On The Record

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How the COVID pandemic interrupted HIV testing Mar 25, 2022

Show notes

The COVID pandemic did not end the HIV-AIDS epidemic; it may have obscured it for a while, raising hurdles to getting tested for HIV. This virus pummels the Black community: Among people newly infected with HIV in 2019, African-Americans showed up at three times their share of U.S. population.

We talk to Dr. Sarah Schmalzle, medical director of the THRIVE program at the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland medical school. THRIVE is a medical practice for people with HIV and other conditions. And we hear from Eric Anderson, a Ryan White eligibility specialist at THRIVE. THRIVE is located at the UMMC Midtown Outpatient Tower.

Original air date: February 4, 2022.

Do you have a question or comment about a show or a story idea to pitch? Contact On the Record at: Senior Supervising Producer, Maureen Harvie she/her/hers mharvie@wypr.org 410-235-1903 Senior Producer, Melissa Gerr she/her/hers mgerr@wypr.org 410-235-1157 Producer Sam Bermas-Dawes he/him/his sbdawes@wypr.org 410-235-1472

Crime, cops and corruption in Baltimore: 'We Own This City' Mar 24, 2022

Show notes

In his book,“We Own This City,” Baltimore Banner investigative reporter Justin Fenton unwinds a twisted tale of dirty cops, oblivious leaders, and a community betrayed by those sworn to protect it.Fenton unearths the rotten roots of the Gun Trace Task Force, an elite plainclothes police unit that won praise for its arrest rate, all while skimming from drug busts and illegally searching citizens:

"If somebody ran, they believed that person was likely carrying something they shouldn’t have and would chase after them. So this proactive police work was really phishing. Trying to look for something and a lot of people who weren’t doing anything wrong would get stopped and searched as a result.”

A true story of crime, cops, and corruption…

Read an excerpt of the book here.

Watch a trailer for HBO's "We Own this City" here.

Check out more reporting by Justin Fenton on the Gun Trace Task Force:
Cops and Robbers: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Congressman Jamie Raskin on his memoir, 'Unthinkable' Mar 21, 2022

Show notes

A year ago tomorrow, the U.S. House voted to impeach then-President Trump, alleging he had incited insurrection at the Capitol a week earlier, and Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin was immersed in organizing and leading the legal arguments for conviction.

It was the hardest thing he’d ever done professionally, Raskin writes in his memoir Unthinkable--but gave him a way to pour his radical faith in democracy into mourning his son Tommy, lost to suicide just two weeks before.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. The Crisis Text Line is a texting service for emotional crisis support. To speak with a trained listener, text HELLO to 741741.

Original air date: January 12, 2022.

Stories from the Stoop: Terry Sapp Mar 18, 2022

Show notes

Here’s a Stoop Story from Terry Sapp, about the healing power of heavy metal music. Hear more from the Stoop Storytelling Series, and find out about upcoming events, including its show next Wednesday, March 23rd, about Baltimore’s music scene.

A benefit concert for Ukraine and a celebration of Baltimore's music scene Mar 18, 2022

Show notes

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has driven nearly 3 million people from their homes. In response, musician Joel Michael-Schwartz organized a concert to raise funds for the aid group, the International Rescue Committee. The concert will take place at the Creative Alliance in East Baltimore on March 26th.Then, Jessica Henkin, co-founder of the Stoop Storytelling Series, and Sam Sessa, WTMD’s Baltimore music coordinator, preview an upcoming Stoop show about the city’s colorful music scene. "Something for Everyone: Stories about the Baltimore Music Scene" will take place at the Ottobar on March 23rd. Find more Stoop events here. Watch the trailer for the WTMD documentary, "Do Whatever You Want, All the Time."

Introducing the Baltimore Ballet Boys Mar 17, 2022

Show notes

The Baltimore Ballet Boys are not your typical dancers. Yes, they practice long hours and are dedicated to their art. But real-life circumstances make for even more challenges.

