Gulf Coast Life

Florida Repertory Theatre is mounting a production of playwright John Patrick Shanely’s Pulitzer Prize and Tony award-winning drama “Doubt, A Parable.” We take a deeper dive into the show in a conversation with cast members Matt Lytle, Taylor Reister, and Alia Shakira.

In her novel The Ten Year Affair, author Erin Somers investigates the married life of her millennial characters.

A recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal opens with the story of a man who believed his 83-year-old mother was plotting to assassinate him. His conversational partner and sounding board — in that case ChatGPT — told him he wasn’t crazy and his instincts were sharp, and that vigilance was fully justified. Not long after the man killed his mother before taking his own life. This is an example of what’s been dubbed ‘AI Psychosis’ — that’s when people are if not encouraged to cause harm to themselves or others, at least are not discouraged to do so by chatbots like ChatGPT or Gemini, or others. We talk with its author, who is co-founder of a nonprofit that's creating tools and demos to help people understand AI systems on a visceral level.

A new paper published in the Journal Nature Communications Biology investigates the link between exposure to Harmful Algal Bloom neurotoxins and the development of Alzheimer's disease signatures in the brain transcriptome of stranded common bottlenose dolphins found in Florida's Indian River Lagoon. They essentially correlated changes in the dolphin brains’ DNA to chronic and acute exposure to blue green algae blooms. Dolphins serve as a "sentinel species" for Alzheimer’s Diseased because they live so long and can naturally develop Alzheimer’s-like neuropathological changes with age.

Bruce Costella brings a limited engagement of his one-man show “MUTTNIK” at the Calusa Nature Center & Planetarium November 7 – 9. The performance tells the story of Laika, stray dog from the streets of Moscow, who was chosen by Soviet scientists to become the first living animal to orbit the Earth aboard the Sputnik 2 in 1957.

Frontier AI Models are the ones that are highly capable and best represent advancements in language processing, reasoning, and multimodal capabilities. They are on the cutting edge of AI development. Many experts warn Frontier Models could potentially pose risks to public safety, and could have dangerous capabilities. The Frontier Model Forum is an industry-supported non-profit focused on addressing these significant risks to public safety and even national security. Its members currently include Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI. Its core mandates are to identify best practices and support standards development, and to advance science and independent research in the field of AI. We meet its Executive Director, Chris Meserole.

WMFE in Orlando — now called Central Florida Public Media — slowed its coverage of space after the Shuttle Program ended in 2011, but at the end of 2014 they covered the first, uncrewed flight of NASA’s Orion spacecraft — which is part of the Artemis lunar mission — and WMFE’s Brendan Byrne covered it. That story pretty much launched his career covering space, including hosting a podcast called Are We There Yet? which we now air on Saturday evenings at 7:30 on WGCU-FM. So, we thought it would be a good time to get to know him and the show.

St. Matthew’s House in Naples is a faith-based nonprofit that is dedicated to addressing hunger, homelessness, and addiction. Their recent project Faces Beyond Homelessness brings the complex story of homelessness to the community and helps people understand the complex dynamics of homelessness and the people experiencing it. It features 10 chalk drawings by artist Wendy Wagner and is on display now at her gallery in Naples. The portraits capture emotional moments as 10 St. Matthew’s House residents shared the stories of their journey from homelessness to hope for the future.

Players Circle Theater in Fort Myers opens its 7th season this week with a production of playwright Neil Simon’s sophisticated farce “Rumors.” We explore the play in a conversation with director Bob Cacioppo and cast members Carrie Lund Cacioppo and Frank Blocker.

GLSEN is a national nonprofit that works to end discrimination, harassment, and bullying based on sexual orientation and gender identity and promote LGBT inclusion and awareness in K-12 schools. It has more than 40 local chapters across the United States, including one in Collier County. This Saturday, they are presenting the 2025 Youth Pride Conference in Naples from 10am to 4pm at the Naples United Church of Christ. We talk to two GLSEN Collier alumni who are part of Saturday's conference.