Think Out Loud

Last year, Oregon lawmakers passed one of the toughest corporate medicine laws in the nation and a recent court case put this law to the test. SB 951 limits corporate influence in medical decisions and was at the center of a courtroom battle between Apollo MD, Peacehealth and local physicians in Eugene. The issue came up when Peacehealth announced it would not renew its contract with Eugene Emergency Physicians and instead would instead contract with Georgia-based Apollo MD. The case took a turn when it was announced that a tentative agreement between EEP and Peacehealth was made. Ashli Blow is an environment and public health correspondent for Lookout Eugene-Springfield. She joins us to share more on what agreement was made and what this court battle says about Oregon’s corporate medicine law. 

More than two dozen artists are participating in the 2026 Oregon Contemporary Artists’ Biennial, which launched last month and ends on July 5. The current exhibit is titled “The Price of the Ticket” and is on display at the Oregon Contemporary gallery in North Portland. Audiences can also experience performances, poetry readings and public talks at other venues in the city.  

TK Smith is a writer and cultural historian who is curating the 2026 OCA Biennial that coincides with the 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding. Smith took inspiration from author and civil rights activist James Baldwin’s anthology of essays, “The Price of the Ticket,” to select a diverse array of works that explore America’s history, identity and the price of citizenship, especially for marginalized communities. 

Last fall, Oregon Contemporary announced that the National Endowment for the Arts had canceled a $30,000 grant it had previously awarded to the Biennial, per reporting by Willamette Week and other media outlets. The nonprofit Sitka Center for Art and Ecology quickly pledged its help to fill the funding shortfall.  

Smith joins us, along  with artists Mako Miyamoto and Jaleesa Johnston who are featured in the Biennial.  

Rachael Allen says business is booming these days at Allen’s Crosley Lanes, a Vancouver bowling alley that her family has owned for nearly four decades. The Columbian’s recent profile of Allen and Crosley Lanes helped remind readers that the 71-year-old bowling alley is not only still around, but today thriving. That’s despite a couple of close but ultimately failed attempts Allen and her husband, Don, had made since 2018 to sell the business due to his declining health. 

Don died last May, and a few months later, Allen decided to throw a party at Crosley Lanes to honor his memory and celebrate the bowling alley’s 70th anniversary. She credits the community’s turnout and its continued show of support for renewing her faith in the business as an investment worth keeping and hand over to her son and daughter some day. 

Allen joins us to talk about Crosley Lanes, its history and the loyal patrons who are helping it endure. 

Henderson Ave and Brooks Wine are two Oregon winemakers that operate at different price points, but are currently faced with many of the same questions: How do wineries appeal to consumers when American alcohol consumption has waned in recent years? How do producers ease barriers to entry for wine consumption and education? How do vintners approach sustainability when wine is facing challenges due to climate change?

Tiquette Bramlett is the founder of Henderson Ave, a collection of canned wines that launched last year. Jen Cossey is the general manager of Brooks Wine. They both join us to share more about the state of Oregon’s wine industry.

The Lullaby Project was created more than a decade ago by the  Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute. The program pairs singer-songwriters with parents who are incarcerated or experiencing homelessness, and together they create a lullaby.  In Oregon, those songs are arranged for the Oregon Symphony and then publicly performed. This year’s performance is next Tuesday, May 12 at the Alberta Rose Theatre in Portland.

Ada McGraw was one of the first women to participate in this program after it expanded to the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility last year. While serving her sentence, McGraw was paired with singer-songwriter Bre Gregg. The lullaby they wrote was for her son Legend and included a poem from Legend’s father.

Jessica Katz is the director of The Family Preservation Project and facilitated their meeting. We talk with Katz, Gregg and McGraw to hear about this creative process and learn more about the larger impact of The Lullaby Project.

Oregon lawmakers passed eight immigration bills in the last legislative session that ended in March, and Gov. Tina Kotek signed them into law in April. The package of bills came as a response to a host of federal actions in 2025 that put immigrants and their families in jeopardy. Oregon was the first in the nation to become a sanctuary state in 1987 and has strengthened its protections in the intervening years. It is already illegal for law enforcement or public agencies to cooperate with federal agents without a warrant. 

The new laws strengthen existing protections and establish new ones. Among other provisions, they direct schools and hospitals to create alert systems, formalizing responses to federal actions. And they protect immigrant’s data and aim to prevent employer retaliation. Isa Peña is the director of strategy at Innovation Law Lab, an immigrant rights organization that lobbied for the bills. She joins us to share more about what the laws will do and the difference they’re expected to make for immigrant communities in Oregon. 

Amazon has plenty of huge warehouses around Oregon to get goods to online shoppers quickly, including one that’s 3.8 million square feet one in Woodburn, its biggest in the entire Northwest. But the giant retailer has started moving toward smaller facilities in more communities around the state, like Hood River, Eugene and Redmond. Amazon says this will provide better service for rural and smaller communities. But some people aren’t so keen on this idea. We hear more from Mike Rogoway, who covers business and technology at The Oregonian/Oregonlive to hear more about Amazon’s strategy and the variety of reactions it's getting from residents.

