During this edition of Florida's Fourth Estate, hosts Ginger Gadsden and Matt Austin along with guest, UCF professor David Morton, unearth Florida's forgotten role in the early film industry.

 Hard to believe but Jacksonville once rivaled Hollywood.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

These instances are the result of drug traffickers from Central and South America who attempt to smuggle cocaine and other narcotics into the United States.

Matt and Ginger explore what this means for sharks and other ocean life, with Dr. Tracy Fanara.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With a knack for uncovering the strange and unusual, Talcott has made a name for himself by finding and sharing these captivating tales.

“Florida’s history is full of interesting and quirky stories,” Talcott shares during the podcast, reflecting on his passion for these unique discoveries.

From towns with odd names to mysterious vigilantes, Talcott delves into the bizarre yet fascinating corners of the Sunshine State.

One of the standout stories discussed in the podcast is the origin of Taintsville, a small community in Seminole County.

As Talcott explains, “They didn’t really feel like they had a lot of identity, so a lot of the folks around there used to joke, ‘Well, we t’aint in Oviedo, and we t’aint in Chuluota.’”

This playful origin story, based on the town’s location between Oviedo and Chuluota, is a perfect example of the local humor that often defines Florida’s communities.

Talcott also addresses the infamous myth surrounding loofahs in The Villages, which many believed were being used as a secret code for swingers.

“It seems like it was a joke that was made by a drag queen a few years back,” Tony clarifies, debunking the widely spread rumor.

Instead, he discovered that the decorations on cars and golf carts were simply a way for elderly residents to find their vehicles in crowded parking lots.

In another fascinating revelation, Talcott discusses the mysterious anti-gravity monuments found in Florida.

These monuments were commissioned by millionaire Roger Babson, who, according to Tony, “really had a bone to pick with gravity” and blamed it for various societal issues, including the death of his sister.

Babson’s unique mission to “wage a war on gravity” led him to fund scientific research aimed at overcoming this natural force, resulting in these unusual monuments.

The podcast also highlights the story of Ratman, a viral sensation at the University of Central Florida (UCF).

As Tony recalls, “There was a viral video online of some guy in a rat costume... stopping a supposed bike thief on the campus.”

The video, which was part of a student film project, quickly gained attention, with many students mistaking it for a real-life superhero incident.

Talcott’s top story, however, is about the hidden “Ginger Ale Spring” near I-4 in Longwood.

This spring, which smells of sulfur, was once used by a ginger ale plant.

“They thought this was gonna be the next big thing,” says Talcott, but the business never took off, leaving behind this curious relic in the woods.

Tony Talcott’s dedication to uncovering and sharing these stories has not only entertained but also educated many Floridians.

As he puts it, “Finding out other folks like these stories too just makes me super happy.”

For those eager to explore more of Florida’s hidden gems, Tony’s articles and appearances on ClickOrlando are a must-follow.

Whether it’s the bizarre origins of a town’s name or the truth behind urban legends, Tony Talcott continues to shed light on the peculiar and captivating stories that make Florida one of the most interesting places in the world.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Michael Keller, CEO of Jeremiah’s Italian Ice, joined anchors Ginger Gadsden and Matt Austin on Florida’s Fourth Estate to share the captivating origin story of this beloved brand.

The journey began with Jeremy Litwack, a passionate entrepreneur from South Jersey. Inspired by the classic Italian ice (or “water ice” as it’s known in Philly. Please don’t try to pronounce “water ice” like they do in Philly. It won’t end well for you) of his hometown, Jeremy began experimenting with recipes as early as 1988 while attending the University of Delaware.

From Push Cart to Brick-and-Mortar

Litwack’s dream wasn’t just about creating a delicious product; it was about sharing it with the world. He started small, peddling his perfected Italian ice from behind a pushcart, sometimes even on rollerblades. He was a hockey player so he knew what he was doing. The journey led him to Florida, where in 1996, he opened the first Jeremiah’s Italian Ice location in Winter Park, Orlando.

Growing Pains and Breakthroughs

Like many great businesses, Jeremiah’s faced its share of struggles. Litwack was bringing a northeastern concept to the sunny state of Florida, and it took time to catch on. Early on, there were quiet days, with few customers and even fewer sales, but Litwack’s belief in his product never wavered. He focused on grassroots efforts, building the brand one customer at a time, even going so far as to place coupons on the windshields of cars parked in his lot. What can we say, the guy had an insatiable drive.

A Franchise Success Story

In 2019, Litwack and his team decided to take Jeremiah’s to the next level by franchising. The first franchise locations opened in 2020, and within just a few years, the company expanded to nearly 130 stores across 11 states. The growth has been phenomenal, and the brand shows no signs of slowing down. When Matt Austin Asked the CEO about growing too fast, Keller explained they take great pains to make sure each location lives up to the Jeremiah’s promise of quality.

A Taste That Stays with You

When, FFE host, Ginger Gadsden got to taste Jeremiah’s Italian ice during the podcast, she couldn’t help but rave about the unique, layered flavors. The blend of Italian ice and custard creates a taste sensation that keeps customers coming back for more. Ginger’s reaction was priceless, likening the experience to a wine tasting where the flavors continue to unfold with each bite.

The Future of Jeremiah’s Italian Ice

Looking ahead, Jeremiah’s has big plans. With a goal to expand to 300 stores within a few years, the company is poised for continued success. New products and flavors are on the horizon, promising to delight customers in new and exciting ways.

A Sweet Legacy

Jeremiah’s Italian Ice has grown from a single pushcart to a nationwide franchise, all while staying true to its sweet roots. As Michael Keller puts it, the future is bright, with endless possibilities for growth and innovation. Whether you’re in Florida or across the country, one thing is clear: Jeremiah’s is here to stay, one cup of delicious Italian ice at a time.

The original Jeremiah’s Italian Ice, which opened in Winter Park, is still open for business and located at 6864 Aloma Ave.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

18-year-old Atreya Manaswi has devoted the last five years of his life to saving the bee population. The young man has worked with the United States Department of Agriculture, University of Florida and spoken in front of the United Nations.

It all started when a friend’s grandfather told the teen about the huge decline in bees. Manaswi, only 12 years old at the time, promised the man he would find a solution. “Something is happening to them within the past few decades,” said Manaswi.

And the numbers back up his claims. According to the USDA, commercial honeybee populations have been dropping for years. Manaswi started attending conferences and lectures. Before he knew it, the preteen found himself inside a lab researching solutions.

“It’s really intimidating at first. I was 12 years old, and I didn’t really know what I was doing,” Manaswi said.

Manaswi decided to target two specific problems the bees are having: The pests and the pesticides are hurting colonies the most.

Soon the budding scientist started testing different solutions inside a small trap in the hive. The goal is to lure tiny pests called the small hive beetle which drown in the solution while the bees go about their work. If left to their own devices, the beetles destroy eggs, honey, and pollen stores in the comb while spreading diseases in the hive.

After countless trial and error, Manaswi found a compound made of beer that was able to entice the beetles at an exciting rate.

“It’s actually 33 times better than the organic agent beekeepers are previously using which was apple cider vinegar,” Manaswi said.

The teen scientist also says his compound is way less expensive than traditional pesticides. It costs about $14 to get started.

For all his work, Manaswi has won a cacophony of prizes, most recently the Barron Prize. The organization selected 15 young heroes making positive change in the ecosystem and improving the environment.

The beer blend is currently under peer review to see if other scientists can replicate the low-cost, eco-friendly, and effective answer for the bees and beekeepers.

Manaswi has racked up many awards and many bee stings along the way to success.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

She is the youngest of seven children.

She said all of her siblings are successful.

But as a child, she didn’t see their success as enviable.

She saw it as boring.

She told Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden on Florida’s Fourth Estate, when she thought of their lives she thought, “Your life looks really boring, going to work every day, doing these routine mundane things.”

She said she wanted excitement, and she found it in targeting wealthy homes and stealing some of their most prized possessions.

Altogether, she said she burglarized hundreds of homes: “I don’t actually know the number, I’m going solely by what the detectives said and what was in my paperwork. It was 200, on paper, documented, that you can find.”

Now Gomez is coming clean sharing her stories on social media and warning people to stop doing simple things that make them and their homes a target.

For starters she said to stop making assumptions, “These people would look at me in these neighborhoods, communicate with me, look me straight in the eyes, and never suspect anything because of the way that I look.”

She added, “Everybody that’s here to hurt you or cause you harm doesn’t look the way your mind thinks they look. There’s no stereotype.”

Gomez pointed out she lived in wealthy communities and had wealthy friends and that the things they do to protect themselves often helped her plot against them. She said signage indicating which surveillance company a homeowner used, notifications that they had a pet, and large bushes helped her better plan her home burglaries.

She said she also tried to target homes that were closer to the front of the community.

She pointed out, “The last thing I wanted was to burglarize a home and then be stuck way in the back of the neighborhood and have to come out and possibly pass police officers or whomever.”

However after breaking into hundreds of homes Gomez did eventually come across a homeowner, then police, and was arrested.

She said she spent time behind bars on three separate occasions and even gave birth to her child when she was incarcerated.

After getting out, Gomez said she turned her life around and is now committed to helping others avoid becoming a target.

You can learn more about Gomez on Florida’s Fourth Estate. You can download the podcast from wherever you listen to podcasts or watch anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tiffani Gay is heading into her senior year of high school. She also hopes to catch the attention of her dream university, Harvard.

The world has changed a lot since Gay last appeared on Florida’s Fourth Estate. After going viral on our YouTube channel, Gay got a call from the Tamron Hall Show.

“Without you, I don’t think I would have gotten that opportunity,” Gay said.

She has become known around the world for her invention that can help visually impaired people navigate using radar instead of guide dogs or a cane.

“I’m getting replies from inventors in Switzerland and inventors here locally asking to collaborate on a host of different projects,” Gay said. “The next project I’m working on is an electromagnetic system that is capable of separating oil from water.”

She recently won first place from NOAA for her research in this field. She is hoping to one day use the technology to help animals impacted by oil spills in the ocean. Another new passion involves social issues.

Gay has noticed one common theme in her science classes.

“It’s kind of overbearingly full of men right now,” she said.

Gay was one of two girls in her high-level science classes.

“I felt like making a mistake would make me and all of the other women in the room look less intelligent,” she said.

So, she and her partner in class co-founded Girls Who Code.

Every Wednesday, they mentor 2nd to 4th grade girls. The little ladies started out shy.

“As the months passed, I watched them become more interactive with the classroom,” Gay said.

Gay and her friend brought in robots and made the classroom a living breathing experience.

This busy high schooler said keeping this intense schedule isn’t easy, but a tight-knit friend group keeps her grounded.

“We are the closest friend group ever,” Gay said.,

She went to prom with a group of girls who had been together since middle school. She looks to them for balance.

“Just having that great group of friends who are all really ambitious has been very important to me,” Gay said.

As for the future, Gay will have a lot of options for college. One institution stands above the rest.

“For me right now my dream college is Harvard University,” she said.

She is researching there this summer. Gay appreciates the university’s options for research during undergraduate years. She’s also very interested in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Wherever she goes, we will keep you updated as she takes over the world.

You can hear more from Gay on Florida’s Fourth Estate. The podcast is available from wherever you listen to podcasts or anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s when the ground caves in, often bringing down everything on top of it. Roads, businesses and homes have all been impacted.

Dr. Manoj Chopra has researched sinkholes and erosion at the University of Central Florida and said much of Central Florida is part of “Sinkhole Alley.”

“It goes all the way from Hillsborough County, and close to Tampa, all the way up to Daytona, and it goes through our areas of Maitland and Winter Park,” Chopra told Florida’s Fourth Estate hosts Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden.

Lake Eola actually started as a sinkhole.

Chopra said part of the lake collapsed through the aquifer and filled with water. He said much of the lake is shallow, but the part that collapsed is very deep.

He pointed out that Lake Rose in Winter Park also started as a sinkhole. It caused a car dealership to collapse and some of the cars were never recovered.

Chopra said there is an easy way to see if a lake started as a sinkhole.

“If you fly over Central Florida, if you see those really round lakes, they’re probably sinkholes, because a sinkhole is typically a funnel that fails the surface and falls in,” Chopra said.

While they are pretty from the sky, they can be concerning and dangerous in residential areas.

The engineering professor said if you have a home in the impacted area, you should check out the Florida Geological Survey map of Sinkholes and learn the history of the area.

Chopra said there are two types of sinkholes: ones that form under sand usually produce depressions before the limestone underneath gives way, but when the ground has a layer of clay under it, like the one in Seffner that suddenly collapsed and killed a man in his sleep, there are little to no warning signs.

Chopra said that’s because the clay acts as a barrier, everything falls apart below, then once everything is gone, the clay barrier falls and everything on top comes tumbling down too.

If you want to make sure the land you are living on is safe Chopra said you can talk to Central Florida experts or get a geotechnical firm to come out and bore into the ground.

To learn more about sinkholes and how they are formed check out Florida’s Fourth Estate.

You can download the podcast from wherever you listen to podcasts or watch anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

About 10 minutes into a fossil hunting trip to Venice Beach, Lundberg said he spotted something that looked like a piece of wood stuck in the sand.

He told Florida’s Fourth Estate hosts Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden that he dove down about 25 feet and started dusting it off.

“I kind of recognize it as it’s probably mammoth ivory or mastodon tusk,” he said.

After about 20 minutes the marine biologist was able to unearth it and realized it was indeed a 4-foot-long, 70-pound mastodon tusk.

The animals, which scientists say date back about 23 million years, went extinct about 10,000 years ago. Lundberg said finding something this old in one piece is unusual.

“It was absolutely surreal. I have been fossil hunting for 20 years and I never thought I would find something like this. We find broken pieces of tusk all the time down there, just small pieces, but usually, they don’t stay intact like this they fall apart or storms break them up. I mean the fact that this one stayed in one piece is so surreal and so exciting,” he said.

After cleaning and drying out his discovery, Lundberg said he has been keeping it at his house.

“It’s actually sitting in a Christmas ornament box next to my bed,” he said.

Lundberg hopes he will get to keep it and pass it down to his grandkids, but first, he has to report his finding to the state.

“All vertebrate fossils in Florida found on public land or public water technically belong to the state unless they say otherwise. As amazing as that tusk is, the Florida Museum has way better stuff. They have whole skeletons so hopefully they are not interested in it and I get to keep it, but we will see when it comes time to report it,” he said.

You can learn more about Lundberg, his epic find and how he got his start as a fossil hunter on Florida’s Fourth Estate. The podcast can be downloaded from wherever you listen to podcasts or watch anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It does not have traditional air conditioning. But it does have a massive fan.

That fan pushes him and his guests through a massive lake surrounded by alligators.

He is a captain at Boggy Creek Airboat Adventures and has been taking people on tours of Lake Tohopekaliga for the past 15 years.

Florida Fish and Wildlife recently reported Lake Toho, as the locals call it, has 6,316 gators in it.

That’s the 11th most of any body of water in the state of Florida.

With so many, you might think it would be easy to spot an alligator, but Ruggeri told Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden on Florida’s Fourth Estate, that spotting one during the late spring and summer months is harder because it’s hot and the gators are doing everything they can to stay cool.

That includes camping out under lily pads in the shallow area of the lake.

So when you think you are looking at a rock, it may just be a 12-foot alligator.

Ruggieri, who has been piloting airboats since 2008 said, “It’s not so much by training your eye as it is training your brain. Once you can lock in and learn what those signatures are it becomes second nature after that.”

Ruggie said his passion for taking pictures of wildlife has also trained him to spot the small eyes and tip of the alligator’s nose poking out among the plants in the water.

If you hop aboard a ride with Ruggieri you may not come out an expert, but he will use his expert skills to help you spot the wildlife in their natural territory.

Don’t be surprised when you hear him shouting out, “Hey guys look over here to your right,” “It looks like a rock with eyeballs,” and “That’s a gator’s head right there” much like he did when he took Matt and Ginger on a ride into natural Florida.

You can learn more about Ruggieri, how he went from the Bronx to the Sunshine State, and how he accidentally became an airboat captain when he got here, on Florida’s Fourth Estate.

You can download the podcast from wherever you listen to podcasts or watch any time on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Morgan said Flair stepped out of retirement to help him launch his career to the next level.

Following his wrestling career, Morgan has stepped into a new arena. He is now the Deputy Mayor of Longwood and is using his position to help people with autism find the resources they need.

During a recording of Florida’s Fourth Estate, Morgan told Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden his son Jackson has helped spur his passion.

“He was diagnosed as non-verbal autistic,” Morgan said. “He pushes and nudges us in the direction of things that he wants.”

He said his son and others on the spectrum experience the world differently. As Morgan and his wife have worked to provide Jackson with the resources he needs he said they found many great things worth sharing.

So the couple is bringing those resources together this weekend during the Second Annual Longwood Walk for Autism and Inclusion.

He said not only will families have the opportunity to come out and enjoy therapy pets and cartoon characters, but they will also be connected with more than 50 Central Florida vendors that cater to people who are neurodiverse.

The event is free.

