This is southwest Florida in focus.

Coming up, two Americans have captured the Nobel Prize for their life work in economics.

And could their accomplishments be implemented to help in the rising costs for the average American?

So we know that we have some of those bloodlines for Nicholas are running in our people.

And in honor of Indigenous Peoples Day, we get insight into how the culture of the ancient Calusa tribe continues to live on to this day, providing a haven for literature lovers.

The local bookshop that works beyond the pages to serve up a sense of community pride, along with the latest publications.

Thank you for joining us, I'm Jennifer Crawford.

Two Americans won the Nobel Prize in economics.

The announcement today from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm.

The winners are Robert Hall of Stanford University and Michael Woodford of Columbia University.

The Americans are being honored for their work that helps policymakers around the world smooth boom and bust cycles in the economy to try to limit inflation and unemployment.

Florida Gulf Coast University associate professor of economics at the College of Business, joins us now from Indianapolis, where, Doctor Clara, you are attending a biannual international conference on economics.

I am it's great to be with you, even though it's not in person in Southwest Florida.

Great to be here.

And I'm really excited about this morning's Nobel Prize in it.

What is the reaction to news that two Americans won the Nobel Prize in economics?

I think people are very, very excited, especially macro economists like me.

We know that the lessons that we learned from these two legends in macroeconomics inform policymaking, whether it's taxing or spending or what the fed does with interest rates and all of these situations, they help us.

And how to make macro policy, economic policy more broadly, even more effective than it previously used to be.

Can you help us understand in a very close notes version of what is macro versus microeconomics?

For a long time, policymakers thought they could manage the economy like it was one big thing, and there was a cookie cutter person, and we were all kind of the same person.

And what would work for one individual would work for every other individual.

And that's what macroeconomics is.

It's zooming out and looking at the big picture.

When you look at numbers like GDP and the unemployment rate and consumer price inflation, which we know too much about these days, microeconomics is the first original economics, and it's all about the ways that human beings, individuals like you and me, working people, retirees in Southwest Florida.

It's about how all of us make the choices that are right for us today.

Even simple decisions like whether to buy broccoli or peas of the grocery store.

That's a microeconomic decision.

How much out of your paycheck to save for the retirement or your for your kid's college fund?

That's a microeconomic decision.

So macroeconomics is about how things turn out overall for the economy.

But ultimately economics is about individual choices.

And you can't make effective macro policy unless you understand that you and I are unique, and we may behave in ways that are unexpected when we're faced with a new one size fits all policy.

How are those policies used by Michael Woodford and Robert E Hall, the award winners, to fundamentally shape a new way, a new path, forward thinking regarding stabilizing the economy not just in our country but around the world.

The arithmetical models that economists use, whether they're in math or translated into computer programs today, they include lots of information at the more individual, more local level than they ever did before.

The top down policy that we used to make, and the fairly basic computer modeling that we used to do to forecast and model what a change would look like and how it would be borne out, because our understanding is better.

The mathematical models and the computer models are more complex, but they're more complex because they reflect the richness of society, not just a cookie cutter economic actor.

Instead, we're getting real human beings below the math.

The fact that they were awarded this prize for their work on this, where it was so important to show how important the individual is in shaping economic policy.

What does that mean to the average person at home that's wondering, what does that mean to me?

One example that we're all familiar with from just the last few years was the stimulus checks that our federal government gave us at the onset of the pandemic.

At that time, the thinking was, we're going to put $1,200 or so in Americans pockets, and they'll run out and they'll buy things and they'll stimulate the economy, and it'll keep the economy thriving even during a berry challenging time in 2020 and 2021.

But because macro policymakers, even now, and even in light of the work, work of the macro economists, they didn't understand that people might react in a way that's unexpected.

And that's exactly what Americans did.

They did not take that check.

The Stimme, as some people called it, they didn't run out and spend it, spend it because it was an uncertain time.

Most Americans, they put that money away, or they use that money to pay down their credit card debt because nobody knew what the future would look like.

So people didn't run out and spend that money and let it burn a hole in their pocket.

Instead, they did the sensible thing that seemed right to them at the time.

And so the stimulus checks in many ways backfired because they didn't accomplish what policymakers intended when they sent out those checks in the first place.

Well well deserved.

It sounds like I'm thrilled.

And these are economists who inform what's in my textbook when I teach my introductory and intermediate courses to principal students right here at FGC.

