Think Out Loud

Portland storyteller and comic Ash Allen is on something of a roll. She’s won the Moth’s StorySLAM multiple times. Willamette Week recently named her one of its Funniest Five and in 2025 she was a Best of Portland Comedy finalist. Allen has headlined festivals including Pickathon, Fire and Story, and Hell Yes Fest.

She says this debut solo storytelling show “Big Feelings Baby" is “rooted in queer identity, grief, humor, and the act of reclaiming one’s voice.” She explores what it means to “grow up different” in the Mississippi woods, “to be asked to quiet that difference, and to eventually choose to live out loud.”

Allen joins us to share more details about her upbringing and her show that premiers this weekend

Lowell began welcoming customers to the store, Kid Hermes the Trickster, about a month ago. Oregon ArtsWatch recently profiled Lowell and his new venture. The 830-square-foot space in downtown Portland is packed with roughly 1,700 books that come mostly from Lowell’s personal library. In addition to literary classics from Jane Austen and Franz Kafka, visitors might find rare first editions and signed copies of titles spanning photography, science fiction or even a 16-volume collection of the Oxford English Dictionary. There’s also a gallery inside the store where Lowell hosts art exhibitions featuring local and international artists. 

Lowell joins us to share his vision and hopes for Kid Hermes the Trickster.

The Mt. Adams Institute has announced that it will dissolve and cease operations effective December 31st, 2026. The Southwest Washington nonprofit provides educational and career opportunities in the outdoors through partnerships with agencies such as the U.S. National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service. It pairs young adults and U.S. military veterans with internship opportunities in outdoor resource management roles, ranging from trail maintenance and construction to environmental education.

Around 95% of its budget came from contracts with federal agencies and through AmeriCorps. Though the loss of federal funding wasn't the only factor in the organization’s decision to dissolve, the budget cuts initiated a ripple effect that left the organization facing layoffs and other financial strains. It’s one example of a wider reaching fallout for nonprofits in the wake of federal funding cuts across the U.S.

Mt. Adams Institute Executive Director Aaron Stanton joins us to discuss how the loss of federal funding has impacted the organization's work.

Spring has sprung! And Hearth and Hollow owner Dusti Arab is passionate about helping people grow their own food. She sells what she cultivates  herself in her edible-plant nursery and is also a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) grower. She says planting and growing food isn’t just for spring — it’s an all season activity. Her entire operation is run out of her home in Vancouver, essentially in her backyard. She doesn’t have a brick and mortar retail outlet, focusing instead on selling at the Vancouver Farmer’s Market on Saturdays and growing the edible-plant CSA. Arab also teaches workshops and maintains a food access resource guide for Clark County. She joins us to share more about her edible plant work and her hunger relief efforts.

Sarah Ruby Armstrong is the creator of Dating Profile Tune-Ups, Playdates and Kissing Booth Social Club. Taylor Kravitz is a licensed marriage and family therapist, the CEO of Empowered Fulfillment Therapy, and an adjunct professor at Lewis & Clark College. Margaret Bagan is a marketing specialist in Portland and served as our resident dating single. 

They bravely joined us in front of a live audience at Portland’s Revolution Hall to talk about the highs and lows of modern dating.

The city of Bend is considering changing its building code to require fire-resistant roofs, siding and other materials in new homes. As reported in the Bend Bulletin, the proposal comes after a surge of interest in wildfire preparedness assessments after the devastating Los Angeles wildfires in early 2025. The Bend City Council is set to consider the measure at its meeting on April 1. 

Melissa Steele is the city’s Deputy Fire Marshal for Wildfire Preparedness. She joins us to talk about how using fire-resistant materials could make Bend more resilient in the face of more frequent and intense wildfires.

For the first time, Clatsop Community College in Astoria is offering a course on the spike in recent years of book bans and challenges. The 10-week course launches on March 30 and will explore the reasons why titles such as “The Bluest Eye,” “Looking for Alaska” and "The Perks of Being a Wallflower” are being targeted in school districts or public libraries. The course will also cover TV shows and movie adaptations of novels that have also been targeted to restrict their viewing in school classrooms and public libraries. 

The course is being taught by Kama O’Connor, a writing and English instructor at CCC who also writes romance novels under the pen name Kristine Lynn. O’Connor says whereas in previous years most book bans originated by individuals, the bans and challenges today are increasingly arising from religious and conservative organizations that are targeting works they find objectionable, including those with romantic themes or feature characters who are people of color or identify as LGBTQ+. 

