Peter Courtney, the longest-serving state lawmaker in Oregon history, and arguably the most consequential one died this week. On this week’s OPB Politics Now, Lauren Dake and Dirk VanderHart talk about Courtney’s legacy and the influence he had over policies that now shape our state.

Peter Courtney died this week at the age of 81. He was first elected to the Oregon House of Representatives in 1980. He moved to the Senate side in 1999 and became Senate President four years later. Courtney, who grew up in what he liked to call “West by God Virginia,” served for 38 years in the legislature, including a record 20 as the senate pres…

Artificial Intelligence is radically changing how we work, learn, play and socialize, from virtual assistants helping organize our day to bots that can score Taylor Swift tickets or write college-level essays. But that vast computing capability may also come at a cost, generating results that are rife with bias if the data that was used to train AI…

Wildfires in the West are becoming more common and severe. Nationwide, national disasters are becoming worse and insurance premiums are rising. In Southern Oregon, residents are seeing spikes in their premiums or are deciding to change insurance companies. One Ashland insurance agent saw a premium on his rental property jump 86%. And for residents …

Have you ever heard a color, or seen a piece of music? Maybe you’ve tasted a sunset, or felt a particular smell? If so, you might have synesthesia. It’s a phenomenon in which one or more sensory pathways blend in the brain to create a new experience. Researchers aren’t sure how many people have synesthesia, but estimates range from 1 in 200 to 1 in…

Earlier this year, the Washington state Department of Ecology wrote new rules to regulate methane emissions from landfills that surpass federal emission regulations set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality wrote its own rules in 2021 and has been collecting data from landfills for the last two ye…

Oregon conservation groups will sue on behalf of the red tree vole LONG SYNOPSIS: Four conservation groups including Cascadia Wildlands, the Bird Alliance of Oregon, Oregon Wild and the Center for Biological Diversity, released a notice of intent to sue the US Fish & Wildlife Service in June for failing to protect the red tree vole. The red tree vo…

About 75 years ago, Jackson Pollock revolutionized the art world with his distinctive style of painting. He would lay the canvas on the floor and with his arms outstretched, pour or drip cans of paint directly onto its surface. The technique invited admirers and detractors alike, along with scandals involving forged canvases turning up decades afte…

Between 2012 and 2020, new HIV cases were generally declining, according to data from the Oregon Health Authority. But in recent years, the trend is headed in the opposite direction. What’s behind the change? How have attitudes shifted around HIV more recently? We dig into these details with Dean Sidelinger, health officer and state epidemiologist …

A recent New York Times article shed light on how some fishing communities are grappling with opioid abuse and overdoses in fishing communities. Overdoses at sea are much more difficult to stop than on land. A program founded by Oregon State University in partnership with Oregon Sea Grant called “Fishermen First Aid and Safety Training” (FFAST) tra…

Portland and Multnomah County have been working together for decades on how to get people experiencing homelessness off the streets and ultimately into permanent housing. Since 2016 that collaboration has taken the form of a Joint Office of Homeless Services. The five-member city commission, three of whom are running for mayor this fall, narrowly a…

The Republican National Convention is underway in Milwaukee. On Monday, Donald Trump picked Ohio senator and author JD Vance as his running mate. Tracy Honl is the RNC national committewoman from Oregon. She joins us with details from the convention.

According to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, veterans have a 57% higher risk of suicide than the general population. But little is known about how that risk differs between men and women. In the first study of its kind, researchers at Oregon Health & Science University followed a group of veterans for roughly a year after a nonfatal s…

Earlier this month, a new journal based in Portland launched online with its first set of published scientific articles. But the Stacks Journal isn’t your typical academic journal, according to its founder, David Green, an ecologist who previously worked at OSU’s Institute for Natural Resources. He says that it removes some of the main obstacles as…

In late June, it was announced that the city of Bend was awarded one of 21 grants given out by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development through the Pathways to Removing Obstacles to Housing, also known as PRO Housing initiative. The 21 communities received grants between $1 million and $6.7 million from a pool of $85 million. Bend is th…

An exhibit at the Columbia Gorge Museum in Stevenson, Washington, features a collection of quilts made by an enslaved woman and her family, carefully preserved for more than 150 years. The exhibit, titled “Ms. Molly’s Voice: Freedom and Family Spoken in Fabric,” runs through July 31. It’s one of the first times the quilts have been publicly display…

Over the last few years, Washington state has funded five “health engagement hubs” to help treat people with fentanyl addictions. The model offers drop-in buprenorphine or methadone at no cost to people suffering from opioid addiction, as well as harm reduction services and other health care. The idea is to make treatment as easy to access as the d…