It will be held Saturday, April 27 from 11 a.m. - 1 p.m. at Reiter Park in Longwood.

You can learn more about the event and Morgan’s career as a wrestler on Florida’s Fourth Estate.

You can download the podcast from wherever you listen to podcasts or watch anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Armogida said it all started when she and her husband were watching their favorite TV show.

“Every time we would watch he would say, ‘Oh my gosh babe, you are so much better than these people. Why don’t you sign up?’ And at first I was like, ‘Ha ha very funny,’ but after he had said it multiple times, I finally went, ‘Well he’s not wrong.’ So then I was like, ‘You know what? I’m going to sign up.’ It was a super quick, five-minute, I didn’t even fill out the entire application. I submitted it just to get him off my back. Had no hopes of ever being contacted.”

Then she said the producers from “Naked and Afraid” actually reached out.

“They sent me an email and I thought it was a scam, I thought it was like fake,” said Armogida.

She figured out, it was legit and soon after she was dropped off in South Africa with a stranger, sans clothes. The new duo was left to create their own shelter, hunt for food and survive for 21 days.

Armogida told Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden on Florida’s Fourth Estate her unique upbringing prepared her for the opportunity.

“I grew up in Western Washington on a small homestead where we grew our own food and we were just backed up to the forest where my brothers and sisters and I would go out into the forest barefoot all day every day and we’d build forts and we would find food to eat that, who knows, didn’t kill me, I’m still here today. And we would just live as like wild forest children. So, I’m very comfortable in that environment,” Armogida said.

She also told Matt and Ginger she was a hiker for many years and knows how to identify food in the wild.

“I have a long extensive background in wild edible identification and foraging, mushrooming as well. I am also a huntress,” Armogida said.

Since her interview on Florida’s Fourth Estate, Armogida announced her next big challenge to premiere on Discovery Channel will be on Naked and Afraid XL. That show will be available on May 12 on Discovery Channel. Her previous show can also be streamed on Max and Discovery+.

Learn more about Armogida’s military service, farm in Mims, and what it was like to survive in South Africa for three weeks on Florida’s Fourth Estate. The podcast is available from wherever you listen to podcasts and anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It is a 1986 river ship that takes people through Lake Monroe and into the St. John’s River.

It can fit up to 300 people and if you come out on a Friday night, the new owner said you can enjoy the experience for as little as $25.

Michelle Wyatt recently purchased the St. Johns Rivership Co. with the goal of letting more people know about the hidden gem. She said it has been in operation for 40 years, but only started offering tickets online since she purchased it.

Wyatt told Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden on Florida’s Fourth Estate owning a piece of Florida history is a point of pride for her.

“Steamboats, riverships have been in Sanford for over 100 years now and the fact that we are the last one really speaks to me,” Wyatt said.

She also enjoys the fact that people visit her to celebrate life’s biggest milestones.

“We have had a number of people married on the boat that come back year after year to celebrate their anniversary,” Wyatt said.

She said birthday celebrations are also popular aboard the Barbara Lee.

“We had three centenarians on the same cruise, celebrating their Birthday, it was 100, 102, and 105,” Wyatt said.

Cruises range from two to four hours and if you are lucky you may even spot some unique wildlife.

“We actually have bull sharks in this river. They suspect that they come in to give birth and then they head back out to the ocean, but yes there are bullsharks in this water especially if they have young,” Wyatt said,

Wyatt said guests also enjoy seeing manatee and osprey. She is renovating the ship but said she is also holding on to the history that attracted her to it in the first place.

“The words we are going for is ‘historical elegance.’ You know that old Florida feel which is encompassed by the paddle wheels and obviously the decoration throughout it, and the lighting.”

You can get your ticket to hop onboard the Barbara Lee here.

You can also learn more about the boat, how you can get behind the wheel and the woman who left a tech career to run this unique operation on Florida’s Fourth Estate. You can download the podcast from wherever you listen to podcasts or watch anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

But, the original plans for the city were much larger.

Brigitte Stephenson is the museum curator at the Sanford Museum. She talked to Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden on Florida’s Fourth Estate about what almost was.

“Henry Sanford originally came down here in Florida and realized after the American Civil War that Florida was probably going to be a place that’s going to rebound, mainly because of citrus,” she said.

Sanford had a wealth of knowledge about the citrus industry and was even inducted into the Citrus Hall of Fame for his experimental gardens and groves.

So when he came to the area that is now named in his honor, he thought it was the perfect spot to design a city because it was the end of the line for riverboats on the St. John’s River.

“We were going to become the gateway city. The idea was that we would be the gateway to South Florida,” Stephenson said.

For a while, Stephenson said Sanford was the major Central Florida town in the area thanks in part to investors in the United Kingdom pouring into Henry Sanford’s Florida Land and Colonization Company.

But she said, “There are several different factors for why we didn’t become what Orlando is today.”

One reason is people who were focused on agriculture didn’t want to grow.

She said another is because, “We had a mayor on the eve of the great recession, turns out he was embezzling money.”

The fact that Henry Flagler built a railroad system to the Keys also cut into the plan of establishing Sanford as the gateway to the South.

Still, the town continued to establish itself as a citrus hub, despite controversy within the workforce.

“Henry Sanford tries originally hiring the local population, he does not think they do a good job and fires them. Then he tries bringing in people who were formerly enslaved, that were Black from Monticello, Florida in this area. Now, most of the people he fired before were white and very upset that they viewed these people were taking their jobs and tried to conduct a series of basically intimidation and murder to drive out these workers in the area,” Stephenson said.

She pointed out, “That’s the reason we have Georgetown, which is a historically Black community that was recently inducted in the National Register.”

To help overcome this issue, Henry Sanford brought in Swedish workers.

“Underneath the contract labor law, he is able to bring in Swedes and they have to work for him for five years and that would pay for their room, and boarding, and passage and they would eventually get a little bit of property in what is the area that we call New Upsala.”

After overcoming the heat, Stephenson said those families quickly assimilated and pointed out you will still meet a lot of people with Swedish last names in the area.

“But unfortunately, we had a freeze in 1895 and 1896 that destroyed our citrus industry and instead of being like, ‘Welp, I give up,’ the people of Sanford decided to do another luxury crop and they chose celery,” Stephenson said.

You wouldn’t know it, based on prices today, but Stephenson said, “It used to be considered one of the most expensive vegetables” and that “You can actually look at old hotel menus, like The Waldorf, and it’s like blanched celery is as much as like filet mignon or something like that, it’s wild.”

However, the celery gold mine also fizzled out after Stephenson said farmers over-inflated the industry to the point celery was no longer considered a unique commodity.

Despite the fact Sanford didn’t become everything Henry Sanford planned for it to become, Stephenson said it’s still a great place to call home.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Now we are learning more about the health benefits that came along with that study.

The retired Navy diver and Executive Director of the International Board of Undersea Medicine said being underwater for so long was like being in a hyperbaric chamber.

He told Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden on the Florida’s Fourth Estate podcast that being nestled about 30 feet under the lagoon for more than three months, reversed the age of his DNA.

“I’m 56 now. My extrinsic age was 44. When I got out of the water my extrinsic age was 34. So my telomeres lengthened, I actually got younger when I was under the water,” Dituri said.

To better explain how it works, Dituri explained, “On the end of your chromosome, you have these little extensions.... and every time you replicate this, the telomere shrinks, shrinks, shrinks, shrinks, shrinks... let’s just say you get one-thousand replications. That’s all you get. When the telomeres are gone, you have no more ability to replicate, that’s called cell death... so that is truly the world-class definition of aging. But, if you can make that telomere longer you can actually extend life.”

He said 9 months later his telomeres are still longer than they otherwise would be.

Those aren’t the only benefits.

Dituri said he also had 17 times the number of stem cells as usual and a reduction in pain which was likely associated with the fact that his inflamatory markers were reduced by 50%.

He said these kinds of results are promising but not altogether surprising.

He said hyperbaric treatment has been used for hundreds of years and is currently being used to treat people with brain injuries and PTSD because of its ability to help with cognitive issues.

However, the treatment is not open to everyone.

He said people interested in getting it do need a prescription from a doctor and treatments can start at $250 per hour.

You can learn more about the results of Dituri’s time underwater for 100 days and the following research that took him into weightlessness on Florida’s Fourth Estate. You can download the podcast from wherever you listen to podcasts or watch anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Now the new owners are hoping they will inspire the next golf greats to get their start in East Orange County with their family at their side.

Gregor Tilch-Jensen and his wife recently bought Rio Pinar Golf and the duo isn’t wasting any time breathing new life into the historic golf course.

If the walls could talk they would probably tell you all about the Florida Citrus Open.

“It was a great event they hosted here with an unbelievable winner’s list, from Arnold Palmer, Lee Trevino, Hale Irwin, Julius Boros, all Hall of Famers and people who tried to win here and never did, Sam Sneade, Jack Nicklaus, they were here, couldn’t do it.”

But, the walls would also tell you about the new owners’ plans to go beyond that history.

Tilch-Jensen stood on the green telling the hosts of Florida’s Fourth Estate that he sees this location as less “members only” and more community.

“We want to be a destination for families,” Tilch-Jensen said.

He said he is bringing new technology to his hitting bays, building a pickleball court and re-furbishing one of his tennis courts.

The amateur golfer turned instructor, turned golf course owner told hosts Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden that creating a space where parents and kids can play together is near and dear to his heart.

“My kids love golf as well. My wife and I met on a golf course. It’s just part of our life, it always has been,” Tilch-Jensen said.

He admitted it’s not as popular of a sport in his home country of Germany, but once he got a hold of a golf club, he fell in love and wanted to introduce that passion to the next generation of golf enthusiasts.

To do that he said he has developed a long-term plan, which involves moving his wife and their children to Central Florida. He said he is committed to making Rio Pinar Golf a success again.

“You want to make it work and you don’t want to let down the people you love the most,” he said.

His wife is fully onboard and has focused on helping to redesign the interior of the golf course’s clubhouse.

“It’s not really like a golf club, it’s really loungy-modern, which is located at a golf course. Leaving the former Champions’ Room, which is now the Oak Room, just modernize that a little bit, which you still have the history part of it and still have the trophy from Arnold Palmer in it, but that’s a separate space, so now again, everyone feels comfortable,” he said.

To learn more about Tilch-Jensen’s plans for Rio Pinar Golf check out Florida’s Fourth Estate. You can download the podcast from wherever you listen to podcasts and watch it anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When you get into a room with him, he is as humble, funny and sincere as they come.

News 6 Insiders and other viewers were invited into the room as Florida’s Fourth Estate hosted a live recording with Holtz at Miller’s Ale House in Winter Park Village.

He talked to podcast hosts Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden about what keeps him humble, his time coaching Notre Dame, and the current state of college football.

Austin asked, “I’m fascinated, coach, to ask you where you think college football is headed, because as a fan it’s been frustrating to see these teams — it seems like the players I root for one year are gone the next year, money is playing a big role, what are your thoughts on how college football is going?”

“I think an athlete should be paid if he works at McDonald’s, but not to go to college. Not to go to college. You go to college to get an education. It’s a 40-year decision, not four. You pick out the school you want to be part of the rest of your life, and you go do that, and to get paid for that is setting the wrong perspective,” Holtz said.

He said he made $95,000 a year at Notre Dame, but feels the approach to coaching and playing has changed since he was on the field.

“I think that coaches followed the money, then the players are following the money, now the schools are following the money,” Holtz said. “Florida State is talking about leaving the ACC, because the SEC just got $51 million per team.”

When it comes to the transfer portal, Holtz called it the “worst thing that’s ever happened.”

“There is nothing wrong with being patient and proven, waiting your turn, and being ready when you get that opportunity,” he said.

According to Holtz, hopping from college to college is not what football is all about, and that it is causing fans — including himself — to turn away from the sport.

“I’m starting to lose interest in it because I can’t tell who plays for who,” Holtz said.

However, he said he remains optimistic something will be done to slow athletes from jumping from team to team so often.

When he talks about his time as a coach, you can tell Holtz is still passionate about making an impact. He said that if given the opportunity today, “I would like to coach anywhere that I could do it physically.”

And if he was at the helm again, he wouldn’t be taking it easy.

Holtz told News 6 Insiders, “The biggest mistake that leaders make and parents make... they lower the standards for their children to try to keep them happy. What you do is raise the standard then teach them how to reach that standard.”

He said part of that is focusing on the details.

“You win because you do the little things the right way. Everybody does big things, winners do the little things. The shoe was lost, the horse was lost, because the horse was lost, the rider was lost, because the rider was lost, the message was lost, because the message was lost the battle was lost, because the battle was lost the war was lost, because of the little thing,” Holtz said.

As for the coaches coming after him, he freely shared what helped him to be a success. Holtz said when he accepted the head coaching job at Notre Dame he was told leadership involved having a vision for where you want the organization to go, leading by example, and holding people accountable for the choices they make.

He said throughout his life he chose to prioritize his faith, his family, and then football.

“I don’t care what you achieve in this world, I don’t care how much money you make, if you aren’t successful as a husband and a father, you failed,” he said.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

They said when they realized how good their chemistry was on the news set, they started thinking of a fun way to get stories to people outside of the traditional newscast.

They sat down in a conference room, started talking about the headlines in our state, pulled out a cell phone and started recording. They soon realized those off-the-cuff conversations about the things that interested them would be a good way for others to stay informed when they weren’t in front of the TV.

And Florida’s Fourth Estate was born.

Now, more than five years later, they are celebrating their 200th episode and taking a look back at some of their favorite moments.

That includes an interview with a researcher who spent 100 days underwater only to find out all of that pressure left him half an inch shorter. Months after shooting that episode they learned, he had not regained that height.

Another favorite is a young inventor who created a visor with the potential to help up to 2.2 billion people who struggle with vision problems. It uses haptic feedback to alert users they are approaching something so they can have better mobility without using a cane. Since that interview, Tiffani Gay has announced she is working to help other young inventors bring their ideas to fruition.

No one can forget the Fruitland Park cowboy, Clayton Sellars, and how he made Ginger swoon as he shared highlights from his bull riding career. Ginger said she has no regrets about asking Sellars about his swagger and even bought Matt the same hat Sellars wore in the interview during a Christmas gift exchange.

They have talked to several celebrities during their time on the podcast, but one of their favorites was Carrot Top. The Winter Park native has been making people laugh in Las Vegas for years and had Matt and Ginger cracking up too, but the duo said they were also impressed with how down-to-earth he is and how generous he was with his time.

Check out some of their other favorite moments over the years on Florida’s Fourth Estate. You can download the podcast from wherever you listen to podcasts or watch anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

He is not only a lifelong Floridian and Disney historian, but he also helped bring you all the special coverage News 6 had on Disney’s 50th anniversary. Add to that his mom was the woman at the center of coordinating Walt Disney’s announcement that the theme park was coming to Central Florida and it’s clear Disney is in Pilcher’s blood.

So, Florida’s Fourth Estate hosts Matt Austin, and Ginger Gadsden invited him on the podcast to separate fact from fiction and debunk some of the craziest myths they have heard about The Most Magical Place on Earth.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

He told Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden on the Florida’s Fourth Estate podcast that it smelled like something was decomposing in the vehicle.

He said this case is something that has weighed heavy on him for years and by writing a book about it he hopes to let people see evidence that was “never explained at trial”.

He said that includes, “How long Caylee was inside the trunk, what really killed Caylee, and why the human remains were found in the wooded area near the Casey Anthony residence, those questions, right now I have the answers for everybody, that never was told, in my book.”

Bloise stressed there was a lot of evidence that was never presented at trial. But, that the evidence that he presented was enough for the jury to convict Anthony of murder.

“In my opinion we didn’t fail, in my opinion the jurors failed our community, failed Caylee,” Bloise said.

He said he hopes the pictures, timelines, and descriptions in “CSI The Casey Anthony Child Murder Case” will help the public to come to a more fully educated decision on the case and that they will stand in stark contrast to some of the statements Casey has made in the public since she was found not guilty.

“Casey is a pathological liar”, she proved to this community that she lied and lied and lied. She was a liar and is still a liar,” said Bloise.

The former investigator for the Orange County Sheriff’s Office said during his time as a law enforcement officer he had to be objective, but now as a private citizen he feels her words have been anything but honest.

Bloise said in addition to shedding new light on the case his book will help get results for missing children through the The Missing Child Project.

You can learn more about the case and Bloise’s book on Florida’s Fourth Estate. Hosts Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden have also spoken to the judge at the center of the case. Both episodes are available now. Just download the episodes from wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also listen to Florida’s Fourth Estate anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

They are both competitive skydivers with a combined 22,500 jumps and belong to a DeLand-based team with the most world titles in the history of the sport.

So, what exactly is competitive skydiving?

“It’s called canopy piloting and our slang term for that is called swooping,” Jeannie Bartholomew told Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden on the Florida’s Fourth Estate podcast.

“Basically we take the smallest parachutes that they make and we dive them at the ground going 100 miles per hour, bring the parachute out of the dive, go across the water and navigate different courses over a body of water and basically we have four different events that we compete in.”

