part of the show? Has that changed?
We’ve managed to find stories that are interesting enough that people would want to listen, that people continue to listen, and the audience continues to grow. The thing that’s changed is the kind of stories we do. If someone were to go back and listen to our archives, there were a lot more personal stories in the early years. We had a lot more writers come on the air, David Sedaris and other people like that. Now, it’s much more of a reported show, and honestly, [has] much more ambitious, investigative stories, but always with the idea that the story will be told with characters and scenes and a plot. The thing that was true of the show at the beginning was that it was a show where the stories were narratives, very traditional stories with characters, scenes, funny moments, and emotional moments. That was true when we were doing personal stories, and as we’ve taken on more serious subjects and things that are on the news, we’ve kept to that.

Do you think you’ll keep that investigative direction?
I think we’re going to keep that. We’re in the unusual situation now where because of the money we’ve made from podcasting, we have a little money to spend and it’s been nice to be able to spend that money on investigative reporting, to let a reporter or producer work on something for several months before it has to go on the air. It’s a luxury we definitely didn’t have at the beginning. We did a project a couple of years ago where we sent three reporters to a high school in Chicago over the course of five months. That’s a huge investment of time, energy and money. And that’s all because of podcasting, which brings in this new revenue we’ve never had before.

Podcasts have been such a boon, it seems like, for programs like yours. Did you foresee that any of this was going to happen?
Oh my god, just the opposite. It kind of just happened and we witnessed it gratefully, like we were the unusual recipients and holders of a winning lottery ticket. No, it’s very odd that our colleagues in newspapers and magazines, and even network TV news, are experiencing this tightening and one of the few places where journalism audiences are getting larger and where people are interested in long-form, detailed journalism is podcasting. It’s this crazy moment, and I’m grateful that it’s happening.

The business plan when we started Serial was if we could get 300,000 people to download each episode, we could sell underwriting and cover our costs. Sarah Koenig and Julie Snyder just referred to it as this little thing they were doing on the side. There was very much a feeling that no one was going to hear it, and the fact that 8 million people have downloaded every episode and it became a phenomenon unto itself, I wish we could say we knew enough to know that.

Does that change This American Life at all?
It just means we can consider stories with more cursing in them. (laughs) No, the serious answer is it doesn’t change what we do on the radio at all, but it does mean there are certain stories that we come across that we realize, oh, this could be a six-episode podcast, this could be a 10-episode podcast. So we have other things planned and other shows planned that we’ll be coming out with.

Why do you think podcasts have become so popular?
Honestly, I feel like we’re in a bubble right now. It will have to burst. They’re so popular because people are just discovering them and it’s sort of cool and new still, so that’s part of it. And some of the individual shows are popular just because they’re great shows on their own merit. Like Radiolab is a great show, those guys are super engaging, it’s beautifully produced, they pick great stories. It’s built to be pleasing. With a show like ours, what we’re doing is such traditional storytelling. I feel like the reason people like it is the same reason we on the staff like the stories. It’s just fun to lose yourself in a story and what to find out what’s going to happen and the feelings that go along with it. It’s the most traditional kinds of stuff. And then I think there’s a market niche thing. There’s certain times when it’s nice to have a story when you can’t keep your eyes on a TV screen: you’re walking down the street, you’re driving, you’re cooking.

What was it like for you to have the first Serial happen in your hometown?
I grew up within 10 minutes of everything that happens in the first episode. That Best Buy parking lot, that was our Best Buy. Security Square Mall was our mall, [so was] Reisterstown Road Mall, but for a fancy mall it was Security Square Mall. Reisterstown Road Plaza, excuse me, or The Plaza as we used to call it in the northwest suburbs. [Mimics teenage voice] ‘You going to The Plaza? Where’s Karen? She’s at The Plaza.’ And Woodlawn High School was the rival to Milford Mill High School, where I went, so I knew the whole world of it. It was very surreal, it was very strange for me. Especially when Sarah would go driving around, it would be like, oh, you’re driving around my old neighborhood.

