Think Out Loud

When ESPN feature writer Roberto Jose Andrade Franco spent two weeks in Woodburn, Oregon, he met and spoke with a host of community members, from business owners to coaches to artists. Those conversations informed a new piece Franco wrote about the ways the community came alive and together during the World Cup.   Franco joins us to discuss his reporting and what he found during his time in W...

In Oregon’s rural, coastal communities, volunteers are coming together to reimagine what end of life care can look like for aging residents outside of medical settings.   Three years ago, Margo Lalich co-founded the North Coast End of Life Collective. She’s a nurse and public health professional who says the COVID-19 pandemic was a “wake-up call” that helped her identi...

Five years ago, the Oregon legislature declared that racism is a public health crisis. A year later, lawmakers told the Oregon Advocacy Commission’s office to come up with recommendations for how to respond to the crisis. The final report detailing that work was just released. It has information about the status of 100 recommendations, ranging from community safety and social services to edu...

In the 1920s, Mahjong took the U.S. by storm, rapidly becoming a popular game to play and a household name. More than a century later, Mahjong’s popularity seems to be on the rise again, as Yelp data shows a nearly 4,500% increas e in searches for Mahjong in the last year. Annelise Heinz is an associate professor of history at the University of Oregon’s College of Arts and Sciences. Sh...

It’s been five years since the Portland Clean Energy Fund, or PCEF, gave out its first grants. The fund has grown much more than expected, and various interests have proposed using some of it for non-climate goals. The Community Energy Project is among the local groups that helped create PCEF after voters passed the ballot measure in 2018. The Fund was designed to reduce carbon emissions to...

Proponents for growing native plants, especially in gardening, argue that because native species adapted and evolved in their surroundings, they are best suited for the climate, habitats and mutually beneficial relationships with species in the area. But does this still ring true as our planet continues to change? Can someone have a garden that mixes both introduced and native species that still b...

Amid the many return-to-analog trends in the U.S., vinyl records have held their footing as a popular medium since the early 2000s. In 2025, vinyl sales in the U.S. had its best year since the 1980s, and surpassed $1 billion for the first time ever. However, most vinyl record pressing is done overseas, with just over 40 record pressing plants currently manufacturing in the U.S.   Object Perma...

Prediction market platforms allow people to place bets on a staggering array of outcomes - from the US-Iran conflict to the winner of the World Cup to who Taylor Swift’s bridesmaids will be. Add to that list betting on wildfires.    High Country News recently reported that Polymarket, the world’s biggest prediction market platform, accepted bets on the Palisades Fire as it br...

While Portland is not hosting any World Cup matches, residents of "Soccer City, USA" have been showing up at local sports bars in hoards to view games. Away Days and GOL PDX are both located in Southeast Portland, and have been hubs for World Cup viewing since the matches kicked off on June 11. Co-owners of Away Days, Niki Diamond and Pete Hoppins, and co-owner of GOL PDX Peter Ma hr join us to di...

Marisa Anderson has been dubbed as one of “this era’s most powerful players,” for her deep and varied interpretations of American music. Her latest album, “The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music,” takes inspiration from folk music from around the world. From Vietnam and Syria, to Afghanistan and the Soviet Union, the album is shaped by songs from countries that have b...

“ Death of a Drag Queen ” opens on the 60th birthday of fictional queen Cram Brulee. Her water is shut off, an eviction notice is on the door and the friends who are supposed to take her out to celebrate keep pushing back their arrival. Inspired by “Death of a Salesman,” the play follows Cram as she grapples with her own fading relevance and mortality.   The play opene...

Nearly 5 million acres of forest and grasslands in Oregon could be seeing drastic changes under the federal government's new draft plan for the Blue Mountain Forests. The draft, which was recently released to the public, proposes tripling the logging happening across three national forests in the state’s Blue Mountain region. While some are hopeful this could boost timber jobs that have decl...