The Portland-based nonprofit Smashing Barriers works with organizations including the Boys & Girls Clubs of America and Friendly House. It offers free tennis clinics and organizes charity tournaments. Jiya Mehta and Rohan Shah, the co-founders, started the nonprofit while in high school. They aim to bring the organization to each state in the U.S. In addition to Oregon, the nonprofit already has chapters in Arizona, California and Texas. We listen back to a conversation we first aired on Aug. 11, 2025 with Shah and Mehta who shared how tennis has shaped their lives and their plans for growing Smashing Barriers.

The city of Portland is facing a $172 million budget shortfall for various reasons, including declining tax revenue, inflation, expiration of pandemic-era funds and increased healthcare costs.  Mayor Keith Wilson shared a proposal last week that would cut nearly 150 jobs and make cuts to public safety, parks, transportation and resources for people experiencing homelessness. Mayor Wilson has said this has been one of the hardest things he’s ever done. He joins us now to share more on his budget proposal and the financial future of the city.

It’s been just over a year since the crisis intervention program CAHOOTS stopped providing services in Eugene after the city decided to end its contract with the organization. The mobile team had operated in the city since 1989. Lane County launched its own crisis response team in 2024, and now, the city is partnering with Ideal Option to send peer navigators on non-emergency calls. Navigators will respond to welfare checks and connect community members to housing, behavioral health and other services.

Eugene-Springfield Fire Chief Mike Caven joins us to talk about the new program and the state of emergency response services in Eugene.

This past winter tied Oregon’s record for the warmest winter ever recorded. The warmer temperatures have led to record-low snowpack levels not only in Oregon but across many other western states. Climate change will likely make our winters not only warmer but also rainier, as more of the winter precipitation falls as rain instead of snow. 

That rain and melting snow are also expected to move faster through our landscape into rivers and streams in the Pacific Northwest through the coming decades, according to a new study led by scientists at Oregon State University. Scientists developed a model that estimates current and future water transit times based on precipitation events in a tributary of the Yakima River. Faster water flows through the landscape could be a variable that water managers may need to consider when planning for summer months when water demand is greatest. 

Zach Butler is a postdoctoral researcher at OSU and the lead author of the study. He joins us for more details.

Prescribed burns are carefully planned fires on public lands to help reduce the risk of wildfires in communities. They're often conducted by by government agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management, but new groups of community members are now getting involved. Prescribed Burn Associations, also known as PBAs, are local groups of community members, land owners and other volunteers that conduct prescribed burns on private land. They also work closely with certified burn managers for planning, securing permits and more to prepare the site for fire.

Chris Adlam is a regional fire specialist for Oregon State University's Extension Program. Aaron Krikava is an organizer for the Rogue Valley PBA. They both join us to share more on what PBAs are and the impact they have had in Oregon.

Over the pandemic, the sale of puzzles skyrocketed. And while people of all ages enjoy piecing together jigsaw puzzles as a more leisurely activity, others take it at a much more serious and at a competitive level. Speed puzzling is a competition where everyone is given the exact same puzzle and individuals, duos or teams work together to complete it the fastest. Last month, USA Jigsaw Nationals brought together puzzle lovers across the country to Atlanta to compete. Portlander Rob Shields was one of the attendees. He is a speed puzzling enthusiast as well as the host of "Piece Talks," a speed puzzling podcast. He joins us to share more on what he saw at the nationals and what makes speed puzzling so appealing.

When it comes to growing apples, no state dominates like Washington. It accounts for roughly 6 in 10 of all the apples grown in the U.S. One of the major threats facing this top crop is fire blight. The bacterial disease attacks apple and pear trees and can ruin an entire harvest, costing roughly $100 million annually in losses for the U.S. apple industry. The fire blight bacteria can also develop resistance to the antibiotic orchardists have typically used to protect their fruit trees.

But that resistance may have met its match in a compound that Washington State University microbiologist and associate professor Cynthia Haseltine calls “the universal assassin” for its ability to kill not only fire blight bacteria but also other harmful pathogens. Haseltine has spent nearly a decade developing this compound that is derived from a microbe found in extreme environments like volcanic vents and hot springs. 

The compound is now being field tested for the first time in central Washington. It’s also shown promise in the lab at killing listeria bacteria which can grow on equipment in fruit packing plants. 

Haseltine joins us to share details of the grant she was recently awarded to expand production and real-world testing of this novel approach to protecting Washington apples.

According to scientists at the Cascadia Research Collective, gray whale populations off the Washington coast are experiencing a higher level of early-season mortality than they’ve ever recorded. Just this year, three gray whales have been found off the Oregon Coast, and 14 have been found off the coast of Washington.

The whales that have been found stranded in Washington and Oregon appear to have been extremely malnourished. Scientists think that melting sea ice due to climate change in the arctic is reducing the whales’ food supply, leading to the uptick in whale deaths recorded along the entire West Coast.

John Calambokidis is a senior research biologist and a co-founder of the Cascadia Research Collective who has been studying gray whales for over 50 years. He’s one of the first to dispatch when a gray whale washes up on the coast of Washington. Calambokidis joins us to discuss these trends and what it means for gray whale populations in our region.