Beyond the News WFLA Interviews

We lose an hour when Daylight Saving Time returns March 13th, and losing an hour of sleep in the morning turns Spring Forward into Fall Forward for many. Dr. Fareeha Hussaini of USF Health talks about how to keep from losing sleep over DST. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Nikki Austin speaks about the Skyway 10K run across the Sunshine Skyway over Tampa Bay Sunday (March 6th), benefitting the Armed Forces Family Foundation. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Operation Dynamo, a nonprofit based in Tampa, has assembled a team including many veterans and intelligence experts to get Americans and others out of Ukraine. Spokesman James Judge gives us an update. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Several members of Congress have signed a letter asking President Biden to grant Temporary Protected Status to individuals from Ukraine who are in this country undocumented or illegally. We speak with Florida immigration attorney Renata Castro about what this means. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

History is suddenly a hotly debated topic in the Legislature and local school boards, with controversies over what is taught and how it's taught. At the end of February, Florida historians are getting ready for their annual conference at Saint Leo University north of Tampa. We speak with Dr. Daniel DuBois, a history professor at Saint Leo who's heading the Florida Conference of Historians. See omn...

It's time for the Florida State Fair again. It runs at the fairgrounds in Tampa starting February 10th through the 21st. We speak with the fair's executive director, Cheryl Flood. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Three conservation organizations are involved in two lawsuits that claim the Federal government is not living up to its obligation to protect manatee habitats. We speak with Jaclyn Lopez, Florida director for the Center for Biological Diversity. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Experts with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service held a joint news conference on the manatee mortality event on Florida's east coast. They say 85 died in January, and that while cold weather was a contributing factor, these sea cows were already weakened by starvation due to lack of seagrass. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy informati...

Governor DeSantis has issued an emergency rule denying state licensing to agencies that house unaccompanied minors who have crossed the border and been brought to Florida. About 200 faith leaders are objecting to that rule. We speak with Rev. Dale Schaeffer, with the Florida District of the Church of the Nazarene. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Stephen Breyer retires from the U.S. Supreme Court, and a Floridian could be nominated to succeed him. We speak with Brendan Beery, constitutional law professor at WMU-Cooley Law School in the Tampa suburb of Riverview. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Rare earth elements are crucial in much 21st-century technology. Right now China controls most of the supply, but that could change if a project to extract some of them from phosphate proves successful. We speak with Dr. Patrick Zhang and Dr. James Mennie of Florida Polytechnic University in Lakeland. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The three-day weekend around Martin Luther King Jr Day includes parades and other events on both sides of the Bay. We speak with Howard Harris about the MLK parade and events in Tampa, and Anthony Hart about the MLK parade and weekend events in St. Petersburg. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The three-day weekend around Martin Luther King Jr Day includes parades and other events on both sides of the Bay. We speak with Howard Harris about the MLK parade and events in Tampa, and Anthony Hart about the MLK parade and weekend events in St. Petersburg. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The World's Biggest Bounce House, at more than 13,000 square feet, is appearing in Sarasota's Nathan Benderson Park Friday (14th) thru Sunday (16th) along with other inflatable buildings. We speak with Danielle Hodge, tour manager for The Big Bounce America. https://thebigbounceamerica.com/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Starting Monday, january 3rd, GoPasco bus service will change because the county can't recruit enough drivers. We speak to the county's transit director, Kurt Schieble, about the schedule changes and what they're doing to bring in new drivers. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Christmas is over but Valentine's Day is around the corner. The Pinellas Clerk of Courts office is signing up couples for their wedding and vow renewal ceremony. We speak with the head of the office, Clerk of Courts Ken Burke. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Americans agree that social media platforms are doing more harm than good to our politics, but they disagree on how to fix the problem. We speak with Dr Joshua Scacco, USF Communications Professor and lead student researcher Sam Rechek on a recent poll of one thousand social media users. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There's a slight decline in the number of people observing Christmas. Is that a function of increasing secularization or a short-term response to the pandemic? We speak with Dr. Marc Pugliese, associate professor of religion at St. Leo University, a Catholic institution based in the Tampa Bay area. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

New numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that prices in the Tampa Bay area rose See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Police say a man threw a fellow sailboater off his Catalina into the Intrascoastal off Clearwater, then decided to take off without trying to rescue him. The victim's body was found off Sand Key the next day. That man is now charged with manslaughter. More from Clearwater police spokesman Rob Shaw. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A poll from Saint Leo University in the Tampa Bay area finds that 80 percent of us look forward to Christmas and the other year-end holidays but about two-thirds of us are glad when they're over. The reason: stress. We speak with St. Leo psychology professor Christopher Wolfe about dealing with Christmas stress. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This coming Sunday (12th), residents of two historic African-American neighborhoods in St. Petersburg are holding a reunion at the facility that replaced them -- Tropicana Field. We speak with Gwendolyn Reese of the African American Heritage Association of St. Petersburg on the event and about a recent report to city council on structural racism. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information...

Florida Polytechnic University has acquired a "drive by wire" car that becomes part of a system that could be used to test and vet the coming generation of fully autonomous, self-driving vehicles, particularly the software that runs them. We speak with asst professor of mathematics A.J. Alnaser, PhD. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The supply chain backlog is one of the big economic issues of 2021, and one big problem is a shortage of truck drivers. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The St. Petersburg Biff-Burger is closed and its physical remnants are to be auctioned off "to the bare walls" Tuesday, December 7th. We speak with Greg Farner, owner of Bay Area Auction Services, about what's for sale, and we touch on the Biff-Burger's history as the last location in a formerly widespread burger chain that was born in the Tampa Bay area. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy in...