Gulf Coast Life

We learn about a nationwide clinical trial, funded by the National Institute of Aging, that's trying to determine if high doses of a synthetic form of Vitamin B1 called benfotiamine might be an effective treatment for mild cognitive impairment or early Alzheimer's Disease. Also known as thiamine, Vitamin B1 is important for brain health, and it's known that people with Alzheimer's have a thiamine deficiency.

When the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010 it guaranteed coverage for people going through addiction treatment for the first time. This was a huge benefit for many people, but it also created conditions that led to some treatment providers taking advantage of people in recovery — and part of that corrupt system is what’s referred to as The Florida Shuffle. Put simply, the Florida Shuffle is when proprietors of what are called ‘sober homes’ effectively "broker patients" in order to keep them in a cycle of addiction and recovery. Well-run sober homes are meant to be a place where people who have been through supervised detox and inpatient treatment and then outpatient care can use as a bridge between treatment and returning to their lives.

Players Circle Theater is preparing a robust seventh season, which kicks off next month. The season includes a fast-paced farce, a holiday musical revue, a musical adaptation of the classic novel “Little Women,” a family comedy, a romantic comedy, a dramedy and a one-woman show that includes a three-course meal prepared and served to a few lucky patrons. We’ll listen back to our season-preview conversation with Players Circle Theater co-founder and Artistic Director Bob Cacioppo.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month so we’re doing our part to increase awareness about breast cancer and the importance of screening, both self and diagnostic, and learning about how treatments and screenings have evolved since 1985 when Breast Cancer Awareness Month was initiated. According to the National Breast Cancer Foundation 1 in 8 women in the United States will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime. We get a snapshot of the state of screening and treatment, and risk factors to consider — and we learn about Partners for Breast Cancer Care, a nonprofit that funds breast screening, diagnostic testing, and treatment for uninsured patients in Lee, Collier, Charlotte, Hendry and Glades counties.

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.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution remains the gold standard globally when it comes to protecting speech. But our guest says free speech protections cannot be guaranteed without strong support from those who it protects — including supporting others’ right to express ideas you might strongly disagree with. Jacob Mchangama has spent his career tracking free speech trends globally and understanding how it has ebbed and flowed over the course of recorded history. He is director of the Future of Free Speech think tank at Vanderbilt University, a Senior Fellow at The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression in Philadelphia, and the author of “Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media.”

Bridging the Gap Center for the Arts is Southwest Florida’s newest arts and culture nonprofit. The new organization is committed to providing support, education, community, and performance opportunities for BIPOC artists. We’ll learn about the new organization in an encore of our conversation this past summer with founder and executive director Sonya McCarter, board of directors member Cotrenia Hood, and dance instructor Eden Collier.

Fort Myers's Artis Henderson was just 5 years old when her father was killed in plane crash. As an adult, she dug up the explanation for the crash as well as other family secrets.

In January of 1742, while sailing around waters south of Florida in search of Spanish vessels to "sink, burn or destroy" the British Royal Navy’s HMS Tyger ran aground at Garden Key in what’s now Dry Tortugas National Park. What unfolded after the Tyger ran aground at Garden Key is a fascinating narrative that is compiled in a new paper published in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology titled “Hunting HMS Tyger, 1742: Identifying a Ship-of-the-Line in Dry Tortugas National Park” co-authored by Andrew Van Slyke & Joshua Marano. To get a sense of the Tyger and its crew's story, and the archeological efforts that go into this kind of identification, we talk with the team lead for the HMS Tyger identification effort.

Beginning this Sunday, Oct. 5 at 5am WGCU will begin airing a weekly interview show called “What’s Health Got to Do With It?” that explores the intersection of healthcare and daily life with a focus on guiding listeners on their journeys through the increasingly convoluted medical bureaucracy. We meet its host, Dr. Joe Sirven. He’s a practicing neurologist, and professor of neurology and Chairman Emeritus of the Department of Neurology at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona. He's also a well-published author on epilepsy, a former editor-in-chief of epilepsy.com, and he currently serves as the editor-in-chief of Brain & Life en Español.