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We get a peek into a local family-owned business that’s now in its third generation. Sunshine Ace Hardware was founded in Naples by Don Wynn in the late 1950s. His grandson, Michael Wynn has been the company's President since 2005. He's also co-founder of the Resnick-Wynn Family Business Conference, which takes place on Thursday, Feb. 29 at Florida Gulf Coast University from 9am to 2pm. It will focus on how family businesses can successfully navigate the challenges they face in our modern economy, and transition from generation to generation if that’s their goal.

Bonaventure Bondo is an environmentalist and climate activist based in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He is the founder and national coordinator of the Youth Movement for the Protection of the Environment. It’s a youth organization working in the fight against climate change and biodiversity loss in the DRC. His efforts focus on protecting forests, promoting renewable energies, defending the rights of local communities, and campaigning against the exploitation of fossil fuels in the Congo Basin Rainforest.

Kirsten Hines started out as a wildlife biologist, but pretty early on found herself drawn to telling stories with images and words about the natural world, rather than collecting data about it. Her photographs and writings have since appeared in numerous exhibitions and publications, including eight books — the latest of which is “Wild Florida: An Animal Odyssey.” It’s like a conversational field guide that explores ecological concepts like the “why” behind Florida’s animal diversity, and its blending of critters from the tropics with those from North America.

We shine some light on a southwest Florida nonprofit that’s been working to make the lives of this area's seniors better for more than half a century. Founded in 1973, Senior Friendship Centers began in a small bungalow in Sarasota, and first began expanding when it began receiving federal funding to provide meals to older adults. Erin McLeod joined the organization as Director of Communications in 2004. It was her first job at a nonprofit and she says she immediately fell in love with the mission and has been there ever since, now as its CEO.

Miami-based photographer and author Kirsten Hines spends her life immersed in the natural world. She started off as a wildlife biologist but found herself more interested in talking pictures of the natural world than doing science with it. She has now published nine books in all, the latest of which is “Birds of Florida.” It’s a guidebook featuring 310 birds you can find in Florida, with photographs she took and brief descriptions she wrote that provide insight into the various species, and tips on where to find them.

Florida is home to more than 500 nonnative species, more than 50 of which are reptiles. Current monitoring techniques depend on visual surveys by scientists, and this is far from an exact science because reptiles — particularly snakes — are extremely elusive. A new technique being developed by scientists at University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) can identify DNA traces of Burmese pythons — as well as northern African pythons, boa constrictors, and rainbow boas — weeks after they have left an area using soil or water samples.

Naples resident Joanne Huskey lived abroad for decades as part of a diplomatic family – her husband Jim was a U.S. Foreign Service officer for almost 30 years. And their time overseas intersected with some historic events: they were in China when the Tiananmen Square massacre happened in 1989; and they were in Nairobi, Kenya when the U.S. Embassy there was bombed in 1998. Throughout her time abroad, her efforts were always aimed at "Promoting intercultural understanding and education." She joins us to talk about her life promoting intercultural understanding and the need for more of it in today’s world.

The United Nations 2024 global climate conference, COP 29, kicked off in Baku, Azerbaijan on Monday, Nov. 11 and runs until Friday, Nov. 22. It's a chance for leaders and delegates from nearly 200 countries to talk about, and make plans for action around, the global climate crisis. Timed to coincide with COP 29, Florida Gulf Coast University and The Water School have kicked off “Two Weeks of Climate Change.” It's a series of events that explore local and global challenges, and solutions for our changing climate. We get preview of it, and a chance to better understand what happens at these global COP conferences.

Tim Love spent his career in advertising, and he says there are correlations between the early days of that industry and mass media, and where we find ourselves today with our wide open and unregulated online world. He was Vice-Chairman of Omnicom Group, it’s a global advertising and marketing services company. But since retiring in 2013, he has focused his attention on our online world, and how, he says, it’s being openly used against us to sow division and uncertainty.

It’s impossible to point to an exact moment or song when what became known as Rock n’ Roll emerged, but it happened in the early to mid-1950s in the United States and was a fusion of genres including rhythm and blues, gospel, and country music. Dr. Clay Motley received his PhD in the history of American Literature but over time found himself drawn to music and its history, particularly Blues and early Rock n’ Roll. Last week he gave a talk at FGCU on the ‘The History of Rock n’ Roll’ so we brought him by the studio to chat about music and how this artform that took over the world came to be.