Think Out Loud

Sophocles wrote "Antigone" almost 2,500 years ago, but the themes in the story are timeless. Nez Perce scholar and author Beth Piatote was inspired to write an Indigenous version of "Antigone," featuring a young woman torn between a moral duty to her family and ancestors and the will of the state. Playwright Beth Piatote joins us, along with Nathan Woodworth, one of the actors in a new production from the Native Performing Arts Network and Bag and Baggage Productions in Beaverton. We are also joined by Jeanette Harrison, Creative Director of the Native Performing Arts Network.

For 40 years, sculptor M.J. Anderson has been making annual trips from her home on the Oregon coast to Carrara, Italy. She spends up to three months there, traveling along a winding road to quarries with towering walls of marble, the same kind of stone that was used to create Michelangelo’s sculpture of David and other timeless works of Renaissance art. 

But Anderson isn’t interested in recreating classical, idealized representations of masculine or feminine beauty. Instead, a unifying theme of Anderson’s work is “the distillation of what it feels like to be woman.” Starting at her studio in Carrara, she uses grinders and air hammers to carve torsos evoking the female form out of massive blocks of marble, onyx and travertine. The pieces are then shipped, unfinished, to Anderson’s studio in Nehalem where she polishes them while retaining drill marks and other raw reminders of the stone’s past and its “power.” We talked with Anderson on Sep. 13, 2025 about her artistic process and the themes she explores in her work.

In September 2025, Oregon became the first state in the nation to be verified for its accessibility for travelers with disabilities by the travel website Wheel the World. The company worked with Travel Oregon to assess hundreds of hotels, restaurants, tourism providers and state parks in seven regions across the state for their accessibility. That includes features like step-free entrances at museums or specialized wheelchairs available to venture onto a beach on the Oregon Coast. 

But the state’s efforts to promote its accessibility doesn’t mean that barriers don’t still exist for travelers with physical or neurocognitive disabilities. Small hotel owners and tourism operators may also lack awareness about best practices to engage with these travelers or struggle with how to become more accessible online and in person. 

To address these gaps, researchers at Southern Oregon University received a grant from Travel Oregon to develop and roll out training workshops at 12 locations across the state for travel industry professionals and other stakeholders. The training includes guidance on best practices and role-playing exercises where participants can experience, for example, what it’s like to navigate a carpeted hotel lobby in a wheelchair or to receive information during an emergency as a person who is hard of hearing. 

Pavlina McGrady, an associate professor in the school of business at Southern Oregon University and Rebecca Williams, an assistant professor in the school of business at SOU, joined us on Oct. 2, 2025, to discuss the project. We also heard from Ulysses McCready, a junior at SOU who is blind and assisted with this effort.

The sport is typically affiliated with images of college quads in the ‘80s and ‘90s, but it’s experiencing a resurgence — so much so that there’s even a current hacky sack shortage. 

The U.S. Open Footbag tournament is taking place in West Linn, Oregon, this weekend, just across the river from Hacky Sack’s birthplace of Oregon City. 

The game is characterized by its laid-back nature, but this weekend, hacky sackers will compete in several different events, including “freestyle battles” and “Net,” a volleyball-style event where competitors have to kick the bag over a 5-foot-tall net. They can even show off their tricks and compete with planned hacky sack routines.

Oregon is not only the birthplace of modern hacky sacking, but as it turns out, the birthplace of several professional hacky sack athletes. 

One of those athletes is Tricia George, who’s considered one of the best players of all time, according to her entry in the Footbag Hall of Fame. 

She holds several Guinness World Records in hacky-sacking and has been playing since 1980. She’ll join us on the show, along with a newer player, Brennan Reim, a soon-to-be 9th grader who’s competing in this weekend’s competition. 

He’s been hacky sacking since 2024.

Juan Carlos González was elected president of Metro in May, and then appointed to serve out the remainder of the previous president’s term. He made history in 2018 becoming the youngest member and first Latino to serve on the Metro council. His priorities for the council are creating more affordable housing and jobs in the region. Metro has begun what it calls Future 50, a planning process designed to shape the metro area through 2077. We sit down with González to hear more about his priorities and vision for the next 50 years.