They have really changed the way that we do macroeconomics.

And once you're in the textbooks, you know, you've really had an impact not only on the scholarship and not only in Washington, D.C., but on the discipline itself.

Thank you, Doctor Claire, for taking time to talk to us today from the conference in Indianapolis.

Thank you.

For more stories on the economy and how it's impacting your wallet, make sure to check out our website at dog.

And coming up, it is believed the native Kaluza people were disbanded over 300 years ago.

But as we observe Indigenous Peoples Day, we're finding out that the cultures of the native tribe never truly disappeared.

WGCU is already underway working on a documentary series called Decoding Ancient Florida.

The series offers a deep dive into the history of the Kaluza tribe, who built a complex society in southwest Florida that lasted for centuries.

WGCU Janet Zeitlin spoke with Brian Zepeda with the Seminole Tribe to learn how the Calusa are connected to indigenous people of today.

Then I had read on this.

I'm on a website that the clues that the tribe really considers the Calusa ancestors.

Yeah, yeah, we call them the Ancient ones.

The clues.

They didn't just interact with us.

They intermarried with us as well.

And so we know that we have some of those bloodlines from Nicholas are running in our people, in our oral histories.

Again, we have those stories about them, but we have stories from them.

We have songs from them, parts of their language.

There's a song we have, about catfish.

And that song is from them, so it's in their language.

We have a story about how we got that song, and a story of what the song is about, all from the Calusa.

And, we use that dance sometimes when we, performers our version of Stop Dancing in the public because it's considered a social dance.

So we share that song with outsiders.

Are there any other cultural traditions that you can share that you feel like are connected to the Calusa culture?

Some of the fishing we do, because a lot of the tribes, they try to put them into a category.

They were hunters, they were gatherers.

They were fishermen.

But for us, we know that being in the Georgia, Alabama, Florida, we would haunt we would track animals and hunt them.

We also grew crops.

But we also fished and a lot of that fishing knowledge.

We we know some of that fishing knowledge came from the Kaluza.

And so, again, all those things that are in our oral history about the Calusa.

Me personally, I believe they didn't just disappear, you know, because because another discussion I had with another professor, he told me, he said, yeah, he goes, The Seminoles haven't been around that long.

You guys, you guys popped up around 1760.

And I was like, so you're saying in 1760, we just popped out of the earth and we were here, and he had never thought about it.

And he's like, I was like, we weren't called Seminole until 1760 when the Spaniards first wrote that down.

So the Kaluza resisted the Spanish for about 200 years, and they never really were defeated by the Spanish.

So there I've read that, you know, Kaluza could be considered unconquered, which is the same as the Seminole.

Sort of.

Okay.

Yeah.

Sort of, because we know that a lot of them died from the diseases that the Spaniards brought.

So if you don't die from war, but you die from disease.

Did you lose a war or did you.

Just be be eliminated by disease?

You know, are you still considered unconquered?

You know, because you fought to your last breath?

So I guess it's all in perspective.

So does that term resonate with you then, for the Kaluza or not so much?

Yeah, yeah.

Because they fought to the end, to the very bitter end.

In 2021, Indigenous Peoples Day was officially recognized on the second Monday of October.

The observance strives to remember the original inhabitants of the Americas to preserve their history.

Today, in the heart of the Everglades, the sovereign nation of the tribe actively worked to pass their traditions down to their new generations.

Tribal leaders say preserving that culture is key to their survival.

At the Miccosukee Indian School.

More than 160 students from preschool to high school head into classrooms each day for academic instruction.

But here, tribal leaders say some of the most important lessons are learned outside the walls of the school.

In this cooking chicky made of Cyprus wood and Palmetto, France.

We're in the lifeblood of every camp.

This is the cooking.

Tricky.

This is where grandma, aunts, sisters make food for the whole camp.

Keep everybody fed, keep everybody alive.

Smoke billows from the top of the thatched roof on the ground.

Fire crackles under the open grill as three and four year olds gather for Culture Day.

You can put your finger like that.

Every grade has at least one day of the month where they just do activities that day.

They're not going to be doing social studies, science, or math in the way that you expect.

It might be incorporated in whatever activity it is, but we want them to understand this is just as important as their day to day life as anything else going on in that school.

Preschoolers clamber to the table to cut up fruit, make dough for pan bread, and slice up spam, a staple in their modern day diet.

How old are you?

Oh, yeah.

