Floridians feel the impacts of climate change

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4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 13 December 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Florida is a state that often feels tangible impacts of climate change, with strong storms and hurricanes making landfall in the state every hurricane season. However, this year is the first time in a decade that the Sunshine State was spared from experiencing a single hurricane. Jessica Meszaros, a climate change reporter at WUSF, joins Kimberly to explain how Floridians are rebuilding a year after hurricanes Debby, Helene and Milton hit the state. Plus, we’ll play a round of Half Full/Half Empty!

Here’s what we talked about on the show today:

“Florida and the U.S. were spared of hurricanes in 2025, but storms are still rapidly intensifying” from WUSF
“Hurricane Helene Response” from US Army Corps of Engineers
“Assessment of Agricultural Losses Resulting from Hurricane Milton” from University of Florida IFAS
“Disaster and insurance costs are rising. The middle class is struggling to hang on” from NPR
“Sorting trash can be dirty and dangerous. Sounds like a job for AI” from Marketplace
“Disney comes to Sora: What you can and can't do with the characters” from Axios
“How fruitcake became a Christmas classic (even if it’s unpopular)” from MSN
“City life is reshaping raccoons – and may be nudging them toward domestication” from The Guardian

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone, I'm Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where we make today make sense. Thank you for joining us, whether you're watching on the YouTube live stream or listening in the podcast. It is Friday, which means it's time for our weekly happy hour episode,
0:22.1	Economics on Tap. And we are going to do another one of our check-ins that we've been doing
0:27.1	with local reporters around the country. And this time, reporting in from Tampa, Florida.
0:32.3	I'm joined by Jessica Mazzaros, a Florida climate change reporter at WUSF. Welcome, Jessica. Hey, good evening. And I see that you brought a friend also.
0:44.3	Yes, this is Nacho. He's two years old on Monday, and he's a sphinx cat. And he is wearing a Christmas sweater.
0:54.8	Yeah.
1:01.4	I'm in the studio, so I couldn't bring my cat who usually makes an appearance.
1:04.5	So I'm glad that we have at least one cat in the podcast today.
1:12.6	All right, we are going to do some climate change news, some games later on.
1:14.4	But first, let's talk drinks.
1:19.5	Jessica, I know you've got a microphone in one hand and a cat in the other, but can you also juggle a drink?
1:20.1	Let's see.
1:21.0	I can multitask.
1:24.0	Yeah, I got the cat and the microphone in one hand and the drink in the other.
1:26.2	What is this drink? So I am drinking the hum, prebiot, or probiotic, rather
1:31.1	kombucha. It's nitro blackberry vanilla. I really love this one. It's super creamy.
1:36.4	Oh, that looks good. Yeah, since I don't have a cozy cat to keep me company, I instead have some
1:43.0	warm sake in absolutely the wrong glass,
1:46.1	but it's what I had here in the office. But thank you so much for coming on because Florida
1:52.3	is just so full of interesting stories between what's happening with your health care sector
1:58.5	and what's happening with your government. But I want to talk about your area of expertise, climate change,
2:04.6	because obviously Florida has just been getting it for years and years
	...

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