 It’s been nearly five years since a deadly heat dome gripped the Pacific Northwest. Many hundreds of people died — including 69 in Multnomah County alone — from the extreme heat event that sent the temperature soaring to 116 degrees in Portland and broke other temperature records in the region. 

As climate change makes extreme heat events more frequent and longer-lasting, a new Portland State University study predicts that heat-related illnesses could double by 2040 across more than 50 of the largest metro areas in the U.S., including Seattle and Portland. The cost of treating heat-related illnesses is also expected to double, according to the study, likely further straining healthcare systems and vulnerable populations. 

The study’s authors developed a model integrating multiple variables, including demographic information about age, race and health; climate data; visits to hospitals and emergency rooms for heat-related illnesses; and access to air-conditioning or other cooling infrastructure. The study reveals that cities in the Pacific Northwest could bear an especially high public health burden with their aging populations and lack of cooling infrastructure.

Vivek Shandas is a professor of earth, environment and society at PSU and co-author of the study. He joins us to share more details.

Dr. and Lady Glaucomflecken — otherwise known as Will and Kristin Flanary —  began making TikTok videos during the COVID-19 pandemic. Will is an ophthalmologist and two-time cancer survivor. Kristin supported Will through those diagnoses and, more recently, provided 10 minutes of CPR after he suffered a sudden cardiac arrest in his sleep.

The couple has used their personal and professional experience to tackle topics such as private equity in healthcare, unrealistic expectations placed on medical students, and providers’ struggles to balance the needs of their patients with the requirements of insurance companies.

In addition to social media, the two host a podcast and create educational resources for clinicians and “co-survivors,” or people who support a loved one through a traumatic illness or medical crisis.

Will and Kristin Flanary join us to talk about healthcare advocacy and the role that humor can play in it.

The Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers in Vancouver, Wash. is the union that represents the nearly 400 workers who were working at the Nippon Dynawave Packaging Co. when a chemical tank ruptured at the paper mill last month. Eleven employees died, all of whom were union members. 

AWPPW has been coordinating relief efforts, including donations, to support and assess the needs of victims and their families. Last week, the union announced it had reached an agreement with Nippon Dynawave to secure full pay until at least Aug. 8 for workers who are unable to or were instructed not to work. Those who are scheduled to work will receive an additional three hours of pay for each shift they work. 

A federal investigation into the cause of the rupture is currently underway and being led by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board. Josh Estes, a spokesperson and former local union president at AWPPW, says the union supports the demands for answers and accountability from victims and their families to ensure that a tragedy like this doesn’t happen again. Estes joins us to share the union’s focus on supporting workers and their families and the importance of this industry on the local economy.

In 1991, James Hall joined the Umatilla Tribal Fire Department as a volunteer firefighter on the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Eastern Oregon. Today, Hall is the fire chief of the agency, leading its response to structural fires, wildland fires and calls for ambulance transportation services in a coverage area spanning hundreds of square miles. 

In February, Hall was appointed by Governor Tina Kotek’s Office to serve a three-year term on the Governor’s Fire Service Policy Council, making him the first tribal representative to serve on the council in its history. A bill passed by the Oregon Legislature last year made changes to the council’s membership, including a requirement that one of its members be a fire agency representative from one of Oregon’s nine federally recognized tribes. 

Hall shares his recent work on the council and efforts to advocate for all tribal fire agencies in the state.

With music so readily available on streaming platforms these days, it’s easy to put a playlist on in the background and go about the day. The Eugene Difficult Music Ensemble is asking audiences to put a little more thought into their listening.

The group aims to “expand the definition of what music can be and what music is capable of achieving, as well as who is capable of achieving it.” They commission and perform experimental works from underrepresented artists in showcases such as the New Music Festival and Ambient Ecology, which is taking place over the next two weekends. Recent performances have included vocal meditations that ask for audience participation and an instrument petting zoo for children.

JP Lempke is the executive director of EDME, and Adrian Cervantes Mendez is the group’s secretary. They both join us to talk about difficult music in the age of easy listening.

