Portland author David F. Walker and illustrator Marcus Kwame Anderson have worked together before - on a 2021 graphic novel about the Black Panther Party. This time they’ve teamed up on something a little different: an update of the classic American novel “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” In their version, the escaped slave Jim is more than just Huck’s companion; he’s a fully imagined character. Walker joins us to talk about the work of updating an American classic.
Mar 10, 2025•52 min
Portland artist Arvie Smith is known for colorful, larger-than-life oil paintings that explore oppression and injustice against Black Americans through symbolism and visual tropes. He’s also a professor emeritus at Pacific Northwest College of Art after a 35-year tenure. His murals can be seen on buildings in North Portland and at the Donald E. Long Juvenile Center, where he spent time teaching art to incarcerated youth. Despite being in his mid-80s, Smith is far from retired — just last year, h...
Mar 07, 2025•22 min
One of the many training programs the Portland Police Bureau requires before officers go out into communities on their own is a simple exercise called Talk A Mile. Police officers are paired with high school students of color and sent off to walk around the track together with four different topics on a note card for each of the four laps in a mile. Justin and Erika Fogarty started the program with a pilot in 2022, which their teenaged son Liam participated in. The Bureau immediately incorporate...
Mar 07, 2025•22 min
Lawmakers in Olympia are considering a proposal that would create tougher regulations around youth labor in Washington. HB 1644 would set minimum penalties for youth labor violations and prohibit companies with multiple serious safety violations from hiring minors. In 2023, a Washington teen lost both of his legs working on a construction site through a school program. An investigation by Cascade PBS found that public officials and the construction company disregarded safety rules leading up to ...
Mar 07, 2025•9 min
Oregon lawmakers are once again debating how best to allocate education funding to improve attendance, graduation rates, test scores and other key metrics of success. Meanwhile, parents and educators are pushing to remove restrictions on the amount of money school districts can receive for students with special needs. Lawmakers are also considering a bill that nearly passed last year that would block schools from removing certain books from libraries and classrooms. Natalie Pate is OPB’s K-12 ed...
Mar 06, 2025•13 min
There were two gun-related homicides in Gresham in January 2025. That's two too many, says Gresham Police Chief Travis Gullberg. Gullberg is one of the people involved in the city’s new Ceasefire initiative, which brings together community-based organizations, city leadership, law enforcement and public health experts to reduce gun violence through focused outreach. Gullberg joins us, along with Marcell Frazier, violence prevention and community partnerships coordinator for the City of Gresham, ...
Mar 06, 2025•18 min
Clark County Jail in Vancouver recently became the first jail in Washington state licensed to provide methadone on-site through a treatment program for opioid use disorder. A team of specialists at the jail also administer buprenorphine, another medication approved by the FDA to manage withdrawal symptoms and the cravings associated with drugs like fentanyl. More than half of the jail population in Washington has an opioid use disorder, according to researchers at the University of Washington. L...
Mar 06, 2025•22 min
Portland’s Aurora Chorus is an inclusive, non-audition women’s chorus that formed in 1992 with the goal of elevating women’s voices through the art of choral music. Led for much of its history by renowned composer and conductor Joan Szymko , the chorus also emphasizes female conductors and composers as well. Rebecca Parsons has directed the chorus for the last few years and says one way this group is distinct from others is the simultaneous quality of the music and the community the women create...
Mar 05, 2025•20 min
Libraries worldwide broke digital lending records last year as Overdrive, the company that operates Libby and Sora, recently reported seeing more than 739 million borrows of audiobooks, e-books and digital magazines — a 17% increase from 2023. But while many library card holders may be enjoying the latest bestseller at no cost, the bill public libraries pay to provide this service grows just as much as demand. Public libraries do not purchase digital books, but rather the license to distribute t...
Mar 05, 2025•21 min
Federal DOGE layoffs and hiring freezes continue to hit Oregon as local offices of the National Weather Service are down to about 30% to 40% of its workforce, the Statesman Journal reports. The NWS plays a critical role in monitoring, predicting and delivering expected weather conditions, as well as issuing warnings about potential weather-related dangers. The NWS isn’t just relied on by the general public, but also by the Columbia River Bar Pilots, an organization responsible for helping naviga...
