Eugene accordionist Maria Telesheva won her first competition when she was just 6 years old. Now a rising senior at North Eugene High School, Telesheva has traveled the globe performing and competing as both a solo artist and as a duo with her father, Sergei. As recently reported by KLCC , she’s also a fellow with NPR’s performance program “From the Top” and a 2025 recipient of the Jack Kent Cooke Young Artist Award. Telesheva joins us for a performance and to share what she thinks makes the acc...
Jun 20, 2025•20 min
By 2050, roughly one in four Oregonians will be age 65 or older. In rural Lincoln County, older adults already make up about a third of the population, representing one of the fastest-aging communities in the state.“Think Out Loud” recently traveled to Newport to talk about healthy aging — the social connections and habits that can help people thrive as they get older, as well as the programs and policies communities should consider as their populations age.Jan Molnar Fitzgerald is the executive...
Jun 19, 2025•53 min
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 conspired to destroy a previously thriving Black neighborhood. The original financial settlement proposed ...
Jun 18, 2025•25 min
Last week, the Trump administration pulled out of a historic agreement made in 2023 to aid in salmon recovery and renewable energy for tribes. The agreement would have invested more than $1 billion in federal funds for wild fish restoration efforts over a decade and could have potentially led to the removal of the Snake River Dams to help native salmon populations. But, some industry leaders were unsupportive of the deal, including those in the agricultural and port industries who say the dams p...
Jun 18, 2025•27 min
Coffee leaders in Oregon recently held a roundtable discussion with Democratic U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici to discuss how changes at the federal level are affecting the industry, according to Daily Coffee News. Leaders in the Portland area say they’re concerned about how a 10% tariff could affect already high coffee prices. Additionally, countries that produce coffee including Kenya, Ethiopia and Honduras have been hit by USAID cuts. Programs that operated with USAID funding have been shut down o...
Jun 17, 2025•17 min
Oregon lawmakers recently unveiled a proposal to maintain the state’s roads and bridges. House Bill 2025 would raise the state’s gas tax by 15 cents, raise vehicle fees and add oversight to the Oregon Department of Transportation, according to OPB reporting. The bill could raise more than $2 billion annually by 2034, according to a revenue analysis. What does the proposal mean for cities and counties? Dan Dorran is a Umatilla County Commissioner. Jim McCauley is the legislative director for the ...
Jun 17, 2025•22 min
In Multnomah County, the number of deaths of homeless residents grew from 113 in 2019 to more than 450 in 2023. Research has found that encampment sweeps can threaten the health of people experiencing homelessness. Portland has carried out 19,000 sweeps since 2021, according to city records. Reporting from Street Roots and ProPublica examines why residents of Multnomah County die at a higher rate than in any major West Coast county, according to available homeless mortality data. K. Rambo is the...
Jun 17, 2025•13 min
Bend serves as a gateway to natural wonder and recreation in Central Oregon. But, like many other places across the West, the city has too few homes. “High Desert, Higher Costs: Bend and the Housing Crisis in the American West” explores the housing issues that have been brewing for decades in Bend. We’ll hear more about the city from Jonathan Bach, author of the book and housing reporter for The Oregonian/OregonLive.
Jun 16, 2025•37 min
Oregon lawmakers have until June 29 to finish legislative business and adjourn the 2025 regular session. Although a number of bills remain in play, even at this late date, the only thing lawmakers are constitutionally obligated to do before they leave the Capitol is pass a biennial budget for 2025-2027. During the last five months, Democrats and Republicans have taken up issues related to housing, taxes, transportation and much more. House Minority Leader Christine Drazan, R-Canby, shared her pe...
Jun 16, 2025•16 min
By the time he was 20 years old, Seattle amateur filmmaker Richard Lyford had already made nine films, including “The Scalpel.” Lyford wrote, directed, starred in and made the silent horror movie in 1936 when he was still in his teens. The film also showcased Lyford’s skills with makeup and early cinematic special effects, which he used to transform himself into a Dr. Jekyll-like scientist who experiments on himself with gruesome and tragic results. According to Seattle composer and producer Ed ...