They start at a much lower altitude than regular skydivers and say it takes about two-and-a-half minutes from jump to touching the ground.

Curt Bartholomew has the most individual world titles in the event.

“This is one of the best places to skydive in the country,” said Bartholomew. He points to Florida’s year-round warmth for being the reason he decided to stay in the Sunshine State after graduating from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

Jeannie Bartholomew wanted to skydive since she was six years old after seeing her older sister do a tandem jump.

“When I saw the video, I started making my own parachutes out of sheets, blankets, pillowcases, Mary Poppins umbrella — I jumped off of everything and drove my parents crazy,” said Bartholomew.

Even with their room of medals and trophies, the Bartholomews do not earn a living off competitive skydiving.

Most of their paid gigs involve coaching, tandem jumps, shooting videos and training with the military in Sebastian, FL.

You can learn more about the Bartholomews’ competitive skydiving career, including the technique behind their 18-person jump in Dubai on Florida’s Fourth Estate. Just download the episodes from wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also listen to Florida’s Fourth Estate anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At first, he said he did taxidermy the old-school way.

“A lot of times when they would bring us fish, we were just beginning, so we would make molds off of the original fish, which entailed taking the guts out of the fish and stuffing it back with some sawdust so it would take its shape again, then we would pose it in sand, put Plaster of Paris around the edges, once that plaster dries, we would actually fiberglass the fish.”

Once the fiberglass mold was finished they would throw out the fish, create a replica, and then mount that for their clients.

Now after decades of working in the business, Brown said he has accumulated about five thousand molds. So, instead of having fishermen bring in their catch, they can just take a picture, measure the fish, and send him the details.

After that Brown and his sons get to work. They create the shape, paint, seal and mount the fish replicas, then ship them all over the world.

Brown said his new way of doing business is gaining in popularity for many reasons.

“It’s been a big selling point for conservation these days with the dwindling of the fish stocks,” he said.

His business plan allows people to preserve their memories when they are doing catch-and-release fishing. Brown said he plans to pass his business, located just across the street from the port at Cape Canaveral, down to his sons.

To learn more about Brown’s Taxidermy check out Florida’s Fourth Estate.

You can download the app from wherever you listen to podcasts or watch anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“I remember watching the trapeze act, and the smell of the popcorn and just the lights, you know, everything and how I felt. I felt so inspired,” Irving said.

Little did she know, years later, that she would be helping to lead that show.

She told Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden on Florida’s Fourth Estate she is one of three people who helps to guide the audience through the experience.

She plays the character of Aria but said she gets to bring a lot of her personality into the role as well.

She said her experience doing a Broadway show on the Norwegian Cruise Line, and performing at Walt Disney World and Universal Studios Orlando prepared her for the position.

Beyond her current role, she said she is also trying to learn to juggle because she is inspired by all of the talent around her.

The show — which used to feature a variety of animals, including elephants — has changed its act and now focuses on what Irving called “human ability.”

She said it brings together people from dozens of countries pushing themselves to their limits to bring a smile to the people who come out and watch them perform.

The acts include a record-breaking unicyclist, musicians, tightrope walkers, jugglers and more.

Irving said she loves to see how much everybody is enjoying it, much like she did as a young girl.

“You see people who you can tell they have been to Ringling before and then they are bringing their children,” she said

“The Greatest Show on Earth” will be in Orlando at the Kia Center from Jan. 12-15. Tickets are on sale starting at $25.

To learn more about the woman helping to keep the new and re-imagined circus running smoothly, and about Matt’s secret skills that could qualify him as a circus performer check out Florida’s Fourth Estate.

You can download the podcast from wherever you listen to podcasts or watch it anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

University of Central Florida History professor Dr. Jim Clark said Walt Disney had his eye on the “Show Me” state well before he began eyeing the “Sunshine State”.

But a fight over beer changed everything.

After successfully introducing the public to Disneyland in California, Clark said Disney was looking for a second location.

The animation mogul considered Niagra Falls and another area near Washington, D.C.

“They seemed to settle on St. Louis for a different kind of attraction, kind of incorporating the city and the Mississippi and Walt got into a disagreement with Augie Busch — the family that owned Anheuser-Busch, makers of Busch beer and Budweiser — and basically Augie Busch said to Walt, ‘Hey you are not coming to St. Louis if you are not serving beer,’ and he wanted the beer concession and Walt said, ‘We are not going to serve any beer or liquor in the Magic Kingdom’ and it kind of went downhill from there. And literally, they had the dinner the night before, Augie Busch made a comment, and they were supposed to sign the papers the next morning, and Walt called it off, so it was that close.”

Clark said Busch was greatly insulted.

“That was his thing. I mean, he had the beer concession for the football teams, for the baseball teams, and here was this major thing coming to St. Louis telling him, ‘No, we don’t want your product in our theme park,’” Clark said.

But Disney wasn’t budging.

“Walt was worried that it was going to end up kinda like a carnival or a county fair or something like that and he did not want drinking in his park,” Clark said.

To learn more about how Disney chose Orlando over other cities competing for the theme park check out Florida’s Fourth Estate. You can download the podcast from wherever you listen to podcasts or watch anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So, Florida’s Fourth Estate hosts Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden are helping you identify some of the top gifts people are asking for this year.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Raymond Webber said he initially wanted a fish pond, but, his vision for a backyard oasis kept expanding.

Now, 32 years after discovering an abandoned lime rock quarry, he has established a peaceful garden fit for a king.

Though it was originally designed as a place to relax and entertain friends, word quickly got out.

Brenda Standridge helps manage the property.

“Locals, all the master gardeners kinda were hearing about it and were coming out on their own and visiting while it was his private property,” she said.

Then, after more people caught wind, and said they wanted to see it too, Webber turned his backyard into a non-profit and opened it up as Cedar Lakes Woods and Gardens.

Standridge said even at 80 years old, Webber walks the property six days a week to check on and plant more plants.

“He wants to make sure there is beauty year-round,” Standridge said.

The gardeners on the property said it all looks natural, but all of it is manmade and manicured.

To reward those who help maintain the property, Webber has named certain parts of the gardens after the men and women who have helped bring them to life.

That includes Jesse’s Japanese Maple Garden.

If you would like to visit the property, you can get a ticket here.

Adults are $12.00, children are $7.00, and children under five years old are free.

If you would like to help preserve the garden and educate others about it Cedar Lakes Woods and Gardens is also inviting people to donate to their “Raise the Roof” campaign.

You can also learn more about the epic backyard turned public garden on Florida’s Fourth Estate. You can download the podcast from wherever you listen to podcasts or watch it anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

They teamed up with their two young kids, Lola and Penn Charles, to rap about all the things that made 2013 special for them.

Today, they are still making videos, but they are also releasing books, games, and merch.

While they did win the 33rd season of The Amazing Race in 2022, Kim says another round of reality TV is not on their short list.

She said, “Maybe like if you needed really middle-aged comedy, like the Golden Survivor. Also, if I needed to get trim really quick for an event.”

But, she and Penn are game for sharing their family experiences in a fun and relatable way.

“I think a lot of people make content that shows how funny they are, how great their life is, but as a viewer watching it, what’s in it for me, that you’re funny? No, I would prefer like make me laugh, show me something that I can relate to, make me feel something,” Kim said.

She said News 6 helped shape her creative process.

“I would say I learned a lot from our news director at WKMG, when I was there. His name was Skip Valet. When I was there for the afternoon pitch meeting, you had to walk in with three ideas. And if you didn’t have an idea, (he would say) you need to take another way in to work.”

And after making a pitch Kim said, “He would always kinda answer back like, ‘why would a viewer care about this story you just pitched.’”

In addition to nailing the creative process, Kim and Penn bring a lot of raw talent to their content.

Kim was trained in dance and Penn is a musician.

But, even with all of that working in their favor, Penn said the duo threw a lot of spaghetti at the wall to see what would stick.

Every video didn’t go viral, but their success is evident.

They currently have their own website, have nearly 5 million followers on Facebook, amassed nearly 18 million likes on TikTok, and are releasing a new book called “ADHD is Awesome.”

Kim says Penn’s book, “Is written for and by an ADHD brain.”

The duo already has a game available at stores but said they hope to have another one available on Amazon by Black Friday.

They also have taken up pickleball and are now offering a line of paddles online.

They aren’t alone in their success.

Kim said their kids are very busy, but they are still active in some of their videos and have been making money with them since their original Christmas Jammies video went viral.

To learn more about Kim and Penn Holderness check out Florida’s Fourth Estate. You can download the podcast from wherever you listen to podcasts or watch anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of the highlights of the ride is the feeling of escaping to the jungle while laughing at a slew of “dad” jokes.

Former Imagineer Brian Collins is responsible for some of those.

“I was very lucky to be able to work on some very cool projects, like writing very corny puns for the Jungle Cruise,” Collins said.

He said he wrote, “You don’t need to bring any money with you on the jungle cruises because there are plenty of banks along the river.”

“One of the reasons I think I got hired in as a writer with Imagineering is because writing was something I always loved to do, it came very easy to me and I could write anything from technical writing to poems, to ‘dad’ jokes and everything in between,” Collins said.

Being an Imagineer can be a coveted role, but Collins, who is now an instructor at the University of Central Florida, said he tells his students there is enough room in the theme park industry for all of them.

“Don’t focus on being an Imagineer. What you need to focus on is finding what your passion is, finding what you love to do, and focus on that and become happy and an expert in what your passion is and if you can do that, hopefully the rest will take care of itself,” Collins said.

“There’s so many ways that you can create a path, whether it’s Imagineering, or Universal Creative, or working for Legoland, SeaWorld. I mean there is a whole cottage industry, especially here in Central Florida, of amazing firms that support the themed entertainment industry for example that Imagineers will work with,” Collins explained.

Still, he says it’s important to differentiate yourself.

“I have a favorite saying for my students, it’s that ‘if you do the same thing as everyone else, you’re just going to be like everyone else, and you don’t want to be like everyone else,” Collins said.

To hear more of Collins’ advice for becoming a staple in the theme park industry check out Florida’s Fourth Estate. You can download the podcast from wherever you listen to podcasts or watch anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A quick look at the George Gideon Auctioneers website reveals many of the local governments in Central Florida use them to sell their surplus items.

Right now a 2012 Dodge Charger from the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office is going for $1,025, a kayak from the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office is going for $3, Seminole County Public Schools is offering several school buses that have not been bid on yet.

Volusia County is selling a 2018 ambulance. The current bid is $1,000.

Pam Wilsky is the Purchasing and Contracts Director with Volusia County. She joined Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden on Florida’s Fourth Estate to talk more about how the surplus program works.

She said the items people buy from the county through the auctioneer website may have a few miles on them but are well maintained.

“We try very hard with this program to keep the lifecycle good so that what we are sending still has residual value when we get ready to send it to auction, so it’s not broken down, it’s not beat up,” Wilsky said. “It’s not to say that there will not be some things wrong with it, but everything within the county is maintained on a regular basis, so it probably is a good value as far as a vehicle to somebody.”

She said there have been some interesting finds at the auction and that the county once re-sold a mosquito control helicopter.

“They actually had one that for whatever reason had been disassembled and they wanted to sell it. The appraised value was $350,000,” Wilsky said.

She said a firm in Montana sent a truck to pick it up and used it to fight wildfires out west.

Austin said he also noticed some drones on the auctioneer’s website going for as low as $27 after Gov. Ron DeSantis made it illegal for counties to use ones from China.

Wilsky said Volusia County dealt with the situation differently, but “a lot of law enforcement and things like that had a lot of these and it was a big impact so I’m not surprised you saw them.”

Aside from providing a savings opportunity for customers, Wilsky said putting surplus items up for auction also helps the county’s bottom line.

She said last year the program brought in about $1.7 million in revenue.

Learn more about the program and how you can score some good deals by checking out Florida’s Fourth Estate. You can download the podcast from wherever you listen to podcasts or watch it anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In her book “American Castle One Hundred Years of Mar-a-Lago,” Mary Shanklin talks about how the mansion and surrounding property used to be part of the National Park Service.

She said the original owner, Marjorie Merriweather Post, heir to the creator of Post Cereal, died thinking the home she built was in the hands of the federal government.

But there were a lot of competing interests after Post died that changed the course of the property’s history.

“The heirs needed some cash which they could get by selling Mar-a-lago. The people of Palm Beach, they didn’t want any part of having tourists come on their island, so it was divested,” Shanklin told Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden on Florida’s Fourth Estate

Shanklin said the heirs went through several prospective buyers, one of them being Donald and Ivana Trump.

“When Donald Trump went to purchase it, he was purchasing for $7 million. The Mar-a-Lago that exists from South Ocean Boulevard to Lake Worth, which is the intercoastal waterway, and the heirs — the Marjorie Merriweather Post Trust — they had sold off an oceanfront parcel. So he had to buy that because Mar-a-lago is not going to be sea to the lake if you don’t own the oceanfront parcel. I think the oceanfront parcel may have went for $ 2 million,” Shanklin said.

Many call that $9 million price tag in 1985 a steal considering Shanklin said it cost Post $7 million to build Mar-a-Lago in the 1920′s.

Shanklin said to establish yourself in Palm Beach in the 1920s your house had to be regal and you had to host all of the big parties and dinners.

“That’s where they wintered, that’s where everybody of power and means went. That’s where you build your relationships and gain trust with people. That’s where it all happens in Palm Beach,” Shanklin said.

Shanklin said the regalness of the home is still intact. She was given a tour of the property during Trump’s presidency and said the ceiling looks like something straight out of Venice.

“Everything gets politicized today. You hear Republicans say, ‘Mar-a-Lago is such an amazing beautiful place.’ You hear Democrats say, ‘It’s gross, it’s crawling with roaches.’ What was the feeling in there?” Austin asked.

“The people who are paying a quarter of a million dollars to become members there are probably getting a bang for their buck,” Shanklin said. “I felt like it looked immaculate. I felt like the furnishings, if not from the original era, which probably they weren’t, they were tastefully done. A lot of the original artwork was still on the walls. I don’t know what was going on in the kitchen or anything. You could see the signature public places and spaces. I feel like it’s really been preserved and maintained and kept well.”

Regardless of what the house looks like, Shanklin said having a membership to Mar-a-Lago is about access and says it still remains unclear if, as the political season gets underway, being the former President will encourage just as many people to maintain their memberships at Mar-a-Lago as when he was President.

Learn more about the history of Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s use of the home and the case surrounding possibly classified documents being kept on the property by checking out Florida’s Fourth Estate. You can download the podcast from wherever you listen to podcasts or watch it anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Birds are also looking for a warmer spot to settle down, but their journey is proving to be difficult.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates up to 988 million crash into buildings every year and die.

The Audubon Society said that’s because the majority of them migrate at night, and are drawn in by city lights, rest among the trees and when they try to return to the sky they crash into windows.

“They see the sky in front of them and it’s actually a reflection of the sky in the glass and they fly towards it not knowing that it’s a death sentence and they hit the glass and they are either injured or killed by hitting the glass,” said Mike Taylor, the curator of herps, birds and others at Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens.

It’s not just skyscrapers in the city drawing birds back to earth, Elizabeth Filippelli with the Duval Audubon Society said residential house lights are too.

Lights Out Northeast Florida is asking people to take a few steps to help the birds make it safely to their destination.

The organization advises turning off non-essential lights between 11 p.m. - 6 a.m., direct lighting downward instead of upward into the sky, putting timers on outdoor lights and turning off interior lighting, especially on upper floors.

Birds migrate from Sept. 15 - Nov. 15. So, your actions over the next few days can have a lot of impact.

If you would like a closer look at what birds are migrating over your neighborhood just plug your county into the Birdcast Dashboard. A quick search of Orange County reveals 122,200 crossed the area and more than 1.1 million crossed our state in a single night.

To learn more about bird migration, the risks they face, and how you can help, check out Florida’s Fourth Estate. You can download the podcast from wherever you listen to podcasts or watch any time on the News 6+ App for your smart TV.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Florida Department of Transportation was working on drainage improvement along King Street and State Road A1A in St. Augustine in October when they discovered the historic boat.

Dr. James Delgado with SEARCH, a company headquartered in Orlando that describes itself as a global leader in maritime archeology, talked about what’s next for the artifact with Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden on Florida’s Fourth Estate.

Delgado said it took crews five days to remove the vessel from the ground.

He said the job included removing dirt, muck, and even oysters from the outside of the boat.

After exposing it, he said the team then documented it and lifted it out of the ground. The boards were then wrapped in cloth and put into freshwater tanks at the Lighthouse Maritime Museum so they wouldn’t deteriorate.

He said it is now safe and out of the way, but the work is not done.

“Now what would have to happen is more documentation, reconstructing it on paper, and discussions beginning about what’s next,” Delgado said.

What’s next could include putting it on display. Delgado described that as a lengthier and more costly option, but stressed that, at this stage, things are being lined up so more informed decisions can be made.

Despite being only 20 feet long, Delgado said the boat still has cultural significance.

