Think Out Loud

The Drive-By Truckers have been churning out Southern rock anthems for three decades. The band hails from Athens, Georgia, by way of Alabama, but for the last 10 years, co-founder Patterson Hood has called Portland home. The band is celebrating with a weekend of shows at Revolution Hall from Nov. 12-14. The showcase is modeled after the band’s annual “Heathens Homecoming” in Athens, which began in 2000.

Hood joins us for a performance and conversation about his 30 years on the road with the band. 

Nicole Ybarrondo is a mother of a first grader and a fourth grader who attend Silver Rail Elementary in Bend. On Oct. 15, they were inside the school when a 16-year-old former Silver Rail student shot and killed three children and a teacher. The teen also critically injured two others before he was fatally shot by Kaylub Giamanco. It would be hours before Ybarrondo was reunited with her children on what she says was the worst day of her life. 

Ybarrondo and her family and many others within the Silver Rail community are grappling with grief, trauma and feelings of isolation. To help with needs both immediate and long-term, Ybarrondo created the Silver Rail Children’s Fund. Since its launch on Oct. 23, the grassroots nonprofit has collected more than $35,000 in donations from individuals and local businesses to pay for outings and services for Silver Rail survivors, their families and school staff. Those include field trips to pumpkin patches; a pizza-making and arts and crafts event; and child drop-off at a gymnastics center so that caregivers could attend a virtual meeting with Gov. Tina Kotek’s office.

Ybarrondo joins us to discuss more details about the fund and her thoughts about the district’s plans to reopen Silver Rail on Nov. 12. 

“Think Out Loud” continues our monthly conversations with Meg Samples, general manager of member-supported KMHD Jazz Radio. Each month, we’ll hear about artists to add to your playlist, along with concerts and community events to attend. 

In November, that includes the third annual Save the LP Record Show at the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts in Beaverton. The Nov. 14 event is organized like two sides of an album. During the day, analog audiophiles will thumb through rare vinyl and other vintage music merchandise from more than 50 vendors. 

At night, KMHD co-presents a concert in the Reser’s theater by Jimetta Rose. The L.A. vocalist and producer will perform her album “MettaSun,” a musical tribute to jazz visionary Sun Ra. Portland-based The Cosmic Tones Research Trio will join Rose on stage for a performance that reimagines the Afrofuturism aesthetic and sonic spiritual dimensions of Sun Ra’s music.

KMHD General Manager Meg Samples joins us to share more details about the concert and other jazz highlights.

A tax gap is the difference between the taxes individuals pay versus what they actually owe. According to a new analysis from the Oregon Center for Public Policy, 77% of the state’s tax gap comes from people underreporting their income. By closing the gap, Oregon could receive $2.7 billion over 10 years. Daniel Hauser is the deputy director for the organization. He joins us to share more on what it would take to close the gap and the impacts it could have.

The Columbian previously reported on the Landing Pad, which opened in August and is staffed 24/7 by peer mentors from the Coastal Community Action Program. They have lived experience with incarceration and provide transportation from the jail to the Vancouver facility and help connect new arrivals with services they might need, including permanent housing and substance use treatment.  

Jennifer Sumait is the reentry program manager with the Coastal Community Action Program. She and Lookingbill join us for more details about the Landing Pad and the impact it’s having. 

The Eagle Cap Wilderness at the base of the Wallowa mountains in Eastern Oregon encompasses nearly 360,000 acres. It’s on the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest, and for filmmaker Cody Sheehy it’s  one of the most beautiful places on earth, maybe the most beautiful. He grew up in Wallowa county and lived elsewhere for 25 years. But six years ago, he returned to his roots and began thinking about how to best contribute to the local community. 

Sheehy met  Zach Halpern, a medical doctor and founder of the Oregon Psychedelic Institute. He discovered they had a shared love of community and film and together they launched the Eagle Cap Film Festival that runs from Nov. 5 - 7. Sheehy’s new documentary is one of the nine films showcased in Enterprise.

We talk to Sheehy and Halpern about the event. We also get a preview of “The Last Dive,” which tells the story of a manta ray and the scuba diver and his unique friendship with one particular manta ray.

Editor's note: This post has been updated to reflect that the films at the festival will only be shown in Enterprise.

Democrats swept elections all across the U.S. and Oregon and Washington were no exceptions. Oregon U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley easily won reelection. Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek has won a second term as Oregon governor.

In Washington, incumbent U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez has defeated Republican state Sen. Minority Leader John Braun. A measure to repeal an income tax on millionaires was behind on election night, while a measure to ban transgender students from competing in girls' sports was leading on election night.

