Three Song Stories

Episode 217 - Apollo Fresh

Apollo Fresh (or Jonathon Appolon) is a local nerdcore rapper who specializes in anime rap. As a second generation Haitian immigrant who grew up consuming hip-hop and anime, Apollo decided to combine his passions and before graduating, produced his first big hit single, Jojo Pose in 2020. Since then, he’s been creating solo and collaborative music and videos for YouTube, Tiktok, Spotify, and Instagram, with an upcoming EP, “Life is anime” set to release. 

Apollo also holds a bachelors in Entrepreneurship and was selected for rapper IDK’s No Label Academy, at Harvard University. 

Episode 216 - Sabrina Salovitz

Sabrina is the Editor-in-Chief of Eagle News and is one of WGCU’s Democracy Watch Fellows, covering news local to Southwest Florida with a focus on government. She’s also been a Next Generation Radio reporter for NPR. 

Sabrina plans to graduate this semester, and will be working on her Masters in Journalism at NYU in the Fall.

Episode 215 - Dr. Jake von Scherrer

 Dr. Jake von Scherrer is creator and host of The Educational AD Podcast which showcases High School Athletic directors, coaches, and Olympic athletes from across the country and around the world. He’s also the author of The Athletic Director's Toolbox, and has served as President of the FIAAA, and several other state and national athletic associations. 

Episode 214 - Katie Fogarty

Katie Fogarty is a junior Journalism major at FGCU. She's involved in Eagle News, the FGCU Odyssey Magazine, the Journalism department at FGCU, and WGCU as a News Reporting Intern. Over the summer, Katie plans to intern at the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting in Jackson, Mississippi. 

Episode 213 - Bob Morris

Bob Morris is an American novelist who writes Caribbean-themed mysteries. He is also the author of several collections of nonfiction, including Gut Check, Short Road to Hell, The Man with the Fish on His Foot, All Over the Map, and The Whole Shebang.

He’s also president of Story Farm, which is a custom publishing company that creates books, magazines and other publications for a wide variety of clients. And he’s an adjunct professor at Rollins College where he teaches courses in food writing and crime fiction.

After graduating from the University of Florida, he worked at a number of newspapers, including the Florida Keys Free Press, the Fort Myers News-Press, the Orlando Sentinel, and the New York Times Regional Newspaper Group. He’s also been editor in chief of Caribbean Travel & Life magazine and Gulfshore Life magazine.

Episode 212 - Patience Cole

Patience Cole is the Digital Media editor for Razzle Dazzle, the Pop culture and video games podcast, which has had Mike, Richard, and Tara as guests. Go check it out! She's also a production intern at WINK News, a digital marketing intern at Celsius Marketing interactive a singer-songwriter, and an about-to-graduate English major at FGCU.

Episode 211 - Amy Ginsburg

Amy Ginsburg is Executive Director of the Southwest Florida Symphony, a fully professional orchestra that’s based at the Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall in Fort Myers.

She graduated from Ft. Myers High and attended Edison State College and University of South Florida as a fine-arts major. She then attended the Gemological Institute of America. After a career in jewelry design and manufacture, she co-owned and operated a marketing and media production company called Waddy World Productions before beginning her career with the Southwest Florida Symphony in 2013.

Episode 210 - Jim Hale

Jim Hale graduated from Dartmouth in 1962, and from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1965. He served as a law clerk to Chief Justice Earl Warren at the Supreme Court in 1965-66 where he spent a significant amount of this time helping to draft the Miranda opinion. 

After 13 years with the Minneapolis law firm of Faegre & Benson in 1979 Jim joined General Mills as head of its international acquisition team. He then joined Dayton Hudson Corp. in 1981, which was later renamed Target Corp., where he served as executive vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary until retiring in 2004.

Jim Hale and his late wife, Sharon, moved to Southwest Florida in 2007 after spending their working years in Minnesota. Jim is also chair of the WGCU Public Media Advisory Board - which is how we met him - but he's also a writer, a songwriter, and a blues harmonica player for the group Jim Hale and Friends.

 

Jim is chair of the WGCU Public Media Advisory Board - which is how we met him

Episode 209 - Miles Mancini

Miles Mancini started playing piano at the age of five. He grew up amid musical excellence as his father, George Mancini, worked with the likes of jazz greats Toots Thielemans, Jaco Pastorias, Herbie Hancock, Henry Mancini and many others. As a child, he played piano in front of audiences in Frankfurt, Germany to Paris, France. 

Miles was part of the inaugural class at FGCU and graduated in 2001 with a degree in communication and history. He joined the Communication faculty back in 2004 and in 2016-17 helped develop the new Integrated Studies program with Dr. Maria Roca. He is a current member of the Integrated Studies faculty.

