Think Out Loud

Multnomah, Clackamas and Washington counties recently launched a regional dashboard that tracks the health impacts of climate change in the metro area. It includes data on heat and cold events, air quality, infectious diseases and the effects climate change can have on mental health. The dashboard is an evolution of the counties’ Regional Climate and Health Monitoring Report , which was prev...

Oregon is the leading producer of Christmas trees in the nation, accounting for about a third of all real Christmas trees sold in the U.S. Christmas tree farmers in Oregon grew more than 3 million Noble fir, Douglas fir and other Christmas tree varieties in 2023, the most recent year for which statistics are available.    Priya Rajarapu is an assistant professor in the college of forestr...

 A new investigation by ProPublica and High Country News reveals how wealthy ranchers and corporations are profiting from federal subsidies for fees they pay to graze cattle on public land. The three-part investigation used data from the Bureau of Land Management to analyze grazing fees and identify the largest ranchers on public lands. Joining us for more details is Mark Olalde, an investiga...

Columbia Memorial Hospital in Astoria is currently undergoing a $300 million expansion. The new facility will include a more secure foundation, a vertical tsunami evacuation staircase and other features meant to make it more resilient during a potential earthquake.   That work was supposed to be covered by a $20 million grant from the federal Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities...

According to the AARP , one in four adults in the U.S. provides care to a spouse, relative or friend with a serious health concern. Roughly 18% of those caregivers are between the ages of 18 and 34.    That group includes Emily Quandt, a 23-year-old Beaverton resident who put her post-college plans on hold when her mother, Angie, was diagnosed with ALS in 2022. Emily and Angie Quandt bot...

The Secure Rural Schools act has provided crucial federal funding for rural schools and counties for 25 years. But for the past two years, funding has lapsed as efforts to renew the act failed and House Republicans omitted the program’s funding from federal spending in July. Now, that funding could be reinstated. On Tuesday , the U.S. House of Representatives voted in favor of the Secure Rur...

 A recent report by the Portland City Administrator shows traffic deaths in the city have continued to fall after a spike during the COVID-19 pandemic. Are Portlanders driving differently now than they were when the streets were emptier? Are earlier state and federal investments in traffic safety now just taking shape? Nonprofit leaders and city officials agree there are multiple factors invo...

Diagnosed in 2024, Portland resident Christy Scattarella has been using her own journey with Alzheimer’s to uplift others and erase stigma surrounding the disease. She began speaking out about Alzheimer's a year after her diagnosis, and champions her “Optimist’s Guide to Alzheimer's" as a way to combat the fear and shame those with Alzheimer’s often face.

For years now, scientists have shown that daily exposure to bright light therapy, which simulates the intensity of outdoor light, can be beneficial for people with insomnia and other sleep disorders, Seasonal Affective Disorder or other forms of depression . But what if bright light therapy can help people recover from concussions or other traumatic brain injuries? And what if it can also lower th...

Last week, President Trump attacked Somali immigrants in the nation during a Cabinet meeting, calling them “garbage” and saying that he didn’t want them in the U.S. Meanwhile, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is ramping up its activity in the Minneapolis metro area in Minnesota. That state is home to nearly 80,000 people of Somali descent, the largest such population...

Five years ago, Joseph-based pianist Seth Kinzie was awarded a Rotary Peace Fellowship to study peace and social change in Uganda. Since then, Kinzie has created the African Peacemaking Database in Ethiopia and Malawi. He has now released a new album, “ Bright Violet ,” with the Kinzie Steele Octet and will be performing in Portland at Holocene on Dec. 7. We talk to Kinzie and hear a p...

When we look at the night sky, we can see the moon, stars, planets and sometimes even faraway clouds of gas and dust. All that visible matter — the stuff we can see — has a gravitational force, the same way the moon pulls on our oceans and creates the tides. But for decades, physicists have noticed something weird: There’s more gravity in the universe than we should expect. Why?...

