Think Out Loud

In 2010, environmental advocates, elected officials and executives from TransAlta, a Canada-based electricity supplier, assembled a plan to close down Washington’s last remaining coal-burning power plant by the end of 2025. The 15-year long project was a sort of benchmark for transitions of this kind – it included comprehensive financial support and educational opportunities for employees and their families. It eventually lent itself to Washington’s clean energy goals passed in 2019, one of which declared that all state utilities must cease purchasing and using coal-powered energy by the end of 2025.

But late last month, when the plant was on track to shut down its operations, the Department of Energy issued an emergency order, ruling that the plant must remain operational for another 90 days. This posed many questions for the future of the plant, due to the long-term effort to close its doors and the lack of customers for coal-powered energy because of the Clean Energy Transformation Act. The plant remains shut down despite the emergency order, but its future hangs in limbo. Joining us to discuss the details is Amanda Zhou, a climate and environment reporter at the Seattle Times.

On Monday, Oregon state lawmakers will convene in Salem to start the 2026 short legislative session. They’ll have just 35 days to tackle their legislative priorities, including the future of transportation funding, housing and rebalancing the state budget, which is facing a nearly $900 million shortfall due to an estimated loss in state revenue from tax changes under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers have also seized on growing concerns around affordability and the cost of living, although with different views on what’s to blame. Also expected on the agenda is legislation Gov. Tina Kotek is sponsoring to accelerate job growth and ease business permitting as part of a multi-pronged effort that Kotek recently unveiled and appointed former state Senate Republican leader Tim Knopp to lead. 

House Minority Leader Lucetta Elmer, R-McMinnville, and House Speaker Julie Fahey, D-Eugene, join us to share their perspectives and priorities for the legislative session.

Editor’s Note: This description has been updated to accurately reflect the source of the nearly $900 million state budget shortfall. We also mischaracterized the source of this shortfall in the on-air conversation. OPB regrets this error.

Southern Oregon artist Crystal Proffitt has always had a connection to hair. As a dancer, she grew comfortable styling her own hair for performances, and later worked as a professional hairstylist. But she’s also had strangers approach her to touch or tug her curls unsolicited, an experience she says isn’t uncommon for people of color. 

Proffitt channeled those experiences and others into the art installation “Don’t Touch My Hair: An Interactive Crowned Experience.” It features portraits of local models accompanied by audio descriptions of their own experiences with their hair. The installation will be on display at the Rogue Gallery & Art Center in Medford through Feb. 27.

Proffitt joins us to talk more about the installation and the ways hair can convey beauty, culture, memory and identity.

Hand-in-hand with Jefferson High School’s planned expansion comes a change in boundaries for Portland’s school districts. Portland Public Schools voted earlier this month to end the dual-assignment policy, which for the last 15 years has allowed families to let their student opt-out of attending Jefferson High School and instead choose to attend one of three other high schools in the area.

This dual-assignment policy has led to steadily declining enrollment rates for the public high school in North Portland. Jefferson High school currently enrolls just under 400 students. Grant High School has an enrollment of over 2,000, McDaniel High School has over 1,600 students, and Roosevelt High School enrolls over 1,400. The new boundary plan aims to even out enrollment between the three schools by 2030, with the $465 million expansion set to open in 2028.

Joining us to discuss the changes are Michelle DePass, vice-chair of the Portland School Board, and Lakeitha Elliot, Jefferson High graduate and former PTA member

Indigenous affairs reporter Toastie Oaster dug into the history and significance of the phrase for High Country News. It was part of the magazine’s larger issue on “deep time” in the West. Oaster joins us to share what they learned.

Music and science don’t often overlap, but University of Oregon professor Leif Karlstrom is making it happen with the Volcano Listening Project. Karlstrom turns datasets from the volcanoes he studies every day into sound, then uses those soundtracks to make music with a wide array of musicians. The project will be on display at a pair of upcoming shows in Portland and Hood River on Jan. 28 and 29. 

Karlstrom joins us to share music from the Volcano Listening Project and what it takes to turn data into song.

