In 2018 and 2019 we experienced massive simultaneous harmful algae blooms. Around that same time, FGCU’s Water School was becoming a reality, and FGCU Marine Science Professor, Dr. Mike Parsons, began dreaming up an artificial reef easily accessible from the school’s Vester Marine Field Station where ongoing, offshore science could occur. It's now a reality, and this Thursday night WGCU will premiere its new documentary film Kimberly's Reef: An Underwater Living Laboratory. We talk with its producer, writer, and narrator, and Dr. Mike Parsons to learn more.

Hurricane Ian arrived in Southwest Florida four years ago today. Whether you experienced true devastation or were just seriously inconvenienced, Ian left a deep mark on everyone who experienced it. In the months after Ian the folks at the Gulf Coast Writers Association embarked on a project to collect some of them for a book that could capture the moment from different perspectives and that culminated in the 2023 book Storm Stories – Hurricane Ian: Stories of Survival, Heroism, and Humanity. We talk with Christie Zarria, who co-edited the book, and award-winning author Robert N. Macomber, who lost his St. James home and wrote the book's forward.

The dental program at Healthcare Network in Immokalee recently earned a Certified Autism Center designation, with their staff completing special training to help neurodivergent patients.

The midway point of the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season was Sept. 10, and that’s pretty much considered the traditional peak of the season. Yet, there hasn’t been a single named hurricane. Since meteorologists started using satellites to track the weather in the 1960s, we’ve never made it this far into a hurricane season without a named hurricane. The calm season is due in part to strong El Niño conditions. We talk with meteorologist Megan Borowski from the Florida Public Radio Emergency network to find out what it all means and what the rest of the year might bring.

Peter Max might not have been a household name at the end of his life, but his visual style — and utterly prolific artistic output over his roughly six-decade career — undoubtedly left a deep imprint on our country's collective artistic culture. His art evolved through numerous styles over the decades, but always keeping his distinctive approach so no matter which era of his career, his work was always instantly recognizable. When we talked with him on this show in 2009, in advance of a visit to a Naples gallery for an exhibition, Peter Max was working out of a 30,000-square-foot studio in Manhattan with a staff of 105 people. He had created a visual art empire. Max passed away on Sept. 14 at the age of 88. We revisit our conversation with him originally recorded in February of 2009.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is the federal government's primary science and natural-resource research agency. It operates thousands of stream gauges, well monitors, and sampling stations that track real-time river flow, groundwater levels, and water quality. Since the late 1990s the primary model or tool they use to estimate how pollutants (primarily nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus) move from the land into streams and rivers has been the SPARROW model. That stands for SPAtially Referenced Regression On Watershed attributes. New research details a new kind of SPARROW model that improves or extends the understanding of nutrient pollution by accounting for what's called 'storage lag' — meaning legacy nutrients stored in soils or groundwater for longer than one season before entering streams, and how those lagged nutrients are impacting water quality across the United States. We learn more about this new model, and who will be using it from USGS research hydrologist who led the study, Olivia Miller.

Starting in the late 2000s, environmental engineers and policymakers began talking about taking "nature-based" approaches to protect ourselves from storms. Concepts like 'living shorelines' were developed, where planners would work with nature. Think planting seagrasses and protecting or restoring dunes along the beach, or strategic mangrove placement as examples. But those approaches are still far from standard. The Conservancy of Southwest Florida has created a new Flood Resilience Blueprint called Working with Nature that uses the City of Naples as a test-site to show just what's possible, and what approaches would work best and where. We learn more from their Climate Resilience Advisor, Dr. Carrie Schuman.

NASA launched the new Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope from Kennedy Space Center on Aug. 30. It's field of view will be about 100 times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope. Its initial primary five-year mission will focus on finding and understanding exoplanets (planets around other stars), doing astrophysics (studying other stars and how they behave), and mapping our galaxy to hopefully get a better handle on both Dark Matter and Dark Energy We talk with space reporter Brendan Byrne, and astronomer Dr. Derek Buzasi from University of Chicago to learn what makes Roman different, and what scientists have planned for it once it starts sending data back to Earth.

We throw around the word "psychopath" a lot. But how many of us really know what makes someone a psychopath? Leanne ten Brinke knows. Listen to our conversation.

In the Fall of 2001, on a Tuesday in September, news started spreading that a plane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center buildings in New York City. At first, most people assumed it was an accident. But then, just 17 minutes later, a second commercial airliner flew directly into the other tower, and it became crystal clear that what was unfolding was not an accident but an orchestrated attack. News emerged that two other planes had been hijacked, one of which struck the Pentagon, the other crashed into a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania after the passengers stormed the cockpit. As we approach the 25th anniversary of nine-eleven, we hear personal stories of what people experienced on that day back then. The conversations in this episode were recorded as part of our 20th anniversary special five years ago.