Episode 208 - Jerry Mitchell

Jerry Mitchell is an investigative reporter whose work has helped lead to convictions of Klansmen for the 1963 assassination of Medgar Evers, the 1963 bombing of a Birmingham church that killed four girls, and the 1964 slayings of three civil rights workers. His work also led to the 2016 conviction of Felix Vail — the oldest conviction in a serial killer case in U.S. history. 

He was depicted in the film Ghosts of Mississippi which covered the events of the Medgar Evers, and while he wasn’t depicted in it, the film Mississippi Burning covered the FBI investigation of the Birmingham church bombing.

Jerry is also founder of the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting - a nonprofit news organization that reports on the criminal justice system, public corruption, political cronyism, and racial disparities to name a few things.

He’s also a MacArthur genius grant winner, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and author of Race Against Time - his account of covering unsolved murders in the civil rights era.

 

Episode 207 - David Brown

David Brown is the Co-Founder and President of Family Initiative, a nonprofit organization which serves children and adults diagnosed on the autism spectrum, along with families engaged by the child welfare system.

David is also actively involved in leadership positions for multiple state agencies focusing on the empowerment of foster families. David has worked in the field of child welfare for over two decades, in foster care licensing, child protective investigations, as well as a training specialist prior to launching Family Initiative.

Episode 206 - Grant Billings

Grant Billings is cofounder of the Southwest Florida Steinway Piano Society's Young Artist Piano Competition and the president of the local Steinway Piano Society, in addition to owning the Steinway Piano Gallery. Born into a multigenerationally musical family - Grant made his instrument the turntables. He DJ’d for more than 25 years, starting all the way back in high school. Last year we offered a slot on the show as a silent auction item for fundraiser the Alliance for the Arts was doing, and Grant’s wife Colleen secretly won it and gave him the interview as a Christmas gift.

Episode 205 - Jamie Kuser

Jamie Kuser and his wife are the owners and operators of Happenings Magazine and Lee Family News magazine for the past 17 years. Jamie leverages his family's multi-generation history in journalism to cover the arts scene in Southwest Florida. As he puts it, "If you can’t find good art in our town, you’re looking in the wrong place - here’s a magazine!"

He’s also co-founder and co-chair of Fort Myers Artwalk, a monthly art and music festival in Fort Myers where local bands perform and artists of all mediums take over downtown. 

Episode 204 - Benjamin Murray

Benjamin Murray is a filmmaker, director, cinematographer, and producer who has taken home best director and best cinematographer from festivals like the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival Awards, the Chain NYC Film Festival, UK Film Festival, UK, and the Independent Horror Movie Awards.

After an injury ended his baseball aspirations Ben took up making videos, and by the age of 16 he was dead set on a film program in NYC, and now owns his own production company while continuing to make films.

Episode 203 - Jeff Cull

Jeff Cull is Florida Weekly’s executive editor and is responsible for all content and management for nine newspapers with a combined circulation of more than 90,000, and is co-founder and managing partner of Florida Media Group LLC, publishers of Florida Weekly.

He earned his bachelor’s degree from the U.S. Naval Academy. He flew the Navy’s carrier-based S-3 Viking and retired as a Commander.

Jeff began his journalism career in 2000 as a reporter at The News-Press and pursued public-service journalism as an investigative reporter.

Episode 202 - Mariapia Malerba

Mariapia Malerba is a multidisciplinary artist who was born in Puglia , a region in Southern Italy.  She has created textile designs Dolce Gabbana and Versace. She is now Senior textile designer for White House Black Market, and her work has been showcased in various galleries in all over Italy and America. 

Episode 201 - Marie Heisler

Marie Heisler leads PR and communication efforts at Mercola, a global brand that provides natural health information and biodynamic and organic supplements. Marie sits on the board of the Cape Coral Chapter of the FGCU Alumni Association and is active with the Southwest Florida Chapter of the Florida Public Relations Association.

Bonus Mini-Episode: Rock Talk

Wherein Mike and Meg launch their 1-minute rock tumbling podcast.

Episode 200 - Meg Favreau

Meg Favreau is a filmmaker, writer, and artist whos worked primarily on animated series for Netflix, Hulu, Warner Brothers Animation, Hasbro, and Mattel. In 2020, her short film Hot Dog Steering Wheel won Best Short Short at the Fort Myers Film Festival.

Meg has also worked in food writing, often focusing on weird and forgotten recipes. In 2011, she published the cookbook Little Old Lady Recipes: Comfort Food and Kitchen Table Wisdom.

Her essays have appeared in The New Yorker’s Shouts and Murmurs, Real Simple, Eating Well, McSweeney’s, and The American Bystander. 

Episode 199 - B. Stille

Buffalo “B.” Stille is a Grammy Nominated musician, and vocalist for the Nappy Roots, an American alternative Southern rap quartet, best known for their hit singles "Awnaw", "Roun' The Globe" and "Good Day". They were the best selling hip hop group of 2002.

In 2019, Stille completed his bachelor’s degree University of Louisville, and is sharing his back-to-college experience in hopes of inspiring others in Kentucky to further their education.