The Evergreen

Rupert Kinnard loved drawing his favorite superheroes as a kid: Superman, Batman, Flash and Green Lantern. But he quickly noticed a problem.    “The superheroes that I was creating were white superheroes,” he said.    Years later, Kinnard would publish The Brown Bomber and Diva Touché Flambé. They were the first Black queer superheroes published in a c...

For the past 25 years, journalist and critic Brian Libby has covered architecture, visual art and film in Portland. His new book “In Search of Portland” is a kind of love letter to the Rose City. The book contains six walking tours exploring different parts of Portland, their history and some of Brian’s own memories. OPB Morning Edition host Jess Hazel took a meandering walk with...

It’s been more than three years since psilocybin therapy became available in Oregon and more than 20,000 people have taken advantage of the program. Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University recently completed the first rigorous study of Oregon’s psilocybin therapy program. And clinical trials are under way at the federal level to test psilocybin as a treatment for anxiety...

The cowboy is one of the most potent symbols of American Western mythology. But while pop culture might call John Wayne or the Marlboro Man to mind, real history tells a different story than Hollywood or history books. Cowboys in the West were racially diverse, and in Eastern Oregon, Chinese Americans played a big role in ranching and local economies.   As part of work to reclaim histories of...

Ballots will start arriving in mailboxes across Oregon and Washington later this week and we all have some important races to weigh in on. Oregon is choosing a governor and Washington’s 3rd Congressional District could affect the balance of power in the House. A lot of the issues that are playing out at the national level are also top of mind for voters in Portland’s suburbs.  &nb...

Standing at 14,410 feet, Mount Tahoma is the tallest mountain in the Pacific Northwest. It’s also known worldwide as Mount Rainier, and is often a stepping stone for mountaineers with their sights set on climbing peaks like Denali and Kilimanjaro. It’s long held significance to the Indigenous tribes with homelands around its base, which have their own names for the mountain — lik...

Imagine a place where the smells of barbacoa and leather from cowboy boots waft through the air, where the sounds of cumbia playing, vendors making aguas frescas and conversations in Spanish carry through the aisles.   M&M Marketplace, a colorful mercado in Hillsboro, gives many of its visitors a sense of community and home.    At the mercado, podcast producer Mía Estrada...

Portland may not be known as a hub of hip-hop on par with New York or Los Angeles, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been a hotbed for sonic experimentation and incredible talent for decades.    We had all the elements: historic Black neighborhoods in Northeast Portland, jazz dripping out of clubs, funk bands, block parties, dances, and plenty of good ol’ fashioned youthf...

The rekindled Portland Fire are wrapping up their inaugural season and, while they didn’t make the playoffs, they did finish fourth in the league for attendance. The team averaged more 14,500 fans per game, which is not all that surprising given how much Portlanders love to show up for women’s sports . Center Megan DiLeo (formerly Megan Gustafson) described the team as “a bunch o...

Data centers are at the heart of heated conversations in communities around the country, and Oregon is no exception. These facilities store and process data that make all kinds of connectivity possible — posting updates to social media, streaming movies and TV shows, online banking, telehealth, and of course, artificial intelligence. There are about 125 data centers in Oregon. The AI boom ha...

The history of tattoos dates back thousands of years. In the Northwest, people have been getting tattooed since long before Oregon even existed. Today, more tattooers are getting licensed to practice the craft in the state each year, and Oregon is a destination for people looking to get inked.   From Indigenous tattoo practices that survived colonization to sailor tattoos and Portland icon Be...

What does it mean to guide someone through one of the most vulnerable moments of their life? What does it take to plan how bus riders get around? What’s it like to walk into restaurants looking for what others might miss?   We’re back with the latest stories from “At Work With,” our series where we interview people from different lines of work about what it’s lik...