We speak with Baltimore School for the Arts dance teacher Samantha Christiansen, and Baltimore Ballet Boys founder Venesa Day:

“It takes so much courage to throw your ballet slippers into your bag and walk the streets of Baltimore and maintain the necessary toughness and masculinity that you need to make it through. But then also be able to channel that into such a beautiful, beautiful art.”

Plus we hear from dancers Brandon Pigott and Sage Chng-Lim (Tsoong-Lim)and filmmaker Gabe Dinsmoor about a collaboration with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra!

Links: BSO 'Off the Cuff' performance featuring the Baltimore Ballet Boys film, Baltimore Ballet Boys, TWIGS program at Baltimore School for the Arts, Gabe Dinsmoor, filmmaker.

Emerging research on heart complications after COVID-19 Mar 16, 2022

Show notes

It’s been two years since the COVID pandemic reached the U.S. How have practices like wearing masks and social distancing evolved?

Hopkins researcher Dominick Shattuck tells us about a global survey of Facebook users that collects data about pandemic precautions and vaccine hesitancy. The aim is to improve the effectiveness of public-health messages.

Check out the COVID Behaviors Dashboard here.

Then, University of Maryland cardiologist Dr. Scott Jerome describes the connection between COVID and cardiac problems, like a racing or skipping heartbeat--and what should prompt a visit to the doctor.

Read more about cardiac problems after COVID here:
Nature, "Heart-disease risk soars after COVID — even with a mild case"
Science, "COVID-19 takes serious toll on heart health—a full year after recovery"

Hope in light of climate change Mar 15, 2022

Show notes

If climate-change news sounds overwhelming, keep listening--for a bit of hope and ways to take matters into your own hands.

Greg Kats, head of the Smart Surfaces Coalition, talks about proven methods cities use to transform hot areas to cooler spots -- like installing porous pavements and reflective roofs. Baltimore is in line to put some of the changes into place.

Plus, sci-fi author Jeff VanderMeer takes his readers on journeys into dark environmental places, but he hopes readers come away with a message:

“We can’t be frozen, we can't do nothing, we have to keep fighting for every inch of ground so to speak. Because we can have a better outcome, but we can also have a much, much, worse outcome.”

Links: Smart Surfaces Coalition, SSC Baltimore Study, Loyola University Maryland Symposium with Jeff VanderMeer, Jeff VanderMeer books.

MindMaze: Focus on the healing power of the brain Mar 14, 2022

Show notes

Stroke can be debilitating. Many survivors live with reduced mobility even after long, intensive therapy. Dr. John Krakauer is chief medical advisor at MindMaze, a digital neuro-therapeutics company that harnesses the brain’s natural ability to heal. He hopes to improve the odds for patients in rehabilitation:

“What we’re trying to do is to create something complimentary. Which is much more intense, much more high dose. And it is not focused on activities of daily living or pragmatic functioning. It’s focused on your actual core capacities in an attempt to rewire your nervous system.”

And we talk with occupational therapist Sandra Deluzio, who uses the gaming software with her patients … who mimic the fluid movement of dolphins as they play their way to recovery.

Note: Omar Ahmad and Promit Roy invented the concept of neuroanimation, and Deluzio works alongside Kelly Jordan, an Occupational Therapist and clinical specialist for KATA.

Links: MindMaze, JHU KATA project.