O’Connor joins us for more details about the course and her personal motivations for teaching it.

The Portland Arts Tax was passed by voters in 2012. It requires those 18 or older to pay the city a flat $35 dollars, if they make $1,000 or more a year and live in a household above the federal poverty line. Residents pay online or by mail separate from their other taxes.  Since it was enacted the tax has drawn criticism for the collection mechanism and how the funds were distributed to public school districts, and large and small arts organizations. As OPB recently reported, the tax has generated a fund of $9 million that has not been spent, even as many local arts organizations lost federal grant funding and are in dire need. Today the city released a new audit of the tax, with recommendations for improvement. We sit down with Audit Services Director KC Jones to get the details.

Since 2022, homeowners have been able to get up to 30% off the cost of installing solar panels through a federal tax credit. But President Trump rolled back those incentives as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The residential credit officially expired on Dec. 31, 2025. The administration also changed how it defines the start of construction for large-scale wind and solar projects, meaning developers have less time to access federal tax credits for those projects.

Angela Crowley-Koch is the executive director of the Oregon Solar and Storage Industries Association. Eric Hansen is the owner of True South Solar, a solar installation company based in Ashland. They both join us to talk about how the rollback of federal incentives are reshaping Oregon’s solar energy industry.

When the Oregon legislative session kicked off last month, state lawmakers had just five weeks to tackle a slate of priorities. One of those was a plan Democratic state and local leaders championed to keep the Portland Trail Blazers’ prospective new owners from moving the beloved basketball team out of Rip City.

Lawmakers in Salem moved closer to that goal with the passage of SB 1501 in the final days of the session. The bill received bipartisan support and allows the state to borrow $365 million by issuing bonds to help pay for the costly renovation of the Moda Center, the aging arena that’s home to the Blazers. The public financing plan has several conditions including: the Blazers’ sale to its new ownership group, led by Tom Dundon, gets approved by the NBA; the team agrees to a 20-year Moda Center lease; and the City of Portland and Multnomah County must also pitch in hundreds of millions of dollars for the renovation.

Joining us for a discussion about the public financing plan are Oregon Senate President Rob Wagner, who sponsored the bill, and Dewayne Hankins, President of Business Operations for the Portland Trail Blazers.

The Alzheimer’s Foundation of America is holding a free one-day conference in Portland on Wednesday designed for patients, families and caregivers. One of the keynote speakers is the co-director of the state’s only Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, Oregon Health and Science University’s Kevin Duff. He says early detection recommendations have changed over recent years and with the emergence of new drugs, many early stage patients can experience dramatically improved outcomes — so catching the disease early is critically important. Duff joins us in studio to discuss the details.

This Friday, a production of “Guys and Dolls” is kicking off at Washougal High School’s performing arts center. But what makes these upcoming performances of this beloved musical different is the cost of admission. It’s entirely pay-what-you-can, which means that cost will not be a barrier for anyone interested in seeing this high-tempo tale of gamblers, grifters and showgirls.

That philosophy is at the heart of Columbia Theater Arts Foundation, the nonprofit theater company staging “Guys and Dolls.” CTAF launched its first production last October, with five performances of “Sound and Music.” According to Michael McCormic Jr., the executive artistic director of CTA Foundation, attendees paid an average of $12 a seat for those nearly sold-out shows. McCormic, who is also starring in “Guys and Dolls,” says that ticket sales cover about half of the cost of CTAF’s productions, with the rest paid for by individual donations and corporate sponsors. 

The Columbian recently profiled CTAF and its pay-what-you-can pricing model, which McCormic says is unique in the Portland metro region among theater companies. He joins us to discuss his vision for making theater more accessible in Southwest Washington where few municipal performing arts venues exist. 

A new resource center for trans, nonbinary and gender-diverse communities is opening soon in Ashland. The nonprofit Rogue Trans will offer a free clothing closet, activities, classes and more at the center. An open house was held March 14, and a grand opening celebration is planned for May.

Maeve Woulfe is the executive director of Rogue Trans. She joins us to talk about the importance of creating safe spaces for queer communities in Southern Oregon.

Caldwell recently wrote about her decades-long journey navigating systems of law enforcement, social services and healthcare agencies for The Marshall Project. She joins us for more details.

