Gulf Coast Life

An exhibit featuring large format prints of Mac Stone's photographs goes up next week along the boardwalk at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary. It's one of the remaining old-growth swamps the award-winning conservation photographer and a National Geographic Explorer featured in his new book is "Cypress: The Last Old-Growth Swamps." We revisit our conversation with him about the new book recorded in August.

Nick Penniman passed away on Sept. 29 at the age of 88. Mr. Penniman began his career as a journalist, first at the Illinois State Journal-Register before joining the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1975, where he rose to be publisher for 14 years. Here in Southwest Florida, Penniman was chair emeritus of the Conservancy of Southwest Florida and a trustee of the Everglades Foundation. He was also chair emeritus of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, and a Florida Master Naturalist, and he served on 33 nonprofit boards over the course of his life, including the Florida Center for Government Accountability. He was also a lifelong advocated for freedom of the press and the crucial role trustworthy news was to maintaining a healthy democracy. We revisit a conversation we had with him in 2021 when he released his book, “On the Knife: A History of Sugar in Florida.”

Neurologist Ray Dorsey is a leading advocate and educator on Parkinson’s disease. He offers explanations for causes and descrobes treatments.

News, as our guest today’s website says, has a scaling problem. It’s just not feasible for teams of humans to track news bias and partisan presentation for everything coming down the pipe, and that’s where PressAudit.org aims to come in. It’s a website, app, and browser extension that uses the power of big data aggregation tools to distill the daily news landscape into a clear dashboard of who is covering what and how; what the most attention-gathering stories of the day are; and what’s being under-reported or where news blind spots might be. We talk with its creator to find out how it works.

When Judy O'Halloran's son Casey was growing up, the conventional approach to teaching reading to children with Down Syndrome focused almost exclusively on whole-word sight memorization. But Judy found that approach hit a plateau so she started looking for another approach that could help Casey surpass the plateau. She discovered the concept of phonograms and it was transformative and Casey's reading greatly improved. Marilee Senior found 'whole language' literacy education was leaving too many kids behind — especially kids with learning disabilities — and she also immersed herself in explicit phonics principles, and she and Judy together set out to help individuals with learning disabilities and Down Syndrome by co-founding Raising Robust Readers. They offers programs that are designed to help families and educators teach reading, and help new readers of all ages achieve authentic literacy.

Ye Gods! with Scott Carter is a weekly exploration of the beliefs, secular or sacred, that shape our choices and direct our lives. It’s an open-minded delving into spiritual backgrounds and paths, and the world's faiths from one end of the world to the other. The host, Scott Carter, is also an Emmy-winning television producer with decades of experience, and he’s a playwright whose newest work "I, Will: A Late Romance" just wrapped up its world premiere run in Iowa City, Iowa. WGCU is the Ye Gods! presenting public media station, and it's distributed by the NPR Network as a podcast and has been picked up by about 80 other NPR stations around the country, so far, so we sit down with him to give listeners a peek behind the Ye Gods! curtain.

In 2018 and 2019 we experienced massive simultaneous harmful algae blooms. Around that same time, FGCU’s Water School was becoming a reality, and FGCU Marine Science Professor, Dr. Mike Parsons, began dreaming up an artificial reef easily accessible from the school’s Vester Marine Field Station where ongoing, offshore science could occur. It's now a reality, and this Thursday night WGCU will premiere its new documentary film Kimberly's Reef: An Underwater Living Laboratory. We talk with its producer, writer, and narrator, and Dr. Mike Parsons to learn more.

Hurricane Ian arrived in Southwest Florida four years ago today. Whether you experienced true devastation or were just seriously inconvenienced, Ian left a deep mark on everyone who experienced it. In the months after Ian the folks at the Gulf Coast Writers Association embarked on a project to collect some of them for a book that could capture the moment from different perspectives and that culminated in the 2023 book Storm Stories – Hurricane Ian: Stories of Survival, Heroism, and Humanity. We talk with Christie Zarria, who co-edited the book, and award-winning author Robert N. Macomber, who lost his St. James home and wrote the book's forward.

The dental program at Healthcare Network in Immokalee recently earned a Certified Autism Center designation, with their staff completing special training to help neurodivergent patients.

The midway point of the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season was Sept. 10, and that’s pretty much considered the traditional peak of the season. Yet, there hasn’t been a single named hurricane. Since meteorologists started using satellites to track the weather in the 1960s, we’ve never made it this far into a hurricane season without a named hurricane. The calm season is due in part to strong El Niño conditions. We talk with meteorologist Megan Borowski from the Florida Public Radio Emergency network to find out what it all means and what the rest of the year might bring.