Think Out Loud

Peter Courtney died this week at the age of 81. He was first elected to the Oregon House of Representatives in 1980. He moved to the Senate side in 1999 and became Senate President four years later. Courtney, who grew up in what he liked to call “West by God Virginia,”  served for 38 years in the legislature, including a  record 20 as the senate president. In an institution that he cared about deeply, he was a kind of institution himself: passionate and bombastic, often dramatic and sometimes dour. We talked to Peter Courtney many times over the last 15 years. We listen back to our conversation with him in January of 2022, soon after he announced he would not be seeking re-election.

Artificial Intelligence is radically changing how we work, learn, play and socialize, from virtual assistants helping organize our day to bots that can score Taylor Swift tickets or write college-level essays. But that vast computing capability may also come at a cost, generating results that are rife with bias if the data that was used to train AI systems is itself biased against or excludes certain groups of people. To counter this issue, we hear about the efforts of two engineering and computer science doctoral students in the Pacific Northwest. 

At the University of Washington, Kate Glazko led a team of researchers on a study that found that the popular AI application ChatGPT routinely ranked job seekers lower if their CVs mentioned an award or recognition that implied they had a disability such as autism or blindness. At Oregon State University, Eric Slyman developed computing instructions that can be used to train AI to be less biased against marginalized groups when generating image search results. Slyman and Glazko join us for more details. 

Wildfires in the West are becoming more common and severe. Nationwide, national disasters are becoming worse and insurance premiums are rising. In Southern Oregon, residents are seeing spikes in their premiums or are deciding to change insurance companies. One Ashland insurance agent saw a premium on his rental property jump 86%. And for residents in remote, wooded areas, the insurance options are shrinking. We learn more from Juliet Grable, a JPR contributor covering the issue.   

Have you ever heard a color, or seen a piece of music? Maybe you’ve tasted a sunset, or felt a particular smell? If so, you might have synesthesia. It’s a phenomenon in which one or more sensory pathways blend in the brain to create a new experience. Researchers aren’t sure how many people have synesthesia, but estimates range from 1 in 200 to 1 in 20 people.

Elizabeth Schwartz is a freelance writer and music historian from Portland; Forest Mountain Lion is a musician from Eugene; and James Duckwell is a career and technical education teacher at Portland’s Roosevelt High School. They all join us to talk about their experiences with synesthesia, along with Mark Stewart, a professor of psychology at Willamette University who studies the phenomenon.

Earlier this year, the Washington state Department of Ecology wrote new rules to regulate methane emissions from landfills that surpass federal emission regulations set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality wrote its own rules in 2021 and has been collecting data from landfills for the last two years. About 30% of today’s global warming is driven by methane. Heather Kuoppamaki, senior environmental engineer at DEQ, joins us to share what we know about methane emissions from Oregon’s landfills.

Oregon conservation groups will sue on behalf of the red tree vole
LONG SYNOPSIS: Four conservation groups including Cascadia Wildlands, the Bird Alliance of Oregon, Oregon Wild and the Center for Biological Diversity, released a notice of intent to sue the US Fish & Wildlife Service in June for failing to protect the red tree vole. The red tree vole is a small, hamster-like species that's native to Oregon’s coastal old growth forests. In 2011, the federal agency determined that the animal's protection was warranted, but didn't extent it endangered or threatened status due to higher priority species. That designation was reviewed and repeated yearly until 2019 when the vole’s protection status was abruptly changed to “not warranted.”

In 2022, the Center for Biological Diversity sued over this decision, which resulted in an agreement to re-assess the species’ protection status. However, in February of 2024, the protection of the red tree vole was again designated as “not warranted.” Noah Greenwald from Center for Biological Diversity joins us to share more about this multi-party lawsuit against the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

About 75 years ago, Jackson Pollock revolutionized the art world with his distinctive style of painting. He would lay the canvas on the floor and with his arms outstretched, pour or drip cans of paint directly onto its surface. The technique invited admirers and detractors alike, along with scandals involving forged canvases turning up decades after his death. 

Richard Taylor, a professor of physics, psychology, and art at University of Oregon has been using computers for more than 25 years to analyze Pollock’s paintings and help authenticate canvases of uncertain origin. He recently collaborated with two former UO doctoral students to develop a tool using AI to distinguish between genuine and imitation Pollock paintings with 99% accuracy. Taylor joins us to talk about the recently published results, and the role AI may increasingly play in the art world. 

Between 2012 and 2020, new HIV cases were generally declining, according to data from the Oregon Health Authority. But in recent years, the trend is headed in the opposite direction. What’s behind the change? How have attitudes shifted around HIV more recently? We dig into these details with Dean Sidelinger, health officer and state epidemiologist for OHA. 

A recent New York Times article shed light on how some fishing communities are grappling with opioid abuse and overdoses in fishing communities. Overdoses at sea are much more difficult to stop than on land. A program founded by Oregon State University in partnership with Oregon Sea Grant called “Fishermen First Aid and Safety Training” (FFAST) trains communities in general first aid including instructions on how to use Narcan, a drug used to rapidly reverse the effects of an opioid overdose. Upon completion of the training, boats are then supplied with a full first aid kit which includes Narcan. Angee Doerr, who works with fishing boats to implement these trainings, joins us to share more.

Portland and Multnomah County have been working together for decades on how to get people experiencing homelessness off the streets and ultimately into permanent housing. Since 2016 that collaboration has taken the form of a Joint Office of Homeless Services. The five-member city commission, three of whom are running for mayor this fall, narrowly approved a new agreement governing that joint office – albeit with some changes. We hear more from Dan Field, the director of the Joint Office of Homeless Services, and Skyler Brocker-Knapp, the director of Portland Solutions, about what the new agreement will mean for people living outside and how it changes how the two governments work together.