Search results for

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…

In the days and weeks after a disaster like Hurricane Ian, it’s often up to local nonprofits and mental health professionals who are volunteering their time to step in and provide support for people who have been impacted. Now, for the first time ever, Florida’s State Emergency Response Team — or SERT — is supporting a program to assemble a group of mental health professionals including therapists, counselors, and massage therapists to work directly with residents and first responders who are still in the midst of recovery work.

Tim Love spent more than four decades in the world of global advertising. Since retiring in 2013, he has focused much of his attention on the way the online world operates today, and how it has been used to polarize us, and has greatly impacted mental health, particularly among young people. Love is author “Discovering Truth: How to Navigate Between Fact & Fiction in an Overwhelming Social Media World” and he’s host of a podcast called Tim Love's Discovering Truth where he interviews major players in the online and corporate world about the nature of truth and the trouble we find ourselves in.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic neurological condition where a person’s immune system attacks the protective covering of nerve fibers in their central nervous system. MS can greatly impact an individual's life, from just mobility issues making daily activities difficult, to relationships and emotional well-being. Treatment generally focuses on managing symptoms and slowing disease progression through medications, physical therapy, lifestyle modifications, and support services. The Multiple Sclerosis Center of Southwest Florida has been providing support services to people with MS since 2000 — all for free. To learn more we talk with the center’s CEO, Kay Jasso.

A natural part of living in Florida is sometimes interacting with wild animals — including Florida black bears. Wildlife officers trapped and tranquilized a black bear on Monday near downtown Fort Myers. Bears are pretty wily and mostly move around at night so most people have probably never even seen one, or even know that we have black bears in this part of Florida, let alone wandering through our neighborhoods. We talk with a bear expert with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission about bears in Florida, how they behave, and what we can do to minimize neighborhood interactions with them.

As internet use became common, communities formed in different ways. Early examples would include internet forums, or message boards. In the early 2000s a message board called 4chan was created that was anonymous by design. And posts made to it, and replies, were inherently temporary. While 4chan had message boards for all sorts of topics its anonymity combined with posts that would eventually disappear led to the emergence of an online culture that would seem strange and even extreme to many people who didn’t spend time there. Our guest grew up immersed in this online culture, and is now a researcher of it, so we thought he’d be a good person to help us understand this world a bit better as it seems to increasingly enter into mainstream culture, from media to public discourse, and the polarization it contains.

On Feb. 14, 2018 — six years ago today — a former student at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida walked into the school and opened fire on students and staff, killing 17 people and injuring 17 others. It was then, and remains today, the deadliest mass shooting at a high school in U.S. history. To mark the anniversary of that horrific day we're airing a one-hour special from Connecticut Public Radio called ‘Life after Parkland: A victim’s dad turns art to activism.’