Think Out Loud

The Trump administration's approach to immigration enforcement has been multi-pronged: detentions and rapid deportation, warrantless arrests, the deployment and attempted deployment of the National Guard, and in some cases lethal force. All of these tactics have been challenged in courts. In Oregon, civil rights groups and immigrant advocates won a significant victory in February, when a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction preventing ICE agents from making arrests without a warrant, except in certain circumstances. But the Innovation Law Lab says that the Administration is still carrying out warrantless arrests, and the non-profit was in court this week asking the judge to enforce his order. We get the details from Joni Auden Land, legal affairs reporter for OPB.

When you hear the term sex education, you might think of classes for kids in public schools. But what Charla Hathaway means by that is far broader. She’s an author with a PhD in human sexuality, and she also became a sex worker for a short time at age 55. She’s now 78, and over the last two decades, Hathaway has given a wide variety of classes and workshops about intimacy, touch, sensuality and sexuality. She says she wants to remove shame around bodies and sexuality in the culture and make those topics normal—not taboo—to talk about. Hathaway joins us to share more about her life and work and the one-woman show based on her work, titled “Naked at My Age.” She’s now performing a follow-up called “More Naked Than Ever.”

Today is the last game and the official end of the season for the Rose City’s WNBA team the Portland Fire. After more than two decades since the team folded, the return of the Fire made it the 15th team to be a part of the WNBA. While the team did not make play-offs, they did better than expected and won the hearts of many fans. Tonight they will face the Golden State Valkyries at the Moda Center. Kyra Buckley is OPB’s business reporter and has been covering the Fire. She joins us to share more on the team's first season.

On average, more than 3 calls a day are made to 911 that report someone who may be trying to end their life at a Portland bridge. That’s according to new reporting from the Oregonian/OregonLive.com. In Goose Hollow, the Vista Bridge saw five suicides in one year, leading to a bridge barrier being built in 2013. These barriers are often fences or netting aiming at preventing suicides. But why can’t these be built on other bridges? And how safe are Portland's other bridges and overpasses today? Oregonian reporter Isabel Funk wrote about this and joins us now to share more about what she found.

In Europe, dogs have been used for centuries for their keen sense of smell to locate prized black and white truffles which can fetch hundreds or thousands of dollars a pound depending on their variety. In Oregon and the Pacific Northwest, using dogs to sniff out truffles is relatively new and growing in popularity. There are even training classes and an annual truffle dog contest held at the Oregon Truffle festival. 

Oregon has four varieties of gourmet edible truffles, but there are hundreds of species of these mysterious fungi growing on the roots of conifer and oak trees across the state. So what if you could use a dog’s nose to home in on the odor signatures of all sorts of truffles, not just the commercially valuable ones, for a better scientific understanding of truffle biodiversity? That’s the goal of Heather Dawson, a doctoral student in the biology department at University of Oregon. She trained her golden retriever, Rye, to detect dozens of different kinds of truffles in the Willamette Valley alone. Dawson joined us in March 2025 to share her work and the attention it’s attracting among other scientists and forest foragers.

Frederick Law Olmsted, best known for designing Central Park in New York City and Prospect Park in Brooklyn, is regarded as the pioneer of modern landscape architecture. The Olmsted firm went on to design over 6,000 landscapes in North America under general guiding principles of creating accessible green spaces and preserving nature. A colleague of the Olmsted brothers, Emanuel Mische, went on to become the Portland Parks Superintendent in 1908 and had a hand in designing Laurelhurst, Sellwood, Kenilworth, Peninsula and Washington parks in Portland under the Olmsted school of thought.

This year’s annual Olmsted Conference, which is taking place in Portland, is focused on the theme of sustaining public landscapes. Sue Brietkoph, president of the Olmsted Network, and Jim Sjulin, longtime Portland Parks employee and board member of the 40-Mile-Loop Land Trust, both join us to discuss how this rich history and legacy of landscape architecture overlaps with Oregon’s green spaces.

In 2024, two civic organizations began partnering on a yearly survey to gauge how residents in Portland felt about some important elements that contribute to quality of life in a city. North Star Civic Foundation and the Oregon Values and Beliefs Center asked more than 1,200 Portland adults how effective they feel local government is, whether they feel represented and what services they think should be prioritized.  North Star Civic Foundation Research Director Marina Kaminksy joins us to share results from the latest survey and how they compare to the last two years.