What do you listen to? Any podcasts on your list?
Right now, my number one podcast that I like that we’re not making is Reply All, made over at Gimlet, which is one of our ex-producers Alex Blumberg, who started a for-profit company to make podcasts. They’re all pretty good, but that’s my favorite. And my wife is a huge fan of various comedy podcasts. She’ll play me stuff from ones she’ll know I’ll like. And then there are the occasional random shows I’ll start listening to. [Musician] St. Vincent has a music show, it’s not a podcast though, it’s on Apple music, so it’s a little harder to get. People call her up and ask her to make a playlist for a specific person for a specific moment in their life. And then she’ll talk to them on air and play the music for them. It’s just wonderful. For a long time I was a big Marc Maron fan. My nephew just started a podcast, the Creator-Destructor Podcast. It’s about music. If the purpose of this question is to get recommendations for podcasts I feel like my list is very idiosyncratic. But honestly, I haven’t had time to listen to much, or really to see much TV.

You listen to people talk all day long. Do you ever not want to listen to anything?
I do have trouble when I’m at the gym. On the treadmill, I need music to keep going. But I don’t get sick of listening to people talk. I do have a hard time with podcasts that are just people talking, that aren’t edited. When Serial came out last year, there were a bunch of podcasts about each episode, and I listened to a few of them, and I was like, “Oh my god, these people don’t understand pacing. Like, how dare these people do a podcast critiquing a podcast, they don’t understand how to pace a podcast.” It made me so angry that I wasn’t able to listen. I was very curious about what they had to say about our show, I just couldn’t stand it. I was just like, “Pacing, pacing, obey the basic laws of pacing.” I don’t want to seem like some crazy crank. I mean, it’s the golden age of podcasting, there are many, many wonderful podcasts out there. And even some of the podcasts that are just straight up interview podcasts, like Marc Maron, are beautifully made and the pacing is good. But there’s a whole world of podcasts out there where the fact that they can be any length, people don’t completely comprehend what good pacing could do to make them better.

What’s it like for you coming back to Baltimore?
It’s nice. Honestly, I just come in and go from the train station to see my dad and hang out with him. And we’ll go see a movie or we’ll go to the symphony or something, so I basically live in his orbit. There’s a lot of the city that I don’t see very much.

Do you get recognized when you visit?
A little. It’s totally nice; people are very normal about it. Public radio listeners treat me and other people on public radio as some sort of distant friend that they haven’t met yet. People are appropriate and not weird. It’s exactly at the level that a person would want it to be.

You recently received a grant to host a new podcast/radio show on WEAA titled Baltimore: The Rise of Charm City.
What is it about?
It’s going to be intergenerational stories of place and memory in Baltimore City. We’re going to look at neighborhoods and talk to some of the older residents who are still living there, or used to live there, and then connect with younger people who are still living there. The idea is to present the history of the place through the memories, and just sort of track the changes and lack of change. It also will have narrated research and some interviews with historians interwoven.

How did the collaboration with WEAA come about? Did you bring them on board or was it the other way around?
The Association of Independents in Radio is funding 15 cities’ public radio stations’ new projects. I’m the Baltimore one, and WEAA is the [selected] public radio station. WEAA had to put together its own proposal, just like the independent producers. They looked at my proposal and then they looked at theirs and thought we’d be a good fit. I agree. WEAA’s tagline has long been the voice of the community and they are very committed to community engagement and community uplifting. Because I want this to have that kind of tone, I was really excited that they were on board with this. Their sensibility and the sensibility of this project seem to match.

The first episode airs in January. What will it be about?
I’m reaching out to a few places that I know I definitely want to work with. One of them is Shake & Bake Family Fun Center.

Where’s that?
It’s in Upton on Pennsylvania Avenue and it’s really, for that area, the only community center that still exists. Upton has a really, really high concentration of children but they don’t have much besides [Shake & Bake’s] skating rink and bowling alley. We want to talk about how that has been a hub of safe community. It has been a really big deal for that community to have that space. Also, Upton has been in decline for a long time, but it has a really interesting history. So we want to try to talk about that.