So, William Popeye Osceola is an elected member of the tribe and has taught at the school.

We want them to be involved from that little childhood age, being a baby all the way to an adult.

Even when they're an elder.

All stages of life have some impact on what's being done day to day.

Squeeze the heart with the heart right now.

The 1972 Indian Education Act.

It's because of that act, we're able to implement our culture into school in the way we are.

And for us, it's the most important thing.

Like everything we have here as a government, as a school.

Modern operation is to keep the Kocher alive.

So of course, we have that culture embedded into the curriculum the Indian school administration building, police department and community health center.

Anchor the reservation, located off Tamiami Trail, just a few miles east of the Collier Dade County line.

The tribe was the first federally recognized tribe to assume operations of its police, health, and school.

We basically told the government back in the early 70s, we know how to run this better than you do for our community, so let us do this.

Tribe officials say the majority of the tribe's 670 members live in modern houses with outside cooking chickens, but an estimated 2 to 300 tribal members live in traditional Indian villages or clan camps.

We lived in the Everglades on a more permanent basis for almost 200 years now, after the Seminole Wars, when we were pushed out here for survival.

22 villages dot the landscape of Collier and Dade counties just off Tamiami Trail.

Most are in the Big Cypress National Preserve.

Green Indian Village signs mark the locations from the road like this one.

The village sits within about 1000ft of the newly built controversial immigrant detention facility Alligator Alcatraz.

Popeye says his grandma Peggy, almost 100, has lived here her entire life, and it's where he brings his nephew and then chuck it straight down at the water.

That's better.

And other children to teach them the traditional way to fish and the importance of the Everglades environment in their culture.

Whenever we take the kids out gigging so they can get fish, teach them how to do that so they can survive.

That's out in the big cypress.

You see this firewood?

We get this wood from the land still.

That's from the big cypress.

We got to do medicine.

That's from the big cypress.

We need to hunt the deer.

A pig that's from the Big cypress.

If I want to go to my grandma's camp.

That's out in the Big cypress.

If I want to go to Corn Dance, our biggest cultural ceremony that's out in Corn Dance in Big Cypress.

Children from villages in the Big Cypress attend the Mikazuki School with the reservation kids.

Almost all are members of clans.

We're here with my niece or June.

I graduated here with her mom at Miccosukee Indian School.

We're both bird clan.

We say here at McIsaac.

We still have six clans.

We have Bird Clan, Wind Clan, Otter clan, Panther clan, Big Town Clan, and Be Clan.

It's just another layer of relations between each other, say a blood relations and clan relations, and they're just as important as the other.

There might be people in the community I'm not related to by blood, but because they're Bird Clan, they're just as connected to me as any other way.

All right.

I think this is ready, though.

Popeye says empowering the youngest tribal members with the knowledge of the Miccosukee language, culture and heritage.

I love you.

I get Kids is imperative to ensuring survival of the McIsaac for generations to come.

The leader of one of the smallest school districts in the state of Florida took home some of the biggest educational awards in the nation.

WGCU ‘S Eileen Kelly has more from Glades In a county on the western rim of Lake Okeechobee, where cattle outnumber people by 4 to 1.

Glades County Superintendent Alice Barfield trekked cross-country to California to take part in national education panels.

People in Glades County will bond together to make sure that the kids get what they need to be successful.

So I'm you know, I'm really I know a lot of times people could talk about, well, you know, it's really hard being a small community.

And but to me, I'm, I'm just I'm just happy because I'm fortunate.

I, I guess you could say, because I get to advocate for the rural, you know, what is rural education.

Barfield was recognized with four prizes from the National Association of School Superintendents, according to the organization.

No other educator has come away with two first place prizes and two second place prizes in a year's time.

I'm incredibly honored to be able to say that now, nationally, people know where Glades County is.

My greatest pride is that I get to represent Glades County and and a place that for many years I was raised in Glades County.

I went to school kindergarten through 12th grade in Glades County.

Barfield returned home after voters in Glades County elected her to lead the schools in the year 2020.

At that time, the school district was heading toward an F grade with the state's grading system, but Barfield, the staff and children changed that trajectory in the following years after the pandemic.

Earning a ratings from the state Board of Education, those recognitions, among other educational feats, helped bolster Barfield nominations for the Superintendents Association's awards.

The top prize of superintendent of the year went to an educator from Connecticut.

Barfield placed second.