“In all the years I have worked on this, whether it has been a bigger shipwreck, (the) Titanic, wrecks at Pearl Harbor, others that I have worked on — Clotilda, the last slave ship — these powerful stories that connect us to ships like that are one part of it, but there’s also these vessels that with no name speak to the reality of life as well and sharing that is practically one of the best days on the job,” he said.

To learn more about the unnamed vessel and Delgado’s work uncovering other vessels in Florida with National Geographic check out Florida’s Fourth Estate. You can download it from wherever you listen to podcasts or watch it anytime on the News 6+ app for your smart TV.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“A ghost will go home with you. You do these tours they are going to come home they are going to visit you,” Ghost tour guide Ting Rappa said.

It is a warning she gives when hiring guides to take people around the Greenwood Cemetery in Orlando.

Rappa said she doesn’t allow the spirits inside of her house.

“I will stop them at my front door. My dog will come greet me. If my dog looks behind me I will go ‘You are not welcome in the home. I will see you guys tomorrow night back in downtown.’”

Greenwood Cemetery is one of Central Florida’s oldest cemeteries and is the resting spot of many of the city of Orlando’s founders.

Once or twice a year it also plays home to ghost tours facilitated by American Ghost Adventures, which is owned by Rappa.

She offers tours around other parts of Orlando but said this experience is different.

“This is the only location I can tell people, I cannot guarantee you friendly interactions with spirits. People can get scratched, they can get touched here. There are different people there. There are different spirits there,” Rappa said.

She said the spooky experiences started soon after she and her partner started offering tours at the site.

While he was taking a group around the grounds she said they saw another group of people about 200 feet in front of them.

“He was in the military area and they saw apparitions marching. His entire group saw apparitions with lights walking and the lights disappeared into thin air, and nobody else was there,” she said.

Rappa said tours can get so scary that some people don’t finish.

“There are a lot of shadow figures that walk through there and voices that you cannot explain,” she said.

The tour guide said specialized equipment does help explain some of the interactions. She said the spirits communicate via flashlights and will sometimes lead you back to their headstones.

To learn more about the Greenwood Cemetery and ghost tours offered by American Ghost Adventures check out Florida’s Fourth Estate.

You can download the podcast from wherever you listen to podcasts or watch anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Perry is well known for presiding over the Casey Anthony case, but long before that high-profile case he was the lead prosecutor in the Judy Buenoano murder trial.

Perry says he was part of the team that transported Buenoano to jail in Orange County after she was arrested for fatally poisoning her husband, United States Air Force officer James Goodyear.

“This was in the summer. I never been in the car with an individual and it felt like wintertime in there. I have never been around a person as icy and cold — I felt it. I never experienced anything like that since then,” Perry said.

Perry said Goodyear’s 1962 death was not the only one “The Black Widow” was responsible for.

“She poisoned her husband, she poisoned her common-law husband, she poisoned her son, and she attempted to poison her fiancé, and then blew his car up,” he said.

Still, when the Orange County Sheriff’s Office was transporting her back to Orlando, Perry said, “She was as cool as a cucumber, and she had this coldness about her that would actually make you shiver.”

Perry said it was 10 years after Goodyear’s death when the trial began, and he didn’t know what angle the defense team would take.

Quickly he said he realized they were attempting to pin the poisoning on Agent Orange, a toxic herbicide used during the Vietnam War.

But an expert witness made it clear, “He would actually have to drink a 30-gallon drum of Agent Orange (in order to die from it),” said Perry.

A jury convicted Buenoano of murder and she was executed in Florida’s electric chair in March 1998.

She was the first woman to be executed in Florida since 1848.

Learn more about Former Chief Judge Belvin Perry’s role in the “Black Widow” trial and his experience with Judy Buenoano on Florida’s Fourth Estate.

The podcast can be downloaded from wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also watch Florida’s Fourth Estate on News 6 on Mondays and Fridays at 3:30 p.m. or anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Much of the country watched her murder trial play out on live TV, including the moment the jury found her not guilty, but there were some things happening behind the scenes that you didn’t see.

The judge at the center of it all, Belvin Perry, joined the hosts of Florida’s Fourth Estate to share the experience from his perspective.

This includes his thoughts on how Anthony’s defense team was able to get her acquitted of first-degree murder in the death of her daughter Caylee Anthony.

“Jose Baez, at the time, probably wasn’t the sharpest person on the evidence code, but he was well prepared, and he did something that good lawyers do,” Perry said. “Once you determine the makeup of the 12 people in that jury, he tailored his case to fit them. It’s just like a great football coach. You go into any game with a gameplan, but you must make adjustments and Baez made those adjustments and he learned how to play to the jury.”

The jury was made up of seven women and five men who had to be sequestered for the full length of the trial.

Perry said it was a lot of work dealing with a case that would last six to eight weeks with jurors that had to be holed up in a hotel room, but added that the Central Florida community helped to lighten the load.

He said the media agreed on the best way to cover the trial and when they found out the jury was staying at Rosen Shingle Creek, “they did not publish it, we had no problem with them following jurors.”

He said Harris Rosen also bent over backward to make sure the jurors were well taken care of while being sequestered.

“Harris Rosen was just tremendous when we talked to him,” Perry said. “He gave us an excellent deal on the rooms, gave us everything we wanted — even structured the meal prices to fit into the per diem, which is unheard of. They even changed the locks on the doors on the stairwell on the floor that they were on you couldn’t access it from the outside.”

Perry said there were also times when the pool and exercise facilities were shut down so the jurors could use them uninterrupted.

The TVs were also adjusted so the jurors could not watch news shows. Towards the end of the trial, with so many people interested in the case, Perry said the jurors were down to only three channels they could watch.

To better cater to the jury, Perry said each one was allowed to have one visitor on the weekends.

“They could come on Saturday afternoons, they just had to be out by midnight,” Perry said.

The judge had to deal with some fallout from the trial as well. That includes becoming, what felt like, an overnight celebrity.

“One day we got out of court and for whatever reason I went by Ross on Michigan and I went in there and I was looking for a picture frame,” Perry said. “When I got home my daughter called me. She said, ‘Daddy someone recorded you in Ross and they posted it on Facebook.’”

It didn’t end there. Perry said people approached him about the case everywhere he went. Once, a group of people even started recording him while he was eating dinner.

“I had to stop going to the grocery store. If I did go eat, I had to eat at certain places where I could be left alone. I couldn’t go anywhere,” he said.

Still, he said the trial was a great experience for himself and the community.

“I think it opened up to the world how the judicial system works,” Perry said. “You got a chance to see firsthand. Most people didn’t agree with the outcome of the case, but at least they saw what happened and I think it is very important that courts that are open to the public, that the public gets to see it firsthand.”

To hear more about Perry’s experience serving as the judge on the Casey Anthony murder trial check out Florida’s Fourth Estate.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

His other extends to his forearm and stops.

As he started growing up and going to school, he had some questions about his limb difference.

“I kinda asked the question, ‘Why can’t I have an arm? Everyone else has an arm, why don’t I,’” Pring said.

He said his mom loves solving problems, so she reached out to the University of Central Florida and a student helped to create his very first arm.

Then, that student, Albert Manero, went on to launch Limbitless Solutions, a company that makes prosthetics for children.

Manero then upgraded Pring’s arm, giving it an “Iron Man” design, and invited Robert Downey Jr. to present it to him in 2015.

The moment went viral.

Pring said the experience, “was probably the biggest time for any 7-year-old possible.”

The first version of the arm helped him to hold a pencil, and the “Iron Man” arm helped him to build confidence, but because he is growing so fast, he said he needs to be resized regularly and sometimes he goes without his prosthetic.

That includes when he is doing football conditioning.

Pring said he power cleans 135 pounds with one arm.

He said his teammates at South Lake High School are often surprised at what he can pull off.

And, his opponents often underestimate him.

“In one of our games, the seniors told me all the players were trash-talking me saying, ‘There is no way this one-armed kid can do it.’ Next play, I destroyed the running back,” Pring said.

It’s not always easy, but he said he gets his confidence from his parents.

“They have taught me every single day of my life, work hard and you will be rewarded at the end of the day,” he said.

Pring said he would love to eventually play football professionally and that he looks up to Shaquem Griffin, the former University of Central Florida, football player who also has a limb difference and went on to play for the NFL.

But, if football doesn’t pan out, Pring said he would like to go UCF to pursue aerospace engineering, the same degree Manero pursued.

To learn more about Pring and how he is making an impact on and off the field check out Florida’s Fourth Estate.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

They were the first cases in the state in 20 years.

Then, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 159 new cases of leprosy in the U.S. in 2020, with Florida among the top reporting states.

“Some Biblical diseases started making a comeback in the state of Florida,” Florida’s Fourth Estate host Matt Austin said. “Leprosy and malaria, these are two things I never thought we would be talking about again on the news.”

Austin and his co-host Ginger Gadsden invited Dr. Elizabeth Borrero with Health First to discuss the diseases that still have a lot of people talking.

When it comes to leprosy, Borrero said it is an old disease that has never been able to be eradicated and that most of the new cases are likely spread by people who are traveling out of the country to areas where leprosy is endemic.

Borrero said that list includes Nepal, India, Brazil and Malaysia.

The disease can be contracted via the nine-banded armadillo or through soil.

Borrero said you likely won’t catch it from someone else.

“As long as the person doesn’t have prolonged contact with another individual, you’re OK. You’re not going to acquire it immediately from somebody who has leprosy,” she said. “It’s not that contagious really.”

More is known about Malaria.

Borrero said it is spread via infected mosquitoes and symptoms include night sweats, nausea, vomiting and headaches.

“The majority of patients that come into the hospital system have a high fever — fevers of over 103 lead them to seek medical attention, which is a good thing.”

Borrero also suggested travel as a way that malaria is spread. She said if you are traveling to a country where it is endemic to see a travel medicine specialist.

She said the World Health Organization has done a lot to help stop the disease from spreading including a vaccine, though it is not available in the U.S. yet.

To learn more about leprosy and malaria and their impact on Florida check out Florida’s Fourth Estate.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

According to the International Association of Amusement Park and Attractions, which is the global association for the theme park industry, American theme parks are expected to invest $1.5 billion in attractions this year alone.

IAAPA’s CEO Jakob Wahl spoke with Florida’s Fourth Estate about some fascinating trends taking place across the industry.

He said parks are creating rides less focused on being the biggest and fastest. Instead, companies like Disney, Universal and SeaWorld are honing in on new technologies and intellectual property.

“Delivering the same services to the same people is stagnation. The theme park industry is huge about innovation,” Wahl said.

Last Year at IAAPA’s big convention in Orlando, SeaWorld announced a new idea for a ride. The rollercoaster called Pipeline would allow riders to feel like they’re surfing a wave. The ride keeps guests in the standing position instead of the standard strapped-in coaster. The roller coaster is now open at Sea World.

Disney used IP and technology fused together to create the new Tron ride, which uses a new seating position and some serious technology to give a new experience. Universal used a motorcycle and sidecar in Hagrid’s Motorbike Adventure to make muggles feel like they’re experiencing Harry Potter’s magical land in a whole new way.

But, with all the new technology, questions have arisen about safety. In 2022, 14-year-old Tyre Sampson tragically fell from a ride at Orlando’s Icon Park putting ride safety at the forefront of the national conversation.

“I can guarantee you safety is the number one priority for our industry,” Wahl said.

Wahl claims engineers make safety decisions early in the process of creating a ride, but, questions about how theme parks police themselves when it comes to ride safety have crept in.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has questioned whether Disney should be put under the microscope of state inspectors. Wahl didn’t want to speak on the political battle.

“I prefer not to comment on that individual case between Disney and DeSantis, but I can tell you Disney has an excellent safety record. Disney has always been on the forefront of safety globally. I think the industry today is a better place in terms of safety thanks to the efforts of Disney and many others. I’m not sure how that would help the already excellent safety records of Disney,” he said.

Either way, with tourism cutting back in Florida it will be interesting to see if theme parks continue making these huge investments in the coming years.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“I think this is going to be a very strange year, simply because people do not know what’s happening,” University of Central Florida history professor and News 6 Political Analyst Jim Clark said. “Teachers are unsure. Administrators are unsure. You have one district doing one thing and another district doing another thing and I think there are just so many red flags flying that it’s going to be a strange year.”

One point of difference this year focuses on AP Psychology. There was a battle over the coursework and any potential focus on gender identity which encouraged some schools to drop it right before classes began.

Matt Austin shared on Florida’s Fourth Estate that his daughter was supposed to be in the class and was stuck in the middle wondering what the school district would decide.

“My kid has been like, ‘Oh, I’m in the class, I’m out of the class, I’m in the class, I’m out, what am I gonna do?’ and this is after the schedules have already come out,” Austin said.

This isn’t the first class caught in the middle of the political debate over education.

“Earlier we had the controversy over the AP History exam, which is still going on, so for students that want to take these, this is a troubled time,” Clark said.

In addition to focusing on coursework, lawmakers are also working to rid school libraries of books that “depict or describe sexual conduct.”

That means librarians must now inspect over a million books.

Ginger Gadsden pointed out it’s not just Florida politicians focused on the classroom.

“There are a number of states, led by Iowa, that see Florida as the role model, and the governor there is an admirer of Gov. Desantis and has been copying much of what goes on,” Clark said,

To learn more about the political impact on Florida’s schools check out Florida’s Fourth Estate. You can download it from wherever you listen to podcasts or watch anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

They wanted to learn more about the people working to call America home and bring those stories back to students at UCF.

Amy Diaz and Ian Rodriguez both said they brought a unique perspective to the trip.

“Even though we are in Florida and we are far away from the border we have family that crossed, or we have family that has come here from Central America, or from other countries,” Rodriguez said.

They both also speak Spanish, so it made it easier to learn the stories of those working to gain citizenship in the United States.

Diaz said some of the conversations he had were “hard to think about.”

That includes one he had with two fathers at a shelter in El Paso, Texas.

“They told me they started in Venezuela and walked up into Mexico and it’s just with kids, with a family, walking up there. It’s hard to even imagine that happening,” she said.

Diaz said experiencing the process from their point of view was gripping.

She said when the group of students and professors went into a stock room where clothes, baby shoes and toiletries are kept everyone got quiet.

“It just put it into perspective that thousands of kids and parents are going through these, just as a stop in their journey, but this is making such an impact on them,” Diaz said.

Rodriguez said he has never experienced anything like standing at the border wall.

“You are just separated by this man-made marker, but it’s just like lack of opportunity on the other side, but you know being in university and having the privilege to be able to get a college education that many people literally a stone’s throw away from you don’t have, it’s interesting,” he said.

He said being able to “touch the fence” and to learn the stories of the people trying to cross it has made him feel more connected to his father’s journey to America and appreciative of his own American experience.

Now, the stories he and Diaz helped gather will be turned into a multi-phase documentary called “A Break for Impact.”

“In addition to that it’s going to be used in several classes for Criminal Justice, for Human Trafficking, for Immigration law and for Journalism, and it’s going to be used to teach students in a more immersive way what it’s like out there,” Diaz said.

To hear more about their journey to the U.S.-Mexico border, what they learned and how it will be used to teach others check out Florida’s Fourth Estate.

You can download the podcast from wherever you listen to podcasts or watch anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

She said it’s a passion that started when she was a child, but it’s not without risk. The python huntress talked to Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsdenon Florida’s Fourth Estate about her mission to rid Florida’s Everglades of the invasive reptiles.

Siewe has bagged several Burmese pythons and knows how to “work the animal.”

“They could easily crush us in a second without even thinking about it,” she said.

She said she “really had an appreciation for their power” when she caught a 9-foot python and it wrapped its tail around her leg for leverage.

She described it as “no big deal” because “that’s what they always do.” But, then things took a turn.

“This thing vice grips me, vice grips my calf and it felt like either my calf muscle was going to explode or my bone was going to break. I have never felt anything like it in my life and it was only a nine-foot python,” Siewe said.

She added that it usually easy to deal with a python when an encounter goes wrong.

“All I have to do is let go and it will take off,” she said. “It will probably bite me a couple times, but it will take off.”

Aside from this unexpected encounter things are a bit more quiet when the Python Huntress heads into The Everglades. She even describes the experience as cathartic, but she is always paying attention, ready for the next takedown, even if it’s not her own catch.

Recently she was driving down the road when she happened to come upon Jake Waleri wrestling a 19-foot, python. It was the largest documented Burmese python ever captured in Florida.

“I saw him go on the ground which was a little risky,” Siewe said.

Then she hopped into action.

“So I told two of the kids to pull the tail, I got the coil off of his shoulder, I came around and told him to sit all the way on top of her, and so then I wrapped her mouth up,” she said.

Waleri also talked to Florida’s Fourth Estate about the experience.

“It felt incredible. I thought this was just a big snake at the time. I thought it would maybe be 16 or 17 feet. I never dreamed that it would actually be the record holder,” he said.

Waleri donated the snake to the Conservancy of Southwest Florida.

But he kept the skin for himself.

“I’m going to turn it into some leather and make a nice trophy out of it,” he said

If you are interested in being part of the solution, you can join the Python Elimination Program or learn the ropes from Siewe, who also teaches people the basics of Burmese python hunting, and make some big money along the way by taking part in the Florida Python Challenge.