3/11 A recent essay in The Marshall Project chronicles a Portland resident’s decadeslong struggle navigating legal systems to remove firearms and other weapons from her mother, who suffers from severe mental illness and psychosis. The author joins us to share more.

Washington state lawmakers concluded the 60-day short legislative session in Olympia yesterday. One of the closely watched bills they passed imposes a state income tax of 9.9% on households earning more than $1 million annually. The so-called millionaires’ tax garnered a record-breaking 25-hour debate on the House floor. Gov. Bob Ferguson is expected to sign the legislation which would not go into effect until 2028. 

Scott Greenstone, a politics reporter at our partner station KUOW and co-host of the “Sound Politics” podcast, joins us to discuss the bill and other key developments in the session.  

PROMO: 3/13 Washington lawmakers concluded the 60-day short legislative session yesterday, including a highly debated income tax on millionaires passed after a record-breaking 25-hour debate. We’ll hear from a reporter with our partner station, KUOW, with more.

 Portland Public Schools Superintendent Kimberlee Armstrong announced this week the district may need to close five to 10 of its 74 elementary, K-8, middle and alternative schools -- by the fall of 2027. Steadily declining student enrollment and rising costs are tied to the funding crunch, which amounts to $50 million for the next 2026-2027 academic year.  And now, the district recently discovered a $10 million dollar budget gap for this year. The district is moving forward with staff cuts and other reductions to shore up the current budget by June 30. We sit down with Armstrong to get more financial details and what she sees as the way forward. 

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is the first Black woman ever confirmed to the highest court in the land, and a consistent and clear voice of dissent on it. She's also the author of a memoir, “Lovely One,” which was picked as this year’s choice for the Multnomah County Library “Everybody Reads” program. We talk to Justice Jackson in front of an audience of Portland high school students.

Many concert venues rely on alcohol sales for revenue, meaning people under age 21 are often left out of shows. Not so at The Off Beat. Portland nonprofit Friends of Noise opened the venue in the Kenton neighborhood last fall and held a grand-opening show headlined by Team Dresch last month.

André Middleton is the executive director of Friends of Noise. Clara Kornelis is a musician and a booker for The Off Beat. They join us to talk about the importance of creating an all-ages space for young performers and live music fans.

Last month, the Washington County Sheriff’s Office began testing drones to respond to traffic crashes, crimes or other emergencies deputies might be dispatched to following a 911 call. Skydio, a California-based drone manufacturer, has provided the county with two of its drones and the “Drone as First Responder” software platform that it markets to law enforcement agencies across the nation.  

A team of sheriff’s deputies who are FAA-certified drone pilots have been assigned to work on Washington County’s DFR trial program, which is expected to end in mid-April. The pilots work in shifts listening to incoming emergency dispatch calls. A pilot can respond to a call by remotely launching a drone, which has a range of roughly three miles, from its base in Aloha to the scene of an emergency to collect evidence or assess a crash site minutes before the arrival of deputies or other first responders. The DFR drones have responded to more than 90 calls for service since Feb. 20. 

Matt Frohnert, a lieutenant in the patrol division of the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, joins us to share more details about the program.

Last month, the Washington County Sheriff’s Office began testing drones to respond to traffic crashes, crimes or other emergencies deputies might be dispatched to following a 911 call. Skydio, a California-based drone manufacturer, has provided the county with two of its drones and the “Drone as First Responder” software platform that it markets to law enforcement agencies across the nation.  

A team of sheriff’s deputies who are FAA-certified drone pilots have been assigned to work on Washington County’s DFR trial program, which is expected to end in mid-April. The pilots work in shifts listening to incoming emergency dispatch calls. A pilot can respond to a call by remotely launching a drone, which has a range of roughly three miles, from its base in Aloha to the scene of an emergency to collect evidence or assess a crash site minutes before the arrival of deputies or other first responders. The DFR drones have responded to more than 90 calls for service since Feb. 20. 

Matt Frohnert, a lieutenant in the patrol division of the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, joins us to share more details about the program.

Researchers at Oregon State University are using satellite imaging to measure damage in Iran. The Conflict Ecology Lab works to assess the effect peace and conflict have on land. The lab has previously done work around Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan. Jamon Van Don Heok is an associate professor of geology and geopolitical sciences at OSU and leads the lab. He joins us to share more on what he’s seeing.