Think Out Loud

PeaceHealth Oregon has decided to use the Atlanta-based company ApolloMD to staff its emergency departments in Lane County, ending a decadeslong contract with Eugene Emergency Physicians. The decision led the group to hold a no-confidence vote in PeaceHealth leadership, which the hospitals’ medical staff supported overwhelmingly. In a statement, PeaceHealth said it selected ApolloMD based on “Lane County’s future emergency medicine needs and the type of resource required to meet increasingly high patient volumes and medical complexity.”

Margaret Pattison is the emergency department medical director at PeaceHealth RiverBend in Springfield and a member of Eugene Emergency Physicians. She joins us to talk about the decision and how the group is responding.

Lakayana Yotoma Drury is an educator, social entrepreneur, community advocate, writer, poet, filmmaker—and now an editor-in-chief. He’s published a new magazine-formatted publication with a collection of essays, poems, and photographs he calls a “defiant anthem of Black joy and resilience against a backdrop of gentrification, community violence, miseducation, and white supremacy.” It’s called “503” and Yotoma Drury says the magazine is dedicated to Portland youth and also describes it as a “love letter to Portland.” We sit down with him to hear more about this new collection and its compelling themes — including Black history and stories, educating Black children and youth, and “Black Portland transplants” and their relationship to historic Black Portland.

Gatherings were held in Portland over the weekend to both protest and celebrate the military action in Iran. On Saturday, protesters gathered to condemn the US involvement in a war in Iran. On Sunday, hundreds of Iranian people in Portland gathered to celebrate the death of Khamenei, and to support the US and Israel’s military action against the Iranian government.

Samira Sahebi is the secretary of the board of directors at Free Iran PDX, a community support organization for Iranians living in Portland. Sahebi joins us to discuss the Iranian community in Oregon’s response to the ongoing conflict.

The Columbia River Gorge Commission oversees land use and stewards both economic development and conservation efforts within the National Scenic Area. Robert Liberty served as the Multnomah County appointee to the commission since 2015, and was most recently reappointed in 2023. But he resigned earlier this year with more than a year to go in his term, citing “the gentrification of working lands with luxury homesites for the wealthy” and “the anti-conservation, pro-development interest of some of the Commission members,” among other reasons.

 U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., said President Trump’s decision to launch an attack on Iran “shreds our Constitution, which assigns decisions of war to Congress.” As of March 2, at least six U.S. Service members have been killed in the military operation. The House and Senate are set to vote this week on bipartisan war powers resolutions, which would limit Trump’s ability to take military action — in Iran and around the world — without Congressional approval. Though the measures are bipartisan, those supporting and opposing the Trump-ordered attacks on Iran are split along party lines, with Democrats opposing and most Republicans supporting them. We hear from Merkley, a long time member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, about what he and other Democrats are doing to prevent further war and bloodshed in the region.

La Pine Library is hosting a free event this Saturday, “Not Your Mama’s Cheddar,” as part of Deschutes Public Library's monthlong exploration of fermentation, decay and rot. Teri Tith is leading Saturday’s event, drawing on her extensive knowledge about cheese and years of experience working as a cheesemonger at Market of Choice in Bend to help educate the public about this delicacy, including cheddar, her personal favorite. 

But to say Tith is a cheese expert is an understatement. She’s a Certified Cheese Professional, which she was awarded in 2023 by the American Cheese Society. Tith earned that distinction by working more than 4,000 hours in the cheese industry, and she also had to pass an exam testing her knowledge on the production, distribution and science of cheese. 

Tith also holds a Level 3 certification in wine from the Wine and Spirits Educational Trust, which she says has helped inform the kinds of wines she selects for wine and cheese pairing events at tasting rooms in Bend. While most people know about the natural pairing of cheese and wine, most don’t know about the pairing possibilities of cheese and sake, an alcoholic beverage made from fermented rice. Last autumn, Tith offered cheese and sake pairing classes and is now pursuing a Level 2 certification to boost her knowledge of this traditional Japanese beverage. 

Tith joins us to share more details and insights into artisanal cheeses made in Oregon and beyond.

Navigating substance use disorder can be especially difficult for those who are pregnant. As reported in InvestigateWest, state data shows that mental health conditions and substance use disorder were the leading causes of pregnancy-related deaths in Oregon from 2018 to 2021. And a study from OHSU found that the rate of opioid use during pregnancy has more than doubled over the last decade.

Those with substance use disorder are often reluctant to seek prenatal care due to stigma around their addiction, and drug treatment centers often turn away pregnant patients due to potential health risks. Efforts like Project Nurture and Nurture Oregon aim to integrate behavioral health and perinatal care by connecting pregnant clients with peer support, social services and other resources.

Diana Smith is the clinical lead for Project Nurture at Legacy Health. Sarah Bovee is a perinatal peer mentor and doula for Project Nurture. They join us to talk about providing simultaneous prenatal care and treatment for substance use disorder.

It’s tough to be a craft brewer these days, whether that’s in Oregon or elsewhere in the nation. Shifting consumer demands, including for non-alcohol beer, along with rising costs and market saturation have contributed to declining craft beer sales in recent years. In Oregon, the abrupt closure of Rogue Ales last November after nearly 40 years was a stark reminder that even iconic brands aren’t immune to the industry’s struggles. 

It’s against this backdrop that four Central Oregon breweries and a cidery recently announced the formation of the Oregon Beverage Collective. The new partnership includes Cascade Lakes Brewing Company, Silver Moon Brewing, Crux Fermentation Project, GoodLife Brewing Company and Tumalo Cider Company. The OBC aims to share resources and manage rising costs for supplies and ingredients. Crux’s production facility in Bend will now be responsible for brewing most of the OBC’s craft beverages. Crux Fermentation Project has also been acquired by the Rhine family, which owns Cascade Lakes Brewing. 

