Think Out Loud

A few years ago, when Gabe Piechowicz decided to change careers from logging to religious ministry, he didn’t imagine that his work would be almost exclusively focused on helping people get off the streets in Eugene. But shortly into his new career, he was calling local shelters to help find a place for some of his church’s neighbors and Dan Bryant answered his phone. Bryant is the fou...

The Cedar Grove apartments in Beaverton were created by Community Partners Affordable Housing, or CPAH. The nonprofit has been working to create homes that Oregonians can actually afford to live in for 30 years now. This is part of a series of conversations we’re having this year about some of the biggest problems Oregon is facing, along with possible solutions. More than half of renters in...

Fentanyl has taken over the illegal drug market largely due to its low cost and abundant supply. It’s fueling rising addiction rates, and those in need of treatment often have no options. Enter the Confederated Tribes of the Grande Ronde’s Great Circle Recovery program. Great Circle runs two clinics in Portland and Salem, as well as a mobile clinic. It serves not just tribal members, b...

The Oregon-based nonprofit LifeWorks NW  began providing mental health services  more than 60 years ago, long before the idea of providing mental health services in the community was recognized as a best practice. Today the nonprofit runs a variety of mental health treatment programs, including Adolescent Day Treatment and one of the state’s  Early Assessment and Support Allia...

We are joined by a panel of experts to look back at the biggest news stories from the Pacific Northwest in 2023. Nkenge Harmon Johnson is the president and CEO of the Urban League of Portland. Anna Griffin is the Vice President of News at OPB. And Scott Bruun is the Vice President of Government Affairs at Oregon Business & Industry, a statewide business advocacy group.

As 2023 comes to a close, the staff of OPB's "Think Out Loud" look back on some of their favorite conversations from the past year. Producers Allison Frost, Elizabeth Castillo, Gemma DiCarlo, Sage Van Wing and Sheraz Sadiq joined host Dave Miller in conversation.

Portland artist Yoonhee Choi has been hard at work creating giant glass wall hangings that will decorate the airport security area at the newly renovated Portland International Airport. Choi usually makes tiny collages from found materials, but her first public art commission, funded by the Regional Arts and Culture Council, will be nearly 56 feet long. Choi joins us to discuss what it means to ma...

Earlier this month, the Oregon Health Authority announced plans to offer free naloxone to middle and high schools throughout Oregon. In Oregon City schools, naloxone is already available. The district has also hosted public awareness events about fentanyl, counterfeit pills and drug overdoses. Michele Stroh is a board member of the Oregon City School District. She’s rallied behind these effo...

The city of Portland hired Brandy Westerman to oversee its Safe Rest Villages and Temporary Alternative Shelter Sites. Westerman previously served as a senior executive at Mercy Corps, and has led humanitarian response teams in Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries. She joins us to talk more about her new role as the city’s emergency humanitarian operations director, and her...

 In September, the newly redesigned Chelsea Anderson Memorial Play Station opened at Marshall Park in Vancouver. But this isn’t your typical playground. For one thing, wood chips have been replaced with smooth surfaces to allow children in wheelchairs easy access to play features, including a merry-go-round and swing, modified for their use and enjoyment. Instead of an abundance of stee...

Tribal governments have used the Endangered Species Act to litigate on behalf of imperiled, culturally important species like salmon and grizzly bears, but the law does not acknowledge tribal sovereignty and hunting rights. Anna V. Smith, associate editor of High Country News, joins us to talk about the complicated relationship between tribes and the 50-year-old law.

In 1973, eight Americans – including four Oregonians – set out to climb the highest mountain in the Andes on an expedition organized by the Mazamas, a Portland mountaineering club. Two of those climbers never returned. The mysterious deaths of Janet Johnson and John Cooper caused a whirlwind of speculation in Argentina, which was never fully resolved. The cold case largely faded from p...