An 'Audible' coming-of-age story Mar 11, 2022

Show notes

Amaree McKenstry-Hall was in his senior year at the Maryland School for the Deaf in Frederick. Football, Homecoming, and his future weighed on his mind. That’s why filmmaker Matt Ogens made Amaree the heart of his coming-of-age documentary, “Audible.” "Audible" was recently nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary - Short Subject. The Oscars air March 27. "Audible" is available on Netflix. TRANSCRIPT:Sheilah KastGood morning, I'm Sheilah Kast. We're On the Record. The documentary “Audible” follows an important season in Amaree McKinstry Hall's life football season. It's his last. He's a senior at the Maryland School for the Deaf in Frederick. The stakes are high. The Orioles have not lost to a Deaf school in 16 years. Just minutes into the film, that winning streak is broken. In the film, we see the searing pain of that loss. But we also see that while that streak was broken, the Orioles are not. Over and over, "Audible" shows how Amaree and his friends persevere. The film, out on Netflix, was recently nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary -Short Subject. Joining us to talk about it is director Matt Ogens, a Maryland native. His other projects include the documentary, "Confessions of a Superhero," about the costumed superheroes who roam the Hollywood Walk of Fame and the Emmy nominated docu-series, "Why We Fight," which follows fighters from across the globe. Matt Ogens, welcome to the show. Matt OgensThank you so much, Sheilah. Thanks for having us. Sheilah KastAlso with us is Amaree McKinstry Hall, who graduated from the Maryland School for the Deaf in 2020. We're speaking to Amaree with the assistance of Anessa Hughes, an American Sign Language interpreter from the Centralized Interpreter Referral Service. Welcome, Amaree. Amaree McKinstry HallThanks. Happy to be here! Sheilah KastMatt, where did the idea for this film come from? Matt OgensSo I grew up in Maryland, about 30 minutes away from from Maryland school for the Deaf in Frederick. But I had a lot of connections, so my aunt is an ASL interpreter in the D.C. Maryland area and interpreted at the Maryland school for the Deaf for about six years when I was a kid. But I think the biggest connection is my best friend, also from Maryland, is Deaf. We've been best friends since we were seven years old, I was just texting with him. And so it actually I came up with the idea of wanting, wanting to do something with Maryland School for the Deaf 12 years before I made the film. It took that long of just stops and starts and different partners and almost and maybes and getting it made until I connected with Netflix. And they really understood and believed in the story. And I think at the end of the day, in some ways, on a personal level, it was a way for me to try to understand and connect with my friend and the larger Deaf community. Sheilah KastAnd why did you decide to make Amaree the main subject? Matt OgensI wouldn't say this is a football or a sports documentary. It's a coming of age film. There's relationships, there's family, there's tragedy and there's sports. And when I say coming of age, I wanted, I knew I wanted the main character to be a senior. Because for every teenager, graduating high school, going off into the larger world or college or whatever you're going to, do is a pivotal moment. And imagine that if you're Deaf and going out into a more of a broader hearing world. But what that meant is over 12 years I tried to make the film. I wanted a senior. That means I had to recast every single year for 12 years because they would graduate. And I'm so glad it took 12 years because if I didn't wait 12 years, I wouldn't have met this man on on this as well, Amaree. And besides just being an amazing human, what I loved about his story, it has all the marks of a great of great storytelling. His relationship with his father or lack thereof when he was younger, his unlikely friendship with the cheerleader. And that friendship coming about through a tragedy through Teddy, it helped show the struggle, his struggle and perhaps others in the Deaf community. And I've never heard another filmmaker saying, I'm glad it took 12 years to get a film made, but I'm glad it took five years to get a film made. Sheilah KastAmaree, how did Matt approach you about being in his movie? Amaree McKinstry HallWell, to be honest, you know, Matt asked me about it and just told me that he wasn't, he was on my side. He wanted me to be able to tell my own story about becoming a man, and he wanted me to just get it all out. You know, the whole story and that it was a way for me to have some healing happen in that way. He just emphasized that he wanted other people to be able to relate to those frustrations and everything that I've been through. I mentioned it to a counselor and just described what the experience was going to be like, and I agreed with everybody else that it would be a perfect opportunity. I'm not sure how to describe that. Yeah. Sheilah KastAmaree, that loss to the school from Texas. How did that moment feel? Amaree McKinstry HallSo, you know, that loss to Texas was so