Next month, Portlanders will be casting their ballots and decide who will should be one of the city’s next commissioners. Jo Ann Hardesty is the Portland City Council Commissioner Position 3 incumbent. Rene Gonzalez is a lawyer and owner of Eastbank Artifex, a technology consulting company. They both join us to make their case and share why Portlanders should vote for them.

Artists Cannupa Hanska Luger and Marie Watt collaborated on an exhibition on display in Portland. “Gather” includes solo work from each of the artists and a collaborated piece, “Each/Other.” The work was created using bandanas that feature political and personal messages. Luger, who is based in Glorieta, New Mexico and Watt, who is based in Portland, were able to collaborate in Colton, Oregon, where they worked together and spent time with each others’ families. They join us with more on their work and the collaboration.

Some states have placed limits on topics that can be taught in schools. Some have tried to ban the practice of tenure, which gives professors job security. Some universities have bowed to pressure from students or outside influences to censure or fire teachers. These attacks on academic freedom may not be new, but they feel particularly acute right now. This week, the University of Oregon is hosting a conference on the present and future of academic freedom. Michael Dreiling, professor of sociology at the University of Oregon, and Lori Latrice Martin, professor in the Department of African and African American Studies at Louisiana State University, are both speaking at the conference. They join us to explain what’s at stake.

There were half as many hate and bias crimes and incidents in Eugene in 2021 as there were in 2020. That’s according to the city’s annual Hate and Bias Report, released last week. Overall, the city recorded 43 hate and bias cases in 2021 — a 54 percent decrease from 2020 and the lowest total in a decade. Joining us to put those numbers in context is Fabio Andrade, equity and community engagement manager for the city of Eugene.

Last week, a prominent chef was killed after being hit by a truck near Cleveland High School in Portland. Sarah Pliner was riding her bike on Powell Boulevard, a state-owned road with no bike lanes. In response to the fatality, Oregon Department of Transportation Director Kris Strickler issued a statement yesterday.

“Powell Boulevard (U.S. 26) was originally established and designed as a highway to move freight and people through Portland quickly and efficiently,” he said. “Recent incidents on Powell, including a tragic death on Oct. 4, are evidence that this road cannot, and should not, function as a traditional highway anymore.”

While some roads in the city remain under state control, others, like 82nd Avenue, are now under city ownership. Advocates have called for a similar transfer to take place on Powell Boulevard. We learn more about road safety from Chris Warner, the director of the Portland Bureau of Transportation.

A community forum will be held on Oct. 20 at 6 p.m. at Cleveland High School. Representatives from PBOT, ODOT Portland Public Schools and TriMet will be there, according to ODOT.

Over the weekend, temperatures climbed to the mid-80s in Portland, shattering decades-old records, according to the National Weather Service. The agency also said that high temperatures for this time of year are typically in the 60s for the region. A cold, dry front will bring a short-lived reprieve from the heat on Tuesday before temperatures rise once more later in the week. Smoke from nearby wildfires has also prompted the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality to issue an air advisory alert in effect until Friday evening. Joining us to discuss the record warm start to autumn is Colby Neuman, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Portland.

The Liberty Theater in La Grande, Oregon will be receiving a grant for almost $600,000 from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration. In July 1999, the theater was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Almost a decade later, restoration efforts began. Ashley O’Toole is the Board Chair of the Liberty Theater Foundation, the organization that is spearheading restoration efforts. He joins us to share what this federal grant will mean for the theater and his hopes for the future.

A new study found a nearly 50 percent gap in services for substance use disorder treatment, prevention, recovery and harm reduction in Oregon. Researchers at the Oregon Health and Science University and Portland State University School of Public Health surveyed more than 160 organizations across the state to help quantify the service gaps, which also included barriers to culturally relevant care. For example, fewer than one in five of the organizations surveyed were able to provide services tailored to the LGBTQIA+ community, and one in four of the organizations could not offer any language interpretation services for clients. Joining us to discuss the findings is Katie Lenahan, the study’s lead author and a research project manager at the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health.

According to a new report, more than half of transgender and non-binary people who died in the last 10 years in the Portland metro area were misgendered on their death certificates. This erasure can be painful for families. It can also have monetary consequences. Death certificates are used for reporting a region’s vital statistics, which can influence the allocation of federal and state resources. Kim Repp, Chief epidemiologist for Washington County, was a co-author on the report. She joins us to explain.

In a career spanning more than three decades, Georgina Hayns has been making puppets that have been brought to life through the art of stop-motion animation on TV shows and feature films like “Bob the Builder” and Tim Burton’s “Corpse Bride.” But instead of relying on computers to do the animating, the characters in stop-motion animation are made by hand from materials like clay, latex and silicone. They are then animated by being positioned on sets and moved in tiny increments, with each movement recorded frame by frame.

Today, Hayns is the director of character fabrication at ShadowMachine, a stop-motion animation studio in Portland. She recently led a team of artists who made 200 puppets for a new animated version of “Pinocchio” by Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro scheduled for release next month. She joins us to talk about working on the film, the opportunity that led her to leave her native England for Portland and the enduring appeal of an avowedly analog style of filmmaking.

Say on-air: Guillermo del Toro’s “Pinocchio” will be released in theaters in November and be available for streaming on Netflix in December