The Wonder Gardens in Bonita Springs has roots that date back to 1936. It was created as The Reptile Gardens by brothers Bill and Lester Piper and sat on the newly built Tamiami Trail. As it grew, and as the collection expanded beyond cold-blooded animals, the Pipers changed the name to The Everglades Wonder Gardens and their family ran it until 2013. These days is moved past its roadside attraction roots to become a modern 'zootanical garden. We meet its new President & CEO, Sally Mulvena.

A wave of copyright lawsuits brought by authors and publishers hinge on whether downloading and ingesting millions of copyrighted books without explicit permission to train Large Language Models constitutes copyright infringement or is protected as fair use. The AI Company Anthropic recently agreed to pay $1.5 billion dollars in a landmark copyright infringement settlement. There are other similar high-profile cases, including two against Meta and Google being led by bestselling novelist and part-time Naples resident Scott Turow. We talk with Mr. Turow, and local author Marty Ambrose, to learn what this all means for the publishing world.

Up until the early 1900s about three-quarters of Florida’s southern coast, from about Tampa Bay on the Gulf side around to The Indian River Lagoon on the Atlantic Ocean, was covered with, and protected by mangroves. After coastal development took off in the 1900s hundreds of thousands of acres of mangroves were removed in urbanizing coastal regions. Mangroves are important for many reasons, so we have a Mangroves 101 conversation to learn about the role they play in our coastal ecosystems. Our guests are Dr. Brian Bovard, Wetland Plant Ecologist in the Department of Ecology and Environmental Studies within the Water School at FGCU and Dr. Win Everham, Professor in the Department of Ecology & Environmental Studies at FGCU.

The Florida Department of Health says contact with water from areas with blue-green algae can make people and animals sick, and it advises people to stay away from these waters. Brand new research found cyanobacterial and algal toxins in low concentrations in the majority of air samples taken around SWFL. We dig into this new research and its implications with the study's lead scientist, Dr. James Metcalf, from Brain Chemistry Labs in Jackson Hole, WY; and Jason Pim, Board President of Calusa Waterkeeper.

A Guardian ad Litem is a legally appointed, trained volunteer who represents the best interests of children who have become involved in court proceedings, often in cases related to abuse, neglect, custody disputes, and other situations where a child's welfare is at stake. There are more than 500 court certified Guardian ad Litem volunteers in the 20th Judicial Circuit. On any given day in Southwest Florida, more than 1,000 children are displaced due to abuse, abandonment, or neglect in their home. We learn about the nonprofit A.N.A.s Friends with Executive Director, Jessica Kaestner; and Board President Bruce Greenberg.

Lung health specialists at Sarasota Memorial Health System have discovered a detection program that can catch lung cancer early – at Stage I or Stage II --when patients have the best chance of survival from the disease.

Active Parenting education programs have been around since the early 1980s. They are evidence-based, meaning they use research-backed curriculum that teach techniques and approaches that have been studied and shown to provide benefits including lowering household conflict and improving child behavior. We learn about a new series of free Active Parenting courses that begin soon through the David Lawrence Centers for Behavioral Health in Collier County from Jasmine Pagano, Wellness Program Supervisor at the DLC Wellness Institute.

Since 2008, more than 100 cities have officially declared that they are "Compassionate Communities" which affirm the Charter for Compassion. In Florida, St. Augustine signed on in 2013 and St. Petersburg did as well in 2018. One year ago, a group of southwest Floridians held their first ‘shaping a compassionate Fort Myers’ event to start building momentum toward imbedding compassion into our local community. Compassionate Southwest Florida is holding its 12th Community Conversation on Saturday, July 25 and we get a preview.

The Burroughs Home & Gardens in downtown Fort Myers was constructed in 1901 so is celebrating its 125th birthday this year, with the help of the Uncommon Friends Foundation — part of their mission is preserving the historic home. Alongside historic preservation, the Uncommon Friends Foundation’s mission also includes promoting good character and ethics, and providing scholarships to local students. We get an update on what the foundation is up to, and get a bit of history on the Burroughs Home and the namesake 'uncommon friends'.

The League of Women Voters of Lee County, in partnership with WGCU and the News-Press held a forum, July 9, with Lee County School Board candidates. Six of the 11 qualified candidates participated including Carl Baxter, Crystal Johnson, Debbie Jordan, Jenn McDaigle, India Palencia, and Carline Saintilus. We will listen back to a condensed version of the 90-minute forum in a special hour-long episode of Gulf Coast Life.