And that's okay, she said.

When I caught up with her on the phone on the evening after the awards, I keep going back to us saying, I said this today probably ten times.

You know, we all are so lucky, you know, enough to be born, but very few of us are lucky enough to know why.

And I know why I was born, and that was to promote rural education in America.

For WGCU news, this is Eileen Kelly.

Coming up after the break.

Spreading the joy of reading throughout southwest Florida, the independent outlet that challenges the bigger national book chains to provide a sense of community for readers.

two independent bookstores are popping up all across the country and right here in southwest Florida, from the newly opened Book Cafe off the road in Lee County, to women owned stores like Flutter by Books in Cape Coral, WGCU Park stop by one bookseller in the Venice area, where much more than buying books attracts new customers.

have.

There is a place in Venice where you can hear music from a record player.

It's not a museum or an antique shop here.

You can also buy pieces by local artists, but it's not an art gallery.

It is a local bookstore where you can touch actual books and chat with fellow book lovers.

For Amy Audet, setting up a bookstore was a heartfelt calling.

The Island Bookshop, owned by Odette and her husband Michael Rank, is among a small array of mom and pop shops that characterize the heart of downtown Venice.

Over previous decades, competition from the behemoths of Amazon and Barnes and Noble has not been kind to brick and mortar bookstores.

But the number of indie bookstores has nearly tripled since a decade ago.

In 2016, according to the American Booksellers Association.

That is reflective of the Island Bookshop, which has expanded twice since opening.

That was the cut through where we were able to then double our size.

Half of the spaces for new books.

The other half is for used.

The Island bookshop is indicative of the nationwide trend.

Since the pandemic, the number of independent bookstores has increased, according to the American Booksellers Association.

In 2025 alone, there were around 400 new stores.

On a weekday afternoon, I spoke with Dino Bianconeri, who drove 30 minutes from Sarasota.

Do you read a lot of books?

I buy a lot of books.

He perused the collection of used books.

Mysteries?

Murder mysteries.

You never know when it might come in handy.

Another passerby was a book conservator.

Frank Mori trained in bookbinding for six years in Europe.

Then he served as conservator at the Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., for 37 years, just learning all the different aspects of a book is takes a long time, and then you have to have the hand skills to, to actually do it.

It's like surgery.

He has lent his hand to mend and preserve older books at the bookshop since retirement.

Do you consider yourself an endangered species?

Well, I mean, I guess I have to in many ways, because in Florida there really are no very few, if any other individuals doing what I do.

Odette gives clues as to why independent bookstores are not becoming relics of the past.

I think the difference between a larger corporate entity is I recognize you.

I know what you like to read, but you also trust that if I recommend something else, that I'm saying that because I want you to have a good experience, not because I want to take your $20 or $30 or whatever it is.

The experience extends beyond the customer.

According to co-owner Michael Rank, we are here to be a part of the community, so we contribute to the theater.

As a matter of fact, we sponsored a show here at the theater called the Enchanted Bookshop, which is just a natural, right?

The Venice performing arts community.

We contribute to that.

Local people donate books to the shop.

The proceeds from the sales then go towards schools, libraries, nonprofits and art groups.

Their bookstore caters to all ages according to Rank and Odette.

It's an experience.

It's more than a sharp, it's an experience.

And that's why people, I think, tend to come here, you know, who is really attracted to bookshops?

Little kids.

Yeah.

We'll also high schoolers.

Little kids drag their parents in here.

So.

Oh look, a bookshop, you know, because it's magic.

Kids are two foot and three foot, so they have a completely different perspective.

When they come in.

They're looking at all this magic and color and characters and things like that.

And then they start looking at the books.

And of course, they want all the books so rooted in the local community.

This bookshop offers a host of sensory experiences, visually viewing an array of eclectic books, verbally talking about books, tactile thumbing through the pages before buying.

And one unexpected sense.

Matter of fact, if you ever want to have an excellent, excellent experience, come to the shop first thing in the morning when we open up the doors.

You smell the leather.

You smell the clock.

You smell the pages.

You smell the words for WGCU new I'm Youn-Joo Park.

Coming up on our next program, providing a financial future for retirees with the cost of medical care and housing on the rise.

What options are there for older Americans looking to retire in the Sunshine State?

Thank you for joining us.

Make sure you head to dog where you'll find all of our stories, and we look forward to seeing you again right here on Southwest Florida in focus.