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Americorps has been addressing issues and serving needs in the United States since 1965 when it was known as Volunteers in Service to America, or VISTA. We speak with its current CEO Barbara Stewart about the many ways its members are helping people around the country today.

During normal times the Harry Chapin Food Bank of Southwest Florida was providing food for about 110,000 individuals every month. Right now they are serving more than a quarter million people a month, and have provided 25,073,464 meals since the coronavirus pandemic began.

We bring you an episode of the WGCU podcast Three Song Stories with singer/songwriter Bill Metts, who performed on Arts Edition just last month with fellow singer/songwriter Bruce Gallant. The duo perform at venues around SWFL and Bill is co-founder and vice president of the non-profit Hope By Song, which helps people whose stories of loss, abuse, addiction, homelessness, PTSD have not been heard by inspiring them to tell their stories through song.

It's been two years since the Collier County Sheriff’s Office found the body of a hiker in Big Cypress Preserve. Despite dozens of people recognizing the hiker from the Appalachian Trail, investigators have not been able to identify him beyond the trail name “Mostly Harmless.”

Throughout the month of June Koreshan State Park in Estero is hosting four 'Citizen Science' informational programs to introduce people to the concept of citizen science and learn about four established research projects that they can become involved with. Citizen Science harnesses the interest and involvement of members of the public to help collect and interpret results for specifically focused scientific questions.

When businesses shut down and people began to isolate themselves due to the coronavirus back in March, a local musician found a way to keep his peers’ connected and their creativity flowing by creating weekly songwriting challenges. We’ll hear from some of the participants and the songs they made during “Songwriter Quarantine.”

We’re going to go back in time to Thursday, September 29 — the day after Ian’s landfall — to listen to some of the voices we heard on Gulf Coast Life. We did the show live at 2:00 p.m. and then again at 7:00 p.m. Power and internet was still out for many, if not most people in our listening area, and cell service was spotty at best. So, we brought on members of our team to hear what they had seen and experienced to try to provide as much first-hand information as possible about what the region and its residents were going through.

Dr. Temple Grandin grew up with autism in the 1950s when the disorder was not well-understood. She did not talk until she was three and a half years old and back then many children with speech delays were institutionalized. Dr. Grandin is now a professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University, and her insights on animal behavior have revolutionized the livestock industry. Over her career she has written scores of scientific papers, and numerous books. She was even the focus of a semi-biographical HBO film called Temple Grandin. She joins us in advance of her talk on Saturday at the Christ Community Church in Fort Myers as part of the nonprofit Family Initiative’s ‘Redefining Autism’ speaker series.

We meet southwest Florida resident Marina Berkovich. She’s a native of Kiev, Ukraine, who fled the Soviet Union and Communism with her mother at the age of 18. Trained as a CPA, Ms. Berkovich was chief financial officer of a New York City-based hotel and property management company before she began teaming up with her husband Alex Goldstein, a renowned Russian-American cinematic composer, to make documentary films -- many of which help tell the story of Jewish people who made, and make, a positive impact on life in Southwest Florida. Ms. Berkovich is an oral visual history interviewer for the Holocaust Museum of Southwest Florida. She and her husband moved here from New York in 2004, and in 2010 helped found the nonprofit Jewish Historical Society of Southwest Florida, where she remains president. We sit down with her to hear her thoughts on the world today — including Russia's war against Ukraine, and the Hamas attack on Israel and what has unfolded since — as well as the work they do at the Jewish Historical Society of Southwest Florida.

David Rahahę·tih Webb was born in Southwest Florida and grew up on Sanibel Island, which puts him in a relatively small group of people compared to this area’s current population. But, his family roots go back for generations and their connections to life on Sanibel are both broad and deep. His ‘pioneer’ side goes back eight generations on Sanibel and his Seminole side goes back past recorded history. His direct ancestors were Spanish Seminole members of the Sanibel Island Rancho. Ranchos were small, tight-knit communities settled by Europeans centuries ago. They were essentially fishing camps with as many as 600 residents, most of which were Seminole. And, David is a 4th generation Ding Darling employee — his great grandfather was the first refuge employee; the admin building was dedicated to his grandmother, who worked there for 33 years; his mother worked there when she was pregnant with him and he worked there while serving in AmeriCorps in the mid 1990s.