Think Out Loud

It’s been three years since the Labor Day fires burned more than 4,000 homes and about a million acres of land across Oregon. Since then, fire investigators have only publicly released the cause of one of the nine major fires. Zach Urness is the outdoor editor for the Statesman Journal and the host of the “Explore Oregon” podcast. He joins us to share why we still don’t have official answers and what this means for survivors of the catastrophic event. 

When Tove Danovich began keeping chickens in her backyard in Portland several years ago, she didn’t realize that what she was actually starting was research. That research would become a full-fledged book investigating the role these birds play in the larger culture and economy. Danovich also started sharing her journey on her Instagram, where most of the photos feature her “girls,” Loretta, Emmylou, Peggy and many more. Tove Danovich joins to talk about her book “Under the Henfluence: Inside the World of Backyard Chickens and the People Who Love Them,” and why she became obsessed with chickens and their place in our lives.

Roughly 13,000 years ago, Ice Age animals such as saber-toothed cats, the American lion and mammoths started going extinct in the Los Angeles basin about a thousand years before their extinction in other parts of North America. To find out why, a team of scientists collaborated on a new study that argues that wildfires due to increased human activity in the region was likely to blame. The scientists made their findings based on fossil specimens extracted from preserved remains at the La Brea Tar Pits, along with sediment cores they dug up to provide a prehistoric timeline of wildfire activity amid a changing landscape. Edward Davis is the director of the Condon Fossil Collection at the University of Oregon’s Museum of Natural and Cultural History, and one of the authors of the study which was published in August. He joins us to talk about the study and its relevance in an era of extreme wildfires driven by climate change. 

Students at Portland Public Schools are nearly a month into the new school year, but their teachers and the district are at an impasse on contract negotiations. Meanwhile, recent test results from Oregon Statewide Assessments showed steady and improving rates in English language arts and math for grades 3 - 8 in PPS. Sharon Reese, chief of human resources for PPS, and Renard Adams, chief of research, assessment and accountability, join us to talk about what the district thinks students and teachers need to succeed.

Fall classes have started at the University of Oregon in Eugene with a new president at the helm: Karl Scholz, an internally respected economist who came most recently from University of Wisconsin-Madison where he served as provost. Meanwhile the university is getting ready to consolidate its Portland presence at a new Northeast campus, the former Concordia University. The property that was purchased in 2022 will house the university’s new Ballmer Institute for Children’s Behavioral Health. UO also plans to move graduate programs currently housed at the White Stag building in the city’s Old Town neighborhood and is putting that building up for sale. We sit down with Scholz in our Portland studios to hear more about the Ballmer Institute, the university’s footprint in the city and how he’s thinking about the rising costs of higher education, both as an economist and a university president.

Oregonians voted to decriminalize drugs three years ago. Now, a new study from the NYU Grossman School of Medicine found that M110 did not lead to an increase in drug overdoses. Corey Davis is an adjunct assistant professor at NYU Langone Health’s Department of Population. He joins us to share more on the results and implications of the study.

Three-quarters of adults over the age of 50 want to remain in their homes as they age, according to the American Association of Retired Persons. But for some older adults in Portland, current infrastructure presents some serious physical and social challenges. A new draft report from Portland’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability lays out some recommendations to address these issues. The Age and Disability Inclusive Neighborhoods Action Plan advocates for creating age-friendly centers, increasing accessible public spaces and providing more support for those wanting to age in place. Alan DeLaTorre is an adjunct professor in the College of Urban and Public Affairs at Portland State University and the former Age-Friendly City program manager for Portland’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability. He is also the main author of the new plan. He joins us to share the challenges facing Portland’s older population and what it would mean to make the city more age-friendly.

Oregon’s Measure 110 — which decriminalized drug possession and directed more money into substance use disorder treatment   — was modeled after Portugal's drug policy approach. New York Times opinion writer and neuroscience journalist Maia Szalavitz has studied what’s happened over the last 25 years since the country began decriminalization. She’s written many articles and books on the subject of addiction, most recently “Undoing Drugs: How Harm Reduction is Changing the Future of Drugs and Addiction.”  She joins to tell us how and why decriminalization worked in Portugal and the lessons she believes it holds for Oregon — and the U.S. as a whole.

Erika Hayasaki’s book “Somewhere Sisters: a story of adoption, identity, and the meaning of family” explores a very complicated multi-family, multinational story. At the heart of the book are sisters: identical twins born in Vietnam. One was adopted by a wealthy family in the U.S., one was raised in rural Vietnam. We spoke to Hayasaki in 2022 in front of an audience at the Portland Book Festival.

When you look at a painting in a gallery or museum, you can’t always tell how much of what’s portrayed is accurate or how much artistic license has been taken. But a new study from Oregon State University shows that some 19th-century landscape paintings are accurate enough to aid scientists who are researching historical forest systems.  Dana Warren is an associate professor of forestry at OSU. Peter Betjemann is an English professor and the Patricia Valian Reser Executive Director of Arts and Education. They collaborated on the study, and join us with more details on how art and science can serve each other.