Mar 05, 2025•11 min
The bipartisan Arts and Culture Caucus in the Oregon legislatures has a slate of bills it’s pushing for this session. One proposal would merge two major arts funding organizations: The Oregon Arts Commission and the Oregon Cultural Trust. Another bill would help owners of historic buildings by lowering their assessed tax, while others would allocate funds for grants to artists, art programs and organizations along with money for museums, festivals and arts districts. Democratic Representative Ro...
Mar 04, 2025•14 min
On March 4, 25% tariffs on imported goods from Canada and Mexico, our nation’s largest trading partners, are expected to go into effect. China will also be hit with an additional 10% hike on its goods entering the U.S. We hear from a broad range of business owners and representatives from different industries in Oregon about the impact tariffs may have on them and consumers. Joining us are Tyler Freres, vice president of sales for Freres Lumber Company; Jeff Stone, executive director of Oregon A...
Mar 04, 2025•39 min
The Quadraphonnes, Portland’s all-women sax quartet, will perform the music of the eccentric artist Moondog at the Alberta Rose Theater on March 7. Moondog was a blind street musician in New York City who worked with some of the biggest names in music in the mid-20th century, including Philip Glass, Leonard Bernstein, Charlie Parker and Benny Goodman. We’ll hear more about the show and get an in-studio performance from the quartet: Mieke Bruggeman on baritone saxophone, Chelsea Luker on alto and...
Mar 03, 2025•26 min
It’s been eight months since the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on Grants Pass v. Johnson, which determined that cities can punish unhoused people for sleeping outside, even if they have nowhere else to go. Since then, Grants Pass officials have restricted public camping to two city-owned lots, one of which closed earlier this year. The city council recently voted to reopen the site after Disability Rights Oregon filed a lawsuit alleging that the city’s restrictions violated state law. Amid the bac...
Mar 03, 2025•13 min
In Europe, dogs have been used for centuries for their keen sense of smell to locate prized black and white truffles which can fetch hundreds or thousands of dollars a pound depending on their variety. In Oregon and the Pacific Northwest, using dogs to sniff out truffles is relatively new and growing in popularity. There are even training classes and an annual truffle dog contest held at the Oregon Truffle festival. Oregon has four varieties of gourmet edible truffles, but there are hundreds of ...
Mar 03, 2025•15 min
Karen Thompson Walker’s last book, "The Dreamers," imagined a mysterious virus that quickly spreads through a small college town and induces perpetual sleep. That book came out just before the covid pandemic changed our collective relationship to viruses. Thompson Walker’s new book, "The Strange Case of Jane O.," also seeks to understand the way our brains work, this time looking at memory. Karen Thompson Walker joins us to talk about her latest novel.
Feb 28, 2025•42 min
On Tuesday, the House narrowly approved a Republican budget proposal calling for $2 trillion in federal spending cuts. The proposal specifically calls for the House Agriculture Committee to find $230 billion worth of reduced spending, which will be challenging without touching the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. At the same time, cabinet officials in the current administration support limiting what can be purchased through the program. In Oregon, food banks across the state have been ...
Feb 28, 2025•10 min
Guide Dogs for the Blind operates two campuses — one in San Rafael, California, and one in Boring, Oregon. The nonprofit raises and trains dogs to work with people experiencing vision loss, and provides a variety of programs for the humans who will one day partner with them. Plans are underway to expand GDB’s Boring campus through a new community hub, which would double the number of clients the organization can serve in Oregon. Susan Armstrong is vice president of client programs for GDB. Georg...
Feb 27, 2025•18 min
Abortion is illegal in Idaho, which borders Oregon to the east. For years leading up to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, women’s health advocates warned that maternal care and abortion services were part of an intrinsically woven set of OB/GYN care that women’s health depended on. Now that Idaho has outlawed abortion – the state's ban is among the most restrictive in the nation – residents are living out what advocates predicted. Some women who want to have childr...
Feb 27, 2025•19 min
A long-vacant block on North Russell Street and North Williams Avenue, which was once part of a thriving African American community in Portland, will finally house people once again. The site was razed in the 1970s as part of an urban renewal project to expand the hospital there. Tomorrow, construction will begin on an 85-unit apartment building, 20 single-family homes and office and retail space for Black-owned businesses. Bryson Davis, chair of the board of the nonprofit behind the project, Wi...
