Mike Kiniry

Of all the film festivals held around the world each year, one holds a certain amount of prestige -- the Cannes Film Festival, which is held in a city of the same name in France. The international film festival was held for the 71st year this May, and at it, a film called “Peacekeeper” was screened. The 13-minute-long documentary is about the Dakota pipeline, and the response of the Native Americans who live on the land that would be developed for the project.

According to a 2016 study in medical journal The Lancet global, universal breastfeeding would prevent about 800,000 child deaths every year around the world, and create $300-billion dollars in savings annually from lowered health care costs. And while the percentage of women who choose to breastfeed their child had dipped in the U-S, it’s been on the rise since the early 90s, and the trendline continues going up. Today is the last day of World Breastfeeding Week, a global effort to promote the benefits of breastfeeding, so we thought we’d spend a few minutes with two experts on the topic from Lee Health to talk about their efforts to help women before, during, and after giving birth, and to successfully breastfeed their babies. Dr. Carol Lawrence is a supervisor of Perinatal Practice, Education, Research, and Lactation; and Delilah Edwards is a Board Certified Lactation Consultant and Maternal Educator.

We’re exploring an interesting technology story that’s been in the national, and international news: 3D printed guns. A Texas company called Defense Distributed wants to publish plans it created that allow people with certain kinds of 3D printers to make their own guns at home. A federal judge temporarily blocked the release last week after a number of states filed suit, arguing that the technology would allow criminals to build untraceable firearms. But, it might already be too late, the plans were downloaded more than 100-thousand times before being they were pulled and are already available elsewhere on the internet. Legal experts say this situation is pretty much uncharted territory with First Amendment implications. We’re joined by one of them, Dr. Pamela Seay, who is a professor of justice studies at Florida Gulf Coast University.

As dead marine life continues to clog area beaches and canals, and beachgoers choke from respiratory irritation caused by red tide, late last week Governor Rick Scott directed the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to “mobilize all available resources to address the problem.” The persistent bloom of red tide algae, which stretches from Naples to Tampa, has left countless dead fish, including massive goliath grouper, on area beaches. And record numbers of sea turtles are turning up dead, as well as manatees and even dolphin. For the first part of today’s show we’re joined by Dr. Michael Crosby, he’s President and CEO of Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota. It’s one of the main research organizations working to find answers when it comes to red tide -- from detailed monitoring efforts, to research projects looking for ways to stem the growth of the toxic algae blooms, and mitigate their effects.

Plus, we're checking in with Dr. Heather Barron, she's Hospital Director at CROW on Sanibel Island to get the latest on how red tide is affecting sea turtles.

Julian Valdivia is a History Student at the University of Florida in Gainesville, but he’s from Fort Myers, and over the course of this summer he’s been working with the Lee County Black History Society and the Southwest Florida Historical Society to collect oral histories from community elders, mostly in the Fort Myers Dunbar community. Julian works for the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at UF...he’s using this research for his senior thesis which will be about desegregation and integration in Lee County. At the end of the summer all of his work will be available to the public at the local historical societies and at UF’s oral history archive in Gainesville. As summer begins to wind down, we thought it was time to bring Julian in and see how the process has gone.