Jun 13, 2025•17 min
Oregon lawmakers have until June 29 to finish legislative business and adjourn the 2025 regular session. Although a number of bills remain in play, even at this late date, the only thing lawmakers are constitutionally obligated to do before they leave the Capitol is pass a biennial budget for 2025-2027. During the last five months, Democrats and Republicans have taken up issues related to housing, taxes, transportation and much more. Sen. Kayse Jama, D-Portland, will join us next week to share h...
Jun 13, 2025•20 min
On Tuesday, two asylum seekers were arrested at the Portland Immigration Court after they showed up for scheduled hearings. After attorneys from the Portland-based Innovation Law Lab filed habeas corpus petitions on the asylum seekers’ behalf, a federal judge ordered the government to not move them out of Oregon without first providing notice and to wait for at least two days. The Innovation Law Lab is also representing two other asylum seekers who were arrested under similar circumstances at th...
Jun 13, 2025•16 min
We do not need any more nonprofits in Oregon,” Libra Forde wrote that recently in an op-ed for The Oregonian/OregonLive, calling it a “difficult truth.” She’s the executive director of Women’s Foundation of Oregon, a philanthropic organization which does grant-making, research and policy advocacy. We hear more from Forde on how nonprofits should move forward as federal funds shrink and how merging organizations could serve communities better....
Jun 12, 2025•11 min
Ada Gallagher was an artsy kid who joined the track team at Portland’s McDaniel High School at the urging of her friends. It turns out, not only was she was good at running, she also enjoyed it. Last year, Gallagher won first place in the 200-meter race at the Class 6A state track meet. Earlier this year, Fox News posted a video of her performance in a 400-meter race at a meet. The national attention came because Ada is a member of a very small but controversial population: a transgender female ...
Jun 12, 2025•19 min
In 2017, Portland created a Tribal Relations Program to bridge the relationship between Tribal governments and the city. It was a trailblazing program at the time, but in the years since, it's had three different managers and has been without a leader for seven months. OPB’s Alex Zielinski and Underscore’s Nika Bartoo-Smith join us to talk about the city’s troubled relationship with Tribal governments and its hopes for the future of the program.
Jun 12, 2025•22 min
For more than 20 years, British author and Cambridge University professor Robert Macfarlane has garnered international acclaim for his writings on nature and our relationships to it, from awe-inspiring wonder and life-giving sustenance to relentless extraction and exploitation. For his new book, “Is a River Alive?”, Macfarlane explores the idea of rivers as animate beings, a concept that is connected to the Rights of Nature movement that has spurred a novel legal framework to protect imperiled w...
Jun 11, 2025•53 min
Sometimes a flower or a bird or an overheard snippet of conversation is enough to bring joy. Perhaps especially in a year like this one, focusing on the small things is important. That’s something poet Ross Gay spent a long time doing for his latest collection of essays, “The Book of Delights.” Gay’s definition of delight is expansive and palpable, and his essays range from the smallest of natural wonders to the largest of societal problems. This year, Multnomah County Library is encouraging eve...
Jun 10, 2025•1 hr 1 min
In 2020, the Almeda Fire ripped through Jackson County. The catastrophic blaze destroyed more than 2,600 homes in Phoenix, Talent, Ashland and Medford. The “Think Out Loud” team traveled to Southern Oregon recently and talked to residents about how they're thinking about fire in their communities now. In Ashland, the city and the forest are tied together. The watershed, which provides the source of Ashland's drinking water, is more than 15,000 acres of potentially combustible forestland. Chris C...
Jun 09, 2025•53 min
In 2012, then Oregon governor John Kitzhaber announced a lofty goal: by 2025, the state would achieve a 100% high school graduation rate. That hasn’t happened — the state’s graduation rate is around 82% — but the goal sparked the creation of a 12-year reporting project at OPB called “Class of 2025.” OPB journalists began talking to 27 students who were then in kindergarten at Earl Boyles elementary school in Southeast Portland, and have followed most of them through to 2025. Back in 2014, “Think...
Jun 06, 2025•52 min
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek recently signed a piece of legislation that makes notable changes to Oregon’s landmark Bottle Bill. The new rules allow grocery and convenience stores across the state to reduce the hours that customers can redeem cans and bottles for cash. They also allow retailers in downtown Portland to stop accepting containers altogether if they’re close enough to an “alternative redemption site” such as The People’s Depot, which processes returns from people whose primary income come...