Learn more on Florida’s Fourth Estate. You can download it from wherever you listen to podcasts.

You can also watch anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jeffrey Heim strapped on his mask, fins and head-mounted GoPro and eased into the murky water to begin his favorite hobby: hunting for massive megalodon shark teeth.

The hobby would later become a career for Heim, who now owns a company called SHRKco which collects and sells the ancient shark teeth and donates profits for ocean research organizations.

“I did know the dangers but I don’t think I took them seriously enough back then,” Heim told Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden on the latest episode of Florida’s Fourth Estate.

While sifting through sand on the river bottom, Heim says he felt what seemed like a boat strike his head.

“It was very powerful. It seemed a lot larger than it actually was,” Heim said. “I saw her. She did bite me twice before I knew what was happening.”

The GoPro strapped to his head was recording at the time and the footage shows a large jolt and bubbles in the cloudy water as the camera sunk to the bottom of the river.

Heim then realized a large female alligator bit a section of his scalp and his hand — and was coming back for another strike.

“You never want to thrash or splash or act like prey, so I stayed calm,” Heim said.

After avoiding two more attempted bites, Heim managed to make his way onto the riverbank and call for help.

He was rushed to the hospital where nurses put 34 staples into his head and treated severe puncture wounds on his hand where the gator chomped down.

Heim believes his injuries could have been much worse if it weren’t for the waterproof camera strapped to his head.

“I still don’t think I felt the full force of that bite. And if I did, my head would’ve exploded,” he said.

It has been over two years since the attack and Heim’s scars have healed while his passion for megalodon tooth collecting has only grown.

“Eventually someday when I’m old I want to have a museum of my best finds... and then pass that story on when I’m no longer here as well,” he said.

Heim’s most well-known megalodon tooth find came about two months after the gator attack when Heim uncovered a “miracle” 6 inch megalodon tooth.

Watch the full interview on Florida’s Fourth Estate at the top of this story to learn what happened to the 8-foot alligator that bit him and Heim’s advice for finding ancient megalodon teeth in Central Florida.

You can download the podcast from wherever you listen to podcasts or watch anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The two 14-year-olds took off from Jupiter Inlet on a 19-foot fishing boat. When they didn’t return, the Coast Guard started a massive search but never found them.

Both of their families were left devastated.

Perry Cohen’s Dad, Phil Cohen, recently discussed how he has dealt with the grief of losing his only child in a Ted Talk.

Now he is sitting down with Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden on Florida’s Fourth Estate to talk about how he is using this devastating experience to help others.

“Losing a child has been known by and said by many to be arguably one of the most profound and painful things that a human being can endure,” Phil Cohen said.

The father said he didn’t know how to cope.

“At one point I actually went online, and I Googled ‘How to grieve,’” he said.

He said the results were dominated by The Five Stages of Grief. Then he realized those were actually created for people diagnosed with life-ending cancer, not for those grieving the loss of a loved one.

So, he decided to focus his Ted Talk on what he calls The Grief Continuum.

He said it suggests navigating grief is different for everyone.

“We don’t all start at the same place, graduate through the same stages to eventually arrive at the same destination. Rather that grief would be more accurately represented on a continuum with acceptance in the middle and negative emotions on this side and even positive things that can happen after acceptance,” Phil Cohen said.

“I believe grief is something that we move back and forth through forever; from good to bad, to good to bad, this never-ending cycle of back and forth as opposed to going from one step to another to reach this place where you’re like ‘Alright I made it,’” he added.

Phil Cohen said he also leans on his faith to deal with losing his son, an experience he calls “indescribably painful.”

“God is good. He has brought me through it. Quite honestly, I don’t even know how people make it through something like this without God. It’s ultimately my relationship with Jesus Christ that really helped me break through this,” Phil Cohen said.

To hear more from Cohen and how he is helping others to cope with loss listen to Florida’s Fourth Estate. You can download it from wherever you listen to podcasts or watch anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Now she is coaching two fellow Floridians, telling them what it takes to rise to the top of the competitive eating circuit.

Sudo talked about her craft with Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden during an episode of Florida’s Fourth Estate.

“You want to minimize chewing,” she said. “Chewing is a waste of time and signals to your brain that you are getting full.”

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

She retired in 2018, but not she is back.

Chuck Best Jr. told Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden on Florida’s Fourth Estate it all started when someone gave his mom and dad, Chuck and Lou Ann Best a baby squirrel.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Deanna Deppen, executive director of Shy Wolf Sanctuary Education and Experience Center in Naples, recently talked to Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden on Florida’s Fourth Estate about the challenges she faces when people are not able to care for the wolves they adopt.

“Florida actually requires licensing, so you should not have a full wolf without having two and a half acres of land, 500 hours working with them, 10-foot fences and an 8-foot perimeter fence,” Deppen said.

Wolves need more space than your house can provide.

“In the wild, they can travel up to 120 miles per day, up to 40 miles per hour, and they have needs where they need to stay active.”

Wolf dogs, or dogs that are bred with wolves, can also pose unforeseen problems when people need to put them up for adoption.

“Shelters won’t adopt them out. They’ll put them down. Other rescues won’t take them—they consider them unadoptable, they just have nowhere else to go,” Deppen said.

That’s where her sanctuary comes in.

She said it has been around for a long time. Now, she is planning and preparing to move to a new 17-acre property.

The move will be expensive and the sanctuary is asking people to step in and help sponsor the animals, or even come in and volunteer.

To join the wolf pack, click here for more information.

You can also learn more on Florida’s Fourth Estate. You can watch the podcast anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Most of the time, the [phones] are basically locked up or the salt water has kind of destroyed them,” Schulze said.

Schultze is the co-founder and CEO of ocean cleanup company 4ocean and was recently looking for trash in the Boca Raton Inlet in South Florida when he came across an iPhone in a clear waterproof case on the sand.

It appeared to be in great shape. I brought it back to our office where I was able to charge it and then looked at the emergency contacts on the lock screen,” Schultze told Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden during a conversation on Florida’s Fourth Estate.

That’s when Schultze said he called the emergency contact number labeled “Mom”.

“The woman answered and said ‘oh my god I can’t believe you found my son’s phone,’” he said.

Turns out, her son lost his iPhone a few days prior.

Schultze said the woman traveled to the 4ocean office and happily retrieved her son’s iPhone.

The discovery and happy ending make for a great story, but sadly the plight of Florida’s polluted water is not over.

4ocean employs captains and crews worldwide who have now removed over 30 million pounds of trash from the ocean.

The company transforms the collected plastic into products like bracelets and sells those products to fund more cleanups.

Florida’s Fourth Estate learned more about the most common and most shocking items found by the 4ocean team during cleanup dives.

“The most common thing we find is single-use plastics,” Schultze said.

Those include plastic bottles, chip bags and multi-layer packaging.

When it comes to the craziest thing he’s found, Schultze says it’s not pirate treasure or a pallet of smuggled cocaine.

“I’d have to say our crews have actually come across a few dead bodies. It’s been pretty heavy,” Schultze said.

You can listen to Schultze’s full conversation about his ocean floor discoveries, his path to co-founding 4ocean and how others can make a positive impact in their environment on Florida’s Fourth Estate.

Be sure to download the podcast from wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also watch anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Now that he’s back on dry land he said he lost something when he was down there.

“I shrunk about half an inch,” Dituri said.

He compared the height he lost to the height astronauts gain when they are in space.

“Astronauts are in tension, so they are basically being flung apart and I’m being compressed together,” Dituri said.

He told Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden during a conversation on Florida’s Fourth Estate that he noticed something was different while he was still inside the Jules’ Undersea Lodge in Key Largo.

“Here, I am the tall guy right and I’m constantly scrapping my head on the escape hatch on top, and I was like ‘Hey, I’m not hitting the escape hatch anymore’ and I’m like ‘I must have shrunk’ and then of course there’s no good place to measure yourself. When I get to the surface, I am 72 and a little bit inches. I’m like ‘Maaaan, I was 73!’”

The question now is: Will he get that height back?

“I don’t know. The astronauts do compress back down, so we will see,” he

Florida’s Fourth Estate will be in touch and have an update if Dituri does in fact regain that height.

You can listen to Dituri’s full conversation about what it was like to live underwater for 100 days, who he really wants to inspire and what he hopes to achieve next on Florida’s Fourth Estate.

You can download the podcast from wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also watch anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

He said he learned a lot and is excited to share his passion for space exploration with young people.

“I have dreamed of space since I was a young boy. The space race was starting in the 60s when I was growing up and it was easy to be captivated by it and I certainly was. So I spent literally my entire life thinking about what it would be like to be in space, to go to space,” he said.

Shoffner said he trained for up to two years to prepare for the incredible adventure, but liftoff was a little different than he expected.

“At the moment of liftoff, which was a bit surprising, it wasn’t this big explosive blast and lots of G-forces,” he said. “It was this very initially gentle lift, where we felt the entire vehicle begin to rise. It later accelerated and got a little more dramatic, but those beginning phases, I’ll never forget those.”

Once he got to space and looked back at Earth, he was in for another surprise.

“It’s just now revealing itself to me,” he said. “I’m just now able to talk about it. It’s funny because as a new astronaut onboard the station one of the first things I wanted to do was hurry into the cupola, drop myself in there, look out over the planet and prepare to be moved and amazed and it was truly beautiful to see the Earth sliding by underneath endlessly, but this breakthrough moment didn’t happen right then and I was a little disappointed. ‘So, maybe I’ll come back a little later on,’ and it wasn’t quite that thing. But I can tell you that after returning (to Earth) it’s slowly bringing itself to me. It’s unfolding itself in a way that I could not have imagined. It’s causing me this sense of longing to go back to it and be able to speak to it. This overview effect is real, but it just does not happen on a schedule. It happens to you as an individual in a way that is familiar and comfortable to you.”

Shoffner has only had his feet back on Earth for a short time but would be excited to buy a second ride back to the space station, despite pushback from people who bash him for paying to take part in the unique experience.

“I would ask them to look at what we do in orbit,” he said. “We conduct research. We provided access to experiment packages that would otherwise wait a long time. We act as a resource. We undertake the training, and we make ourselves available to scientists and researchers to do that. My big effort was to create a conversation so that teachers and educators and parents could look at this and say, ‘My children would like to do this also.’ We demonstrate that we are in the early days of spaceflight, and we have to create that bridge so that it becomes available to others. Whenever commercial aviation was started, it was hugely expensive to people at the time in the 20s. Only people of means could do that. But the continued effort to develop aviation just as now we want to develop space flight in the economy of low earth orbit there has to be a beginning. The participation by people who can is hugely needed. I did my part and I also wanted to contribute some value by creating awareness among teachers, educators and young people that space is real and that we have a space among the stars.”

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You can soar through the sky on a hang glider at Wallaby Ranch.

Malcolm Jones said he bought the property in 1991 so he could bring his favorite sport back to Florida.

He told Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden on Florida’s Fourth Estate his love for the sky started when he was growing up in Tampa.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

But Kiersten Benitez with Bark Orlando said it’s important to consider what kind of breed you adopt.

Benitez started Bark Orlando in 2016 as a dog training company and eventually expanded it to a full-service pet care company.

Every day she comes in contact with different breeds of dogs.

She shared her experience and advice for first-time dog owners with Ginger Gadsden and Matt Austin on Florida’s Fourth Estate.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Paleontologist Jonathan Bloch with the Florida Museum of Natural History said his team would have never uncovered a prehistoric site filled with fossils if it weren’t for a 5-year-old little girl.

“She was walking on this property up around Williston and she was there with her family, and they were looking for arrowheads, taking a walk,” he said. “And this 5-year-old found a handful of bones in the site. And that’s how it was discovered. And that’s when they contacted us about seven years ago. And we very quickly, once we went out there and started digging, we started finding fossils.”

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Copyright Attorney Aaron Moss said that’s because Disney is trying to keep the original Mickey out of the public domain.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

That includes a house once owned by Osama Bin Laden’s brother, Khalil. It sits on a lake in Oakland, near Clermont.

Kent said he originally visited the property back in 2016. He thought it was vacant, but when he walked up to the front of the property he was greeted by its new owner. Kent said the man invited him in and showed him around.

Now, years later Kent said he returned to the property and found many of the valuable wood that adorned the house and even some of the chandeliers have been taken out.

“Some of the features are starting to disappear over the years. I just want to capture it before everything is completely gone,” Kent said.

So, he took videos and pictures and posted them to his social media pages.

“It’s not really a creepy property like a lot of people try to make it out to be. It’s really a beautiful old house.” he said.

The house has a lot of history.

“It’s almost approaching 100 years old now. It was built in the 1920′s. Originally owned by a guy who was a chemist for Jello. From there it went through the hands of the owner of the Tupperware company and after that ended up then in the 1980′s in the hands of Osama Bin Laden’s Brother, Khalil. He owned it up until 9/11 when they were flown out,” Kent said.

Though it has had several owners, Kent said the stigma of the Bin Laden family remains.

“Every owner that’s owned this property has had nothing but bad luck with it,” he said.

The Bin Laden Mansion is just one of the many Florida properties Kent has explored and shared with people across the country and around the world.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

He said he put three cars on the car rental app about a year ago and since then he has grown his fleet to seven vehicles and said that they stay rented out about 60-70% of the time.

At that rate, he said each of his luxury vehicles brings in about $2,000 a month. Some go for more.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

He was also the wrestling coach and said he was used to cutting weight but didn’t expect to lose a whopping 48 pounds during taping.

Radner joined Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden on Florida’s Fourth Estate to talk more about his experience on the reality show.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

University of Central Florida History Professor and News 6 Political Analyst Dr. Jim Clark said it may not end until it gets to the Supreme Court.

Clark recently joined Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden on Florida’s Fourth Estate to talk about the governor’s ongoing battle to strip Disney of some of its self-governing abilities.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosts Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden are breaking down their top five roadside attractions in the sunshine state.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

He said he didn’t mean to start a battle with one of the most powerful men in tech, but that’s exactly where he has found himself.

Sweeney said it all started when he was just a child. His dad worked in the airline industry, so he would track planes to make sure his dad would be home on time.

“And then I had an interest in Elon Musk, and where he was, what he was doing. And then I figured that he had a private jet. And that I could track it myself. But nobody was really doing it. So I started doing it during my free time during COVID,” he said.

But when Sweeney posted that info to Twitter he said Musk didn’t like it.

“So he hit me up in the Twitter DMs and it was like 1 a.m. here in Florida time,” he said. “He’s like, ‘Hey, can you take this down?’ And then he was asking how it worked. He didn’t have really any idea of how it worked. And I was like, ‘You know, I’ve put a lot of work into this (to) just take it down.’ You know, I didn’t really want to.”

Sweeney said the conversation continued for about a month, with the two exchanging a couple of messages a week.

Eventually, Sweeney said Musk offered him $5,000, but, he turned that down and asked for more. The two were not able to come to an agreement and after Elon Musk bought Twitter the tech company suspended Sweeney’s account.

Sweeney still has a tracking account on Facebook and other platforms.

Despite all of the controversy surrounding his introduction to the tech industry, Sweeney said he would like to continue working in the industry professionally.

“I think in the future I might want to do (something) with AI and GPT, stuff like that, it’s very interesting,” Sweeney said.

Software programming is also on his radar as are planes.

“I’m still interested in doing something with aviation and aircraft,” the UCF student said.

To learn more about Sweeney’s plans for the future, how the University of Central Florida is responding to him making national headlines and more, check out Florida’s Fourth Estate.

You can download the podcast from wherever you listen to podcasts or watch it anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The owners of Florida Van Life renovate vans and turn them into a vacation on wheels.

Lebelo Mosehle said he and Estelle Bain wanted to make travel more affordable. Instead of buying a brand-new RV which could cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars, Moshele told Florida’s Fourth Estate hosts Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden the most they have ever charged for one of their renovated vans is $45,000. Others have gone for under $25,000.

“The way we determine our price is by how much you put in, the time it takes us, and also the year of the vehicle, but mostly a lot of people who buy our vans they’re hippies so they don’t really care about ‘Oh, yeah, I want it to be so perfect, like 2023 whatever.’ As long as it is a van it’s got that retro look, and it feels like you’re back in like the 70s. That’s what our people are going for,” Moshele said.

While Mosehle focuses on sales, Bain focuses on design.

She said she incorporates the things that she likes into each of her custom creations. One of her vehicles is a redesigned U-Haul truck. Bain took Austin and Gadsden inside to show off the skylight she created. She said it really allows you to feel like “you’re sleeping underneath the trees, but you’re still protected.”

She said, as a single woman, she was always concerned about safety and has designed her vehicles with that in mind.

Bain admits some of the re-imagined vans can get warm in the summer, but said a fan can help with that and that it is still much more comfortable than a tent.

It also includes a cooktop, bed, shower and toilet.

To learn more about Mosehle and Bain and their business check out Florida’s Fourth Estate. You can download it from wherever you listen to podcasts or watch it anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“I feel like in the next five to 10 years, we’re gonna have over half of the quarterbacks in the league playing football as a Black quarterback, and it’s not about the color of their skin. It’s about what they can do and how well they can play,” he said.

