Think Out Loud

 Next month, the Food and Drug Administration committee will consider easing restrictions on some peptides. Some influencers have claimed these injectables improve muscle growth, create better immune function and slow aging, among other things. However, there is very little evidence to support the benefits of many of these drugs in humans. At the same time, prescription peptides that are already on the market, such as GLP-1s like Ozempic, have seen increasing demand for off-label use. Daniel Hartung is a professor of pharmacy at Oregon State University. He joins us to share more on the FDA processes and off-label prescriptions.

Four times a week, you’ll find Camas resident Martins Licis working out in his home garage. Like many people, he will lift repetitions of weights to build strength. But most people don’t do 600 to 900-pound deadlifts or 500 to 700-pound squats.  

Licis is a professional strongman who is currently training to compete in the Giants Live Strongman Classic in London on July 4 and another international competition three weeks later. The Columbian recently profiled Licis before his return to the World’s Strongest Man, which he won in 2019 and finished in sixth place this year. The four-day competition features grueling feats of strength like pulling a truck along a 100-foot course or throwing 30-pound sandbags over a 16-foot-high bar.  

But it’s more traditional feats of strength that Licis is particularly interested in these days. In 2022, he launched with his friend and manager the YouTube series “Strength Unknown.” As host and co-producer, Licis has traveled to more than 15 countries to document and participate in ancient strength traditions, from sumo wrestling in Japan to stone lifting in Pakistan, and to meet the people who are keeping them alive. 

Licis joins us to discuss the series, which is currently on hiatus, and how it’s expanded his understanding of strength.

The Menopunks movement started as a documentary. The goal was to debunk claims about hormone replacement therapy through interviews with doctors and hear the stories of Portland musicians who have benefited from HRT. But it’s now grown into a broader effort to advocate for more comprehensive and accessible menopause care. 

A benefit concert series this weekend aims to raise money for the documentary and awareness around hormonal therapy through a resource fair and panel conversation with doctors and healthcare advocates.

Alicia J Rose is a musician, filmmaker and one of the founders of Menopunks. Gilly Ann Hanner is a participant in the documentary and a founding member of the band Calamity Jane, which will perform this weekend with both of its founding members for the first time in 35 years. They both join us with more details.

High Country News recently reported on how residents within the city limits of White Salmon, Wash. have lacked free mail delivery from the U.S. Postal Service for years now. The agency also does not provide free Post Office Boxes for those residents. High Country News’ reporting also revealed that at least 10 other towns in Washington, Oregon and Idaho also lack both free home mail delivery and free P.O. Boxes provided by the USPS. Meanwhile, White Salmon Mayor Marla Keethler has been trying to no avail since 2020 to work with the agency to create a new mail delivery route or provide free P.O. boxes. 

Susan Shain is a freelance journalist based in White Salmon. She joins us to share more details of her recent reporting.

The men’s soccer team from Jordan lost to Algeria  2-1 to on Monday, meaning they won’t go on to the next round of the World Cup. The team has been using the University of Portland’s Merlo Field as its home base for practice and training sessions between games. 

UP men’s soccer head coach Nick Carlin-Voigt says the school boasts one of the best all-grass soccer fields in the Northwest, if not the country, and that it was a “no-brainer” when FIFA contacted him several years ago to see if the university would be interested in hosting a 2026 World Cup national team. It’s also given him the chance to attend Team USA’s matches, including its victory over Australia last Friday in Seattle, and relive his boyhood memories of cheering on the men’s team from the stands 32 years ago – the last time a men’s World Cup game was held on U.S. soil.  

Carlin-Voigt joins us to share those memories and the new ones he’s making at the World Cup.

The law made changes to SNAP, including eligibility restrictions and work requirements for able-bodied adults 64 and younger without children under the age of 14 in their SNAP household. SNAP recipients who don’t qualify for an exemption can meet the 80-hour monthly work rules in several ways, including paid work, volunteering or participating in a SNAP Training & Employment Program. The program helps SNAP recipients with job placement, career coaching, pre-apprenticeship training, tuition assistance and other support provided by WorkSource Oregon and community-based organizations.