Jun 05, 2025•22 min
If you’re having a bit of deja vu over a plastic bag ban, you’re not alone. When Oregon lawmakers passed the first ban in 2019, which prohibited using so-called single-use plastic bags, more than a dozen Oregon cities had already passed such bans. But the ban's environmental aim of reducing the use of plastic - and its impacts on the environment and human health - did not end up achieving that goal. Grocers replaced the thinner, single-use bags with a thicker, sturdier version that in theory cou...
Jun 05, 2025•15 min
A man who attacked a dozen people with a knife at Salem's Union Gospel Union Mission shelter on Sunday night is now in police custody facing attempted murder and assault charges. Several of the 12 stabbing victims suffered serious injuries and were hospitalized. The Union Gospel Mission has operated in Salem for 73 years and Director of Community Engagement Mark Hunter says, while it’s hard to make sense of the attack, he and the other staff and volunteers remain committed to their work. UGM pro...
Jun 05, 2025•17 min
In 2012, Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber announced a goal that by 2025, the state would achieve a 100% high school graduation rate. Although Oregon today graduates only about 4 out of 5 students, that aspiration sparked the creation of OPB’s “Class of 2025” project. Journalists at OPB began tracking 27 students starting in first grade at Earl Boyles Elementary School in Southeast Portland through their senior year. For the past 12 years, the production team has documented the students’ triumphs and s...
Jun 04, 2025•39 min
Until last week, Kevin Heatley was the Crater Lake National Park superintendent. He’d worked in the private sector for much of his career, but for most of the last decade he’s been in leadership positions with the federal government, including with the Bureau of Land Management. He had only taken the Park Service job in January, a move he made in anticipation of possible BLM cuts. But last week, he chose to resign, saying he could no longer be party to President Trump’s dismantling of the federa...
Jun 04, 2025•13 min
After the killing of George Floyd in 2020, millions of Americans participated in protests for racial justice. Much of corporate America promised to address racial equity. Now, many of those companies are retreating from diversity initiatives. “Qualified: How Competency Checking and Race Collide at Work” identifies how to create a more equitable workplace. Through research and anecdotes, Portland author Shari Dunn illustrates the institutional racism that exists in the workplace and how to stop i...
Jun 03, 2025•40 min
A study led by researchers at the University of Oregon explores water injustice across the U.S. The analysis focuses on vulnerable communities facing systemic barriers to clean water and also investigates water privatization in America. “We found that violations and risks of water injustice tend to cluster in specific areas or hot spots across the country,” said Alex Segrè Cohen, the paper’s lead author. “We designed our method to capture not just where the problems are, but who they impact most...
Jun 03, 2025•12 min
Long before the four dams along the Klamath River were removed, the habitat restoration process began. RES, a company that specializes in ecological restoration, has been involved in the process since 2019. It’s charged with working on habitat restoration and will continue to maintain the project for about 5 years. We check in on the effort with Dave Coffman, the director of Northern California and Southern Oregon for RES.
Jun 02, 2025•20 min
Less than 24 hours after a lower court ruling on Wednesday found that President Trump had illegally used an emergency powers law to enact global tariffs, a federal appeals court paused that decision and allowed the tariffs to continue – for now, that is. The legal topsy-turvy added a fresh round of uncertainty for business owners like Leslie Jordan, who started a company in Portland nearly 40 years ago which manufactures athletic apparel and accessories made in factories in China and Pakistan. I...
Jun 02, 2025•24 min
With the warm weather over the Memorial Day weekend you might have been tempted to cool off in one of the region’s many beautiful rivers. If you headed to Glen Otto park or High Rocks park in the Portland area you might have seen Emergency Medical Technicians from the American Medical Response (AMR) River Rescue Program on hand to help out in case of an emergency in the water. The EMTs are getting training in river currents and rescue operations this week and will staff the two parks all summer ...
Jun 02, 2025•9 min
A bill in the U.S. Senate would put more responsibility on social media companies to design their platforms to better protect children from online dangers. The Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, appeared set to pass Congress last year, only to stall in the House . It was reintroduced earlier this month.Advocates say KOSA is necessary to keep kids from being fed harmful content through algorithms, such as posts encouraging eating disorders or suicide. But opponents such as the ACLU have argued that...
May 30, 2025•30 min