Williams was the first Black quarterback to play in and win a Super Bowl in 1988.

But with the way the NFL draft is going and as more coaches give Black quarterbacks a chance, Williams said Florida’s Fourth Estate hosts Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden he expects a majority of the quarterbacks in the league to be Black in the coming years.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An Orlando-based mental health counselor says he is helping people figure it out all, while at the same time improving their mental and physical health.

Jesse Lyon describes himself as a Clinical Hypnotherapist and Dream Interpreter who helps people work through the trauma they face in their day-to-day life by analyzing the dreams they have at night.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Well, that’s about to change. Flagler Beach is preparing to welcome back the Hang 8 Dog Surfing event.

The city’s mayor said it all “came about because of Wednesday,” her 8-pound chihuahua.

Mayor Suzie Johnston told Florida’s Fourth Estate hosts Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden her pup has no fear of the water.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Vaughn has worked as an engineer at News 6 in Orlando since 2018.

When he first accepted the gig, he said he didn’t know it would involve going hundreds of feet up into the air to make repairs to a TV news tower.

Vaughn spoke with Florida’s Fourth Estate hosts Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden about how he came to News 6.

“I was in video post-production in New York for 20 years. When I took this job, I was like, ‘Oh, I can work on machines and computers,’” he said.

Not long after he was hired, he said there was an issue at the tower. He said he was nervous the first time he had to make a repair so high above the ground.

“I actually never stood up the entire time I was up there. I was on my hands and knees. Absolutely terrified,” Vaughn said.

Over time, despite the swaying, clanking and vibrating, Vaugh said he has gotten a lot more comfortable working on a 1,300-foot-high platform, but he knows he has to be careful.

When he does go up, he said he always has a partner with him.

“If one person gets incapacitated, you can’t call Orange County Fire Rescue, they can’t get you. So, one guy has to be able to get the other person off the tower, get them into the elevator,” he said.

But, when you think of an elevator, it’s not one of those fancy ones you see in a hotel. It looks more like a small metal cage and when two men are riding in it together for 26 minutes up and 26 minutes down, things can get tight.

Vaughn said he often rides “belly to belly” and that “Larry and I have spent a lot of close time together.”

Most recently the duo went up the tower to fix an antenna that allows viewers at home to see the signal from the Sky 6 helicopter live. Vaughn said he and the engineering department go up twice a year just to repair, replace or inspect those antennas.

When they go up Vaughn said, it’s important to make sure you don’t go up too high.

“You’d die... you’re talking about an enormous amount of RF energy. I mean, we oftentimes, around the base of the tower, you’ll see dead birds and whatnot. I mean, it’s like being in a microwave,” he said. “If you were to go any higher than, say 1,500 feet, then you would have to wear an RF alarm, similar to a radiation alarm.”

As with everything else in Florida, Vaughn said weather also plays a factor in when engineers can go up the tower to make repairs.

“In Florida, you’re off that tower by one o’clock. If it’s done or not, you’re off,” he said.

The reason? The high risk of lightning strikes.

When you are trying to get down, if for some reason, the elevator doesn’t work, Vaugh said, that’s where your safety harness comes into play.

“There’s a ladder” and you would have to lock and unlock your harness the whole way down.

“You better have nice boots on. Otherwise, the insides of your feet are going to be destroyed,” he said.

Despite the inherent risk involved, Vaughn said he and the whole engineering team at News 6 is committed to doing whatever it takes,

“We all have a common goal, and that goal is to make sure that the station stays on the air,” Vaughn said.

To learn more, check out Florida’s Fourth Estate. You can download it from wherever you listen to podcasts or watch it anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

He said he was only in the water for about 15 minutes when a shark chomped down on his foot while surfing in Fort Pierce.

“Something grabbed my foot and right when it bit me I saw the shark, it kind of flailed in the water and swam away from me really quick,” he said.

Right after that, he said he told a friend he was with that he had been bitten.

“We gotta get out of the water, I got bit. She thought I was joking, I literally grabbed her and said ‘Get out of the water, get out of the water.’ She still thinks I’m joking, I get to the shore, we both look down and it was horrible,” Picarelli said.

He said the four to five-foot-long shark did a lot of damage.

“The scene of it was brutal. There was blood everywhere when I got onto the beach,” Picarelli said. “It was a fully opened wound, I almost lost all of my toes, 50 stitches, broken tendon, chipped bone.”

The surfer, who lives a very active life, said the attack — which happened in early March — will take several more weeks if not months to recover from, but he believes he will make a full recovery.

However, the experience has been challenging emotionally.

“That first week of it happening, I couldn’t process it for a few days,” Picarelli said. “I was having some nightmares, I was having some terrors. Then some of the dreams I was having — it turned into like me being in that same situation getting bit by a shark, then it eventually turned into me sitting at home in my bed and a shark blasting through the door, it was crazy.”

He said he does want to get back in the water, but moving forward he will be more careful.

Picarelli has started a GoFundMe to help with his medical bills.

You can learn more about Picarelli’s shark encounter and why he believed the water was clear of sharks on the day he was bitten. Listen to the full conversation on Florida’s Fourth Estate. You can download the podcast from wherever you listen to podcasts or watch anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

She is the Park Director and Crocodilian Enrichment Coordinator at Gatorland.

But, if you ask her, what brought her to Central Florida was the allure of Disney World.

“(I) ran away to Florida when I was 16 years old because I wanted to be Cinderella,” she said. “Of course, Disney doesn’t hire 16-year-old runaways and I was way too tall to be Cinderella.”

So she started applying to work at Gatorland. The gator pro said it took seven years to get a gig at the wildlife park and once she came on board she never looked back.

“I’m so honored every day that I get to come to work with these amazing dinosaurs,” she said.

Boan now focuses her time caring for alligators and crocodiles, working to protect their habitats and educating the community about the reptiles.

She recently took Florida’s Fourth Estate hosts Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden around the wildlife park to talk about gator mating season.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Trucker Employment site, TransForce states Florida has “over 719 miles of toll roads crisscrossing the state”.

Researchers say Orange County has the most, with 150+ miles of toll roads.

UCF History Professor Jim Clark joined Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden on Florida’s Fourth Estate to talk about why traveling on so many of Florida’s roads comes at a cost.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For people here in Florida, it can feel like it is a world away. But for one University of Central Florida student, it has been her reality daily.

Mia Willard lives in Kyiv and attends classes virtually. Her dad lives in Lake Nona. Since Russia’s attack on Ukraine began, Willard has focused on humanitarian efforts and helping those who have lost so much during the war.

Within the last few weeks, she flew back to Florida to spend some time with her dad. While here, she talked to Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden on Florida’s Fourth Estate about what it has been like helping survivors across Ukraine.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

But Orlando Sentinel columnist Scott Maxwell said lawmakers can get pulled into some pretty strange positions by Florida’s special interest groups.

The Cambridge Dictionary describes a special interest group as “a group of people who have particular demands and who try to influence political decisions involving them.”

Recently, Maxwell sat down with Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden on Florida’s Fourth Estate to break down his top five list of special interests influencing how our government works.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After stepping away from journalism, Osborne took up voice acting and is getting her son involved in the fun, too.

The former newscaster recently sat down with Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden on the Florida’s Fourth Estate podcast to talk about her new career.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

By combining two technologies used in everyday life, Gay is striving to get results for the over 2.2 billion people worldwide with visual impairments.

The Orlando Science Schools sophomore joined Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden on Florida’s Fourth Estate to explain the story and the science behind an electronic headset she created.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

He told Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden on Florida’s Fourth Estate he didn’t understand the weight of his words when he first began his career.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Triece and her attorney Mark Nejame joined Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden on Florida's Fourth Estate to talk more about the case.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Safari Wilderness Ranch lets guests feel like they are in the motherland while skipping the expensive price tag.

“We have a lot of endangered species here, animals that are extinct in the wild, animals that need a place,” said owner Lex Salisbury. “And this is, I think the next evolution for zoos.”

Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden took their podcast Florida’s Fourth Estate on the road to check out the one-of-a-kind experience in Lakeland.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s not just changing schools, there is also a lot of brain development involved.

The experiences during that time can have a lasting impact.

Neurologist and mental health expert Dr. Romie Mushtaq joined Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden on Florida’s Fourth Estate to talk more about kids and their mental health.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lovebugs often fly in tandem and can make for some uncomfortable conversations.

“It caused me to have a very awkward conversation with my daughter, who when she was very tiny, she caught the little lovebug and she goes, ‘Dad, why does this bug have two heads?’ And I stumbled around and bumbled and said, ‘We’ll talk about it when you’re older,’” Florida’s Fourth Estate co-host, Matt Austin said.

Austin and Ginger Gadsden are getting to the bottom of what lovebugs are doing, where they came from and how to clean them off of your car.

The duo spoke with Dr. Norman C. Leppla with the University of Florida on Florida’s Fourth Estate. He has dedicated his life to studying insects and he knows a lot about lovebugs.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It graces the 50-yard line and determines who will get the kick-off in the championship game. But, before it ever travels to Arizona the Super Bowl coin is expertly crafted in Central Florida.

The Highland Mint in Melbourne etches the heads and tails into the decision-making coin.

It’s a job Vince Bohbot said the company has been doing for nearly three decades.

The Executive Vice President of The Highland Mint joined Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden on Florida’s Fourth Estate to talk more about it.

Bohbot said it all started in 1993 when he took over what he calls “a failing business” and turned it around.

“(The Highland Mint is) kind of like the U.S. mint except we are minting investment grade rounds and not currency and we are privately owned,” he said.

Everything is done at their Melbourne location including melting silver, framing and packaging.

“Every component that we use is made in the USA. So whether it’s the wood; it’s sourced in the U.S., whether it’s paper; it’s sourced in the U.S., whether it’s metal; it’s sourced in the U.S. — and so we were very proud of that side of our business,” Bohbot said.

He said his company doesn’t just make the Super Bowl coin.

“We also sell replicas of the coin.”

He said those generate royalties and sales for the NFL.

The company isn’t just responsible for the big game.

“We make the flip coin for every NFL game and the postseason — there are special coins made for each week,” Bohbot said.

If you plan on heading to the game Bohbot said the Melbourne-based company also frames tickets and coins.

“That’s a really big seller,” he said.

You can learn more about The Highland Mint on Florida’s Fourth Estate. You can download the podcast from wherever you listen to podcasts or watch anytime on News 6+,

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There are a lot of great places to enjoy a unique date with your loved one this Valentine’s Day.

Dani Meyering, the Managing Editor for the Orlando Date Night Guide teamed up with Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden on Florida’s Fourth Estate to talk about some out-of-the-box ideas.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Linden Hollow Sheep Farm in St. Cloud lets dogs tap into their wild side.

Natalie Cole said her grandma started the unique business with shelties.

“We used to show Shetland sheepdogs in confirmation and we wanted to compete with them in herding as well. So, my grandma got a few sheep for herself to work her dog and we started from there when I was very little and have been going since then,” Cole said.

Cole gave News 6 anchors Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden a behind-the-scenes look at the training on Florida’s Fourth Estate.

She said when people bring their domesticated dogs out to the property, some of them act like “they are born and bred on a farm.”

“It’s just hard-wired (in their) DNA. So, when they say that they have their pup that lives in an apartment and they want to bring it out for herding lessons and it comes out and does what it is supposed to do, it doesn’t surprise me at all,” she added.

Ginger takes her dog Finn to the farm and says when he goes, he gets a great workout and comes home tired.

Other than tapping into their natural instincts, Cole said dogs also get a boost in their confidence after visiting the farm.

“I will have some people come out that say, ‘You know, my dog is a little timid, my dog is a little afraid of people’ and stuff like that, so a lot of times, we’ll bring the dogs out here if they are bred for this and we get them on sheep and a totally different dog just comes alive. They are not afraid of things. They come out of their shell, they learn how to do this and it’s something that they love and it keeps their brain busy and it’s a good stimulation for them,” Cole said.

Learn more by checking out Florida’s Fourth Estate. You can download it from wherever you listen to podcasts.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If so, it likely made Florida’s Fourth Estate’s top roller coaster list.

Hosts Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden invited In the Loop: Theme Park Scoops producer Landon McReynolds on the show to break down the best of the best.

“If he’s off for two seconds he’s at the theme parks,” Austin said of McReynolds.

Of course, he has ridden each of the top 5.

Counting down to one, the top five are:

5. Mako (Seaworld Orlando)

McReynolds said Mako at SeaWorld claims to be “Orlando’s tallest and fastest.” It goes up to 73 miles per hour but because it has a metal track.

“It’s very smooth,” McReynolds said.

He also calls it “a must-do,” even though when he took his parents his mom sat this one out and his Dad agreed she was safer on the ground.

4. Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind (Epcot)

McReynolds said this ride is “one of the longest enclosed coasters in the world” and that “it’s so big it could actually take up an entire football field.”

He added it’s mostly in the dark.

“So you can’t see where you’re going,” McReynolds said.

Pair that up with your chair moving you towards displays on the wall and he said this could increase the “vomit factor” for some people.

3. Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure (Orlando’s Islands of Adventure)

Gadsden said this is the only one of the top five coasters she has ridden. She said she was “so terrified to get on this thing.” She quickly realized it was “fast as all get out,” but also “smooth.”

Despite waiting for two hours to get on she says “we had so much fun.” Austin said the good thing about Hagrid’s is that the height requirement is 48 inches, so parents looking for a thrill can take their kids on too.

2. Iron Gwazi (Busch Gardens Tampa Bay)

“This one reaches up to 76 miles per hour and it flips you around like nobody’s business,” McReynolds said.

He said he was screaming on this ride and describes it as “very intense”

1. Jurassic World VelociCoaster (Universal’s Islands of Adventure)

Austin said this is his “favorite roller coaster on Earth.”

“It does things to your body that you’re just like ‘what are you doing to me,’” Austin said. “You feel like you are floating around. you are going upside down, it has 12 points in this ride that you just feel like, ’Yep, I’m going to die’ and you don’t, you manage to survive it. And my favorite part about this is just how incredibly smooth it is, so I get off the thing and I don’t feel violently ill, I feel like I just cheated death.”

Austin said his family is gifting Gadsden with admission to Universal so she can experience the ride for herself.

If you don’t agree with Florida’s Fourth Estate’s top roller coaster list, or think Austin and Gadsden missed one, let them know at ffe@wkmg.com.

During this episode of Florida’s Fourth Estate Austin and Gadsden also talk to the co-owner of Tank America.

He said kids as young as 16 can get behind the wheel of a tank and don’t even need a license to do so. Watch the full episode to learn more.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So, when he heard about the opportunity to get a specially trained dog that can track down the devices that hide child porn, he jumped at the opportunity. He alerted his superiors of the opportunity and once it was approved, he purchased “Baxter.”

“(Baxter is) trained to detect the presence of a chemical that is actually used in the manufacturing process of electronic storage devices,” Torres said.

Torres said the chemical is present in “cell phones, thumb drives, SD cards, external hard drives.”

He added there are only seven or eight of these types of dogs in the state and about 100 across the country, but he hopes eventually every agency will get one.

During a conversation on Florida’s Fourth Estate Baxter successfully searched three rooms and found hidden electronics. In one case he knocked a thumb drive out of a planter.

“He is so geared up to work, his nose is already working without me really giving the command,” Torres said. “So, from the doorway he can already tell that there is a device here, he can already tell the area where it was, so he ran right here and shoved his nose at the plant and then like a savage he knocked it over.”

What Baxter accomplished in seconds, Torres said, “even in the best scenario this could take two detectives easily two hours.”

“(A dog like Baxter is) very valuable because what we do is so important, a lot of the children we deal with, the child victims are going through horrors that we can’t even comprehend,” the officer said.

Learn more about Baxter and Kissimmee Police K9 Officer Georgie Torres on Florida’s Fourth Estate. You can watch Florida’s Fourth Estate every Monday & Friday on News 6 at 5:30 p.m. or anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you go to the Audobon Center for Birds of Prey you are guaranteed to see one and it will only cost you $8. You will likely learn a lot too.

Daisy Fiore, the Senior Coordinator for Education joined Ginger Gadsden and Matt Austin on Florida’s Fourth Estate to talk more about the location and how it has become a haven for injured raptors.

Fiore started with Trouble, a 36-year-old bald eagle. She confidently held the bird out on her arm, but agreed eagles can be vicious and intimidating.

“Bald eagles are extremely territorial,” she said. “They form pair bonds and they are very nice in those pair bonds, but to stranger eagles, they are very territorial. They are trying to protect the best nesting space that they are laying claim to. Keep other eagles out of there. Protect their hunting territory.”

Austin said once thought two eagles blocking traffic on the side of the road were in love, but quickly realized they were actually fighting.

“Every year here at Audobon Center for Birds of Prey we do get in a couple eagles that have got into territory fights with one another and have been injured in those territory fights,” Fiore said. “It’s very true that if you see two eagles together, it could be a bonded pair... but they could also be getting in a territory fight.”

If you haven’t seen one yet, you likely will.