This month, ODHS began requiring interviews to check eligibility for households applying for SNAP or renewing their benefits. Nate Singer, Oregon Eligibility Partnership Director at ODHS, shares how Oregonians are being impacted by federal changes to SNAP, along with Matt Newell-Ching, Senior Policy Manager at Oregon Food Bank, and Jesse Aronson, WorkSource Program Manager at Worksystems, the Portland metro workforce development board serving Portland, Multnomah and Washington counties.

In 1951, a group of parents decided to start a school for their children with developmental disabilities rather than having them institutionalized. As those children grew into young adults, the school evolved into a workforce training organization. That organization — now known as Relay Resources — is still creating employment opportunities for people with disabilities more than 75 years later.

The nonprofit provides janitorial, landscaping, document imaging and other services to businesses throughout the Pacific Northwest. They also offer individual career counseling for people with disabilities and help pair those job seekers with employers who are interested in inclusive hiring.

Jennifer Camota Luebke is the president and CEO of Relay Resources. She joins us to talk more about the organization’s work.

The city of North Plains has a population that hovers around 3,500. Like so many small communities in Oregon it has a strong sense of identity and a closeness among residents that other bigger cities just don’t have. 

As part of our effort to cover both urban and rural communities all over the state, we sent out a community survey to find out what people in this Washington county town value and what the biggest challenges they face. We heard predominately about the quality of life here and the challenges of reconciling different views of how to improve life here and plan for growth.

We invited the community to participate in a conversation about North Plains at the Atfalati Ridge Elementary School in North Plains on June 11, 2-26. About 55 people showed up, and many shared what they think makes North Plains and why they think the urban growth boundary should be left alone or expanded. 

Our guests included Robin Doughty, director of the North Plains Public Library; Rowan Maiorano, assistant planner for the city; Daniel Stinchfield, who sits on the UGB Public Advisory Committee; Patti Burns, director of the Senior Center and Vice President of the North Plains Events Association; Lora Dexheimer, founder of the North Plains Food Bank; Russ Sheldon, business owner and former city councilor; and Emily Waldron and Elizabeth Beaupain with Friends of Smart Growth North Plains. 

 ”Words Will Come,” a new work by Portland-based playwright Melody Erfani, focuses on a young Iranian-American girl’s experience with learning, language and identity while navigating dyslexia. 

The production takes a multi-sensory approach, using movement, projections, stage setting and fractured language to immerse the audience in the mind of someone experiencing dyslexia. 

We’ll hear from Erfani about her own experience with dyslexia, and how guiding her young niece through a dyslexia diagnosis helped inspire this theatrical work. 

“Words Will Come” is showing at Shaking the Tree Theater in Southeast Portland through June 28th.

Portland was well represented at this year’s James Beard Awards. Cocktail bar Scotch Lodge took home the award for Outstanding Bar, while Japanese restaurant Nodoguro’s Ryan Roadhouse won Best Chef: Northwest and Pacific. 

Writer Erica Berry also won a Media Award for her personal essay published in Orion Magazine. In it, she explores the balance between risk and reward in both mushroom foraging and her personal relationships. 

Berry joins us to share more about her work.

While this isn’t the first time the U.S. has hosted the World Cup, it’s the first time our nation is co-hosting it with venues in the Pacific Northwest. Portland-based sports writer Tyson Alger is covering three of those games in our region, including Friday’s match at Lumen Field.

It’s the first time that Alger is covering the World Cup after more than a decade’s experience of writing about college football. Alger writes about the Portland Timbers in his Substack publication, “The I-5 Corridor,” while also reporting on University of Oregon athletics for Lookout Eugene-Springfield. He joins us to talk about making the leap from covering college football to World Cup soccer, and the storylines he’s pursuing on the sport’s biggest stage.

Sunshine Division, a Portland food relief organization, has opened a new food pantry that takes the form of a free grocery store. People in need can sign up for a time slot to come to the market and choose the groceries that best fit their household’s needs. It’s a model that Sunshine Division says was most requested by the people they serve. Kyle Camberg, Executive Director of Sunshine Division, joins us to explain why.

