Think Out Loud

The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife estimates 14.5 million wild vertebrate animals are killed on Oregon’s roadways each year. Data shows it’s difficult to control driver behavior with things like road signs and traffic regulations. A more effective way to mitigate animal fatalities is by redirecting the animals themselves.

Wildlife crossings — human-made struct...

According to the Oregon Health Authority, nearly 35,000 Oregonians visited emergency rooms in 2023 for issues related to a brain injury. These injuries can result in a range of symptoms, from confusion and short-term memory loss to depression, anger issues and lack of impulse control. Depending on the severity of the injury, survivors may need access to resources such as employment and housing assi...

It’s estimated that more than 80,000 Oregonians are living with disabilities related to a brain injury. That includes Portlander Cheryl Green, who sustained a brain injury in 2010. Since then, Green has showcased the experiences of brain injury survivors through a number of projects, including a podcast, documentary film, short videos and her work as a self-described “access artist.&rdq...

The Astoria library reopened in the fall of 2025 after a major renovation. When discussions about remodeling the library surfaced, it begged the question: What exactly does a community need from a public space? The same kinds of questions were posed when the original library was designed.

Trailblazing Astorian architect Ebba Wicks Brown, the first woman in Oregon to receive an a...

 It’s been one year since Portland welcomed its new 12-member city council, which was a part of a major voter-approved overhaul of the city’s government. Since January 2, 2025, the city has seen 48 council meetings, more than 190 pieces of legislation passed and nearly 40 resolutions. The new council has seen some wins, such as broader representation on the council and bureaucracy for bureaus m...

 Wildfires, extreme heat, ice storms and other weather events have Oregonians thinking about climate change in a much more personal way. We talk with clinical psychologist Thomas Doherty, who helps people cope with anxiety, depression and other mental health issues brought on by the climate crisis. His new book, “Surviving Climate Anxiety,” teaches how to cope and heal from the psychological im...

 In 2016, Tara Roberts was living in Washington D.C. and working at a nonprofit when she visited the National Museum of African American History and Culture and a photograph she saw there changed her life. The image was of Black scuba divers from the group Diving with a Purpose which searches for and documents slave shipwrecks around the ...

What can animals teach us about ourselves? That’s part of what poets Reginald Dwayne Betts and Mai Der Vang are both exploring in their new collections. “Doggerel” is Bett’s collection about the relationship between dogs and their humans. “Primordial” by Der Vang tells of a nearly extinct deer-like creature ...

 It was a big year in news for the Pacific Northwest. The president attempted to send the National Guard into Portland, plans for a potential ICE facility caused unrest in Newport, and communities across the region saw an uptick in aggressive immigration enforcement activity.

Meanwhile, a significant road funding bill died — then was resurrected — in the Oregon ...

The immigration detention center in Tacoma, WA is one of the largest detention centers in the country. This prison-like facility has rapidly filled to capacity as a new era of ICE enforcement gains steam and brings profound changes for people locked inside detention — many who are longtime residents of Oregon and Washington. Today we bri...

Sometimes laughter can be the best way to make it through difficult times. And a good joke can go a long way to connecting with another person, no matter how different they are. Those are themes in the two new books “Stop Me if You’ve Heard This One” by Kristen Arnett and “So Far Gone” by Jess Walter. OPB’s Jess Hazel talked to Walter and Arnett about their books...

What does survival look like if it comes at the expense of freedom? How can we build safe places in an increasingly unstable world? These questions are at the heart of two new books by authors Leni Zumas and Cleyvis Natera. Zumas’s book “Wolf Bells” tells the story of an intergenerational group home determined to make a space for people who fall through capitalism’s cracks. ...

Irish-Canadian author Emma Donoghue is perhaps best known for her novel “Room,” told from the perspective of a 5-year-old boy held captive with his mother. Most of Donoghue’s work, however, is rooted in historical fiction. She frequently writes about characters and perspectives that are often erased from history. Her latest novel, “The Paris Express,” tells the story o...

The Owyhee Canyonlands area encompasses millions of acres along the Owyhee River on the borders of Oregon, Idaho and Nevada. The land is rugged and remote and beautiful, and efforts to to protect it in some way have dragged out for years. There were pushes for the last two Democratic presidents to designate the area a national monument and most recently, a bill to protect over 1 million acres of th...

Ponderosa pine trees dominate parts of Eastern Oregon and Washington and have long been an icon of the American West, but in the past decade more than two hundred million ponderosa have died. Particularly in the Southwest, scientists estimate that by mid-century less than 5% of the ponderosa trees may remain. Portland author Gary Ferguson explores the history and the future of the ponderosa forests of the South...

A new audit from the Secretary of State found that the implementation of Measure 110, the drug discrimination ballot initiative, faced a number of challenges with unclear results. The audit notes that despite the roughly $800 million dedicated to programs aimed at helping in-recovery and substance-use treatment, the outcomes — including the number of people served — are unclear. Beyond that, the aud...

In 2023, Oregon lawmakers passed HB 3198, which created the Early Literacy Success Initiative, an effort to address the state’s dismal reading test scores. The bill aimed to more fully adopt a phonics-based teaching approach — often referred to as "the science of reading" — in schools across the state. Education experts broadly agree this approach is the best way to teach kids to ...