In 2016, Nike pledged to cut its global carbon emissions in half. But in the last year, it laid off many of the employees who worked on sustainability. An investigation from ProPublica and the Oregonian found that Nike has managed less than a 2% cut in emissions. We’ll talk to the Rob Davis, investigative reporter at ProPublica, who worked on this …

Oregon’s top transportation officials said they need billions of dollars to maintain the state’s roadways. Without it there will be more potholes, more traffic and worse driving conditions for everyone. On this week’s OPB Politics Now, we’ll dig into the politics and ask what it will take to make Portland great for bikes again. Find the show wherev…

Last month, a boys volleyball team from Portland won the 18 and under American division title at the 2024 USA Volleyball Boys Junior National Championship in Dallas, Texas. It’s the second consecutive appearance at the national tournament for the members of the Portland Chaos 18U boys volleyball team who attend high schools in the Portland metro ar…

Because there is no constitutional guarantee, every state in the country has different regulations about who is allowed to vote. But in many states, people with intellectual disabilities are denied the right to vote. Paul Collins, an English professor at Portland State University, wonders why his 25 year-old son with Autism Spectrum Disorder can’t …

More than a decade ago, Linn-Benton Community College in Albany took a look at its data for students enrolled in career and technical education programs. What they found was that many students were able to progress through their degree program, but one course in many cases stopped them from completion: math. The school’s math department then began …

For the past five years, Oregon’s Lines for Life has been running a youth program called Safe Social Spaces. Now an OHSU study published in the journal Psychiatric Services suggests the program may have prevented more than 160 suicide attempts since it began. The program uses social media to find youth struggling with suicidal ideation and provide …

It’s been just over a year since Oregon’s first regulated service centers began providing therapeutic psilocybin trips to clients. There are now 29 licensed service centers across the state, as well as 12 manufacturers, two testing labs and more than 300 facilitators who supervise clients during sessions. Angie Allbee is the manager of the Psilocyb…

Chain stores like Dollar General and Family Dollar have been popping up in eastern Oregon. An opposition group known as No Dollar General has formed to stop the spread of such stores. While Dollar General successfully opened a store in the city of Wallowa recently, the opposition group is still fighting to keep the chain from expanding in the regio…

The Bike Index was started in 2013 and allows people to register bicycles for free and report them when they have been stolen. The nonprofit has helped recover more than 14,000 bikes. Most recently, the group has been tracking an elaborate bike-theft pipeline that leads back to Mexico. It estimates from 2020 to 2024, the theft ring has sold an esti…

Oregon is known as the “Grass Seed Capital of the World.” With nearly 1,500 farms in the state, Oregon is a major world producer. But pollen -- including from grass -- in the Willamette Valley leads to Oregonians suffering from allergies through the summer. We dig into the details of this year’s allergy season with Shyam Joshi, an assistant profess…

The downtown district in Dallas, Oregon was recently added to the National Register of Historic Places. Dallas has also worked with Oregon Main Street, a program that helps cities across the state with revitalization efforts in their communities. We learn more about the work Dallas and other cities have been doing from Brian Dalton, a former Dallas…

With the Olympic trials wrapping up and the Paris competition on the horizon, sports are top of mind for many people this summer. The pressures of athletic performance will once again be on full display for the world, sparking conversations about athletes’ physical – and mental – prowess. The conversation around athletes and mental well-being has o…

Necroarchivos de las Americas: An Unrelenting Search for Justice is a group exhibition on display at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon in Eugene. The exhibition features art that examines political violence. We learn more about the exhibit and the artists behind the work from Adriana Miramontes Olivas, curator of academ…

Author Nicole Chung was born to Korean immigrants in Seattle and later adopted by a white couple in Southern Oregon. The 2018 memoir “All You Can Ever Know” follows Chung’s exploration of her identity as a transracial adoptee as she searches for her birth family. Her second memoir, released earlier this month, covers the untimely deaths of her adop…

The Cedar Grove apartments in Beaverton were created by Community Partners for 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 p…

"On The Road" is "Think Out Loud's" radio road trip series: conversations with wanderers, tourists and residents along Oregon's back roads and highways. In this trip, we traveled through the sparsely populated corner of Southeast Oregon from Fruitland, Idaho, to McDermitt, Nevada. We met rodeo riders, rafters, ranchers, and rock hounds – among othe…

Ann Patchett’s novel "Tom Lake," is set during the pandemic, but it is also set in the past. The main character, a mother of three adult daughters, tells her children the story of her own youthful romance with a man who is now a famous movie star. The story is told over long days picking cherries on their family farm, where everyone has gathered to…