So this is going to be a hyper-local show. Do you feel like you’re part of a trend toward telling hyper-local stories?
I do think that there’s a trend toward local storytelling, in podcasting particularly. It’s a relatively new medium, I guess. We’re all looking for different ways to present personal stories that have broader resonance and that give people something to connect to that’s larger. One of the reasons I think we were selected was because of the Baltimore Uprising earlier this year. We wanted to talk about how the history [of Baltimore] isn’t just the things that are problematic. There are things in each community that are very special and very important to the people and they rely on even when there’s unrest. So we wanted to talk about those things in conjunction with—or as a way to juxtapose—the national coverage that we were seeing earlier this year.

You are new to radio and podcasting. You come from a writing background.
My background is entirely in freelance writing and before that it was in education. It’s a new experience for me, working in audio.

Well you have a nice voice. So that should help.
I was worried about that! I thought about hiring a different host but we’ll see how it goes.

Really? You thought about not hosting it, even though you pitched the idea for the show?
I briefly considered it, and then I talked to the people I’m collaborating with at WEAA and they thought it would be best if I did it. [Laughs] But I was really timid about being the on-air voice. And then we also bounced around [the idea of] maybe not having it narrated at all. But because we also wanted to do the historical aspect, we definitely need that narration. At this point, I comfortable with the idea of it, but at first I had some hesitation. So I think it’s just going to be me on-air.

You’ll be like the Sarah Koenig of the show.
Apparently.

Speaking of Sarah Keonig, Serial had a Baltimore narrative at the center of its first season. Do you in any way see your show as a response to Serial and other media in which Baltimore—fairly or unfairly—has been depicted as dangerous?
Not Serial, specifically, but I think just generally Baltimore gets such tough coverage, especially this year with the homicide rate being higher than it has been in most recent years. A lot of national attention has been paid to that, too. So because of that, we’re hoping that a lot of national listeners will take notice of it and add [our stories] to their framework of what the city is about. I feel like Baltimore has always gotten, sort of, a lot of bad coverage, more than it has gotten good—and there’s so much good here.

Full Circle Dance Company is celebrating its 15th anniversary. Tell us about its origins.
We started in 2000 as an outgrowth of the Morton Street Dance Center, which is a school here in Baltimore that I co-founded and run. Full Circle was founded initially because we had such talented teachers who were not performing but wanted to. And we’ve attracted other folks who have moved to town and looked for that professional dance outlet.

The anniversary show on October 3 will feature a piece themed around breast cancer called 328-HOPE.
That is the phone number for the Baltimore City Cancer Program that screens uninsured and underinsured women. We will provide the proceeds to the program.

Full Circle performances are often built around a theme, but why breast cancer?
We thought about a number of things—domestic violence was one that I was beginning to settle on when one of the dancers said, ‘I have something even more personal.’ I said, ‘What’s that?’ And she said, ‘Breast cancer.’ I took a deep breath and I said, ‘I’ll do it.’ I had breast cancer two years ago, and I’ve got to tell you, I thought all of these concerts were personal—we’ve talked about religion, we’ve talked about race, we’ve talked about the unconscious mind—but this one is different. Many of the dancers and myself spent some time with women who are in the breast cancer support program of the BCCP. I put out the question and simply said, ‘Tell me what your experience has been?’ and I will tell you a little bit of mine, and we just let them go from there.

I was very blessed with a cancer that was discovered very, very early. So my journey is not the journey of some, but I know what mine was, and it’s something I still think about every day. So I can only hear, listen, and imagine what that experience is like for someone who went through the entire panoply of care needed to survive. And it does make you think about your mortality in ways that you probably never did. It makes you very sensitive to each and every ache and pain. I feel such a responsibility to honor these women.

How do you translate personal experiences into movement?
I was thinking about the volume of information and how fast that comes and the decisions you have to make and I began to think, ‘How do I translate that into movement?’ And then there are certain procedures that one goes through. I did radiation therapy, and every day I laid on a table in a certain way, so that became movement to me. And then, when we talked to the women about their stories, one of them said, ‘I just wanted to run away but whatever I did, it followed me.’ So that’s movement in my mind. Or they talked about their strength. Or they talked about support from somebody else. So I used my own experience, but probably even more so, the words, the phrases, the concepts of the other women.

