Arts Alive! podcast: Journalist, author Craig Pittman

Craig Pittman has a new book out, his seventh. It’s called Welcome to Florida.

Nor surprisingly, that’s also the title of Pittman’s successful weekly podcast, which now has 275 episodes in the can and is listened to, he tells us on this edition of Arts Alive!, in something like 74 countries.

The book, like the podcast, looks at people, places and events in Floridian history and places them in some sort of context. All filtered through the eyes and ears of an award-winning, former (30-year) Tampa Bay Times journalist whose attention to detail is acute, sense of irony finely-tuned and sense of humor always on full display.

Pittman, whose main freelance gig these days is at the Florida Phoenix, uses that acerbic wit to winningly counter-balance the awfulness he sees in many corners of the Sunshine State, both environmentally (as a watchdog, he is of the pit bull variety) and politically.

If he meets unique and interesting people along the way, they go into his stories, too. Welcome to Florida (the book) is a compendium of what Pittman considers his best work, of recent years, from the Phoenix, Flamingo, Crime Reads and other prestige publications.

Like the man himself, the stories are both multi-faceted and fascinating.

Click on the arrow to listen to the interview.