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA, requires museums, universities and other institutions that receive federal funding to return Native American ancestral remains and cultural items to their original tribes. Though the law passed nearly 35 years ago, many institutions have failed to fulfill its requirements.  

Oregon State University recently opened a new facility designed to advance its NAGPRA obligations. The two buildings house a records room, a laboratory and a space to consult with tribal members as they move through the repatriation process. The new buildings are also better equipped than the old facility to store cultural items and remains of tribal ancestors awaiting return.  

Dawn Marie Alapisco is the director of the NAGPRA Office within OSU’s Office of Institutional Diversity. She joins us to share more about the new facility and how institutions should be approaching their NAGPRA requirements.

 Clark County resident Wayne Sutton was only 7 or 8 years old, he says, when his father, who worked in the logging industry, helped him buy his first chainsaw. That was 60 years ago. Today, Sutton is the founder and curator of Wayne’s Chainsaw Museum, a private museum located a few miles outside of Amboy in Clark County that is free and open to visitors by appointment. 

The Columbian recently profiled Sutton and his museum which is big enough to display only about half of the 4,000 or 5,000 chainsaws he has amassed over the years and continues to collect, or have donated to him. Sutton opened the museum in 2000 when he started working for Stihl, the world’s leading maker of gas-powered chainsaws. 

Sutton retired from Stihl in 2024. Although his museum boasts hundreds of models made by his former employer, it also showcases other brands and rare, decades-old examples that serve as a time capsule of the evolution of this power tool that is inextricably tied to the logging history of the Pacific Northwest. Sutton joins us to share his love of chainsaws and future plans for sharing his massive collection with more enthusiasts.

Morgan Stanley has projected the weight loss medication market to reach $150 billion globally by 2035. The use of GLP-1s, such as Ozempic, have increased drastically since 2019. At the same time, new research shows that the use of these drugs still comes with the risk of judgement and social pressures that all relate to weight stigma.

An Oregon-based group, Body Liberation for Public Health, wants to help end these stigmas. The group is advocating for body liberation, which is a movement aimed to dismantle the systems that have created weight stigmas and bias, as opposed to the body positivity movement, which encourages acceptance of all body types. Debbie Kaufman is the creator of the project. She joins us to share more on what body liberation is and why it’s important to incorporate it into public health.

If you’ve been in Portland for a while, you’ve probably seen Mike Bennett’s artwork: It’s on the facade of the Wonderwood Restaurant & Indoor Mini Golf course. It’s on Trailblazer hats and Portland Timbers banners. It’s on road signs and beer cans. Now, the famous cartoonist and immersive space designer has launched a new video-podcast series that explores the animal kingdom for a youth audience. Every episode of “The Zooquarium Podcast” begins with a listener-submitted question — mostly from young kids — and the video element features animations in Bennett’s whimsical cartoon style. The first episode aired Tuesday, with a silly and science-backed conversation about sloth stool.

Bennett joins us to share more about the origins and details of his new podcast. We’re also joined by his co-host, Chanel Hason, a marine biologist, science communicator and director of outreach and community relations at the Elakha Alliance.

Earlier this month, the Oregon Community Foundation and Oregon Humanities announced the names of four recipients of Fields Artist Fellowships. Each of the winners will be awarded $150,000 during the two-year fellowship to work on artistic projects inspired by the communities and cultural traditions they hail from.  

Ernesto Javier Martínez is a 2026-2028 Fields Artist Fellow based in Eugene. He is also an associate professor and head of the indigenous, race and ethnic studies department at University of Oregon. Martinez is a filmmaker and children’s book author whose award-winning works provide a rare glimpse into the experiences of queer Latinx youth. He joins us to share his plans for the Fields Artist Fellowship, which include producing an animated TV pilot inspired by the real-life tragic story of a man and his child who drowned while attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border.  

Oregon became the first in the nation to legalize psychedelic therapy through psilocybin back in 2020. What soon followed were bans in various jurisdictions, large costs for individuals seeking treatment and other barriers to access. Now, new reporting from The New York Times found that a third of psilocybin service centers have closed and other states have also begun offering this therapy, including Colorado and New Mexico. Andrew Jacobs is a health and science reporter for the NYT. He joins us to share more on where things stand in Oregon’s program and what other states have learned from the state’s first-in-the-nation rollout. 

