Mike Kiniry
Producermkiniry@wgcu.org
Mike Kiniry is producer of Gulf Coast Live, and co-creator and host of the WGCU podcast Three Song Stories: Biography Through Music. He first joined the WGCU team in the summer of 2003 as an intern while studying Communication at Florida Gulf Coast University.
He became the first producer of Gulf Coast Live when the show launched in 2004, and also worked as the host of All Things Considered from 2004 to 2006, and the host of Morning Edition from 2006 to 2011. He then left public radio to work as PR Director for the Alliance for the Arts for five years, and was then Principled Communicator at the election integrity company Free & Fair for a year before returning to WGCU in October, 2017.
In the past Mike has been a bartender and cook at Liquid Café in downtown Fort Myers, a golf club fixer/seller at the Broken Niblick Golf Shop in Fort Myers, and a bookseller at Ives Book Shop in Fort Myers. He lives near downtown Fort Myers with his daughter, and their dog and two cats.
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Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan is most recognized for the expression "the medium is the message" which means the technology or medium we use to transmit information changes our behavior — and society — more than the information it carries. Tim Love spent more than four decades in the world of global advertising. He was Vice-Chairman of the global advertising and marketing services company, Omnicom Group. Since retiring, Love has turned his attention toward the way our online world operates today — and how behavior data collected on us users is being used to not only drive our behavior but is negatively impacting mental health and has led to polarization. We discuss his new book "The Medium is the Mirror: The Reformation of Truth." -
This year marks the 60th anniversary of a landmark document called Nostra Aetate (translates as In Our Time) which was the result of Jewish and Catholic collaboration during the Second Vatican Council that ran from 1962 to 1965. It fundamentally changed the official Roman Catholic position on Judaism and spoke out openly against antisemitism. Now, 60 years later, the Catholic-Jewish Dialogue of Collier County along with the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Naples and Ave Maria University are presenting a two-day symposium bringing together a panel of distinguished theologians and professors from across North America to discuss the landmark document that changed 20 centuries of Catholic-Jewish relations – and it’s importance in our time. -
In the late 1990s an ethnobotanist named Dr. Paul Cox spent time in two villages on the Pacific island of Guam where a huge percentage of residents were dying of a neurodegenerative disorder that’s similar to Alzheimer’s Disease or ALS. He found links between the villagers’ diet, which included large fruit bats called flying foxes, and cyanobacteria toxins that were accumulating in the seeds of cycad trees, which the foxes would eat. This led to villagers having huge amounts of the toxins in their bodies. He joins us to talk about the work he did on Guam, and where the research is at today. -
The League of Women Voters began as a national, nonpartisan nonprofit political organization that was founded in 1920, just a few months before the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteed women the right to vote. The Collier County chapter is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. One of their main information sources is Vote411.org. It’s a one-stop shop for information about who and what will be on ballots for each election. We learn about their new educational effort is a series of videos called Civics Unplugged which cover basic government functions like the three branches, the houses of Congress, Constitutional Amendments, and more. -
Jason Vuic is an author and historian who lives in Fort Worth Texas but grew up in Punta Gorda so many of his books delve into Florida history and culture. His brand new book tells two seemingly unconnected yet strangely overlapping stories that unfolded in the small, rural town of Arcadia in DeSoto County beginning in the 1960s that come together in the 1980s. "A Town Without Pity: Aids, race and resistance in Florida’s Deep South" explores the wrongful conviction and long incarceration of a migrant farmworker named James Richardson, and the town's response to three young boys who were infected with the HIV virus via blood transfusions in the mid 80s. -
Investigative reporter Katherine Stewart first turned her attention to the Religious Right in the United States in 2007 after her child’s school hosted what’s called a Good News Club. She was surprised to learn of religious program in public schools, and is an investigative reporter whose work has appeared in The New York Times and other major publications, so she started researching and that led to her first book on the subject, “The Good News Club.” She recently stopped by the studio to chat about her third book on this subject, published in February, called “Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy.” -
The Education Foundation of Collier County's Champions for Learning program was started in 1990 with a mission to serve as a catalyst for educational success by investing in Collier’s students and educators. They have programs for students designed to prepare them for their future learning and career goals, both college or occupation-based learning and skill building. Of the roughly 350 students they worked with in their mentorship program, 100% graduated high school last year, 33 of which took dual enrollment courses and 62 received industry certifications. Almost three-quarters of their students are slated to be the first in their family to go to college or receive any other kind of post-secondary education. We talk with their new President and CEO, and an alumna of the program to better understand what they do and the impact their programs can have. -
A recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal opens with the story of a man who believed his 83-year-old mother was plotting to assassinate him. His conversational partner and sounding board — in that case ChatGPT — told him he wasn’t crazy and his instincts were sharp, and that vigilance was fully justified. Not long after the man killed his mother before taking his own life. This is an example of what’s been dubbed ‘AI Psychosis’ — that’s when people are if not encouraged to cause harm to themselves or others, at least are not discouraged to do so by chatbots like ChatGPT or Gemini, or others. We talk with its author, who is co-founder of a nonprofit that's creating tools and demos to help people understand AI systems on a visceral level. -
A new paper published in the Journal Nature Communications Biology investigates the link between exposure to Harmful Algal Bloom neurotoxins and the development of Alzheimer's disease signatures in the brain transcriptome of stranded common bottlenose dolphins found in Florida's Indian River Lagoon. They essentially correlated changes in the dolphin brains’ DNA to chronic and acute exposure to blue green algae blooms. Dolphins serve as a "sentinel species" for Alzheimer’s Diseased because they live so long and can naturally develop Alzheimer’s-like neuropathological changes with age. -
Frontier AI Models are the ones that are highly capable and best represent advancements in language processing, reasoning, and multimodal capabilities. They are on the cutting edge of AI development. Many experts warn Frontier Models could potentially pose risks to public safety, and could have dangerous capabilities. The Frontier Model Forum is an industry-supported non-profit focused on addressing these significant risks to public safety and even national security. Its members currently include Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI. Its core mandates are to identify best practices and support standards development, and to advance science and independent research in the field of AI. We meet its Executive Director, Chris Meserole.
