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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In Sally Wen Mao’s collection, NINETAILS, she reimagines the nine-tailed fox spirit from Asian folklore in a series of short stories interwoven with a novella. -
Two decades ago two young men disappeared in Naples under mysterious circumstances. Terrance Williams and Felipe Santos were both last seen with the same Collier County Sheriff’s deputy, Steven Calkins. They were both men of color in their 20s. And they were both last seen in Deputy Calkins’ patrol car. Deputy Calkins was fired after his story changed when questioned. He denied wrongdoing. He’s the only person of interest in the cases, but law enforcement never found evidence against him. -
The Apollo 11 lunar module, nicknamed "Eagle," landed on the Moon on July 20, 1969. Our guest today was part of the team that got it there. Ed Grace was a Principal Engineer at the MIT Instrumentation/Draper Laboratory. They designed the inertial navigation system and computer software used to control the Apollo command and lunar modules. Ed was in a backup mission control room when the Eagle landed. -
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. -
Bacardi Jackson took over the role of Executive Director of the ACLU of Florida in May of 2024. Prior to joining the 60-year-old organization, Jackson was deputy legal director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Democracy: Education and Youth” advocacy and litigation team, where she led efforts to stop the school-to-prison pipeline and to ensure equitable access to mental health services and high-quality public education in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi. We talk about the work the ACLU of Florida is focusing on now, as the executives, both here in Florida and at the federal level, are exerting their executive power beyond the bounds of what we’re accustomed to. -
Southwest Florida is a great place to produce food and other ag products — but only if growers are able to remain profitable. In order to assess what local growers and producers think about the future of Southwest Florida’s agriculture industry, Florida Gulf Coast University’s Center for Agribusiness recently wrapped up a large study titled “Agribusiness in Southwest Florida: The Next 25 years.” A team of researchers conducted in-depth interviews with representatives from 30 local farm operations and compiled what they found in the new report. We talk with the study’s three co-authors to get an overview of what came out of those conversations. -
Since President Trump returned to the White House in January his administration has undertaken a number of actions that seem to signify a retreat from international support and cooperation, and reflect a broader shift toward prioritizing domestic interests over international collaboration, fundamentally altering the United States' traditional role in global affairs. Our guest's work focuses on issues that intersect with what’s been unfolding on a number of levels. Dr. Andrew Rosenberg is an Associate Professor of International Relations and Political Methodology at University of Florida. His 2022 book “Undesirable Immigrants: Why Racism Persists in International Migration” focuses on the politics of international migration and what drives and constrains it. -
We talk with a political scientist who has been collaborating on a project to explore how minority parties are able to accomplish their goals. Dr. Andrew Ballard is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Florida State University. His forthcoming book distills research that he, and his co-author have been doing that looks at U.S. Congressional power dynamics in history to see just how minority parties approach getting their goals into legislation, or in some cases obstruct the majority party’s efforts. -
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In the literary thriller The Red Grove, a community of women live among redwoods, until a death changes everything.