unexpected. You know, I just always had complete confidence that we would do what we needed to do, that they would do something wrong that we can add such pride in the Maryland school for the Deaf. And that moment that we lost, I was completely enraged. I mean, I wanted to start beating the ground. I wanted to get out of there. I just wanted to escape. I felt ashamed, just embarrassed to have it happen. But it was such a learning experience that I could apply it to the rest of my life. If something's getting in the way of me being successful somewhere else, if something happens on my job, I can't just walk away. You just can't just give up like that. So it was really it really threw me being at the real school for the Deaf and having that loss. Sheilah KastYou and your teammates are very close. What did you do to not let that loss weigh you down? Amaree McKinstry HallAfter we had the loss, I just knew we needed to regroup. We had to do some exploration. We had to figure out how to grow from it. We'd go to practices. We might start at three o'clock and before then we would right at five o'clock sharp, just all walk away. And we decided, you know, we're not going to quit at exactly five. We're going to do what it takes. We're gonna stay late if that's what we need and just get back in the game and see if we can get back into a championship rating. So. It made me happy to have that happen because we saw that we could come back from it. We actually only had that one loss. We had nine more wins, so it wasn't as big of a deal as we thought it was definitely didn't give up. Sheilah KastMatt, there are lots of personal moments in this film, conversations about dating, friends dancing at a party. What did you do to earn the trust of these teens? Matt OgensGoing back for 12 years. Obviously, they were just kids, but I think in general, going back every year because I'd go visit. I live in Los Angeles now, going back to visit my family in Maryland. Every year, every other year, I'd pop into the school and say, Hi, meet the new kids. And I think coming back over and over and really being invited in. Also, I met Amaree when he was a junior and and Lira. So, you know, I had a year of talking to them and actually, I didn't know there was a person named Teddy. They told me that story when I met them. I assume because they wanted to share that. And so I didn't know that. I think just showing up and talking to them and doing a lot more listening than talking. I mean, I'd say at the end of the day, I don't know that Amaree and them learned anything from me. I hope I was just a conduit for them to tell their story and created a space, a safe space for it to be about them. It's not an observational film, it's that it's their film. And I learned a lot from them. Sheilah KastAmaree, Matt mentioned Teddy, Teddy Webster. You endured the death of your friend and fellow football player. He died by suicide in 2017. Tell us about Teddy. Amaree McKinstry HallI'd be happy to. Teddy. He died in November 2017. And he was my best friend. We grew up together, we were at the Columbia campus of the Maryland school together up until eighth grade. We got our education together, and he was my best friend just because of all the experiences we had together, all the fun that we had. We didn't see ourselves as being any different from each other. He was so funny. He loved acting. He loved everything about Hollywood. Everybody knew him well. Everybody knew his name. It was one of those kind of kids. You wanted to go to some Ivy League school like Yale, Harvard or something like that. He had big goals in his life and we all knew he was capable. And then suddenly he was gone and died by suicide. Sheilah KastYou wrote Teddy's name on your wristband before the big homecoming game. Why? Amaree McKinstry HallI did that was just to reinforce his memory you so many people actually didn't want to say his name when he actually died just because it's too painful, too painful to remember, too painful to think about. But I mean, we knew each other since we were little kids. So to me, I wanted to keep that, even after he was dead and gone. I feel like people who die by suicide leave behind friends and family who have a lot to work through when it comes to trying to understand why they felt the need for that. Teddy was the last person I would have guessed for someone to do something like that. So that's why I wanted his name on my wrist. Sheilah KastThis is On the Record on WYPR. I'm Sheilah Kast, speaking with Amaree McKinstry Hall, who graduated from the Maryland School for the Deaf in 2020, Anessa Hughes, an American sign language interpreter, is assisting. Also with us is filmmaker Matt Ogens, who directed "Audible," a coming of age film about Amaree and his peers. "Audible" was recently nominated for an Oscar. Matt, how did you approach the sound design for this film? Matt OgensI knew I wanted to do something special with sound and make it a character kind of for obvious reasons way before I made the film. And lucky enough to have an A-list sound team, I mean way more than I can afford, but they really connected with the material. Our sound designers and sound