From camping gear to  gorpcore , consumers may not realize that the functional, tactical and practical clothing worn today has deep connections to the U.S. military. In the latest season of “ Articles of Interest, ” host and producer Avery Trufelman takes listeners on a journey to learn more about how civilian and military fashion intersect and the ways in which the uniforms of so...

The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted Friday morning to change its recommendation on hepatitis B vaccines for newborns.    For more than three decades, the agency has recommended that all infants receive a hepatitis B vaccine, regardless of their risk status. Now, the vaccine will only be recommended for infants born to mothers who test positive for the infec...

Since 1999, there have been more than 430 school shootings across the nation. Oregon alone has had eight incidents since 2008, according to CNN . With school shootings being a concern for parents, teachers and students, a new industry around school safety has emerged. Estimated to be worth $4 billion, school shooting preparedness and security is projected to continue to grow. From panic buttons an...

Jeanne Maddox Peterson was 13 years old when she began teaching dance lessons out of her family’s living room in Astoria.     That was 75 years ago. Today, at the age of 89, Peterson is still teaching students at Maddox Dance Studio , which is now located in Warrenton and offers classes ranging from ballet to tap, hip-hop to acrobatic dance. As first reported by The Daily Asto...

Law enforcement agencies across Oregon and Washington use automated license plate readers to identify vehicles and manage traffic. Many of those cameras are run by a company called Flock Safety, which has been criticized for sharing data with immigration officials. A new study from the University of Washington’s Center for Human Rights found that U.S. Border Patrol and Immigration and Custom...

The Ashland Sarcasm Festival is a three-day comedy festival that kicks off this Friday in Ashland. Held in various venues across Ashland, from local bars to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Bowmer Theater, the inaugural festival aims to make the Southern Oregon city a destination for comics on the touring circuit in a place more famous for soliloquies than stand-up.    ASF feature...

Paul Smith, dean of the Linfield University School of Nursing in Portland, was recently appointed chair-elect of the National League for Nursing. Smith is the first male to ever be elected to the post in the organization’s 132 years.    The National League for Nursing is the oldest nursing organization in the U.S., aiming to create a standardized nursing curriculum since 1893. The...

A recently published paper led by an Oregon State University researcher suggests that installing floating solar panels on top of existing reservoirs could have a variety of positive results. Those include cooling the solar panels, allowing for greater energy generation from those panels, and preventing the water in shallower reservoirs from warming to temperatures that are challenging for fish and...

 The 2024 Lonerock Fire burned over 137,000 acres in Gilliam County, much of it rangeland. Ranchers whose lands were destroyed faced a common yet costly hurdle to wildfire recovery: new fencing. According to the Gilliam County Soil and Water Conservation District, to replace about 300 miles of fence that had burned in the fire would have cost over $9 million. With financial support from Gilli...

Nutrition Inside is a Portland nonprofit that launched last year to improve the quality of food for adults in custody in Oregon prisons. It delivers between 500 and 3,000 pounds of surplus food obtained from farms and hunger-fighting charities to correctional facilities across Oregon each week. The organization is volunteer-based and led by a group of current and former students from Lewis & C...

 The Portland band Møtrik is known for laser lights and fog machines and a driving 4/4 beat. The five piece band pumps out playful, danceable krautrock and has just released its fourth full length album. We talk to Erik Golts, Jonah Nolde, Dave Fulton, Cord Amato and Lee Ritter about their new album “Earth.”

Data from the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit which advocates for criminal justice reforms, shows that Native American children in Washington are nearly five times more likely on average to be incarcerated than their white peers. Furthermore, Native American children are less likely to receive a second chance once they are in juvenile court, according to a recently published series from Investigat...

This week the board of Prosper Portland votes to finalize a settlement for more than 20 people whose homes and businesses were destroyed in the name of urban renewal from the 1950s through the ’70s. The group of Black Portlanders fought for years to get to this point, and eventually filed a federal lawsuit arguing that the city of Portland, Emanuel Legacy Medical Center and Prosper Portland...