Think Out Loud

JR Ujifusa is a Multnomah County senior deputy district attorney and heads its Human Trafficking Team. He’s also the chair of the National Advisory Committee on the Sex Trafficking of Children & Youth. His team and other partners working to eliminate trafficking and support survivors are trying to locate anyone who was trafficked on the now defunct Backpage(dot)com, which was one of the largest online prostitution sites in the world. The DA’s office wants to let survivors know there is money available to them in the form of restitution from the successful prosecution of those who profited from that trafficking. Ujifusa joins us to share more about that effort, and the progress that’s been made more broadly since he began working in this area in 2008.

More than 40 thousand people turned out in Portland alone for the No Kings protest, and people turned up en masse in scores of cities and towns throughout Oregon and Washington. They were part of an estimated 2,500 coordinated demonstrations across the country against President Trump’s use of presidential authority, extrajudicial deportations, immigration sweeps and attempts to deploy the National Guard in Democratic cities, including Portland. We’re joined by two organizers for a first hand report of what the protests were like: Isabelle Fleuraud in Burns, and Alan Unell in Vancouver.

“We do not need any more nonprofits in Oregon,” Libra Forde wrote that in an op-ed published by The Oregonian/OregonLive in June 2025, 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 heard more from Forde on how nonprofits should move forward as federal funds shrink and how merging organizations could serve communities better.

Pacific Northwest National Lab scientist and Hanford manager on radioactive tank waste, vitrification and clean-up progress In September 2024, we packed up our van and drove about four and a half hours from Portland to Richland, WA, to set up a mobile broadcast studio on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities, in partnership with Northwest Public Broadcasting. We broadcast a week of shows that included conversations about the WW II and Manhattan Project history that created the radioactive waste from war-time plutonium enrichment at Hanford. Our coverage from the region also included in-depth interviews with Indigenous leaders and a tour of the infamous B-reactor, along with conversations about the economy and culture of the region. We listen back today to two of these conversations. The first is with Carolyn Pearce, a PhD and chemist with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory working on the science of the  vitrification, the glassification process that will be used to turn some of the 56 million gallons of radioactive waste  into radioactive glass logs for storage. In the second half of the show, we revisit our tour of one part of the Hanford nuclear reservation. The 56 million gallons of waste are stored in 177 massive, underground tanks on 18 different “farms.”  Most of the tanks are single-shelled, but 28 of them are double-shelled, which helps prevent waste from getting into the ground. Karthik Subramanian, chief operating officer of Washington River Protection Solutions, the tank farm operations contractor, was our guide. After the tour, we sat down with Brian Vance, who at that time was the Department of Energy’s top manager in charge of Hanford. He resigned in March of this year. Vance talked with us about tank integrity, the status of the vitrification plant and the overall clean up progress. The opening of that waste processing facility -- which has now cost $30 billion  - was thrown into doubt earlier this month, but the Department of Energy is now allowing the project to move forward and the first glass logs are expected to roll out as soon as this week, ahead of the October 15 deadline.

Elizabeth Gilbert rocketed to fame for her best-selling romp “Eat, Pray, Love.” Her  latest memoir has a very different tone. “All the Way to the River: Love, Loss, and Liberation” details her journey to heal from sex and love addiction. It is also about the love of her life, Rayya Elias, a Syrian-born recovering addict and musician. Elizabeth Gilbert joins us for a live broadcast in front of an audience at the Literary Arts bookstore.

The author of the Bakeshop Mystery Series used the city of Ashland for her inspiration, with many real shops and restaurants in the city appearing in the novels, which now number more than 20. And for the third year in a row, Ellie Alexander is partnering with Travel Ashland to bring fans of “cozy mysteries” to the city for the Ashland Mystery Festival, with tours, talks and other events with more than a dozen other authors. Alexander joins us to tell us more about the genre, her own Ashland-based cozy mystery novels and the festival that runs through Oct. 19.

The community transition program is for students with disabilities who have graduated high school with a modified diploma or a certificate of completion. The program serves people ages 18 to 21 and helps prepare them for life after high school through job training and volunteer opportunities.     Sally Golden is a special education transition teacher for the Springfield School District.  She was recently named Oregon’s 2025-26 Teacher of the Year. She joins us with more on working with students in Springfield and what the award means to her.  

 Protesters at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland may have had their identifiable information from their cellphones surveilled, new reporting from Straight Arrow News found. An analysis done by the news organization found evidence that suggests a cell-site simulator was used in the area. These devices mimic cell towers and are able to capture a phone's unique SIM card number known as an International Mobile Subscriber Identity. Mikael Thalen is a tech reporter for Straight Arrow News and used a research tool known as Marlin to report this story. He joins us to share more.  

Before colonization and the decimation of Indigenous people, Nez Perce, or Nimíipuu, lands encompassed 17 million acres that would become parts of Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana. The Nez Perce Indian Reservation currently consists of 750,000 acres in North-Central Idaho. The Oregon Origins Project aims to bring the traditions, art and storytelling of Oregon’s first peoples to a nonnative audience, and to provide additional space for tribal members, or culture bearers, to gather with each other for their own benefit. This Saturday, Oct. 18, the Project presents its seventh series, called “Earth + Heart, Being and Becoming Nimíipuu” at 6 p.m. at the Reed College Performing Arts Building. We learn more in conversation with Nez Perce/Nimíipuu tribal members Nakia Williamson-Cloud and Phil Cash Cash, along with Matthew Packwood, the executive director of the Oregon Origins Project.

The threat of a 9.0-magnitude earthquake along the Cascadia Subduction Zone has hung over the Pacific Northwest for decades. Seismologists and emergency managers say “The Big One” could be one of the worst natural disasters in the region’s history, but it may not be the worst-case scenario. New research from Oregon State University suggests the Cascadia Subduction Zone may be linked to the San Andreas Fault in California, with seismic activity on one triggering corresponding activity on the other. Chris Goldfinger is a professor emeritus at OSU and the study’s lead author. He joins us with more details on what the findings could mean for our region.