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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.

As of this morning, President Donald Trump has signed 35 executive orders since his inauguration, setting a record for the most executive orders issued by a president within the first week of a term. They encompass a range of directives, and several underscore the administration's commitment to tightening immigration policies and enhancing border security. And the president says he intends to implement 25% across-the-board tariffs on all goods from Mexico. So, we get some context on all of this from an FGCU political science professor who focuses on Mexican politics and history.

We talk with a political scientist who has been collaborating on a project to explore how minority parties are able to accomplish their goals. Dr. Andrew Ballard is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Florida State University. His forthcoming book distills research that he, and his co-author have been doing that looks at U.S. Congressional power dynamics in history to see just how minority parties approach getting their goals into legislation, or in some cases obstruct the majority party’s efforts.

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.

Here in Southwest Florida about 30% of the population is 60 and older. That translates to about 1.3 million people, and this population and percentage is growing. Demographic trends show an expected 38% increase in adults over 60 by 2040 and a 62% increase in adults over 70 by that same year. While southwest Florida has been a destination for older people when they retire for decades, this area’s aging population is chronically underserved. We learn about the work being done to address the need at Florida Gulf Coast University’s still relatively new Shady Rest Institute on Positive Aging.

Stuart Eizenstat met Jimmy Carter when he was running for Governor of Georgia in 1970 and remained a central figure of Carter’s team until he left the White House in 1980. During President Carter’s administration Eizenstat served as Carter’s Chief Domestic Policy Adviser, and throughout his career and life Ambassador Eizenstat remained a close advisor to President Carter. We speak with him about his career in politics and the changes he's witnessed over the decades, and about his longtime colleague and friend Jimmy Carter.

Back in the 1990s, as the southwest Florida population grew, it became apparent that local water bodies and waterways were being impacted — and impaired — by nutrient pollution. So, in the late 2000s several local governments began implementing ordinances that prohibited the application of lawn fertilizer during the rainy season, which generally speaking runs from June first through September or so. We learn about Lee County’s ordinance, and the importance of complying with these rules to benefit our waters and ecosystems.

At the 32nd Annual Southwest Florida Model United Nations conference at Florida Gulf Coast University in March, high school teams were challenged to imagine solutions for the problem of land-based plastics and the micro and nano plastics that we now know are in the world all around us. Cypress Lake High School’s Model UN team took top honors and a $1,000 prize for their presentation proposing a creative and actionable — and ambitious — plan to address plastic pollution along Southwest Florida’s Gulf Coast. We learn about their plan from one of the team's members.

Bacardi Jackson took over the role of Executive Director of the ACLU of Florida in May of 2024. Prior to joining the 60-year-old organization, Jackson was deputy legal director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Democracy: Education and Youth” advocacy and litigation team, where she led efforts to stop the school-to-prison pipeline and to ensure equitable access to mental health services and high-quality public education in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi. We talk about the work the ACLU of Florida is focusing on now, as the executives, both here in Florida and at the federal level, are exerting their executive power beyond the bounds of what we’re accustomed to.