Gulf Coast Life

When OpenAI launched ChatGPT on Nov. 30, 2022 and made it accessible to the public for free, a new season of AI began around the world. But, what it all means for individuals, our communities, our countries, and the world remains to be seen. There will undoubtedly be benefits in many fields, but there is also great concern that such power could bring problems that we may not even be able to imagine yet, including job and industry disruptions. We get some context from Dr. Chrissann Ruehle, She is an Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning Researcher, and Strategist, and she is a Management Instructor in Florida Gulf Coast University’s Lutgert College of Business, and she is Provost Faculty Fellow for AI at FGCU.

The Philadelphia A’s were the first Major League Baseball team to spring train in Fort Myers, beginning in 1925. Over the decades were followed by teams from Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Kansas City. The Minnesota Twins arrived in 1991, and the Boston Red Sox moved their spring training operations here two years later in 1993. We dig into the City of Palm’s rich baseball history with two men who just love digging into rich baseball history. They’ll be two of the presenters at the upcoming fundraiser for the Southwest Florida Historical Society called “What it was, was baseball. An evening of Fort Myers history as told through the prism of diamonds…baseball diamonds.”

Last year was the hottest year in recorded history, both in terms of air temperatures and ocean temperatures. And it was the eighth record-breaking year in a row. And while climate scientists have been telling us for decades that as temperatures increase we’re going to see disruptions in our weather patterns — someday in 'the future' — it’s starting to feel like that future is already upon us. We’re previewing the 2024 Southwest Florida Climate Summit, hosted by the Coastal & Heartland National Estuary Partnership, which gathers experts to present the latest climate science pertaining to our region, and methods for building resiliency in our communities. It’s Wed. and Thurs., Feb. 28 and 29 at the Charlotte Harbor Event & Conference Center in Punta Gorda. The summit is free and open to anyone but pre-registration is required.

We sit down with Barbara Peterson, from the Florida Center for Government Accountability to talk about the crucial role of investigative journalism in keeping government accountable, and how exactly to do your own public records request here in Florida.

Gospel’s story begins with The Great Migration, when millions of African Americans from the rural Southern United States moved to urban areas in the North, Midwest, and West beginning in the early 20th century. But as this new style arrived on the scene, it wasn’t immediately accepted, because until this new fusion of music and message came along, most preachers and church leaders believed you didn’t SING gospel — you PREACHED it. We learn a bit about Gospel’s story from Stacey L. Holman, Series Producer and Director of the new 4-part series on PBS called Gospel.

A day-long event, created by and for LGBTQ youth, is coming up Saturday. Students in grades 6 through 12, from anywhere, are invited to attend. The event will include a concert, food, and activities, and is entirely free.

We listen back to last week’s forum with City of Naples Mayoral candidates ahead of the March 19 election. The forum included all three candidates: incumbent Mayor Teresa Heitmann, current Naples City Councilman Ted Blankenship, and former councilman Gary Price. The forum was moderated by WGCU’s John Davis and Naples Daily News Executive Editor Wendy Fullerton Powell, and organized by the League of Women Voters of Collier County and the Collier Forum Coalition.

Founded in 2003 as an independent nonprofit, the StoryCorps team has now helped nearly 700,000 people across the country have meaningful conversations about their lives, most of which are collected in the U.S. Library of Congress and in their own online archive. StoryCorps has been a beloved segment heard weekly on NPR stations on Friday mornings during Morning Edition for about 20 years. The StoryCorps Mobile Tour will be setting up shop in Fort Myers from Feb. 15 through Mar. 15, and registration opens on Feb. 1. Participants can choose to record in-person in the mobile airstream travel trailer, or remotely in a “virtual recording booth.” To learn more about the process, we talk with the Director of the StoryCorps Mobile Tour, Lea Zikmund.

Collier County is a wealthy county. According to data from the financial technology company SmartAsset, Collier County is the second wealthiest county in Florida. But, alongside that wealth many country residents are struggling. According to the Collier County Community and Human Services Division nearly 53,000 people commute to work every day from outside the county, and 35% of jobs in the county pay less than $35k a year. We talk with the Collier Community Foundation’s President & CEO to go over the highlights of a new community assessment that identifies the challenges county residents are facing, and the challenges the community foundation faces in trying to support them.

The new book, “La Florida: Catholics, Conquistadores, and Other American Origin Stories” opens with the story that takes place in what’s now Florida in the fall of 1565 when Spanish explorer Pedro Menéndez de Avilés celebrated a ‘feast day of commemoration’ with his men after their successful landing at the future site of the town of St. Augustine. This celebration had many of the same trappings as what we think of when we recount the story of the first Thanksgiving, celebrated 56 years later in the fall of 1621, by Pilgrims in Plymouth Plantation. But, it’s not considered the “first Thanksgiving.” Why is that?