mixers, our composer. I wanted to. There's a few reasons. One, I wanted for the hearing audience for them to, they'll never fully what it's like to be Deaf, but to be able to feel something. And so to show that spectrum of sound from silence like the very first frame to very vibrant and saturated, especially from different points of view, like, for example, a pretty important scene is a memory in the kitchen at his family home, and he's the only one that's Deaf and they're all talking around him. And so you switch to his point of view where it's very distant and muffled. So the audience, at least the hearing audience, can try to come close to putting themselves in his shoes. And then he leaves and goes upstairs and really playing with that. I did a lot of research, and that research mainly was talking to Amaree and his friends. What music do you listen to? How do you feel things. All of that they talk about in the film. So you'll hear a lot of the sounds having a lot of bassey sounds, a lot of distortion underneath. So if you turn up the volume, you're actually going to kind of feel something. And even if not, you sort of feel it emotionally in your gut. So that was sort of the idea. Also, something that I learned from Amaree and his friends in the Deaf community is that, their their minds, their worlds are not silent. I mean, certainly go in the locker room with Amaree before the game. There's nothing silent about that. They're not silent on the field and they have a voice and they have something to say. But also being Deaf is not, there's a spectrum of that. You know, Amaree's level of hearing is different than someone else. I also wanted to show that. Sheilah KastAmaree, you talk in the movie about moments of isolation as a Deaf person out in the world and even in your own family, as Matt mentioned. Tell us more about that. Amaree McKinstry HallWell, as Matt just described, you know, even in my own family, in the house, everybody, I can see their lips moving. People chatting and laughing, and I don't have access to any of that. So when everybody's chatting with each other, it's kind of exhausting to try to even figure out what's going on. Somebody says something and then another person laughs, and nobody's letting me in on what's going on. So, often I just want to get away from it. I'll go up to my room. I'll turn up the music, get the bass going, play a game, watch TV or something like that. Or especially, you know, face time with my friends and be able to communicate that way. Sheilah KastWere you nervous about sharing those feelings on camera or worried that your family, how your family would react to knowing that you feel isolation? Amaree McKinstry HallNo, I wasn't nervous, actually. I wanted to be really open about that. I know that, you know, my mom honestly doesn't understand Deaf culture. She doesn't have the awareness. I wish she had. So I looked at it as a great opportunity for her to watch the film, and through the production of the film, get to see it from my side and then consider what had been going on in my family up until this point. And it's great exposure for any family, any hearing family who has a Deaf child to understand that they need to make things visual, especially when they get together. They need to have their hands up and signing, communicating with each other. If they're not doing that, they're excluding somebody in their family. Sheilah KastI read, Amaree, that you are not only a football player, you also did track and field - the discus and javelin throw. Is that right? Amaree McKinstry HallRight, I did discuss and it was actually one of my favorite sports. Then the javelin throw, that was a real way to get out some aggression. You know, just frustration just to let it all out. And sports in general, I really depended on. I know that's an individual thing. Not everybody has that feeling, but I love having something in my hands, like the discus or the javelin and being able to measure how I'm doing, how far I can throw it. Sheilah KastAmaree, you graduated from high school two years ago. What are you doing now? Amaree McKinstry HallAfter high school, I moved to Indiana, I've since moved to Minnesota, and I really wanted to start my own YouTube channel. I wanted to blog and I wanted to record more things about my life. I wanted to keep the film-making going. Then, when things didn't really work out in Indiana, no offense to Indiana, but there just wasn't a whole lot going on in the town I was living in. I'm not used to being so far out in the country. I decided to move to Minnesota because I could be on the Deaf Olympics wrestling team, Greco-Roman wrestling. So that way, you know, it was a sport where I could have my whole body involved, it's a head to toe kind of sport, and we'll be competing in 2022 in Brazil. Sheilah KastWow! And you have made one film and it was Oscar nominated, so more films might be in your future. Amaree McKinstry HallI hope so. I love it. Yes, I don't have any expectation, but I'd love for that to happen. Matt OgensI would, too. Sheilah KastAnd Matt, what what are you working on next? Matt Oge…

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