For nonpartisan races in Portland, city council incumbents seem likely to keep their sets. In Multnomah county, Sharon Singleton is leading in the race to be the next county chair.  We get the latest results and analysis from OPB political reporters Lauren Dake, Dirk VanderHart, and Alex Zeilinski, and Sarah Mizes-Tan, political reporter for KUOW and KNKX.

Joyce Tischler has been called "the mother of animal law." When she began studying law in the 1970s, the area of animal rights law was nonexistent.

For the last 50 years, Tischler has devoted her career to championing the field. She founded the Animal Legal Defense Fund and helped develop and taught at the Center for Animal Law Studies at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland.

She was recently awarded the Lifetime Excellence in Animal Protection award by the nonprofit Animal Grantmakers.

We’ll sit down with Tischler to hear more about her extensive career.

From camping gear to gorpcore, consumers may not realize that the functional, tactical and practical clothing worn today has deep connections to the U.S. military. In autumn 2025, “Articles of Interest” host and producer Avery Trufelman took listeners on a journey to learn more about how civilian and military fashion intersect and the ways in which the uniforms of soldiers have influenced the outdoor apparel industry. Trufelman joined us on Dec. 5, 2025 to share more on the history of military gear, the civilian-veteran divide, Portland’s Functional Fabric Fair and more.

The Hermiston Herald reported in September that Cummings is retiring as the lead chaplain and chaplaincy program services coordinator for the Umatilla County Fire District #1 and Hermiston Police Department. He helped launch the program in Hermiston 15 years ago and today oversees four other chaplains, including two Spanish speakers. 

Cummings joins us to share his work and the importance of being there for first responders and others on their darkest days.

The Lullaby Project was created more than a decade ago by the Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute. The program pairs singer-songwriters with parents who are incarcerated or experiencing homelessness, and together they create a lullaby.  In Oregon, those songs are arranged for the Oregon Symphony and then publicly performed. 

Ada McGraw was one of the first women to participate in this program after it expanded to the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility last year. While serving her sentence, McGraw was paired with singer-songwriter Bre Gregg. The lullaby they wrote was for her son Legend and included a poem from Legend’s father.

Jessica Katz is the director of The Family Preservation Project and facilitated their meeting. We talk with Katz, Gregg and McGraw to hear about this creative process and learn more about the larger impact of The Lullaby Project. 

On Thursday, musicians drove down to Coffee Creek to begin work on the next set of lullabies with women in custody. We’re rebroadcasting this segment that first aired live on May 5, 2026 to kick off Staff Picks, an occasional series highlighting some of our production staff’s favorite segments 

 As the need for critical minerals like lithium and magnesium grows, scientists are looking for new ways to extract them. Rather than trying to pull them out of the ground, researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Lab are working to pull those minerals out of seawater. The team has created a system to extract magnesium hydroxide from seawater, which can then be processed into magnesium metal for cars, airplanes and construction materials.

Chinmayee Subban is a chemist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. She joins us to share more about the effort to mine ocean water.

Election Day arrives in just four short days, with mail-in voting already underway in Oregon and Washington. The Trump administration is continuing to challenge the country’s ballots, methods of voting and state voter rolls all around the country. Trump is sending federal election observers to Oregon, Washington and a handful of states. In Washington, the state has also been dealing with allegations that the state’s voter rolls are rife with noncitizens.  

Washington’s Director of Elections Stuart Holmes joins us to talk about the accuracy and security of the state’s voter rolls and election system more broadly in this political moment. We also get an update from Tim Scott, director of the Multnomah County Elections office, about Election Day observers and recommendations for where and how county residents can cast their ballots. 

Earlier this month, Oregon became the 25th state to sanction girls flag football as a high school sport, starting next spring. The sport has grown especially rapidly in the Beaver State since the Oregon School Activities Association voted just two years ago to designate girls flag football as an emerging activity. This past spring, nearly 60 girls high school flag football teams competed in the state, compared to 32 teams in 2024. 

Bubba Lemon is the head coach of the girls flag football team and the boys basketball team at Tualatin High School. In May, senior Briana Kaer and junior Hannah Wachter helped their Tualatin teammates defeat South Salem in overtime to clinch the state title. A month later, Tualatin defeated other top teams from Oregon and Washington to win the Best of the PNW tournament sponsored by the Seattle Seahawks. Kaer, Wachter and Lemon join us to discuss their love for this growing sport, which will make its debut at the Summer Olympics in 2028 in Los Angeles.

The Immigrant Story began in 2017 with a mission of highlighting the humanity of individual immigrants and refugees with photos and accompanying short descriptions of their experiences. Sankar Raman founded the nonprofit after immigrating to the U.S. from India. Since then, it has evolved into a multimedia organization that also features live storytelling. Now for the first time, on the 250th anniversary of the founding of the U.S., Raman is turning his attention to citizens who have not enjoyed the full liberties and protections guaranteed by the Constitution. He partnered with the Portland Opera to create a unique celebration of the U.S. called “The American Story: 250 Years of Becoming.” It features live music and three storytellers who are Black, Mexican-American and Japanese-American citizens.