Andy Rhine, co-owner of Cascade Lakes Brewing and President of OBC, says the collective will allow each of the brands to retain its own identity while fostering new collaborations between them. Rhine joins us, along with Steve Augustyne, CEO of OBC and owner of Silver Moon Brewing, to share what this collective model offers for both brewers and consumers.

Last April, President Trump issued an executive order directing federal agencies to fast-track the review and issuing of exploration licenses and commercial recovery permits for seabed minerals.

The Metals Company, based in Canada, has applied for an exploration license and commercial recovery permit in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, a massive band of the Pacific Ocean stretching between Hawai’i and Mexico that is thought to be rich in deposits of critical minerals. Last May, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management approved a request from California-based Impossible Metals to begin a leasing process to explore for deep-sea minerals off the coast of American Samoa. 

Despite these companies’ claims that deep-sea mining is a more ethical and environmental alternative to terrestrial mining, it is rife with uncertainty and poses grave risks to the health and biodiversity of the deep ocean, according to Astrid Leitner, an oceanographer and assistant professor in the College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University. She joins us to share more details, including the research she has done on deep sea ecosystems in areas the Trump administration is now interested in opening up to mining.

Home Forward, the housing authority for Portland and Multnomah County, is the largest provider of affordable housing in the state. Reporting from Willamette Week has found that the agency has an unusually high vacancy rate and takes, on average, half a year to fill vacant units at some of its properties. The lack of rental revenue from empty units is making it difficult for the agency to pay off its debts.

Sophie Peel is a reporter for Willamette Week covering Portland City Hall and neighborhoods. She joins us with more details about her investigation into Home Forward.

The Oregon state Senate may soon take up the bill that would enshrine additional protections for Oregonian patients and providers of reproductive services or gender-affirming care. That bill, HB 4088, has already passed in the House and has been referred to the Senate by committee. Chief sponsor Rep. Lisa Fragala (D-Eugene) says the bill reflects a commitment to the rights of Oregonians to access these types of medical care and retain their privacy. Fragala joins us with more on the legislation. We also hear from Rep. Virgle Osborne (R- Roseburg) who voted against the bill.

Susan Sokolowski holds more than 100 patents, most of which she earned during the nearly 18 years she worked as a sports product designer at Nike. One of her favorite patents was for Flyknit, a knitted fabric upper that’s lightweight and provides a sock-like fit on shoes. The inspiration for it came, she says, from conversations she had with women athletes while working as a designer on Nike’s women’s footwear division, which launched in 2002. While at Nike, she also helped design shoes worn by women gymnasts at the 2008 Summer Olympics and track and field uniforms worn by Team USA at the 2016 Summer Olympics. That same year, Sokolowski left Nike to launch University of Oregon’s first graduate program in sports product design. 

Sokolowski was named by USA Today as one of its 2025 Women of the Year in recognition for her work championing and designing sports apparel and products made specifically for women such as sports bras and women’s running shoes. She joins us to discuss her trailblazing career and the big trends, challenges and future of this industry, from sustainable fabrics to equipment for athletes with disabilities.

Artificial intelligence is beginning to change the entry-level job market. AI often automates the repetitive tasks that might otherwise allow new employees to learn on the job, and some worry it could eventually replace those jobs altogether. A study from Stanford University found these changes were most likely to affect “AI exposed occupations” such as software development and customer service.

Lucas Hellberg is an enterprise reporter for the Daily Emerald newspaper at the University of Oregon and an elections reporting intern for Lookout Eugene-Springfield. He recently wrote about how AI is changing entry-level jobs in Oregon, and joins us with more details.

College newspapers are often on shoestring budget, and at the same time they’re a vitally important source of information — especially for their student readers. At the University of Oregon’s The Daily Emerald and Portland State University’s The Vanguard, reporters have been tear-gassed while covering immigration protests. Though reporters at Oregon State University’s The Daily Barometer have not faced that challenge, the editor-in-chief says the paper would like to be prepared for that situation if it arises. All three papers also cover stories in the community that affect the campus. Managing these competing priorities with limited resources can be a major challenge. We get more details from the editors-in-chief at the University of Oregon, Oregon State University and Portland State University: Tarek Anthony, Jenna Benson and Noah Carandanis.

Next Friday, the 2026 Paralympic Games kick off in Milan Cortina, the same region in Northern Italy which hosted the recently concluded Winter Olympics. Anna Soens is an alpine skier from Bend with incomplete paralysis who earned a spot on the Team USA roster. She will now head to Italy to join more than 650 athletes from around the world vying for victory in nearly 80 medal events. 

It is her first time competing in the Paralympics where she has qualified for five events:  downhill, super-G, alpine combined, giant slalom and slalom. The achievement is even more impressive considering that she has only been skiing with the use of adaptive equipment for less than a decade after an accident at a Portland rock climbing gym left her with incomplete paralysis below the hips. In 2018, Soens became the first woman with paraplegia to summit Mt. Hood, which she did with her father, and she is the first person to descend its summit using a sit-ski. 

Soens joins us to share her remarkable athletic journey and hopes for her Paralympic races.

Portland Playhouse in Northeast Portland is currently performing "Angry, Raucous, and Shamelessly Gorgeous." The play follows four Black women artists as they confront their own and each other’s evolving definitions of art, protest, and storytelling.

Audiences have until March 15 to see performances by Faith Lavon and Ashlee Radney, who play actors of different generations. They join us to discuss the production and its relevance today.