Gulf Coast Life

Cottage food laws are what create the rules under which people can make certain kinds of food products in their home kitchens and then sell them without a commercial kitchen license or a state inspection or traditional food permits. Primary examples are baked goods like bread, or jams or honey. A 2021 law expanded the rules, and the cottage food industry nationwide has grown in the past decade or so, wo learn about how Florida's laws work, what people interested in selling their home homemade products should know, and why more people are choosing cottage food sales as a side hustle. Our guests are Dr. Stephanie Brown and Jen Hagen, both agents with UF/IFAS.

The nonpartisan nonprofit, Floridians for Democracy, is holding a Rally for Hope on Saturday, Aug. 29. They chose the date to coincide with the anniversary of the historic March on Washington that brought about 250,000 people to Washington, D.C. in 1963 to advocate for the civil and economic rights of Black Americans. Organizers say it’s meant to be a nonpartisan gathering rather than a protest, with a focus on promoting voter participation & civic engagement, and the moral traditions of the civil rights movement. We talk with FFD co-founder, Jim Nathan, and one of the event planners, Sonya McCarter, founder of Bridging the Gap Center for the Arts in Fort Myers.

Voters choose Republican Byron Donalds and Democrat David Jolly as their parties’ respective nominees in the race for Florida Governor. In a surprise upset, Democratic State Rep. Angie Nixon defeated Lt. Col. Alex Vindman in the Democratic Primary for U.S. Senate. She now faces incumbent Ashley Moody in the November General Election. Primary contests for U.S. House seats in the sunshine state were loaded with candidates, but voters by-and-large choose to back incumbents. We’ll take a closer look at the results and what they’re setting up for the General Election in a conversation with FGCU Political Science Professor Sandra Pavelka, Ph.D., and UCF Political Scientist Aubrey Jewett, Ph.D.

Mac Stone is an award-winning conservation photographer and a National Geographic Explorer. His work focuses on swamps and wetlands — he says he's trying to change public opinion towards these often misunderstood and maligned ecosystems. We discuss his new book is "Cypress: The Last Old-Growth Swamps" which is filled with photographs of the American South’s ancient wetlands and intricate webs of life that grow beneath ancient cypress canopies, including Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary.

About 75% of the world’s flowering plants and about 30% of crops rely on pollinators. Things like habitat loss, pesticide use, climate change, and invasive species are all threats to pollinator populations, which are truly essential for both ecological balance and food security. On August 22-23 Floridians can do their part as citizen scientists to help researchers keep tabs on the health of pollinator populations by participating in the Great Southeast Pollinator Census. To participate, during those two days you simply pick one or more plants in your yard that attract pollinators and watch them closely for 15 minutes and count each time an insect lands on the plant, and then upload that information into a database.

Laurien Papa Bartuccio co-founded The Bridge for Women. It provides trauma-informed peer support for survivors of domestic abuse in Collier, Lee, Charlotte, and Hendry counties.

Since 1954 — during a time when public schools were not required to educate kids with intellectual and developmental disabilities, so many of these kids were institutionalized — a group of parents in Fort Myers came together to create what they called LARC which would work to empower and support young people with disabilities to achieve their full potential. They've continued that mission and grown over the decades. We learn about everything they do and how they've grown with Executive Director, Angela Katz.

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.