“We are usually second or third as far as largest populations (for eagles),” Fiore said.

She added great horned owls are also prevalent in our state and if you haven’t seen them, you have likely heard them.

“They make that whoo whoo call that everyone thinks of,” she said.

“They are called the tigers of the sky.... eagles may have a strong grip, but great horned owls can grip about twice as strong as an eagle,” Fiore said. “(Great horned owls can) actually crush bone with those tallons.”

Fiore also said there is a red-shouldered hawk at the center and that they are the most common bird of prey in Florida.

Most of the birds at the Audobon Center live there because they have been injured and are not able to be re-introduced to the wild.

If you would like to learn more or help out, Fiore said they are in need of volunteers and for every visitor that comes, the ticket price goes back into supporting the birds.

Florida’s Fourth Estate is on News 6 at 5:30 p.m. every Monday and Friday. You can also watch it anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oxx Simeina runs Oxx Beekeeping in Kissimmee. He said he keeps bees on multiple properties across North and Central Florida.

One of the properties he keeps his hives on was flooded with “about 3 feet of water,” and some of the hives “floated about 100 yards to the other side of the yard.”

“A bunch of them flipped over, and I pretty much lost all of the hives,” Simeina said.

One of the hives managed to survive.

“I’m just trying to baby her to make sure she makes it through the winter,” the beekeeper said.

He told Ginger Gadsden and Matt Austin on Florida’s Fourth Estate that the struggle extends beyond his hives.

Simeina said a lot of trees were destroyed in the storms.

“So the bees aren’t getting as much food as they would get during this time of year, and the bees that do have food are being robbed by the bees that don’t have food,” he said.

Simeina said this is the first year in 9 years he is considering giving his bees a sugar-water mix through the whole winter to make sure they don’t starve.

He said he doesn’t like it because it’s not natural, but he has to do what needs to be done to save his bees following the busy hurricane season.

You can learn more about the impact Hurricane Ian and Nicole have had on our local bee population on Florida’s Fourth Estate.

You can download the podcast from wherever you listen to podcasts or watch anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ginger said her worst present ever just so happens to be from Matt.

“I call it the wheel of awfulness,” she said “I gave Matt the business about some shoes he wore to work one day and several days after that and he wasn’t having it or whatever.”

In return, she says she got a wheel of pictures of him “making out with the shoe.”

Others show him blowing kisses, telling someone to ‘shh’ and another of him smiling into the camera.

“That was your sexiest man alive attempt,” Gadsden said.

Gadsden said she keeps the silly gift on her mantel at home.

While that one was intentionally bad, Austin admits he has a history of giving bad gifts.

“Many years ago when my wife and I were dating, I was walking through the mall and I spotted this dress,” he said.”I was like, ‘Man. my girlfriend Tricia is going to look so good in this dress.”

Austin held up the soft green, multi-tiered, flowery dress, to show it off.

“If she were a flapper girl that would be perfect,” Gadsden said.

It turns out it was not a hit.

“The tags are still on it,” Austin said. “If you ask her to this day she would say, ‘Oh no it was nice.’ She won’t ever say how bad it is.”

In this episode, Austin and Gadsden also break down what they think the top gifts are this season.

If there is a gift you think should be on the list or if you have ever gotten a terrible gift, we want to hear from you.

Leave your comments below or email ffe@wkmg.com.

You can download Florida’s Fourth Estate from wherever you listen to podcasts or watch it anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alanah Story said Frontier Airlines delayed her flight earlier this month.

“People were literally lining up about to get on the plane... we find out our flight is canceled,” she said. “Everyone was like oh my gosh what are we going to do now?”

That’s when, Story said one of the women on the flight, “yelled out to everyone to let us know, like they’re not doing anything for us, we can get a van if you want.”

“My mom and Carlos and his wife had kind of been talking about doing it so they all just kind of merged together,” she said. “It was kind of like a joint effort.”

Story said she was surprised at the direction everything was going.

 “I actually met up with Mikayla in the bathroom, the one who’s going to UT, and I was like ‘Girl, this is crazy, this is nuts, like we don’t know each other.’”

And before they could get in the van a total of 13 people had agreed to take the road trip, all for their own reasons.

One girl said she was going to miss her finals, another woman said she was about to miss her kid’s custody battle, and one guy said he was just trying to get home after visiting a friend in Orlando.

Story recorded their stories on her cell phone and posted the video to TikTok.

Story said the TikTok video, which has now been viewed more than 3 million times, “helped break the ice” for everyone in the van.

“When I say like the comments were being read out loud the entire van ride, it’s Iike I’m listening to stats running — like that’s how often they are talking about this,” Story said.

She said a lot of the passengers also talked to each other and shared their life stories.

Overall Story called it a good experience but said one person did take more bathroom breaks than her mom would have preferred and one passenger did talk quite loudly, but for the most part, people were very considerate of each other.

Lots of people who saw the TikTok video online are suggesting the experience be turned into a movie.

Story said that would be OK with her.

So, would she ever fly Frontier again?

“I say, like, uh, I would never fly with them again, I’m 23 years old, they have cheap flights, I like to go places... so I might try it one more time,” she said.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

But California isn’t the only state churning out celebs.

Florida has had its fair share, some you may have forgotten and others you never knew about.

Florida’s Fourth Estate hosts Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden break down their top five.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

But, if you have lived here for more than a couple weeks or have visited more than once, you have likely been exposed to some more unique city names, too.

Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden break down their Top 5 list of strange town names in Florida on their podcast Florida’s Fourth Estate.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jeremy and Jill Barton run Barton Beef in Bunnell. The couple says getting your beef from their Flagler County ranch means fewer antibiotics in your beef and could mean big savings too.

The duo joined Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden to talk more about it on Florida’s Fourth Estate.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

While the wind was still whipping our state, Jonah Martinez and his daughter, Kaylee Martinez, set their sights on the sand.

“When the cold fronts or the hurricanes come up, we usually get an opportunity to go out there and look for stuff that has been lost. Mother Nature does a job and erodes the sand away and if you are in the right place at the right time, you never know what you are going to find,” Jonah Martinez said.

The pair said they found a lot of junk, but they also uncovered gold coins.

Florida’s Fourth Estate host Ginger Gadsden asked them if they “found a sweet spot, and where is it?”

But co-host Matt Austin chimed in before they could dish out the details, saying, “I’m not going to let you answer that.”

“Through the 30 years of doing this, I have found many sweet spots and I can tell you that when I find them, they are sweet and when I leave them there is not much for anyone else to find,” Jonah Martinez said.

But he added you can look around online to find information on how to succeed at finding treasures along the coast like he has.

“Little by little, Kaylee’s got involved with this and it’s kind of something now that we are doing and she’s just having fun with it too,” he added.

And she’s not just having fun; her Dad said she also uncovered several coins.

“It was a totally new feeling, just holding this piece of treasure and this piece of history that hasn’t been held in 300 years,” she said. “It’s just mind-boggling.”

Her dad said it’s an incredible find, especially considering how often he goes out to search for treasure and comes up empty-handed.

“The chances that you actually do are very, very slim, so you gotta have that “no-finds” or the “treas-aren’ts” before you have the “treas-are,” Jonah Martinez said.

It was a pun that left his daughter with her hand palmed to her face.

Along the way, Jonah Martinez said he has also found “wedding rings, GoPros, sunglasses, cellphones, hand grenades, bullets... World War II stuff” and more.

But his best find was back in 2015 when he said he uncovered about $6.5 million worth of gold coins.

Learn more about the Daddy-Daughter Hurricane Treasure Hunters on Florida’s Fourth Estate. You can download it from wherever you listen to podcasts.

You can also watch it anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An Orlando-based mental health counselor says he is helping people figure it out all, while at the same time improving their mental and physical health.

Jesse Lyon describes himself as a Clinical Hypnotherapist and Dream Interpreter who helps people work through the trauma they face in their day-to-day life by analyzing the dreams they have at night.

“One of the symptoms of trauma are post-traumatic nightmares, and so helping people learn what those nightmares are, trying to teach them and really helping them unlock their mental health through the messages from their mind, is what I am all about,” Lyon said.

He says while there are naysayers, there’s also a lot of research to support what he does.

“The research is just astounding -- how many research articles, how many scientific papers have been written about dreams and their connection with mental health,” Lyon said.

He also says there are a lot of myths surrounding dreams.

“The falling and hitting the ground -- big myth -- it’s not going to hurt you, but there is some really great research behind it. What we have researched and found is two things: there can be kind of a physical interpretation and an emotional interpretation,” Lyon said.

He says the emotional side can be attached to us feeling like we have not reached our goals, but the physical ones may happen because you are experiencing a blood sugar drop.

If you think you don’t have dreams, Lyon says you actually do, you just may have forgotten them by the time you open your eyes.

“Everyone dreams. The research is very conclusive,” says Lyon.

“Every time you go to sleep you go through many phases of sleep -- in each of those, you have dreams. Those dreams can be different based on the phase, but everybody dreams. The big problem, though, is that many people don’t remember their dreams when they wake up, so it’s a memory issue not a dreaming or not dreaming issue,” says Lyon.

Lyon says he has found a lot of success with his message on TikTok and through his website.

You can hear more from Lyon as he discusses his business and future plans on Florida’s Fourth Estate. The podcast can be downloaded from wherever you listen to podcasts.

You can also watch it anytime on News 6+.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Austin and Gadsden’s guest, Ting Rappa, said we have to be open to the idea we are not alone.

Talking to Rappa about the paranormal is eerily comforting. Perhaps that explains why for 18 years now the company she founded, American Ghost Adventures, has been so successful.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why do some relish thrills so chilling it could lead to heart palpitations?

This is certainly the time of year curiosity gets the best of anyone looking for a scary good time.

When you think of creepy stories — whether in real life or in the movies — strange, unexplained things almost always happen in places that have stood the test of time. They are old, musty and mysterious.

Think of the creepy hotel in The Shining, the mansion in The House on Haunted Hill or the house in The Amityville Horror.

All places that send a chill up the spine just thinking about them.

This week on Florida’s Fourth Estate, hosts Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden get the haunting details on what is considered to be one of, if not the most haunted cities in America: St. Augustine.

The man brave enough to pull back the curtain on the dark side this haunting season is Stephen Mitchell. Mitchell, with Historic Tours of America, knows about things that go bump in the night in St. Augustine because he has been bumped by a spirit or two while working at the Old Jail in St. Augustine.

Mitchell has been featured on shows that conduct paranormal investigations and St. Augustine is a hot spot.

Mitchell said while doing research on ghost tours in America he discovered the first ghost tours may have started in St. Augustine.

“There is so much history and so much happens, people come looking for the ghosts and they have been for much longer than we’ve had ghost tours,” he said. “But the ghost stories keep building and building and so much keeps happening there it’s no wonder that hundreds of tours go out on any given night all over the city. It’s really incredible.”

One of those takes place at the Old Jail on San Marcos Avenue, just north of downtown.

It served the city from 1891 to 1953 and housed some of the most violent criminals within its walls.

A tourist attraction now but at one point the Old Jail carried out capital punishments in public. It should come as no surprise when Mitchell explains there are nightly sightings and encounters with spirits and dark energies at the jail.

Mitchell said each night there is a paranormal investigation being conducted.

“Every night people are in there from midnight until two o’clock looking for the ghosts, looking for evidence, looking for a sign of some sort of paranormal activity because in that building something happens at least once every 24 hours that nobody can explain. It is truly and certifiably, incredibly haunted,” he said.

Mitchell has had his own encounters with dark forces in the Old Jail. He said he has come across things he can’t explain, like the time he was pushed down some stairs.

“I was going up the staircase, it was late in the day and all of a sudden I was stopped. I could feel that push right on my chest as it pushed me backward right back down the stairs. I didn’t get hurt. I didn’t fall entirely. I was able to catch myself, turn around and run the rest of the way,” he said.

If you would like to hear more about the local haunts in St. Augustine take a tour and experience the unknown for yourself. Click here for more information.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is it just hyperbole or do some people—young and not so young—experience a bit of nirvana topped with pixie dust as soon as they cross the threshold of a Disney theme park and get a glimpse of Mickey and Minnie?

Depends on who you ask.

On this episode of Florida’s Fourth Estate, hosts Ginger Gadsden and Matt Austin speak with Dr. Abigail Disney, whose grandfather was Roy Disney and great-uncle was Walt Disney. They are the two men who built Disneyland in Anaheim, California, and Disney World in Orlando, Florida.

Abigail Disney is quick to point out you would be hard-pressed to find anyone else who loves Disney more than she does.

But these days, her love hurts and is cutting to the core of Disney culture as she questions why some loyal employees can’t make ends meet. Some of them claim they can barely afford food while others say they know cast members who have slept in cars because they can’t afford an apartment or home.

She said it wasn’t always that way.

“I grew up with my grandfather going through the cast member entrance to the park and I remember the people who work there with incredible affection,” Disney said. “And there was a great deal of affection between them and my grandfather as well.”

Disney added she saw the relationship shift over the decades as management changed.

“I saw the nature of the way workers were treated there and frankly, everywhere else, in America over the last 50 years. And I wanted to make a film about why it changed so dramatically... and what we can do about it,” she said.

Her new documentary, “The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales” takes a walk down memory lane as she fondly recalls the early days of Disneyland.

The theme park in Anaheim, California opened in 1955. She has many happy memories of park visits there, so it is troubling when she hears stories about cast members who are struggling.

And while looking for answers, Disney has come across a lot of people who don’t appreciate her opening previously shut doors.

“I would say I probably love Disney more than any other super fan could possibly love Disney. It’s in my DNA, it’s down to my toes, and I remember every detail and every nuance of both of those parks,” she said. “I will tell you, though, if you really, really, really love something, then you have to see it truthfully and you have to speak the truth about it and it’s not perfect. I wish it were.”

Disney said she knows not everyone will understand her plight or even agree with it, but she believes the company she shares a name with can and must do better by its workers.

“Disney can make money and still be a visionary company, a company that supports the wellbeing of their employees. Both of these things can coexist,” she said. “Unfortunately, the way we run businesses in this country, we’ve come to believe these things are mutually exclusive, that managements must always get workers for as little as they can possibly get workers.”

Disney said it’s not the amount of money CEOs make that bothers her.

“I don’t have a problem with your $65 million, I really don’t. Bless you, you’re welcome to it. But don’t take it until everybody’s fed,” Disney said.

News 6 has also reached out to Walt Disney World for comment, but the company has not responded.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How well do you know the state you call home?

With nearly a thousand people moving to Florida every day there are bound to be some gaps in state knowledge.

Quick, when did Florida become a state?

What’s the population of the Sunshine State?

If you got both of those right then chances are you have generations of Florida blood running through your veins.

In case you are wondering, Florida became the 27th state on March 3, 1845.

This year Florida is expected to have 22 million residents making it the 3rd most populous state in the country.

This week on Florida’s Fourth Estate anchors Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden are putting you to the test and learning a few things along the way.

They want to know what you know about the state so many people love to berate.

So, they invited Steve Griffiths on to help out. He is not a name you may recognize but Matt and Ginger work with him daily. He is their floor director, but, he has also managed trivia nights in years past and still goes strong on the trivia scene.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ginger said she got a message from a viewer and the subject was “That Stupid wig on your head.”

Inside she said there was a whole paragraph.

“I didn’t even know what to say to this woman so I just didn’t say anything,” Ginger said.

One viewer also reached out to Matt about his hair.

“Matt my name is Denise I watch the news every day and I hope I don’t afend (sic) you but your new hair style (sic) needs to go. You are very handsome (sic),” the message read.

“So, I started doing something a little bit different with my hair. Just a little bit.” Matt said. “I got this new hair apparatus for my wife right, and she was like ‘You should use it’ and I started using it and it just gave me a little extra zhoosh.”

The hate didn’t end there, Matt also said a viewer sent him a very long message bashing several things about him but finishes with “I am not trying to abase (sic) or degrade you in any way.” and “Have a nice day.”

Hear more about the hatemail on Florida’s Fourth Estate.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Linden Hollow Sheep Farm in St. Cloud lets dogs tap into their wild side.

Natalie Cole said her grandma started the unique business with shelties.

“We used to show Shetland sheepdogs in confirmation and we wanted to compete with them in herding as well. So, my grandma got a few sheep for herself to work her dog and we started from there when I was very little and have been going since then,” Cole said.

Cole gave News 6 anchors Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden a behind-the-scenes look at the training on Florida’s Fourth Estate.

She said when people bring their domesticated dogs out to the property, some of them act like “they are born and bred on a farm.”

“It’s just hard-wired (in their) DNA. So, when they say that they have their pup that lives in an apartment and they want to bring it out for herding lessons and it comes out and does what it is supposed to do, it doesn’t surprise me at all,” she added.

Ginger takes her dog Finn to the farm and says when he goes, he gets a great workout and comes home tired.

Other than tapping into their natural instincts, Cole said dogs also get a boost in their confidence after visiting the farm.