Doctor Carlos Sanchez has an unusual and challenging caseload of patients. For one thing, they have scales, feathers, horns and fur, and can’t really say where it hurts. But it’s his job to oversee the medical care and treatment of more than a thousand animals as the head veterinarian at Portland’s Oregon Zoo. In our latest installment in our serie…

In April, United States Supreme Court Justices heard arguments in one of the most widely watched cases out of Oregon in recent memory. The question at the heart of Grants Pass v Johnson was whether cities can regulate where and when people can sleep outside, especially if there isn’t shelter space available. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals had hel…

For the fourth year in a row, nonprofit theater Kickstand Comedy is hosting a series of free stand-up comedy nights in Portland’s Laurelhurst Park Friday evenings for the entire summer. The first outdoor event was held by necessity in the pandemic and began with a small crowd of less than 100 people. But word has spread, and as pandemic has subside…

There are roughly 500 Southern Baptist churches in the Pacific Northwest, accounting for more than 44,000 members. At its annual meeting last month, the Southern Baptist Convention considered an amendment to ban women from being pastors. It ultimately didn’t meet the two-thirds majority it needed to pass, but it still had support from more than 60%…

On Thursday morning, a semi-truck hauling an excavator caused severe damage to the Hood River-White Salmon bridge when an excavator it was hauling struck the lift span above the traffic lanes. The Port of Hood River immediately closed the nearly mile-long bridge spanning the Columbia River until “further notice.” No injuries were reported at the ti…

In April, United States Supreme Court Justices heard arguments in one of the most widely watched cases out of Oregon in recent memory. The question at the heart of Grants Pass v Johnson was whether cities can regulate where and when people can sleep outside, especially if there isn’t shelter space available. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals had hel…

A population of gray whales that feed off the Oregon coast have been shrinking in size over the last 20 years. New research from Oregon State University shows that whales born in 2020 grew to be more than 13% shorter than whales born before 2000. The shrinkage could bring significant reproductive health challenges for the whales, and could also be …

Oregon’s foster care class action lawsuit against the state's Department of Human Services was settled in May after five years. But the improvements to the foster care system agreed in the settlement couldn’t move forward until a “neutral” was chosen to oversee the system. This week the court picked outside expert Kevin Ryan to oversee the changes.…

In November 2016, Oregon voters overwhelmingly approved Measure 98, also known as the High School Success fund. It provides targeted state funds in three core areas: dropout prevention, career and technical education and college readiness. High schools across the state can apply to access Measure 98 funds by developing individual plans on how those…

Hayward Field is once again hosting the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials in Eugene which end on Sunday. The nation’s best sprinters, hurdlers, javelin throwers and more are competing for a shot to qualify for the summer games which kick off next month in Paris. Among those who’ve already punched their tickets is Ryan Crouser, an Oregonian and tw…

Summer is here, and people are kicking it off by getting out into nature. But those in communities of color can often feel excluded from natural spaces and from participating in activities like hiking and camping. People of Color Outdoors (POCO) is a local nonprofit that works to build community in the Portland area through outdoor excursions. It’s…

Washington is just one of many states that makes an assault on a health care worker a felony offense, but recent reporting from the Marshall Project and the Seattle Times found that this law is disproportionately affecting those in a mental crisis. From 2018 to 2022, there were 151 cases of felony assault on a health care worker in King County. A l…

Although the City of Portland passed a fireworks ban in March of 2022, Portland Fire & Rescue is preparing for a potential increase in fires started by personal fireworks this Fourth of July. Reporting by Willamette Week found that although the number of fires caused by fireworks dipped during the year the ban was enacted, the number of fireworks-r…

Fire departments across Oregon are facing staffing shortages as veteran firefighters retire and volunteer numbers drop. But the Oregon Fire Apprenticeship program has been helping departments bring in more candidates with diverse backgrounds. The apprenticeship pays a minimum salary of $3,800 a month and covers the cost of the five community colleg…

Outdoor recreation generates around $7.5 billion in Oregon, according to the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable. Some of our most popular industries include boating, tent camping, hiking and climbing. But while the industry generates more than 70,000 jobs in the state, some of these workers face dangers that go beyond just natural elements. As reported …

The latest data made available by the USDA Census of Agriculture show that the value of Oregon farmland has increased by 23% over a five-year period, compared with just 7% nationally. Dan Bigelow is an assistant professor in the department of Applied Economics at Oregon State University. He’s been analyzing this census data to create a fuller pictu…