What do you hope people take from the performance?
I hope that, certainly, there’s power in our message about breast cancer and that they’ve been touched by the stories that we’re looking to tell. But I hope they walk away from an evening filled with dance that they’ve enjoyed aesthetically, and they’ve enjoyed the meaning of each piece. So I hope they’re able to follow all that and understand the place that dance has in people’s lives and how beautifully it can communicate meaning and can cross boundaries about things people may need to address or consider about others.

Gertrude’s owner John Shields has spent a lifetime devoting his career to crabs and all incarnations of Maryland seafood. “I was born in Baltimore at 25th and Greenmount,” he says, “and I started cooking with my grandmother Gertie at St. Ann’s church in the basement. We’d go to all the municipal markets and there was fresh fish everywhere.” And summers were spent on Eastern Shore workboats and crab boats, where Shields’ great uncle ran the Tilghman Island seafood-packing plant.

Shields writes about those experiences and more in the 25th anniversary edition of his cookbook, Chesapeake Bay Cooking, due out this fall. We talked to the chef about his transition from the Bay Area to Chesapeake Bay, what to expect in his cookbook, and his time spent picking crabs on Tilghman Island.

You had a French restaurant in Berkeley, CA in the early ’80s called A La Carte. How did you go from French fare to Chesapeake cuisine?
I was rolling out pastry one day, and suddenly it came to me: “Do what you love, do what you miss,”—and that was Chesapeake Bay cuisine. For my first shipment, I went to the San Francisco airport in my Toyota Corolla, and there was a palette of these big airfreight containers packed with crabmeat, oysters, and rockfish. I had to unpack the containers and just stuff everything in the car because I didn’t have a truck. I literally had oysters on the floor of my car up to the window on the passenger side. After that, no one would ever ride in my car again.

The 25th anniversary edition of Chesapeake Bay Cooking is due out this fall. What was the book’s genesis?
The publisher of a boutique cookbook company came in to my restaurant, Gertie’s Chesapeake Bay Café, all the time. He’d ask me, “Have you ever though about doing a book on the Chesapeake cooking? There’s no definitive book.” I was like, “I’m running a restaurant.” For months, he’d come in asking. Finally, I took a sabbatical, drove my VW Beetle across the country, and went around the Chesapeake to write the book.

What’s your favorite anecdote from researching your book?
On Tilghman Island, I was in this room with women who had just finished picking crab. One picker said to me, “Exactly what are you doing here?” And I said, “I’m writing a book on the cuisine of the Chesapeake.” She said, “We don’t have a cuisine here—it’s just the way we cook.” That’s what it’s all about—taking the best that the bay has to offer, and treating it simply.

When Capt. John Smith first sailed on the Chesapeake, he had diaries and he wrote that “the fish in the bay were so thick, we attempted to catch them with frying pans.” That’s what Chesapeake Bay cooking is—taking it fresh from the water right into the frying pan and onto your plate.

So you’re a crab-cracking expert, then?
Of course. When you’re born here, you’re genetically predisposed to being able to crack a crab.

If you could share one thing about Maryland seafood with someone visiting the state for the first time, what would you want them to know?
There’s way more to Maryland seafood than crabs. Most people think that crabs are the only thing in the bay, but we also have oysters, rockfish, shad, shad roe, clams, perch and more.

What is Betamore?
Betamore is an incubation, co-working, and education technology space in Federal Hill that focuses on early-stage companies and all the people and organizations that support them.

In practical terms, that means tech start-ups, right?
It is for tech start-ups, absolutely, but it’s also for other kinds of start-ups. We have social leagues in our space, for tech, but also for sports. We have Urban Teacher Center, which is a not-for-profit, and then, in our co-working space, we actually have a real hybrid of folks who work here. We have everything from financial managers to developers to digital marketing experts to somebody who works for a congressman. It serves a really broad community.

You took over for [Betamore co-founder] Mike Brenner in January. What are your plans for Betamore?
I got to work with Greg Cangialosi, Sean Lane, and also Mike Brenner when they started Betamore, so I’ve kind of seen the iterations as it has developed over the past two years. When I came in, I felt like I had a really great platform to move things forward. So it’s going to be technical education, business education, and also design. And we’ll be focusing on a full, yearlong program for our educational offerings.