Clyde Best became one of England’s first Black soccer superstars when he played for West Ham United from 1968 to 1976. Best scored 58 goals in his 218 appearances as a striker for West Ham. He later 

went on to play for the Portland Timbers from 1977 to 1981, helping build the foundation for professional soccer in the U.S. 

The documentary “Transforming the Beautiful Game: The Clyde Best Story” showcases Best’s life and career, including the racism he had to contend with on and off the pitch. The film will play at the Aladdin Theater on June 4 and 5, followed by a Q&A with Best and other interviewees in the film. 

Clyde Best joins us for a conversation ahead of those screenings.

 For the third year in a row, the Cascade Booksellers Association has thrown a kind of huge book party for book lovers in the Portland metro area. The idea is to highlight the huge variety of book shops and get people out to visit as many of them as they can. More than 80 bookstores are participating in Portland Book Week this year, including the White Rabbit Book Cafe in Oregon City, Maggie Mae’s Bookshop in Gresham and Lost & Bound Books, a mobile bookshop based in Portland. We sit down with owners Danielle Walsh, Sho Roberts and Desirai Vuylsteke to hear more about what led them to start their independent shops, how they see their role in their communities and their fondest hopes for the week.

After the deadly chemical tank rupture that killed 11 people last Tuesday at a paper mill in Longview, questions continue to loom over the community — including what environmental impacts the chemical spill could have on the city and nearby Columbia River, as well as the potential cause of this disaster. It’s Washington’s deadliest workplace incident in nearly a century.

Officials from the U.S. Chemical Safety Board arrived in Longview last Wednesday to investigate the cause of the chemical disaster. The future of the board has been uncertain in recent months after a proposed budget from President Trump would have defunded the federal agency, and a recent house bill restored the board's funding by $8.2 million. But yesterday afternoon, the House Appropriations Committee adopted an amendment brought by U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez to add over $5 million to preserve the full funding for the CSB.

We’ll hear more from Gluesenkamp Perez, whose congressional district includes Longview, for more on the investigation and its impact on the Longview community.

So Mary decided to help by donating $50,000 to start a fund for cancer patients in the North Coast region to pay for expenses like transportation, utility bills, lodging and rent. Nine years later, the Arm-in-Arm Fund has nearly tripled in size and has given grants to dozens of patients at the CMH-OHSU Knight Cancer Collaborative in Astoria. 

This year, the Columbia Memorial Hospital Foundation increased to $2,000 the grant money a team of social workers can award to an individual to help them, for example, replace a broken refrigerator or repair a home furnace. Money from the fund has also been used to provide Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday meals for patients and their families. Joining us to discuss the fund and its impact are Mary Armington and William Armington, who is now retired and has also donated to the fund. Mark Kujala, foundation director of Columbia Memorial Hospital also joins us.

 Last week, Portland City Councilors passed a new policy barring law enforcement of all kinds from wearing masks. The policy itself would also direct the Portland Police Bureau to investigate someone who engages in law-enforcement activity, such as detaining someone, and doesn’t show proper credentials.

The ordinance passed in an 8-4 vote, and was introduced by Councilor Sameer Kanal and co-sponsored by Councilor Elena Pirtle-Guiney and Angelita Morillo. Opponents of the law say the policy raises concerns around labor laws and workload for PPB officers. Joining us to share more on the policy and its impacts are PPB Chief Bob Day and Councilor Morillo.

A decade ago, a building in Portland's Nob Hill neighborhood exploded in a gas leak and was consumed by a fire soon after. That building was home to Portland Bagelworks and the eyewear shop Fetch, as well as Art Work Rebels Tattoo Studio, which was located in the building for seven years. Artist Jeff P, who now co-owns Tattoo Smile, was an artist at the shop when this happened. After the dust settled and rubble was sorted, much of the shop was lost, including memories, personal belongings and much of the hand drawn art and flash that many artists like Jeff created.

But for Jeff, some of his work survived as digital scans and phone camera photos he captured as he documented his own work. Now, Jeff has released a book marking the anniversary of the explosion. "Everything That Burned” is a collection of scans and photos of his art and the shop after the fire. Jeff joins us to share more on his memories of the shop and his new book.