State lawmakers and business leaders have argued high taxes and stringent regulations are hurting Oregon businesses. In 2025, not long after a CNBC report ranked Oregon near the bottom of states to do business, Gov. Tina Kotek announced a plan to change that. Among other goals, it aims to sharpen the state’s competitive edge through changes to permitting and taxation, partnerships with the private sector and incentives to invest in Oregon. 

Angela Wilhelms is the president and CEO of Oregon Business and Industry, the state’s largest business advocacy organization. She joins us to discuss why businesses are leaving Oregon and whether the state can improve its business climate to keep them. We also talk with OPB business reporter Kyra Buckley about Gov. Kotek’s roadmap and the challenges currently facing Oregon’s business community.

Since President Trump took office a year ago, Oregon has sued the administration more than 50 times, often teaming up with other Democrat-led states. Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield has held a series of town hall meetings with other state attorney generals to discuss their efforts and ask for feedback. We ask Attorney General Dan Rayfield about what he has learned from these events.

 Amid crackdowns by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, some are turning to serve for the U.S. military in order to receive protections for their undocumented family members. The Parole in Place program provides a protection from deportation for undocumented parents and spouses of military members.

New York Times reporter Greg Jaffe, who covers the Pentagon and the U.S. military, spent eight days in The Dalles, reporting on National Guard recruitments in the city and speaking to members of the community. He joins us to discuss his reporting in The Dalles.

Kwame Alexander has written many books and picture books for children, tackling a range of different topics. In 2022, his book, “The Door of No Return,” was published as the first installment in a trilogy starting in Ghana in the 1800’s. The book is written as a series of poems, following a young boy, Kofi, who is eventually captured and sold into the slave trade. Kwame Alexander joined us for a conversation recorded at the Portland Book Festival in 2022 to talk about the 10-year process of working on this book.

In October 2025, more than 30 farmworkers were arrested outside Woodburn, OR in a raid by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It was one of ICE’s most aggressive enforcement actions that year in Oregon. But it was also one of the moments that led the state’s largest farmworker union to launch a series of monthly boycotts in protest.

Why? Immigrant labor fuels the state’s economic engine, and so do their dollars: 2023 data show immigrants in Oregon hold about $14 billion in spending power and contribute more than $5 billion in taxes. The boycotts, which kicked off in December, urge immigrants to refrain from economic activity, including working, shopping and going to school.

Reyna Lopez is the president and executive director of Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN). She joins us to talk about the first day of boycotts, as well as the goals they hope to achieve.

Surro Connections was once a reputable surrogacy agency that operated out of Camas, Washington. The company helped match surrogates with prospective parents and facilitated communication and payments between them. But the agency abruptly closed late last year, leaving clients without access to the tens of thousands of dollars needed to pay the surrogates carrying their children. The whereabouts of the company’s founder, Megan Hall-Greenberg, are unknown.

Investigative health care reporter Sarah Kliff talked to clients, surrogates and former employees of Surro Connections for the New York Times. She joins us with more details about the closure and the largely unregulated surrogacy industry in the U.S.

In 2024, former Oregon state Treasurer Tobias Read unveiled a plan to make the state’s public employees retirement fund investments achieve net zero emissions by 2050. Last September, Gov. Tina Kotek signed into law the Climate Resilience Investment Act which directs the Oregon Treasury to pursue profitable clean energy investment opportunities and reduce fossil fuel holdings in the retirement fund, which is valued at more than $100 billion. 

A new report released this week by the Oregon State Treasury details the progress Oregon is making to reduce the climate impact of its investment portfolio. It found, for example, a more than 50% decrease in the climate intensity of its investments between 2022 and 2023. Investments in renewable energy, EV charging, carbon credits and battery materials also doubled to $2.4 billion between January 2022 and June 30, 2025.  

Oregon state Treasurer Elizabeth Steiner joins us to share more details and discuss the uncertainties lying ahead as the state tries to balance its pension system obligations with climate-cutting goals despite the Trump administration’s embrace of fossil fuels.