Several days a week, Quinn Brown will head to Goodwill stores in the Portland area to spend hours at a time sifting through blue bins to look for clothes to resell on the secondhand clothing site Depop. Brown launched his business reselling vintage clothes in 2023, when he was a junior at Lincoln High School. He says his items sell on average for $13 and the biggest sale he’s netted to date...

Oregon students missed classes, left school and struggled to learn as the fear of ICE undermined the school year. Washington County saw Oregon’s highest number of recorded immigration arrests from July to December. In all, Operation Black Rose led to the detention of more than 1,400 people statewide. That number includes some of the 39 kids who were arrested in Oregon between January 2025 an...

After more than 40 years in Portland’s Old Town, homeless services nonprofit Sisters of the Road is moving. Last month, the organization closed on a house in the Lents neighborhood which will serve as the new base of operations for the organization. This comes after the nonprofit closed its physical doors in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and after the organization initially announced th...

Last Thursday, Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek announced she had accepted the resignation of the director of the Oregon Health Authority, Dr. Sejal Hathi. As OPB reported , Hathi wrote to OHA employees that she was leaving to focus on her family, health and “personal priorities” without mentioning what she plans to do next. In May, the New York Times published an op-ed Hathi wrote about the lac...

The U.S. Constitution likely would not have been ratified in 1788 without Article 5, which allowed for amendment. Many of the original founders championed the idea that the document would need to change as the country changed. As historian Jill Lepore points out in her newest book most of the 27 amendments to the constitution have happened just after times of war or conflict, and after 33 years wi...

Oregon communities have some of the nation’s highest rates of alcohol-related deaths among adults age 65 and older. That’s according to a new study conducted by the Woodlands Grove Recovery Campus in Ohio. It used CDC data from 2020 through 2024 to rank metro areas by both alcohol-induced death rates and total number of deaths.    Of the top 15 cities with the highest rates,...

Cathedral Park Cohousing is a mixed-income cohousing development in North Portland that was recently awarded $1.4 million in Oregon State Lottery Bond funds. Along with $2 million in funding previously awarded by Oregon Housing and Community Services and other funding sources, the project is expected to break ground early next year. In cohousing developments, residents typically own their own unit...

In just a few weeks, our nation will commemorate the 250th anniversary of its independence. As we approach this historic milestone, “Think Out Loud” hears from guests whose life experiences and personal histories illuminate different aspects of what it means to be an American. Noushin Hoshyar came to the U.S. in 2010 and just last month, became a naturalized citizen. She's originally f...

In just a few weeks, our nation will commemorate the 250th anniversary of its independence.   As we approach this historic milestone, “Think Out Loud” hears from guests whose life experiences and personal histories illuminate different aspects of what it means to be an American.    Jill Gentry is the recently installed State Regent of the Oregon State Society of the Daug...

The punk organization Volume Bomb has been around in one form or another for the last 10 years. It’s been organizing and promoting local punk bands ever since it began — with one neighborhood block party. Volume Bomb’s mission has gradually evolved since then, says co-founder Jason Rocksmore. Last year, they incorporated as a 501(c)(3) to better fulfill their goals of supporting...

The National Civic League has announced the 10 recipients of its prestigious  All-American City award . Woodburn was the smallest of the 10 cities from around the country to receive this honor, and the only one on the west coast. The winning cities were chosen by a panel of judges based on how they demonstrated “innovation, civic engagement, and inclusive collaboration.” Woodburn...

  Centrally Oregon is a co-working space for artists, writers and other professionals which opened earlier this month in Sunriver. The Bulletin previously reported on its opening and owner Stephanie Gregory’s vision for it. Located inside a 1,400-square-foot warehouse, members have access to dedicated desks, an art studio space and workshops Gregory currently teaches on writing, printma...

As we approach the 250th anniversary of American independence, “Think Out Loud” has been hearing from guests whose life experiences and personal histories illuminate different aspects of what it means to be an American.   We’ll continue that conversation with Tony Johnson, the chairman of the Chinook Indian Nation . The nation represents five tribes whose ancestral homelands...