We talk with Raman, along with storyteller Chani Hawkins and Alfrelynn Roberts, the artistic director of the Portland Opera.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a cyclist in Portland who doesn’t know the name Jonathan Maus. Since 2005, he’s reported on Portland’s evolving bike culture and transportation policy through his blog, BikePortland. But after taking a hiatus in April, Maus announced last week that he’s stepping away from the publication for good. 

Maus joins us to talk about what’s next — both for himself and for BikePortland. 

Scientists at Oregon State University set up cameras and recorded 12,000 hours of video footage to track changes in how marbled murrelets feed their chicks across four years of varying ocean conditions. Poor ocean conditions, for example, are generally associated with warmer marine temperatures that can affect the availability of fish like Pacific sand lance the small, stocky seabirds catch to feed their chicks. 

The scientists found that not only did the chicks receive fewer fish per day during poor ocean conditions, they also took 25% longer to leave the nest, which made them more vulnerable to being eaten by predators like ravens and hawks. That raises concerns for the future of a species that’s listed as threatened in California, Oregon and Washington under the Endangered Species Act. Climate change is affecting marbled murrelets’ population recovery by making marine temperatures warmer and El Niño events stronger, and harming the old-growth conifer forests where the birds nest. 

Jim Rivers is an associate professor of wildlife ecology and the director of the Forest Animal Ecology Lab at OSU. He joins us for more details.

 Last week, the city of Umatilla voted to declare a state of emergency in response to Gov. Tina Kotek’s data center moratorium. The city says preventing future data centers could cost their community millions. Data centers have drawn growing bipartisan opposition across the country. They've also created increasing concern for Oregonians on both sides of the aisle. Umatilla City Manager Dave Stockdale joins us to share more on the state of emergency and the state moratorium's broader impacts.

 It’s been nearly two weeks since the shooting at a Bend elementary school. As new details emerge, experts have shared their ideas for preventing school shootings in the future. School shooter prevention has grown to a $4 billion industry, but researchers and advocates say many of the current efforts turn schools into places that can actually bring more fear to students.

Amie Wexler is the executive director of Alliance for a Safe Oregon. It argues that increased access to mental health support for families, reducing youth access to firearms and changes to the physical environments of schools can prevent future mass shootings. The Alliance also notes that increasing the use of Oregon’s Extreme Risk Prevention Orders could also help prevent mass shootings before they occur. Wexler joins us to share more.

The Bureau of Land Management intended to capture an entire herd of wild horses in southeastern Oregon this month after a wildfire burned much of the vegetation in the area. But a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order limiting the roundup, stating that the agency failed to adequately study how it would affect the herd’s genetic diversity. The BLM began its reduced roundup last week.

April Ehrlich covers lands and environmental policy for OPB. She joins us with more details on the court order and the longstanding conflicts around wild horses on federal lands in Oregon.

Last Wednesday, thousands of students in Bend-La Pine Schools returned to class following a school shooting at Silver Rail Elementary in Bend on Oct. 15. A 16-year-old former student at Silver Rail killed three children and a teacher, and seriously injured another educator and young student that day. A Silver Rail parent, Kaylub Giamanco, who was passing by the school at the time of the attack, pursued the shooter and fatally shot him.

Instruction has resumed at all schools except Silver Rail, which remains closed. The district is asking Silver Rail parents to complete a return-to-school survey and is gathering feedback from the school’s staff to inform its reopening plan. The district has also set up an information hub with updates and community resources for students and their families.  Meanwhile, an online petition created by a Silver Rail parent calls for improved security measures in the district, including regular security assessments and hiring more security officers. 

Bend-La Pine Schools Superintendent Dr. Steven Cook joins us to share updates and what he has been hearing from teachers, staff, students and parents following this tragedy.

Kaylub Giamanco is a 36-year-old carpenter and father of two children who attend Silver Rail Elementary school in Bend. In an exclusive interview with OPB News Regional Managing Editor Emily Cureton Cook, Giamanco described the “split second decisions” he made when his life forever changed on Oct. 15. 

That afternoon, Giamanco pursued and fatally shot an armed 16-year-old who had forcibly entered the school and killed three children and a teacher, and seriously injured two others. “Think Out Loud” features an extended version of Giamanco’s interview with OPB, which was recorded in Bend one week after the Silver Rail school shooting.

Editor’s note: This interview contains descriptions of gun violence. The 16-year-old shooter’s firearm was a shotgun and not a rifle, as Gianmanco refers to it in the interview.