In late July, just two days before the first of the month, a line of Oregonians stood waiting for free food.    At the Dallas food bank in the Willamette Valley countryside, the hunger crisis gripping Oregon was on full display. Alexis Arechiga, 28, struggles to afford snacks for church and sporting events with her two kids. Corrina Campbell, 32, visits the food bank twice a week, and sa...

When people think about the Lewis & Clark expedition, they probably think about Meriwether Lewis, William Clark and maybe Sacagawea. But there’s one member of the Corps of Discovery who isn’t as famous: York.    York was an enslaved Black man who was just as essential to the success of the expedition as anyone else, but didn’t receive credit for his work afterwards....

Esta es la versión en español de este episodio del podcast. Click here to listen in English.   Luis Lamas salió de Oregon por miedo.   “No quiero averiguar si me van a meter a un centro de detención o si voy a vivir tantos años más y que me digan sabes que, siempre no, te tienes que ir a tu país.” dijo.   Lamas se encuentr...

This is the English version of this podcast episode. Haga clic aquí para escuchar en español. Luis Lamas left Oregon out of fear.    “I don't want to find out if they're going to put me in a detention center or if I'm going to live so many more years [here] and be told, you know what, no, you have to go back to your country,” he said in Spanish.    Lam...

OPB has teams of people working tirelessly behind the scenes to support the journalism we do. We are actually the only media organization in the state with an in-house legal team. A big part of their job is defending the public’s right to access information from government agencies by pushing back when reporters are facing denials for public records requests. And our media archivist helps us...

Last fall and winter, after President Trump claimed Portland was “war ravaged” and threatened to send in the National Guard , immigration detentions in Oregon skyrocketed and became more aggressive. We learn what happened next to two families whose loved ones were among more than a thousand Oregonians caught up in what the government called “Operation Black Rose.”  &nb...

The CEO of a fast-growing company in Battle Ground is buying and developing properties at a rapid pace. His investments in the Southwest Washington town have raised hopes for some who live there. But others are questioning whether the executive, Camden Spiller, has a specific Christian vision for the city. He has connections to a local pastor who has described his approach as “an experiment...

Becky Lange became enamored with all the goodies you could find in a dumpster.    “You never know what you're going to get,” she said on a 2025 podcast called American Wastepickers .   Lange lived unsheltered on the streets of Portland. Things she found in dumpsters, like nail polish, art supplies and hair dye, were treasures to her. She saw the value in what most people...

The Deschutes River is a lifeline for Central Oregon. About 90 percent of the river’s water is diverted to irrigation canals during the agricultural growing season. OPB’s Central Oregon Bureau Chief Emily Cureton Cook wanted to know where all that water went, and what it was used to grow.    Emily teamed up with journalists at ProPublica to zoom in on the Central Oregon Irrig...

Portland is the global epicenter of women’s sports. At least, that’s what some people have been saying lately. The phrase pops up in media coverage of our new WNBA team, the Fire , and our beloved women’s soccer team, the Thorns . And those are not our only professional women’s sports teams. We also have a pro softball team, the Cascade and a pro ultimate frisbee team calle...

The shipwreck of the Brother Jonathan is one of the Pacific Coast's deadliest maritime disasters.   In 1865, the ship crashed into a rock and sank off the coast of Crescent City, California, killing more than 200 people and taking a fortune in gold with it to the ocean floor.    OPB’s Kami Horton takes us on board to understand what happened that day, and learn about the peopl...

Happy Pride from The Evergreen! June is officially Pride month, and of course, queer visibility isn’t limited to one month of the year; it’s important all the time.    Pride is about celebrating queer communities and it’s also a chance to learn about queer history. This week, we’re revisiting two intergenerational conversations about the importance of history, and...

In Eastern Oregon’s John Day, a 160-year-old building holds one of the biggest collections of traditional Chinese medicine in the world. Kam Wah Chung and Company , once part of a thriving Chinatown, was owned and operated by Lung On and Ing Hay for over half a century. It was a home, a general store, a community center and a medical clinic where Ing Hay served as a beloved doctor to residen...