Think Out Loud

14 neighborhood schools in Portland would close if the Portland Public Schools Board approves a district plan. The "rightsizing" plan also includes consolidating or eliminating programs, as well as major boundary changes. Parents, students and staff have been pushing back on both the process and substance of the plan, and are calling for a pause.

School Board Chair Eddie Wang joins us for the hour to share more details about the budget and the school closure proposals. And we’ll be taking calls this hour from those who would be affected by school closures and the other changes. Our number is 888-665-5865.

“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 October, that includes a concert by the pioneering, alternative hip-hop group Digable Planets. The trio is currently on tour for the 30th anniversary of their landmark album, “Blowout Comb,” which they’ll play in its entirety at Revolution Hall in Portland on Oct. 21. Kiefer, a Grammy Award-winning producer and pianist from L.A., will also visit Portland for a performance on Oct. 17 at the Star Theater and Starlight Lounge. Kiefer has become a KMHD staff favorite for his ability to blend jazz improvisation with hip-hop beats. Jazz fans won’t want to miss a performance by Buster Williams at The Jazz Station in Eugene on Oct. 25. The legendary octogenarian bassist has performed with jazz giants such as Sarah Vaughan, Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock.

Metro has been acquiring land to create green spaces in the Portland metro area since the 1990s — and its collection of natural areas, trails and parks has now grown to over 20,000 acres. Metro-managed natural areas and parks include the Smith and Bybee Wetlands in North Portland, Cooper Mountain Nature Park in Beaverton, and Oxbow Park on the Sandy River. John Blasher, the parks and nature director of Oregon Metro, joins us to discuss this milestone and break down how and why Portland’s regional government creates these parks and conservation areas.

The Portland-based group Seffarine blends traditional music from Morocco and Southern Spain with jazz and other contemporary genres. Their upcoming album, “Abaraz,” explores the music of Southern Morocco and the Arab and West African music that influenced it. The album was inspired by the band’s residency in Mhamid El Ghizlane, an oasis at the edge of the Sahara Desert where the landscape is rapidly shifting due to climate change. 

Nat Hulskamp and Lamiae Naki are the founders of Seffarine. We’ll talk with them about the new album and their upcoming shows at the PRAx in Corvallis on Oct. 14 and at the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts in Beaverton on Oct. 16, which will feature clips of interviews with the musicians they met in Mhamid El Ghizlane.

The Clark County Youth Commission allows young people to offer their input to the county council about the issues youth are facing and how to address them. While their work typically focuses on mental health, the commission has also explored violence prevention, youth homelessness, community resilience and other topics. As reported in The Columbian, commission members created two murals to represent last year’s topic, relationships and mental health.

Hunter Bledsoe, Shaunak Deshpande and Evan Decker all serve on the Clark County Youth Commission. They join us to talk about the biggest concerns they have for young people in Southwest Washington and some possible solutions.

Immigrants’ rights advocates are reporting a rise in the number of arrests by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement in the Portland metro area in the last week. Immigration arrests peaked in November of 2025 with “Operation Black Rose.” They decreased dramatically earlier this year but numbers surged again in the summer. The Portland Immigrant Rights Coalition told OPB that there was a “sharp uptick” of arrests Tuesday. And advocates fear that another federal enforcement operation is coming. OPB’s Public Safety reporter Troy Brynelson has been following this story and joins us to share more details.

Early next year, Portland residents may begin seeing and hearing fleets of drones carrying Amazon packages bound for delivery in as fast as half an hour. The tech giant says it plans to expand its Prime Air delivery service to nearly 500 cities and towns by the end of the year. A company press release from August shows the service is being offered in 10 metro areas in the U.S., including Phoenix, San Antonio, Detroit and Tampa. 

According to the Portland Business Journal, Amazon plans to build a Prime Air drone delivery center at its fulfillment center in North Portland and is expected to meet with city officials this month to discuss its proposal. Although the drones haven’t started flying yet, members of the Piedmont Neighborhood Association in North and Northeast Portland have begun expressing their concerns around safety, noise and impacts on local retailers. 

Portland Business Journal reporter Sara Edwards joins us to share more details.

With both education and arts funding facing cuts across the country, it’s not an easy time to be a school music teacher. Research shows that music educators have been leaving the field in recent years, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. But there are still young professionals who are entering the classroom in Oregon.

Charles Torok is a music instructor at Antonia Crater Elementary in Newberg, and Brenda Olvera is a general music and choir teacher at Monmouth Elementary. They join us to share what draws them to music education and how their first year in the classroom is going. 

Polling from OPB shows that the Oregon gubernatorial race is neck-and-neck in the rematch between Republican state Sen. Christine Drazan and the Democratic incumbent, Gov. Tina Kotek. That’s with roughly a week to go before Oregon voters start receiving their ballots. 

OPB politics reporters Lauren Dake and Dirk VanderHart join us to talk about the key issues in the race and where things stand now.

When you think of professional wrestling, World Wrestling Entertainment, also known as WWE, may come to mind. But the Pacific Northwest is home to its own indie scene of wrestling. As Katherine Cusumano writes in The Believer, the blood, sweat and tears that go into wrestling take a toll on the body and mind, but the spirit and drive keep many in-ring. Including Derek Drexl and Amira Lukens, both Portland-based pro-wrestlers who were profiled recently. They join us to share their wrestling careers, match stories and more.

Portland’s got a reputation for food — the New York Times has called the city “the dining capital of the Pacific Northwest.” And last year, a Eugene establishment made it into the publication’s top 100 restaurants of 2025.