“I will have some people come out that say, ‘You know, my dog is a little timid, my dog is a little afraid of people’ and stuff like that, so a lot of times, we’ll bring the dogs out here if they are bred for this and we get them on sheep and a totally different dog just comes alive. They are not afraid of things. They come out of their shell, they learn how to do this and it’s something that they love and it keeps their brain busy and it’s a good stimulation for them,” Cole said.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What you may not have noticed is that even though some products are still being sold at the same price, the sizes are shrinking.

For instance, you likely remember Gatorade selling large 32-ounce drinks. Now their slimmed-down bottles are just 28 ounces.

UCF business professor Anand Krishnamoorthy says it’s called “Shrinkflation” and says it is here to stay.

To make sure their customers don’t feel too bad about it, Krishnamoorthy says companies often pass it off as “product innovation.”

“Gatorade in this case, PepsiCo. argued that the size of the packaging decreased not because they wanted to provide less of the item, but because these containers are becoming less easy to hold so what they did is they introduced a groove in the middle of the packaging which makes a product easier to hold, so this is positioned less as shrinkage, more as product innovation,” said Krishnamoorthy.

Krishnamoorthy says something similar happened with bar soap as well. He says soap was originally square. Then, over time manufacturers put a groove in the soap so it would be easier to hold. Then, he says the groove got deeper and deeper, meaning less product for consumers, even though the prices remained the same.

But, Krishnamoorthy says companies are not always working to fool customers, sometimes they do just make valid changes. For instance, “There might be cases where there is actual innovation going on because Bounty for a long time has claimed that their paper towels are more absorbent today, as a result of which you don’t need as much paper towel.”

Krishnamoorthy says chocolate bars also used to be a lot longer 15 years ago. But, changing the size of the sugary snack could be a part of trying to reduce the number of calories people are consuming.

With costs rising, Krishnamoorthy says many companies are struggling to stay profitable and even after the market stabilizes package sizes likely won’t go back to their original sizes.

You can learn more about shrinkflation on Florida’s Fourth Estate.

In this episode, you can also learn more about this year’s Fireworks at The Fountain returning to Lake Eola.

You can check out Florida’s Fourth Estate with Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Based in Orlando, journalist Katrina Scales voices a selection of the day's top headlines, along with a nugget of Florida knowledge you may have never heard before. 

Ready by 7:00 a.m. every weekday morning.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You may not know that Morgan actually got his start in law following what he calls an “ugly legal battle” with Disney that involved his brother Tim.

“He was paralyzed out at Disney World and he was paralyzed on the water,” Morgan said.

Morgan said his brother was not adequately compensated due to the Reedy Creek Improvement District, which happens to be locked in a political battle that could cause Disney to lose its special governing authority.

“The reason that his case, that he could never sue Disney World is because Reedy Creek was owned by Disney, so that was his employer and they had comp immunity so that Tim was never able to bring a lawsuit,” Morgan said.

Morgan said the whole experience was a nightmare,

“Disney treated Tim terribly,” he said. “They just fought him like he was a combatant enemy, even on his comp benefits and I was 19. We were poor as hell, and here we were with my brother a C6, C7 quadriplegic with this gigantic company. And, then they finally said to him they said ‘Well we will put you back to work,’ so they could get out of paying him benefits. They said ‘We will make you an operator from 11 at night until 7 in the morning.’”

This experience steered Morgan’s career.

“When Disney was messing with Tim, I became as mad at Disney as Ron Desantis is at Disney and that was — those moments in my life — was my inspiration for becoming a personal injury lawyer. I said then and there that my life’s work was going to be representing people who were powerless, hopeless and helpless against big corporations like Walt Disney World. That’s all I’ve ever done. I’ve never applied for a job anywhere else. Everybody that knows my story knows this is the story. So, it’s been interesting to hear Reedy Creek’s name come up after all those years after Tim was hurt in 1977.”

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As mating season comes to an end and nesting season begins Gatorland said alligators are more active this time of year.

You have likely seen stories of them popping up at schools, in pools and in some cases people getting attacked. In one recent encounter an alligator bit a man who mistook the reptile for a dog.

Brandon Fisher with Gatorland joined hosts Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden on Florida’s Fourth Estate.

He said he has never mistaken a gator for a dog but said their personalities can actually be similar to cats. He said some people nickname them “swamp kittens.”

“Cats, they’ll do stuff to (make you think) they’re all cute and cuddly and then all of a sudden turn on you. Gators are the same way,” Fisher said.

Fisher said gators lack the part of the brain for feelings and emotions.

“They do have their own personalities, some more calm than others, some you can really tell they want to be around you... some of them like their butt scratched, you know right on the back of the tail and they kinda wiggle and move with it,” Fisher said.

He went on to say the reptiles he works with every day know and respond to their names.

In the wild, gators don’t respond to verbal commands and can end up in places they don’t belong. Fisher said the weirdest place he has heard of an alligator going is into a house that was under construction.

If you have an unexpected run-in with an alligator, there are some steps you can take to defend yourself.

“Your best bet if you’re in the water and you are able to... stand up make yourself look bigger than that gator is. If you think about it, we still look like monsters to them. They don’t realize that they are bigger than us and can hurt us,” Fisher said.

He added, that typically you will not run into a situation like this because they are afraid of people.

Host Matt Austin also asked about other popular theories when it comes to escaping a gator attack such as jamming your fingers into its eyes or nose.

“The eyeballs is not true. Eyeballs sink right into the sockets in the head to help protect them,” Fisher said.

Though a young girl said she was able to fight off an alligator in 2017 by sticking her fingers in its nose.

“You might get lucky, but it’s not 100% guaranteed,” Fisher said.

He also said punching and kicking the animal’s head will likely just lead to you breaking your hand.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s generally the first response from a lot of people followed quickly by a barrage of questions.

What are the rules?

Is it family-friendly?

How do I get started?

Where do I sit?

How do I sit?

Where do I look?

Don’t worry. Here at Florida’s Fourth Estate, we ask all those burning questions, so you don’t have to.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“(Disney and Florida politicians) were hot and heavy in this case for, like, five decades sort of each scratching each other’s back and then all of a sudden you know Disney said, ‘Eh, we’re not so fond of this Don’t Say Gay bill, which they only said after a lot of pressure,” Orlando Sentinel columnist Scott Maxwell said. “And then Disney, and this is really important in my mind and it gets overlooked, Disney also said we are going to stop giving you money, which Disney has given to politicians on both sides of the aisle for decades and as soon as that happened the politicians just went apoplectic.”

He’s referring to politicians approving a bill that would dissolve the Reedy Creek Improvement District.

Maxwell, who has been covering Central Florida for years, calls it a rush job.

“Part of the problem here, Ginger, is that you have probably done more research into what Reedy Creek involves than the legislatures and the policymakers who abolished it,” Maxwell said.

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the bill into law in April. If nothing changes, the special district that has given Disney space to self-govern for decades would go away in 2023.

On Florida’s Fourth Estate, Maxwell discusses what getting rid of that district could mean for Disney.

“There are some people who say, ‘Well, Disney is going to disintegrate and problems will happen if they don’t have these powers.’ I think that’s a bunch of horse hockey,” Maxwell said. “If Disney doesn’t have its own government, you know what Disney will do? It will function just like every other company in the world that doesn’t operate its own government.”

Maxwell also discussed the impact on local taxpayers.

“Last we checked, there was something like a billion dollars worth of bond indebtedness that Disney has basically assumed right now via Reedy Creek, and if the state takes it over or if Orange County takes it over, that means taxpayers ultimately take it over and we still don’t have good answers on to who is going to be responsible for all of that,” he said.

Maxwell also goes on to talk about how all this plays into the DeSantis’ political aspirations on the latest episode of Florida’s Fourth Estate.

You can hear his analysis and get a breakdown of this political battle and the week’s most interesting stories in our state from hosts Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week on Florida’s Fourth Estate, Ginger Gadsden and Matt Austin talk to a cyber intelligence expert and the CEO of a cyber intelligence company.

These companies are the tasked with hunting hackers before the damage is done by sending out a warning beacon and highlighting the vulnerable spots a cyber security company may have missed.

Karim Hijazi is the CEO of Prevaillion and an expert on cyber-attacks targeting critical industries.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Amendment 2 will raise the minimum wage in Florida to $15 an hour. It will happen in stages so the process will take until 2026 to get to that amount.

While many workers in the service industry are saying it’s about time, others are saying we shouldn’t be so quick to celebrate because it could have dire consequences for businesses. Some say those businesses will have to cut jobs and raise prices on products, leaving the consumer digging deeper into their wallets.

But, the man firmly behind this fight, high profile attorney John Morgan, said the threat of layoffs and price hikes are just scare tactics.

Morgan, who also led the fight to legalize medical marijuana in Florida, also put his name and $6 million of his money behind Amendment 2.

Morgan joined News 6 anchors Ginger Gadsden and Matt Austin on this week’s edition of Florida’s Fourth Estate to talk about why he led the fight to get the issue on the ballot.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you want to hear how Mother Teresa pointed him in the right direction and how introducing his wife to Jesus earned him some serious brownie points, download the podcast.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The popular family attraction, which is still family owned, has suffered major setbacks over the years.

It has weathered hurricanes, tornadoes, recessions and even a fire that burned down its main building some 14 years ago. Still, McHugh says the pandemic has outdone all of those major disasters.

But a place that houses thousands of live animals can’t just shut its doors and hope for the best. The attraction closed for two and a half months due to the pandemic.

“We’ve got 2,500 crocodiles and alligators at Gatorland so even if you are closed you still have mouths to feed. You don’t want hangry alligators on your hands, they get really grumpy” he joked.

While nothing could prepare them for the coronavirus, Gatorland was somehow prepared to take care of its 190 employees though it all.

“We were also blessed to be able to continue to pay all 190 of our employees through the pandemic” McHugh said during a recent appearance on the podcast Florida’s Fourth Estate with News 6 anchors Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden.

“Most of them were at home, sheltering in place, taking care of themselves and their families," McHugh said. "We had a small crew in here taking care of the animals but we were fortunate to be able to pay all of our employees through the entire pandemic and get back open with everybody that we had back in March when we had to close so the park was ready to open up and start welcoming guests back.

McHugh credits the local love from Florida residents for getting them through past disasters and this one. He said every time there’s a crisis, it’s the locals who save the day.

And now he wants to assure them when they return to the 110-acre park that they will get all that love back by the great care they’ve taken to keep everything pristine. Each day crews clean the entire place and they have put safety protocols in place to make sure guest can have a great time and stay safe.

It’s a lot of work but McHugh says it’s worth it.

McHugh even gave us his impression of another guy who used to run a local zoo and became a household name for all the wrong reasons. When Matt asked him about the Netflix hit “Tiger King” and its star, Joe Exotic, McHugh wasted no time in saying, “Well I’m no Joe Exotic, I’ll tell you that. That cat is crazy!”

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mac Loudermilk is the standout former UCF punter known for his flowing hair both on his head and chin...and his exuberant celebrations on the field.

Michael Coe is a former NFL player. The cornerback has spent time with the Dallas Cowboys, New York Giants, and the Indianapolis Colts to name a few.

Both men joined us to talk about the return of pro and college ball.

Of course, one big concern was players returning to the field amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Loudermilk says it’s a challenge to keep the college crowd in line but the one thing players have to remember is they are not on the field for just themselves.

“We had a saying at UCF that was you’re not just playing for yourself or the name on the back of your jersey. You’re playing for the buddy to the left and the buddy to the right of you and that’s what kind of propelled us from that horrible 0-12 season to now the success that we have.”

So far the NFL has seen a lot of success as well. After week one, no teams have reported an outbreak of COVID-19 despite the fact they are not in a bubble like we saw with the NBA.

Michael Coe said with the frequency of testing it’s almost like being in your own bubble.

“The protocols are pretty stringent and you are in your own little bubble so to speak anyway. And the fact of how many times and the frequency which they test guys and like you said the staff. I am pretty sure before the game, after the game on the travel on the plane they are doing the same thing. I think the NFL is going to make it as safe as possible. Obviously nothing is 100 percent proof. I think a lot of the guys watching them play, everybody was just excited to play again.”

Coe also said as a new dad and a guy who has had his share of injuries and surgeries, he definitely doesn’t miss time on the gridiron.

Both Cole and Loudermilk were not fans of the fake crowd noises pumped into the stadiums or the lack of cheering during the college games. To hear more of their take on the return of football

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How do you get your hair cut in space? How do the Russians and Americans get along so well in space, while we have so much drama down here on Earth? Have the astronauts ever seen a UFO? We discuss these questions and more with Emilee Speck on this episode of Florida's Fourth Estate.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The recent NBA boycott in protest of another black man being shot by a police officer has Foyle recalling his own encounter with police when he was a player with the Orlando Magic.

On this week’s edition of Florida’s Fourth Estate with Ginger and Matt, Foyle explains why the recent protest by NBA players is such a powerful statement.

He says being in a bubble while they are away from family and friends has forced the players to take a good look at what’s really happening in society right now.

Foyle says the days of expecting NBA players to shut up and dribble are over.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

President Donald Trump has made it clear he is not a fan of allowing all registered voters access to mail in ballots, otherwise known as universal vote-by-mail.

“It will be the scandal of our times,” he tweeted, saying millions of mail-in-ballots will be printed by foreign countries and others.

The president has also said Florida is the exception when it comes to mail-in-ballots. Trump himself voted by mail because he is registered to vote in Florida. In Florida, a person must required a mail-in ballot.

Trump has said the Sunshine State knows what it’s doing in that department.

But are those ballots really scandalous and could they swing an entire election?

Not so fast, says University of Central Florida History professor Jim Clark. He says voter fraud takes some serious work.

“They keep unbelievable records. People don’t realize that people who vote by mail it’s recorded on line,” he explained. “They can go in and check ... the fact that you voted is recorded.”

“Once you’ve requested a mail in ballot you’re taken off the list and cannot come in and vote so there are safeguards, people are worried about this.”

From mail-in-ballots to who buys stamps these days and an update on Florida’s Primary election, News 6 anchors Ginger Gadsden and Matt Austin speak with UCF history professor Jim Clark on this week’s edition of Florida’s Fourth Estate.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week News 6 anchors Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden open up the hatemail bag and unpack a few gems from some people who just don’t like long hair.

In this week’s edition of Florida’s Fourth Estate, we share some of the messages viewers send in when they just don’t like what they see.

Often the comments we receive from people who watch the news have nothing to do with a story or the content of the show but rather what we look like or what we’re wearing.

Some people send direct messages to our inbox but others are brazen enough to post it on the News 6 Facebook page for everyone to read.

One person pointed out our long hair made us look like strippers.

Another recent gem was to remind my co-anchor Lisa Bell and I that our long hair just isn't professional.

"Please tell your female newscasters on the 6 pm news (Ginger and Lisa) that their long stringy hair is not attractive and is very distracting. Why does it have to hang over their shoulders like a dead animal? Just saying..."

Ouch!

People often ask if it hurts our feelings when people write mean things. Quite honestly the answer is no. We take it in stride but regret not asking our boss for hazard pay.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week on Florida's Fourth Estate we speak with a man whose story of survival is nothing short of a miracle.

Kevin Rathel was in a coma when he was treated with convalescent plasma therapy. Rathel was the first patient at Orlando Health to be infused with convalescent plasma from a man who had already recovered from the virus.

We hear his first hand account of the harrowing toll COVID-19 took on him. From vivid nightmares to losing thirty pounds he speaks to us about what life is like now during the recovery phase.

He also tells us even though he was in a coma, he was very clear about one thing that was happening in his hospital room on a regular basis.

Join us for a candid conversation with Kevin and his wife Stacie on this weeks edition of Florida's Fourth Estate.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Also, small businesses have faced many issues when it comes to applying for government assistance. JJ explains how one government program may have lost all of the applications. Also, he tells us which banks are dealing with the government programs.

Let's do your taxes with a pro! It's all this week on Florida's Fourth Estate.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week most students began distance learning and we wanted to offer a little help to frustrated parents who may not know where to start or what to do so this can be a good experience for them and their kids.

Who better than a teacher who has nearly 30 years under his belt. Orange County teacher, Chris Crisona, says this is a learning curve for them too. While nothing can take the place of one-on-one classroom time, he says teachers are learning meaningful ways to connect with their students on line.  

The process is different depending on the grade level. Elementary kids love seeing their teachers in a video chat because it gives them some comfort. 

Mr. Crisona also offers up some advice on how to structure the day for students so they stay on track.

Bottom line, don't panic because most parents have not done this before and are feeling the same anxiety as you

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The affordable housing crisis in Florida has hit hard for a local dad. He adopted his niece and her three siblings. Even though he makes $15 per hour, he can barely afford his rent.

And, a Florida family expands in a 7-Eleven parking lot. We hear the dispatcher say, "Try not to push." But, the directions come a moment too late. 

All this and more on this week's Florida's Fourth Estate!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week on Florida’s Fourth Estate, we speak with UCF assistant professor Paul Gazzillo about these smart home devices and what we’re really agreeing to when when sign up to use them.

Are the risks worth the convenience? And which devices are likely the most invasive once we set them up in our homes? It’s a conversation that will have you reading the fine print on those user agreements.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices