The Evergreen

It’s pretty common to see people including their dogs in outdoor recreation activities, but a cat? That’s a different story. Oregon Field Guide producer Noah Thomas recently met some cats who go with their people on all kinds of adventures in the great outdoors. He joins us to share their stories, and we hear from some Evergreen listeners with adventurous cats.    You can see...

Almost every day, new articles are being posted to the website of the Southern Oregon newspaper Ashland Daily Tidings, founded in 1876. At least… that’s what it looks like. But here’s the thing: the newspaper closed down two years ago.   So what’s the deal with dailytidings.com? Why do all the articles posted there seem vaguely… familiar? And who are the report...

You’ve probably heard of famous Northwest volcanoes like Mt. St. Helens or Mt. Hood. But did you know the region’s most active volcano is at the bottom of the ocean, three hundred miles off the Oregon coast?    Scientists have been studying the Axial Seamount for decades. They predict it’ll erupt again in 2025.    OPB’s science and environment reporter J...

If you live in the Pacific Northwest, you’ve probably heard a lot about salmon — how important they are to this region, and how much trouble they’re in now. But the history lessons many of us have learned are not the whole story. Tony Schick is an investigative reporter for OPB and ProPublica . He’s done a lot of work to uncover and understand a far more sinister version of...

We’ve come a long way since launching The Evergreen in February 2024, when we set out to make a weekly podcast for OPB about the beautiful and complex place we call home: the Pacific Northwest.   As the year comes to a close, we’re listening back to our very first episode! It’s a reflection on the idea of home itself. What makes where you live your home? What is it that make...

OPB’s partner station, KMHD Jazz Radio , has been celebrating its 40th birthday this year. So we’re using the milestone of this anniversary to look back at Portland’s birth and evolution as a jazz town.   When you think of jazz, perhaps its birthplace, New Orleans, or New York City first come to mind. But Portland’s been attracting jazz stars and fostering local jazz t...

Oregon law allows psilocybin therapy in licensed service centers. But what if you’re too sick to go to one? Could a licensed psilocybin facilitator come to your home and provide therapeutic services for you there? Oregon law says no. But a group of facilitators are now fighting to change that. Science journalist Jane C. Hu has been following an effort by four licensed facilitators to expand...

The town of Enterprise, nestled in the northeastern corner of Oregon, has a population of about 2000 people and it’s pretty isolated. (You have to go 60 miles to get to the nearest traffic light.) Ten years ago, Darrell and Christi Brann bought the 100-year-old OK Theatre in Enterprise and began reimagining it as a live music venue. Now, they’re able to attract world-class talent as we...

Central Oregon’s High Desert Museum’s exhibit called “Sensing Sasquatch” is interactive and multidimensional. It includes larger-than-life installations, a soundscape that evokes both the natural world and supernatural elements, and artwork that visitors are encouraged to touch and smell. The exhibit showcases Native American interpretations of the being known as Sasquatch,...

Oregon’s old forests keep getting cut down, despite Biden’s promise to protect them    Episode description:    On Earth Day in 2022, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to protect mature and old growth forests on federal lands.    But over two years later, these forests were still being cut under the Biden administration's watch. Nearly the same...

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. And that’s never been more true than in our fractured-attention-span, doom-scrolling age. People can process an image in as little as 13 milliseconds — and that often means deciding whether to read the story below that image - or not - exactly that quickly.    So the choices journalists make about what image to put with a story re...

This election season, we’re looking back at the fight for women’s suffrage. When Oregon became a state, only white men could vote. Women worked for more than four decades to get men to vote for their rights. Racism hampered the movement, as many white women didn’t want to work with women of color in their activism. Black women formed their own groups and pushed hard for ballot ac...

It’s been a little over a month since Oregon officially ended its experiment with drug decriminalization. Now, there’s a new set of experiments going on around the state. When people are caught with small amounts of illegal drugs, the consequences depend on a variety of factors, including what county they happen to be in. Some counties have gone back to charging people who are caught w...

This week, we’re talking all about Oregon’s award-winning animation scene. Just think of Coraline, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio and Will Vinton Studio’s California Raisins ad from 1986.   OPB’s Oregon Art Beat producer Eric Slade helped make a documentary about that state’s animation industry, and he’s here to break down how creators have establishe...

When President Jimmy Carter traveled, he sometimes stayed in people’s homes. This started as a way to save money when he was running for Georgia governor, but he continued these home visits even after being elected to America’s highest office. He stayed with at least eight different families around the country, one of which was in Oregon. Producer Nora Colie was six years old when Pres...

For our latest “At Work With” episode, where we talk to Pacific Northwesterners with cool jobs and ask them your questions about what it’s like to do what they do, we bring you along as we go to work with a burlesque performer, private investigator and Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA).    For our “At Work With” series, let us know who you want to hear...

For some 30 years in the early 20th century, Oregonian Jean Birnie led a trailblazing group of horsewomen called the Hen Party on annual horse packing trips in northeastern Oregon’s Wallowa Mountains. Inspired by their legacy, a group of Hen Party descendents retraced the steps of their foremothers on an adventure into the Wallowas of their own, almost a century later.   OPB “Oreg...

It’s that time of year when many Oregonians are enjoying an abundance of garden produce. Evergreen host Jenn Chávez learned about making blackberry jam and got some advice on what to do with her own garden peppers from Heather Arndt Anderson , the food writer and culinary historian behind OPB’s Superabundant newsletter . OPB’s Crystal Ligori offers us a window into the his...

On today’s episode, we’re preparing for disasters. Whether it’s extreme heat, wildfires or a looming earthquake –  we know how unpredictable disasters in the Pacific Northwest can be. What are some things we can have prepared in an emergency like this?    OPB’s lands and environmental policies reporter April Ehrlich , who’s reported on and experie...

Who was the badass woman who became the namesake for Portland’s only lesbian bar? Dr. Marie Equi was born in 1872 and came to Oregon at the age of 20. She became known as a radical and lived an extraordinary life. She was a fierce advocate for women’s rights and reproductive freedom as well as an activist for workers’ rights. She staged a one-woman anti-war protest during World W...

When people think of the Pacific Northwest, along with gray skies and evergreen trees, coffee often comes to mind. That’s because some of the most iconic modern coffee brands — Starbucks, Stumptown, Dutch Bros — all call our region home. For a place that doesn’t even grow coffee, we’ve had an outsized influence on the global coffee culture and are continuing to shape...

On March 20,1998, police in Salem, Oregon, discovered the body of a 28-year-old Harriet Thompson inside her apartment. Within a week, they arrested Jesse Johnson for murder. Johnson drifted west after a troubled childhood in Arkansas and a stint in prison there. In Salem, he was known around town as a homeless drug user. A random encounter with Thompson the week before she was killed changed Johns...

American country music, sometimes described as ‘three chords and the truth,’ can be a great vehicle for storytelling. And many songs share a nostalgia for a certain idea of home. But for those whose ancestors have traveled long distances, home can often be a messy concept.  A few years ago, three Oregon musicians and artists started getting together to play and share music, inform...

What if a spider could play the harp?    OK, sure, there aren’t spider virtuosos in little tuxedos out there performing harp concerts. But there IS a harp-like musical instrument inspired by a spider’s web, complete with a mechanical spider perched in the middle, and it was dreamt up in Oregon. It’s meant to simulate how spiders use vibrations in their webs to understan...

You may be familiar with ferris wheels, funnel cakes, quilting competitions, and demolition derbies. But the Tillamook County Fair has a unique event you’ve probably never heard of: Pig-N Ford races. Racers hold piglets while driving around a dirt track on stripped down Ford Model T cars (sounds cute, right?) The tradition has endured for close to 100 years and some families have been racing...