OPB Audio

Hundreds of people gathered to share songs and prayer at a vigil in Drake Park hours after Thursday’s shooting.

School safety is top of mind for many families and students, a day after a mass shooting at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend. Three children and a teacher died, as well as the suspected shooter. It’s a horrific situation for Bend and communities well beyond it. Kent McIntosh is a professor in the College of Education at the University of Oregon and an expert on school violence. He joins us to...

The Portland Public Schools proposal to close up to 14 schools is getting a lot of pushback. Earlier this week, School Board Chair Eddie Wang answered questions from parents who would be affected. He emphasized that even though the district has had to make a series of significant cuts over the last several years, the closures would not be helping fill a budget gap. Instead, they are aimed at bette...

Dozens of volunteers across the state have now signed up to help tally wildlife they observe either dead or alive along Oregon’s roadways. That might mean, for example, taking out their phone to snap a photo of an elk munching on moss next to a country road or a photo of a dead opossum struck by a vehicle. The images will be collected from Oct. 17 to Oct. 25 and uploaded to the iNaturalist communi...

The Central Oregon community is grieving after a gunman opened fire at Silver Rail Elementary School on Thursday afternoon, killing three children and a teacher, according to police. Another child and teacher are also hospitalized. Police said that the suspected shooter, a 16-year-old boy, is also dead after he was shot by a community member who followed him into the school. The community gathered...

What we know so far about the Bend school shooting

Author Michael Copperman wrestles with loss and celebrates the legacy of his friend, following Kenny Cox’s adventures and sharing interviews with his loved ones.

The shooting occurred at Silver Rail Elementary School. The suspected shooter died at the scene, according to police. We get the latest from OPB's Emily Cureton Cook.

Southern Oregon was the only region in the state to see more wine production in 2025 than 2024. That’s according to the Oregon Vineyard and Winery Report released this summer. USA Today also named the Rogue Valley the best wine region in the country in its annual poll. The recognition comes amid falling wine sales nationwide due to rising prices, changing drinking habits and other factors. Eric We...

Christopher McKnight Nichols taught history at Oregon State University for a decade and was also the director of its Center for the Humanities until 2022. He left that year for Ohio State University where he is today the Wayne Woodrow Hayes Chair in National Security and a professor of history. He is also the co-chair of the university’s America at 250 Initiative, a series of programs commemoratin...

Since the Klamath Dams came down in 2024, researchers, tribes and conservation officials have all been waiting to see whether salmon would return to the rivers and streams they last populated 100 years ago. A study published in the journal “Nature” this summer shows that they have. Researchers documented thousands of salmon migrating upstream in 2024 and 2025. They found that Chinook salmon in par...

Docktober invites folks to join citizen scientists in peeking under docks

Since 1986, the Portland-based nonprofit Ukandu has offered a week-long, free camp for children with cancer, ages 8 to 18, and their siblings. In 2022, Ukandu began offering a free week of camp on the Oregon coast for the entire family. Ukandu is now about to expand its programming year-round with the opening of The Loft on Oct. 21. The roughly 22,000-square-foot community center in the Lair Hill...

A new six-part investigative series follows several cases of educator sexual misconduct that took place at Centennial high school in Gresham in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It closely follows the story of Stacy Love, a student who married her former high school teacher shortly after graduating in the 1990s. But her story wasn’t the only one. The series also details an investigation into Jeff St...

For more than 20 years, Oregon has been monitoring toxic algal blooms. Other states such as Utah, Wyoming and California have been monitoring the blooms as well. Now, new reporting from High Country News highlights how these blooms are happening more frequently and are lasting longer. Reporter Christine Peterson joins us to share more on why this is happening and what states are doing to try to ad...

For the past 14 months, Bryan Vance has tracked the prices of 20 common grocery staples, aggregating them into a newsletter called Stumptown Savings. Spurred by rising costs and his own layoff, the Google sheet where he tracks items is now 5,500 lines long. Every month he adds 400 unique points of data.

Part 2 of OPB’s series on the state’s school system explores how parents and school advocates are looking to other states for ways to change the system from the ground up.

Portland State University engineering professor Joshua Méndez is conducting experiments in his lab to get to the bottom of this electrostatic mystery.

14 neighborhood schools in Portland would close if the Portland Public Schools Board approves a district plan. The "rightsizing" plan also includes consolidating or eliminating programs, as well as major boundary changes. Parents, students and staff have been pushing back on both the process and substance of the plan, and are calling for a pause. School Board Chair Eddie Wang joins us for the hour...

Can a massive influx of money to political candidates and rural communities change public perception of Amazon’s data centers in Oregon?

You’d be hard-pressed to find a more unpredictable Congressional race than the one in Washington’s Third District. Democratic Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez has won that election twice now. But polling commissioned by OPB shows she’s in a statistical dead heat with her Republican challenger, state Senator John Braun (BRONN). And more than a third of likely voters polled say they haven’t fu...

The Portland-based group Seffarine blends traditional music from Morocco and Southern Spain with jazz and other contemporary genres. Their upcoming album, “Abaraz,” explores the music of Southern Morocco and the Arab and West African music that influenced it. The album was inspired by the band’s residency in Mhamid El Ghizlane, an oasis at the edge of the Sahara Desert where the landscape is rapid...

“Think Out Loud” continues our monthly conversations with Meg Samples, general manager of member-supported KMHD Jazz Radio. Each month, we’ll hear about artists to add to your playlist, along with concerts and community events to attend. In October, that includes a concert by the pioneering, alternative hip-hop group Digable Planets. The trio is currently on tour for the 30th anniversary of their...

Metro has been acquiring land to create green spaces in the Portland metro area since the 1990s — and its collection of natural areas, trails and parks has now grown to over 20,000 acres. Metro-managed natural areas and parks include the Smith and Bybee Wetlands in North Portland, Cooper Mountain Nature Park in Beaverton, and Oxbow Park on the Sandy River. John Blasher, the parks and nature direct...

Oregon's Secretary of State's Office and the national organization ALL IN are launching the Oregon Campus Voting Challenge this year. PSU held a "Puppies at the Polls" event as part of it.