Zoe Baillargeon is a freelance food writer based in Portland, and Taylor Gobel is the Food Correspondent at Lookout Eugene-Springfield. They join us to break down some of the regional trends in restaurants and some of the exciting openings to look out for this fall in Portland and Eugene.

 Portland voters in two of the city’s four districts will soon be casting ballots to elect or re-elect their city councilors. It’s the second election using ranked choice voting. With half of the Portland city council seats up for grabs, what should voters expect? We hear from OPB politics reporters Bryce Dole and Alex Zielinski as they discuss the upcoming Portland election on the latest episode of “OPB Politics Now.”

The Oregon chapter of the international nonprofit “Dress for Success” was among the very first of the 130 member networks. It started by offering professional suits and clothes to women who couldn't otherwise afford them. But since 1998, it’s evolved to offering a range of career services. And now it’s opening its most ambitious program yet: WorkWell, a co-working space in NE Portland that includes all those services, plus childcare and more. We talk with Dress for Success Oregon Executive Director Lindsey Norlander and client Delaney Farve, who owns Tiny Travelers Play Place.

The scientists recruited 120 regular users of cannabis to vape a low or moderate dose of cannabis in the lab. They also included a placebo group who vaped without cannabis. Neither the scientists nor the participants knew which group the participants were in during the study.  

All of the participants reported feeling less stressed after vaping – even those in the placebo group. The scientists also found that cannabis appears to have varied effects on stress indicators in the body. For example, the drug significantly elevated heart rate in the moderate-dose group but had no effect on heart rate variability, which typically decreases during stress. 

Carrie Cuttler is an associate professor of psychology and the director of the Cannabis Research Center at Washington State University. She joins us to share more details about the study.

From Wonderwoman and Lois Lane to Cathy and Veronica Lodge, there have been no shortage of women represented in comics. In the new book, “Women in Comics,” authors Nhora Lucia Serrano and Portland State University’s Susan E. Kirtley explore the history of not only the women on the page, but the authors behind them. Using archetypes commonly found in comic books, Kirtley and Serrano look at some of the most influential women that have changed the medium. Kirtley joins us to share more on the book and the impact women have had on the industry. 

Portland’s Alano Club is dedicated to helping people recover from alcoholism, addiction and mental health disorders. It serves 10,000 people a month with meetings, classes, workshops and other activities and programs. Founded in 1947, it’s the oldest and largest such recovery nonprofit in the country.

Several years ago, a participant in its programs decided to start bringing naloxone from the Alano Club and distribute it to bars and restaurants whenever she could. When the executive director got wind of this effort, he immediately began writing grants and invited her to run a formal program to provide naloxone to communities all over the state. Those initial efforts became Project Red, which now works with organizations in all 36 Oregon counties to get the life-saving medicine to as many people as possible. Like many 501-C3s, it lost a significant portion of federal funding, which nearly ended the program. But recent grants from Boulder Care and Pearl Jam’s Vitalogy Foundation have enabled the expansion of the program and guaranteed its operations through 2027.

Kasey Anderson is the executive director of the Alano Club of Portland. He joins us to tell us more about the nonprofit’s work and how Project Red became integral to distributing naloxone throughout Oregon.

Kristin Whitman is the head of information and learning services at the Oregon Health & Science University Library. Fabrice Jotterand directs the university’s Center for Ethics in Health Care. They join us to offer advice on how to navigate chatbots and other online resources in health-related situations.

At a time when many rural hospitals are either closing or merging with larger, urban health systems, a group of Oregon hospitals want to try something different.

Eleven hospitals and health systems are asking for state approval to form a clinically integrated network. They say the partnership will allow them to share resources while maintaining their independence. 

Landon Dybdal is the CEO of Lake Health District and the chair of the proposed Cascade High Value Network. Nate White is the CEO and president of Cibolo Health, which has helped establish these networks in other states. They both join us to talk about the new partnership.

Michael Blesius is the owner of Sports Card Ink, a store in downtown Sisters that specializes in vintage baseball cards and is open for just about three hours a week, by appointment only. Blesius opened it roughly six years ago as a place to house – by his estimation – nearly 2 million baseball cards he has collected over the decades, along with sports memorabilia dating to the 19th century. 

The Bulletin recently profiled Blesius, who refers to Sports Card Ink as his “high blood pressure medicine” and a place for making connections, not profits. A good day at work might be spent appraising a collection, hearing stories from a retired professional player, or giving away cards to children who never got to see Willie Mays make an over-the-shoulder catch at the Polo Grounds.

The future of a new homeless shelter in Grants Pass is in question after the shelter and the organization providing wraparound services ended their working agreement. Under the terms of a lawsuit settlement, Grants Pass is required to provide space for 150 unhoused people in the city, which the shelter is meant to fulfill.

The shelter, known as Parker’s Place Village, is required to provide case management, housing navigation and other wraparound services in addition to basic needs such as clean drinking water, around-the-clock staffing and sanitation. Local organization MINT agreed to provide those services and was already paying for security, utility and trash service at the shelter. But it will end those services Oct. 15.

Reporter Jane Vaughan has been covering these developments for Jefferson Public Radio. She joins us with more details.

Mazama Energy, a Texas-based geothermal company, has recently secured more than $135 million to dig deeper and harvest heat for renewable energy. Project Ceres, which the funding will be put toward, is a horizontal well development in Central Oregon and could generate more than 15 megawatts of power next year. That’s enough to power 4,500 homes. OPB climate reporter Monica Samayoa joins us to share more on geothermal energy in Oregon and its future.