Lewis and Clark are often thought of as some of the earliest explorers of the western U.S. But more than a century before, Moncacht-Ape, a Yazoo explorer, reached the Pacific Ocean mainly by foot. The Indigenous explorer’s accounts were documented by French colonists, but were often dismissed as being untrue. But as featured in an article in Outside Magazine, historians and explorers may have been looking at the accounts all wrong. 

Mike Bezemek, author of “Mysteries of the National Parks,” wrote about his experience following the Yazoo explorer’s trail in the documented accounts and argues that Moncacht-Ape’s accounts are true. Bezemek joins us to share more on his journey and who this Yazoo explorer was.

Recent reporting from InvestigateWest found that overcrowding in the neonatal intensive care unit at Oregon Health & Science University is raising concerns among staff and patients. Plans to expand capacity by building a new wing of OHSU’s Doernbecher Children’s Hospital have largely stalled despite rising demand for neonatal intensive care nationwide.

Dana Braner is the physician in chief at Doernbecher Children’s Hospital. He joins us to talk about the challenges hospitals are facing in providing neonatal and pregnancy care.

On Monday, Oregon Democratic U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley and Alaska Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski led a group of Democratic Senators to urge the National Science Foundation to stop its plans to dismantle a nearly $400 million ocean monitoring network. The Associated Press reported on the letter Sens. Merkley and Murkowski wrote to the NSF, which was signed by nine other U.S. Senators, including Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell of Washington. More than two dozen Democratic U.S. Representatives signed onto a separate letter, per the AP’s reporting, to warn against the “illegal decommissioning” of the Ocean Observatories Initiative. 

The OOI is a network of 900 sensors anchored off Oregon, Washington, Alaska, North Carolina and in the North Atlantic. For more than a decade, the instruments have transmitted real-time data that has helped detect coastal flooding events, manage sustainable fisheries, track marine heat waves and more.  A memo from the NSF posted last month said the “major descoping” is already underway for the array of instruments managed by Oregon State University, with the removal of most of the rest of the network expected to be completed next summer.

Sen. Merkley joins us to discuss his and other Democratic lawmakers’ efforts to protect the OOI, along with other federal issues affecting his Oregon constituents.  

During the pandemic, Lara Blair found herself with a lot of time on her hands. With her Camas photography studio sitting idle, Blair reminisced about her childhood and two things that brought her joy as a 10-year-old: donuts and dollhouses. Thanks to how-to videos she saw on YouTube, she soon began making sculptures of donuts from clay, adorned with sprinkles and surreal, whimsical elements such as tiny people with ropes climbing up their frosted, candy-colored sides. 

Today, Blair works full time as a small-scale artist creating intricate dioramas, shadow boxes, commissioned pieces and other tiny, sculpted works she sells online or at Gallery 408 in Camas. The Columbian recently profiled Blair and a miniature version of the art gallery she designed and helped create with the gallery’s co-owners featuring tiny, painted canvases and sculptures Blair and other local artists, including Portland painter Bianca Youngers, contributed.  

The mini gallery was inspired by a conversation Blair had with Rachael Harms Mahlandt, a Portlander who co-created the PDX Sidewalk Joy Map that has since expanded worldwide. Harms Mahlandt was one of the featured guests on Blair’s new podcast, “Tiny Worlds, Big Stories.” Blair and Youngers talk with us about making small-scale art that can spark delight and childlike wonder for its creators and audiences alike. 

Conditions are becoming increasingly crowded in Oregon Health & Science University’s neonatal intensive care unit, raising concerns among patients and staff. That’s according to new reporting from InvestigateWest. Plans to expand capacity by building a new wing of OHSU's Doernbecher Children’s Hospital have largely stalled despite rising demand for neonatal intensive care nationwide.

Danielle Dawson is a collaborative investigative reporter and Report for America corps member at InvestigateWest. She joins us with more details.

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.