Think Out Loud

Michael Pollan has spent much of his career writing about the sometimes surprising relationship between plants and humans. His newest book, “This Is Your Mind on Plants," focuses on three different plants and how they affect our brains. Opium, coffee, and mescaline could all be considered powerful drugs, or simply beautiful plants, or something much more mystical. We listen back to this conversation with Pollan in front of an audience at the Newmark Theater, as part of an event put on by Powell’s Books.

Kate Beaton gained an international following for “Hark, a Vagrant,” a quirky, satirical, historically informed comic strip. Beaton’s newest book takes a very different turn. It is a deeply personal graphic memoir called “Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands" about the time she spent working in the oil industry in Alberta, Canada in the mid-2000s. The book is a brutally honest exploration of class, migration, misogyny, and the culture of her homeland: the island of Cape Breton, in the Atlantic province of Nova Scotia.

Colin Meloy is perhaps best known as the songwriter and lead singer of The Decemberists, but he also writes books aimed at young readers. He’s authored the "Wildwood" series, which is now being made into a feature film, and he’s just come out with a new book, “The Stars did Wander Darkling.” It’s set in 1987 in an Oregon coastal town that draws inspiration from Astoria and Manzanita. Meloy also weaves poetry into the narrative, including Arthur Rimbaud, Lord Byron and William Butler Yeats, and he hopes to pique kids’ interest to read further. He joins us to talk more about the themes in the book and what he hopes middle grade readers take away from it.

For people who live to ride mountain bike trails through the wilderness, there is a new dream on the horizon. One day soon, it may be possible to ride all the way from the southern tip of the Baja peninsula up the west coast to the Canadian border. Gabriel Amadeus Tiller is the executive director of Orogenesis, an organization working to build this trail. They have only about 200 miles of the route left to map. Tiller joins us to talk about his dream of the longest mountain biking trail in the world.

A labor shortage in Eastern Oregon is making it harder to remove ice and snow on Oregon highways. As the La Grande Observer reports, the Oregon Department of Transportation employs 300 positions in the eastern part of the state, but has almost 40 vacancies. Most of those empty positions are for permanent and seasonal employees that are in charge of road maintenance. Rich Lani is ODOT’s District 12 Manager. He joins us to share why it’s getting harder to get people behind the wheel of snow plows and what this shortage could mean for the future.

It’s no surprise that reading news about the ever-worsening climate crisis can be depressing. But a new study suggests that when journalists frame climate stories differently, their effect can change dramatically. Solutions journalism researchers at the University of Maryland found news consumers exposed to coverage of solutions had lower eco-anxiety, felt they could better influence climate change policy and were more likely to support collective action to address it. We talk with lead researcher Kathryn Thier, a former University of Oregon instructor, who was one of the first to teach this kind of reporting in the broader journalism curriculum.

In 2006 Osa Atoe, a Black feminist punk living in Portland, did what felt natural in the punk scene: she started a zine. “Shotgun Seamstress” was a fanzine by, for and about Black punks that published six issues. Now, a new book reprints all the zines in one place. Osa Atoe joins us to talk about "Shotgun Seamstress," zines and the joys of punk music.

The so-called "red wave" did not materialize in the 2022 election. Nonetheless, the GOP made some significant gains nationally and in the Northwest. Republicans will have control of the U.S. House, and in Oregon, they broke the Democratic supermajority in the state house chamber. And Oregon was one of the few blue states in the country where Republicans gained legislative seats.
Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer took the 5th Congressional District. The seat was held by the moderate seven-term Democrat Kurt Schrader, but he lost to the more progressive Jamie McLeod-Skinner in the May primary.
We talk about these wins and the future of the Oregon Republican party with political strategists Reagan Knopp and Julie Parrish.

Earlier this month, images started appearing online of a macabre and quirky amusement center that may not be, well, fun for the whole family. It’s also not real. Chucky Cheese Pizza Arcade & Bowling is the work of Cabel Adams, a Eugene resident and self-taught virtual reality artist who took photos of a nearby mall and used 3D rendering, augmented reality and virtual reality software to create a realistic-looking arcade with Chucky, the slasher doll from the ‘80s horror movie franchise “Child’s Play,” as its mascot. Adams posted the images and video clips of the exterior and interior of the space on Facebook, blending elements of real structures and fake attractions, and even dressed up in a Chucky costume himself to create a tantalizing possibility of actually being there.

His concept quickly went viral, racking up 100,000 shares on Facebook within 24 hours, and it even caught the attention of Jennifer Tilly, an actress in the “Child’s Play” movie franchise and the “Chucky” TV spin-off. Cabel Adams joins us to talk about the reaction to his work, and using VR and augmented reality to blur the lines between reality and artifice.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved a plan to demolish four aging dams on the Klamath River.
Removing the dams would open up salmon habitat and help restore the river, which has faced toxic algae, major fish kills and was impacted by the McKinney Fire earlier this year. Cassandra Profita is a reporter for OPB's Science & Environment unit. Barry McCovey Jr. is the Yurok Tribal Fisheries Department Director. They join us with details on what the demolition means for the Klamath River.