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We’ll learn about the Freedom Riders, which were small groups of black and white people travelling together on buses in the early 1960s to deliberately violate segregation laws in the deep south.

There’s a brand new exhibition on display on the campus of Florida Gulf Coast University called “They Were Children: Rescue as Resistance.” It brings the story of the Oeuvre de Secours Aux Enfants’ (OSE) — amazing group of everyday people who worked at great risk to themselves to rescue Jewish children in Nazi-occupied France during World War Two.

On Saturday, July 19 there will be a daylong gathering in Fort Myers to begin a conversation about moving the City of Palms toward openly becoming a Compassionate City. One that holds empathy, dignity, and care at the core. The organizers are calling for educators, civic leaders, healthcare workers, artists, entrepreneurs, faith voices, and anyone really, who want to join the conversation about the importance of compassion and empathy and how to find ways to build them into the community. We talk with three of the people involved with Saturday’s event to get a preview and to talk about compassion.

Over the decades, the nonprofit Calusa Nature Center and Planetarium has introduced countless people of all ages to the natural world, and the cosmos, through educational programs. Their 105-acre site features a natural history museum with live native and teaching animals, a butterfly garden and raptor aviary, as well as exhibits about the animals, plants, and environment of Southwest Florida. And they host events like music under the stars, paint and sips, night hikes, summer camps, and even an event called Potter in the Park. We sat down in their planetarium on a Saturday morning to shine some light on the work they do and the resources they provide to the community.

In 2016 the nonpartisan global policy think tank RAND Corporation published a piece called "The Russian "Firehose of Falsehood" Propaganda Model: Why It Might Work and Options to Counter It" that outlined ways Russia was flooding the internet and social media with false claims, and why this technique — which featured a lack of consistency or relationship to truth — was effective in both creating confusion and getting people to tune out because there was just too much information swirling around. We talk with one of the researchers behind the 2016 perspective to learn how it came about, how they did their research, and what it means through the lens of today, far beyond Russian propaganda.

In the leadup to the midterm elections Governor Ron DeSantis announced that the state of Florida’s new Office of Election Crimes and Security had arrested 20 people who allegedly had knowingly registered to vote illegally during the previous election in 2020. He said this was the first step in addressing wide-scale voter fraud — despite there being no evidence of such fraud in Florida. The problem is, there is no straightforward way for former felons — or for election officials — to determine whether someone who has completed their sentence for a felony conviction has satisfied all requirements to be eligible to vote.

On the morning after Hurricane Ian swept through southwest Florida a team of more than 50 people working for, or with, the Housing Authority of the City of Fort Myers went door-to-door to conduct resident wellness checks and document damage at the more than 1,400 public and subsidized units and 2,400 housing voucher residences it administers. We check in with the Housing Authority's Executive Director, Marcia Davis, to hear about the work they’ve done and what’s left to be done.

We explore what the Sunshine Laws cover today and how people can exercise their right to access information about how their government and other public bodies operate with Tony Conticello, he is a Tallahassee-based attorney that specializes in Sunshine Law compliance.

So far this year there have been almost a thousand travel-related cases of dengue fever reported in the continental United States, with 278 of them coming from Florida. This means someone contracted the disease outside of the country and then got sick once they were back home. There have also been 16 locally acquired cases of dengue so far this year — all of those were acquired here in Florida. Dengue is a mosquito-borne disease, so we sit down with two people from the Lee County Mosquito Control District to learn about their extensive operations.

Matt Keller is mostly known as the lead pastor of Next Level Church, but he’s also a writer, podcaster, leadership coach. Like a lot of people in…