The second piece is that Betamore is obviously a campus here in Federal Hill—it has four walls—but the reality of it is that we serve a community that is much larger than that. So we’re going to be creating a membership for that community. It will be anyone who is outside of these fours walls who wants to be engaged with Betamore and all the activities we’re doing. We’re also creating a free resource called Baltimoretech.org. It’s a new website that is absolutely free. This is a way for us to say, ‘Here’s what’s going on in Baltimore and Maryland in terms of tech and innovation.’ So if someone were outside of our region, we want them to have a one-stop shop to see everything that’s going on in this area. We also want the people who come here to relocate or start their company to get linked in quickly and seamlessly.

And then the last piece is we’ve created a membership board, and it’s for the entirety of Betamore, not just Betamore companies that are here in the space. It’s for the entire community and we have almost 40 people who’ve signed up to contribute their time, expertise, and experience to the companies that are here and the initiatives and activities that we’re going to be doing to drive these companies forward. It’s pretty exciting.

For people who don’t know what the educational course offerings are, can you give a quick overview?
There are the front-end and back-end web development courses. In addition, we’ve done mobile, PHP, and we’ve done a Python course. Those are very specific areas, but it has allowed people to get more depth and focus in the areas they’re interested in. So that’s been really well received. We’ve done a WordPress course for anyone who’s looking to become more efficient at WordPress. We’ve done a SEO [search-engine optimization] course. We create programs based on what we’re hearing from our community members in the actual Betamore campus. So if they’re like, ‘We need a crash course on SEO,’ that’s what we’re creating.

Tech can be intimidating, but Betamore’s classes are open to all skill levels, right?
Tech can be really scary. You walk into a room and you’re like, ‘Am I the only one who doesn’t know this already?’ We don’t want tech to be scary for anyone. We want everyone to be comfortable with it and know that they can be a part of it. No mean people allowed! The reality is you can come here for a one-hour workshop if you just want to dip your toe in the water or you can come here for a 10-week course, and you can get quite a bit more proficiency, and you’re not spending a college education to do it.

How realistic is the goal of making Baltimore a tech hub?
I think it’s already happening. The Baltimore-Washington region is the second largest for tech employment. We’re already a hotbed just because of our proximity to the intelligence and cyber-security agencies. In addition, there are huge tech groups that have started here, like Laureate, Advertising.com, and Millennial Media. Then, on top of that, you have the universities. It’s almost a shame if we don’t do this, because then we’re not maximizing our capabilities or the capacity that the city has to welcome this type of talent.

There’s a perception that women are marginalized in tech culture. Thoughts?
I guess I don’t see that so much in Baltimore. And trust me, I’ve read all the stories. I honestly feel like Baltimore is open and totally willing to accept the best talent that’s here, regardless of your background, race, or gender. When you have 20,000 jobs to fill, that kind of stuff is not going to fly. Because your competitors will outpace you by hiring all these talented people, and a lot of them are going to be women, a lot of them are going to be from different backgrounds—ethnic, religious, whatever. If you want to compete, and if you want to be one of the top providers here, none of that stuff is going to matter.

What about people who say, “We want to hire women but we never see any good candidates”?
They’re not looking hard enough.

What’s your background?
I grew up all over. My dad worked for the government, so we moved every four years. I was born in D.C. We lived outside of Philly. I lived outside of St. Louis. And then we moved to Clarksville when I was in high school, and so we have lived here ever since. My mom put her foot down and said, ‘We’re not moving anymore.’ She said to my dad, ‘You can travel for your work.’

I went to school here in Maryland for both undergrad and graduate school. My undergrad was in business at Frostburg. I got my MBA at Loyola and then my first job was actually in the high-tech field, so I worked for a website hosting company and a domain name registrar. And then I actually worked at Athire [a recruiting service for tech companies], so that kind of started my love affair with technology and with early-stage start-ups.

Where did you pick up your tech skills?
My technology background and experience came through my actual work.

Do you think you would’ve gone to Betamore if it had existed back then?
Oh my god, 100 percent.