Anyone who was living in Southwest Florida in 2018 will always remember the two massive harmful algal blooms that devastated marine animals, and hurt the local economy. The blue-green algae bloom which started in Lake Okeechobee and wound up choking the Caloosahatchee River, the canals that line it, and its estuary, met the offshore red tide bloom which was lining beaches with dead fish, dolphins, and even a whale shark.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4th, 1968, while standing on the balcony outside of his room in the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. That was the day after he’d given his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech, which ends with him talking about the possibility of an untimely death. We’re discussing the play The Mountaintop by Katori Hall , which is a fictional account of a conversation Dr. King had with a hotel maid just after delivering that famous speech.

The work of Miami-based artist and musician Beatriz Monteavaro is distinctive for its densely drawn narrative images and environments. It’s also distinctive for its representation of pop culture icons including Gary Numan, Adam Ant and the all-women new wave band The Go-Go’s . A retrospective exhibition of her work titled “ Beatriz Monteavaro: Vacation ,” opens Jan. 16 at the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery at Florida Southwestern State College in Fort Myers.

Florida lawmakers officially kick off the 2020 state legislative session today. Over the course of the 60-day regular session, legislators will be considering measures that tackle a broad range of issues including teacher pay, abortion access, immigration, criminal justice reforms, the future of the state’s tourism and marketing arm, water resource protection, term limits, firearm regulation and much more.

We’re sitting down with award winning author, historian, and journalist James Carroll . A Roman Catholic reformer, Carroll has written extensively over his nearly 50 year career about his experiences in the seminary and as a priest. He’s published novels, books on religion and history, and has written many articles and essays, often for The New Yorker .

Sunday evening will mark the Punta Gorda Symphony ’s first performance of the new year with a program featuring Felix Mendelssohn’s famous Violin Concerto in E minor performed by guest soloist and concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra David Kim . We’ll talk with Kim about his life in music from his violin studies that began at the age of three to becoming the first Korean-American concertmaster of a world class orchestra.

Ten years ago this Sunday, on January 12th 2010, a catastrophic magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti , with an epicenter about 15 miles west of Port-au-Prince, the country’s capital. An estimated three million people were affected by the quake. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed, and the government of Haiti estimated that roughly a quarter million homes and 30,000 commercial buildings had collapsed or were severely damaged. This is a country already struggling economically; Haiti is

Back in the summer of 2018 we brought a University of Florida history student named Julian Valdivia on the show to learn about his work collecting oral histories in Lee County – primarily in the Dunbar community – for UF’s Samuel Proctor Oral History Program . It’s one of the largest oral history archives in the south, employing students to go into their communities to collect life stories that future historians and researchers can use.

The School District of Lee County recently announced its 2019 Teacher of the Year, Mariner High School Art Teacher Samantha Hower . Now in her fourth year at Mariner, Hower has been instrumental in transforming the school’s STEM Academy into the STEAM Academy – adding an art curriculum to the science, technology, engineering and math already being taught.

The Southwest Florida-based Americana, folk, rock and bluegrass group Reckless Saints is back in studio to perform live ahead of their concert Jan. 4 through the Americana Community Music Association at All Faiths Unitarian Congregation in Fort Myers. We’ll hear from Reckless Saints founding members Roy Schneider (vocals, guitar, dobro, mandolin, banjo, harmonica, percussion) and Kim Mayfield (vocals, piano, guitar, mandolin, ukulele, percussion) about their music, songwriting styles and life on