Gulf Coast Life

Players Circle Theater is mounting a production of playwright Amy Herzog’s Pulitzer-nominated family drama “4,000 Miles,” about a grieving young man and the bond he develops with his 91-year-old grandmother during an extended stay in her West Village apartment. We’ll delve into the show in a conversation with Players Circle Theater Artistic Director Bob Cacioppo and the stars of the show, actors Carrie Lund Cacioppo and Jameson Stobbe.

Jordy Rosenberg's new novel, Night Night Fawn, satirizes beliefs such as homophobia and transphobia. The novel is funny, rich, and thought-provoking.

State lawmakers closed Florida’s regular legislative session, March 13, without passing a budget and with several priority bills going down in defeat. We talk with UCF Political Science Professor Aubrey Jewett, Ph.D., and FGCU Political Science Professor Sandra Pavekla, Ph.D. about what, passed, what didn’t, and what it all means for Florida going forward.

Dr. Martínez-Fernández has published at least eight books, including “Key to the New World: A History of Early Colonial Cuba” in 2019, and “Revolutionary Cuba: A History” in 2014. He was also a nationally syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate — it’s an independent media and syndication company. He was on the FGCU campus last week to give a talk titled “Chiseled out of stone and cast out of bronze: a history of the Caribbean as told by its statues.” But, because of recent events in South & Central America and the Caribbean — and in Iran and the Middle East and other parts of the world and how it’s all connected — we didn’t talk about statues, but instead began our wide-ranging conversation with his most recent book, “When the World Turned Upside Down: Politics, Culture, and the Unimaginable Events of 2019-2022."

Actor, playwright, director and educator Frank Blocker is performing a run of his one-man show “STABILIZED NOT CONTROLLED” this month in the Norris Center Auditorium in Naples. We talk with Blocker about this tour-de-force performance in which he plays all 17 characters.

Drs. Angelica Ahrens and Eric Triplett are both microbiology researchers at the University of Florida in Gainesville. They recently published new research that found markers in the umbilical cords of children who were later diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Their research may lead to more effective treatment of the common condition.

The Center for Inquiry was founded in 1976 by the likes of Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov to investigate what they called ‘extraordinary claims’ being made about things like paranormal activity and UFO abductions — things that fall into the category of pseudoscience. We talk with the center's Director of Education, Bertha Vazquez, about the work she does and the role of science in our lives, and the crucial need for a skeptical mind in the face of information overload.

Every year hundreds of thousands of students in dozens of countries act as delegates in a simulation of the United Nations. The 33rd annual Southwest Florida Model UN was held on the campus of Florida Gulf Coast University last week. This year’s keynote speaker was Andrea Bedoya. She’s a 2020 graduate of Florida Gulf Coast University, and since leaving FGCU with her Political Science degree her career has already spanned four continents and a wide range of global service experiences. She stopped by the studio while she was back on campus to chat.

Florida Repertory Theatre in downtown Fort Myers recently announced the line up of shows for their 2026-2027 performance season, including both adult and family-friendly comedies, a psychological thriller, a documentary, and plenty of music. We’ll get a preview of the upcoming 20th season and explore their production of “Little Shop of Horrors” that opens later this month in a conversation with the company’s producing artistic director Greg Longenhagen.

Collier County contains innovation, growth and plenty of wealth. A lot of the community’s innerworkings go unseen by most residents, but there is a podcast looking to change that. We sit down with Amanda Pearson, founder and host of Community Matters, to learn how the podcast came to be and explore the show’s growing impact.