Feb 27, 2025•15 min
Rep. Cliff Bentz represents Oregon’s 2nd District in the U.S. House, covering most of the state east of the Cascades. He’s the only Republican in the state’s congressional delegation, and he voted in favor of the House budget resolution Tuesday that would mean nearly $900 billion in cuts to Medicaid over the next 10 years. Statewide, about a third of Oregonians rely on the Oregon Health Plan, which is the way people in the state receive Medicaid. Bentz, like many others in his party, has held to...
Feb 26, 2025•22 min
U.S. Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley joined with other senators in a letter to Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and President Donald Trump urging them to not cut Medicare and Medicaid. The two programs serve 140 million people nationwide, and in Oregon, the way people receive Medicaid is through the Oregon Health Plan. Sen. Wyden joins us to discuss protecting the health care these federal programs provide, what Democratic representatives are hearing from thei...
Feb 26, 2025•18 min
On Tuesday, a federal judge in Seattle temporarily blocked the suspension of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, which President Donald Trump halted by executive order on his first day in office. Several nonprofits that provide federally contracted refugee resettlement services, including Lutheran Community Services Northwest, along with stranded refugees and their relatives filed the lawsuit challenging the executive order. Since 1984, LCSNW has helped more than 45,000 refugees resettle in the...
Feb 26, 2025•15 min
When we talk about forestry jobs in Oregon, you might automatically think of logging. But there are countless other roles in the industry, including planting trees after a forested area has been clear cut to thinning the understory for wildfire management. As recently reported by Jefferson Public Radio, that workforce has evolved from worker cooperatives of the late 1960s to largely immigrant contractors, known as “pineros,” which we see today. JPR reporter Justin Higginbottom joins us to talk m...
Feb 25, 2025•22 min
Vishaka Priyan is a junior at Catlin Gabel, a private school in Portland. She doesn’t have personal experience with foster care. But she came across a group called Project 48 that helps kids in the first 48 hours after they enter the child welfare system. And as she heard stories about the trauma and economic challenges they face in care and after, she wanted to do something that would both support them and help them develop self-sufficiency. That’s why Priyan says she decided to research incent...
Feb 25, 2025•12 min
In 2020, Oregon voters passed Measure 110, decriminalizing possession of small amounts of controlled substances. In 2024, the state passed HB 4002, which made possession a misdemeanor crime, but also allocated millions for counties to establish “deflection programs.” Reporter Ben Botkin recently finished a series of articles for the Oregon Capital Chronicle about deflection programs have looked like in different parts of the state.
Feb 25, 2025•19 min
An estimated 650,000 adults in Bangladesh suffer from blindness, according to researchers. At the end of November, Oregon Health & Science University ophthalmologist Beth Edmunds traveled to the country to teach local doctors a minimally-invasive operation for adults and children with glaucoma. She joins us to share what she took away from her time volunteering and what it was like operating in the world’s only flying teaching hospital.
Feb 24, 2025•12 min
According to a new report from the Portland Metro Chamber, foot traffic in the central city is still down -21% compared to 2019. On top of that, the region lost nearly 10,000 jobs and has continued to lose population. Andrew Hoan, president and CEO of the Portland Metro Chamber, joins us to talk through the report, and what he thinks is needed to help downtown Portland thrive.
Feb 24, 2025•17 min
Exactly three years ago, Russia mounted a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, triggering a war that has killed more than 12,000 civilians, displaced 4 million people internally and created nearly 7 million refugees, according to the United Nations. Today, Russian forces occupy roughly 20% of Ukraine. Last week, President Trump falsely accused Ukraine of starting the war, called its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, a “dictator” and initiated talks with Russia – but not Ukraine – to end the conflict. Tw...
Feb 24, 2025•23 min
Earlier this month, J.D. Tovey was appointed the executive director of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation following a vote by its board. Tovey is an enrolled member of the CTUIR, and he had been serving as the interim executive director since last May. An urban planner by training, Tovey was appointed by Gov. Kotek as co-chair of the Housing Production Advisory Council in March 2023. The council finished its work with a report released last year containing recommendations...
Feb 21, 2025•17 min
