Think Out Loud

The threat of a 9.0-magnitude earthquake along the Cascadia Subduction Zone has hung over the Pacific Northwest for decades. Seismologists and emergency managers say “The Big One” could be one of the worst natural disasters in the region’s history, but it may not be the worst-case scenario. New research from Oregon State University suggests the Cascadia Subduction Zone may be lin...

Over the weekend, protesters gathered in the buff to speak out against the Trump administration’s attempts to mobilize the National Guard. Last week, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem visited Portland’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility and met with high-profile leaders, including the city’s mayor Keith Wilson. Mayor Wilson urged the defens...

With its focus on characters and narratives outside the mainstream, horror is considered by some to be an inherently queer genre. According to the founders of the Stage Fright Festival , horror has “a special and symbiotic connection to queer culture.” The festival celebrates that connection with a lineup of performances that range from campy to creepy to chilling. This year’s fe...

Nearly 30 years ago, Newport resident Kent Gibson headed out with his dog to the beach one day to look for agate and jasper, types of gemstones he collected as a hobby at the time. He picked up what looked like a baseball-sized rock, threw it for his dog to fetch and then took it home for his dog to play with. But it turns out it wasn’t a rock. It was a fossil of a skull from a porpoise that...

 By law, emergency rooms must ensure that individuals receive appropriate care regardless of their ability to pay when coming into the ER. But, new reporting from ProPublica shows that more than 90 psychiatric hospitals, including one in Oregon, are turning away or discharging patients too early and are breaking this law. Eli Cahan is a pediatrician and investigative journalist. He joins us t...

The Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution in Pendleton won five awards last month, including top honors for its newsletter and magazine at the 2025 American Penal Press Contest . Twenty-one prison publications in nine states, including Oregon, submitted entries to the contest which is organized by the Pollen Initiative and Southern Illinois University.    A staff of six adults in custo...

Mary Flower finally convinced her parents to buy her an acoustic guitar when she was around the age of 12, growing up in Indiana more than six decades ago. Inspired by the folk stylings of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, Flower taught herself to play and was good enough to teach the instrument while still in high school. She continued to perform and teach while in college, which she left to embark on a c...

Heather Douglas loves making zines, both long and short, big and small, about subjects both serious and lighthearted. The zine — its name a shortened form of magazine and is pronounced “zeen” — has been around for decades, and can refer to a single sheet of paper folded into multiple panels and hand drawn, or multiple sheets of paper folded in half, similar to a chapbook. &...

The definition of digital literacy has changed dramatically over the last couple of decades. Although one report found that teens spend about seven hours a day on their phones, employers have learned that some young people have a lack of computer skills . Eric Magidson is an IT consultant and professor of Computer Information Systems at Central Oregon Community College. He recently wrote about thi...

A panel of federal judges heard arguments Thursday over whether the Trump administration can send federal troops to Portland.    Last Saturday, a federal judge temporarily blocked the president from mobilizing 200 federalized Oregon National Guard troops. The same judge issued another order a day later barring the president from sending any federalized National Guard members to Portland...

The start of the new school year brings the usual set of challenges for students as they navigate new schedules, lesson plans and social dynamics. Those changes can also take a toll on a student’s mental health. A survey conducted in 2023 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found, for example, that 40% of high school students nationwide reported depressive symptoms - an increas...

The U.S. Department of Justice recently sued Uber for refusing rides to passengers who use service dogs. The Americans with Disabilities Act requires ride-hailing services to accommodate riders who use service animals and mobility devices such as wheelchairs. A self-selected survey from the nonprofit Guide Dogs for the Blind found that 83% of respondents had been refused a ride at some point, caus...

The federal government shutdown is now a week old and shows little sign of ending. On Monday, Senators rejected for the fifth time competing proposals from Republicans and Democrats to pass a funding bill to reopen the government. Among other concessions, Democrats are demanding Republicans agree to extend tax credits set to expire for 24 million Americans who get their health insurance under the...

Multnomah County District Attorney Nathan Vasquez has filed charges against 33 of the 37 people arrested by Portland Police officers in protests in 2025. That’s a much higher percentage than is predecessor, Mike Schmidt, who announced early on in his tenure that he wouldn’t be charging for certain types of behavior at protests. Portland Police have arrested 40 people outside the ICE fa...

Tom Toro has just published a new collection of his New Yorker cartoons, “And to Think We Started as a Book Club.” The cartoons are from the last 15 years his cartoons have been running in the magazine and are grouped in sections, from Life, Love and Family to Work, Tech and Weird. Some comment on modern life wordlessly, like a teenager in the rain holding a mini-umbrella over his phon...

On Sunday, the Trump administration sent a memo to Oregon Gov. Kotek authorizing the deployment of 200 members of the Oregon National Guard for 60 days. At the same time, the administration has also named antifa, the left-wing, anti-fascist political movement, as a domestic terrorist organization. What does action mean for the political movement and how do protests happening now compare to other p...

This weekend, a federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from mobilizing the Oregon National Guard to Portland and then issued a second restraining order when the president tried to summon troops from Texas and California to Oregon. The administration has since appealed the decision. Throughout the back-and-forth, Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek has denounced the president’s actions...

British primatologist and conservationist Jane Goodall died last week at the age of 91. Goodall revolutionized our understanding of chimpanzees, our closest living relatives. She was mentored by the renowned anthropologist and paleontologist Louis Leakey , who helped fund her first trip to Tanzania in 1960 when she was 26-years-old. With no formal scientific training, she made the discovery that c...

Hatcheries, also known as fish farms, have long been used to supplement fish supplies affected by human activity. But with the 18 dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers, they became more important to maintaining fish populations to fulfill tribal agreements and to meet commercial and sports fishing demands. There are now hundreds of hatcheries in the Northwest , run by federal, state, local and tri...

An unprecedented weekend put Portland at the center of national headlines, as President Trump continued his push to deploy National Guard members into the city over the objections of city and state elected officials and a federal judge. After his order for an Oregon National Guard deployment was blocked, Trump turned to the National Guard in California and Texas for hundreds of federal troops he c...

 Portland is well-known for its craft coffee, beer and cocktails. But it’s also home to a number of craft chocolate makers. The city’s first Craft Chocolate Festival will take place Oct. 3-5 at the Olympic Mills Building in the Central Eastside neighborhood. Attendees can sample sweets from makers across the city, while makers can attend informational sessions on how to grow their...

The Portland Art Museum already has one of the most significant collections of modern Japanese prints in North America. On September 27, it burnished those credentials with the opening of the first solo U.S. exhibition of the late artist Yoshida Chizuko (1924-2017).   Born in 1924, Chizuko forged a place for herself in Japan’s male-dominated postwar art world. And though she married int...

Portland will host Major League Table Tennis events this weekend at the Oregon Convention Center. On Friday, the Portland Paddlers will face off against the Los Angeles Spinners at 7:30 p.m.  Hampus Nordberg is a Portland Paddler player, and Christian Lillieroos coaches the team. They join us with more about what table tennis looks like in Portland and what to expect this weekend.

 Last month, Oregon became the first state in the nation to be verified for its accessibility for travelers with disabilities by the travel website Wheel the World. The company worked with Travel Oregon to assess hundreds of hotels, restaurants, tourism providers and state parks in seven regions across the state for their accessibility . That includes features like step-free entrances at muse...

 In 2007, the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries released a report looking at the seismic safety of more than 3,000 schools and other public buildings. A new analysis from The Oregonian/OregonLive found that of the 138 schools in the Portland area that were considered  at “high” or “very high” risk of collapsing, 110 of those continue to have stud...