The Echo Fund, meant for working musicians in Oregon, can help pay for creative, non-performance projects. These projects can range from music production and promotion, to distribution of physical albums. The fund is intended to help independent musicians with career development. The winners were recently announced and 18 musicians in Oregon received funding for their projects. The program is a pa...

In early 2020 a group of behavioral scientists from around the world came up with about 20 science-based recommendations for public policymakers regarding COVID-19. Ellen Peters, the director of the University of Oregon’s Center for Science Communication Research, was among them. Those recommendations were published in the April 2020 issue of Nature and included messaging recommendations fro...

Last week delegates from Washington state announced that the effort to replace the Interstate 5 bridge spanning the Columbia River will get $600 million from a U.S. Department of Transportation grant. Replacing the century-old bridge is expected to cost around $6 billion. Planners overseeing the project hope $2.5 billion of that will come from federal grants. Oregon and Washington state have each...

Last week, the Food and Drug Administration approved two new gene therapies to treat sickle cell disease. Roughly 100,000 people in the U.S. live with the debilitating and painful blood disorder, most of whom are African American. One of these “milestone treatments'' is a drug using powerful gene-editing technology never before approved for human use. It can repair a mutation that produces s...

Portland filmmaker Irene Taylor’s new film isn’t about any one person or tree or culture. She tells a series of braided distinct stories, like English Ivy around one of the towering trees in her own backyard. Taylor interweaves her own personal story with the overlapping and intersecting narratives of George Weyerhaeuser, photographer Beth Moon, Oregon bonsai professional Ryan Neil and...

A new effort has launched at Oregon State University in Corvallis to specifically address the mental health needs of veterans, active duty service members and students who are dependents of service members. Don Phillips was hired in August as OSU’s new coordinator of veteran and military-connected student mental health and wellness. He served four years as an active duty Army medic, includin...

The Washington Secretary of State’s Office is making a new effort to track and address misinformation about voting and elections. It recently hired the British company Logically to scan social media sites for misleading narratives that could threaten election integrity, as well as physical threats to staff, and generate biweekly reports on its findings. The move led to backlash from the stat...

About two dozen environmental organizations and eight elected officials have sent a public letter to Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum calling for her to follow up on misleading and false information put out by NW Natural about the health impacts of gas stoves. The methane-based fossil fuel has been increasingly linked to health problems, particularly asthma in children, and cities in Oregon...

For years, conservationists have been at loggerheads about how exactly to decide what land should be preserved. Should the focus be on large contiguous tracts of land, or would it be better to focus on the most valuable, biodiverse plots of land, and save them, no matter the size? This disagreement has had real implications for landowners and conservationists and has led to fights about research,...

Drivers license suspensions for unpaid traffic fines is an issue that affects millions of Americans across the country. An Oregon law that went into effect in 2020 halted the practice of automatically suspending driver’s licenses for people who failed to pay traffic fines on time. But the law wasn’t retroactive, so thousands of Oregonians are without licenses for exactly that reason. L...

Portland Rescue Mission receives thousands of pounds of donated clothing every year, which they then redistribute to people in need. Most of that clothing is lightly used and is more about keeping warm than looking flashy. So when one of the workers sorting donations spotted a bright gold pair of new Nike Air Jordan 3 sneakers, they took notice. It turns out those shoes are one of only 4 or 5 cust...

Before the advent of cardboard boxes, wooden crates were used to pack apples, pears and other iconic fruits of the Northwest to ship across the region and the nation. Up until the 1950s, the crates were adorned with elaborately illustrated labels bearing the name of the orchard that grew the fruit packed inside. These fruit crate labels reflect the histories of the growers, distributors, printers...

The Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries has failed to collect nearly $5 million in wage theft claims from employers since 2015 according to a new analysis from InvestigateWest. It also found that employers in industries with more low-wage and undocumented workers, like construction and agriculture, left more wages and penalties unpaid. Kaylee Tornay, investigative reporter with InvestigateWest,...