Danez Smith has won and been nominated for a lot of big prizes for their poetry, including the UK’s Forward Prize, the National Book Critic Circle Award and the National Book Award. But in 2020, Smith stopped writing. In the depths of the pandemic, after the death of George Floyd in Smith’s hometown of Minneapolis, poetry began to feel less powerful as a place for social change. Danez Smith joined poet Diannely Antigua, author of two poetry collections including “Good Monster,” for a conversation with OPB’s Jenn Chavez at the 2024 Portland Book Festival to talk about the role of poetry in our fractured society and our fractured lives.

Ani DiFranco is best known for getting up on stage and belting out hard-hitting feminist songs while playing her guitar. But when she walked out in front of an audience recently at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, there was no guitar in sight. She was there for the 2024 Portland Book Festival to talk about the picture book she wrote for young readers about a child who accompanies her mother to their local polling station. DiFranco was interviewed on stage by OPB’s Prakruti Bhatt.

As 2024 comes to a close, the staff of OPB’s “Think Out Loud” look back on some of their favorite conversations from the past year. Producers Sage Van Wing, Elizabeth Castillo, Gemma DiCarlo, Rolie Hernandez and Sheraz Sadiq join host Dave Miller in conversation.

Music can provoke powerful emotional responses. Sometimes your favorite song, or album played on repeat, can be just what you need to get through. What song or album has helped you get through this year? What music have you had on repeat? OPB’s Prakruti Bhatt will join us to talk through the year in music.

Earlier this year, Oregon lawmakers passed a bill to implement new criminal penalties for drug possession and end the state’s three-year experiment with drug decriminalization. The legislation also allows law enforcement in counties that have opted into the program to deflect drug users away from the criminal justice system and into treatment as a way to avoid charges. In Multnomah County, 127 deflections have been initiated since the program started in September. Portland Police Commander Brian Hughes and Heather Mirasol, Director of the Behavioral Health Division for Multnomah County, join us to talk about what the deflection program looks like so far.

Earlier this month, the celebrated and prolific poet, author and professor Nikki Giovanni died at the age of 81 from a third bout of cancer, according to Virginia Tech. She taught at the university for 35 years as an English professor before her retirement in 2022. Giovanni published her first collections of poetry, “Black Feeling Black Talk” and “Black Judgment,” in 1968, and was a leading figure in the Black Arts Movement that emerged during the Civil Rights Era. 

We listen back to an interview we recorded with Giovanni in 2014 after the release of “Chasing Utopia,” a collection of poetry and prose which covers topics both personal and political. 

U.S. Fish and Wildlife are proposing federal protections and label the Western monarch butterfly as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The federal agency will be accepting public input until March 12. At the same time, a federal grant of $300,000 was awarded to the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation to aid in habitat restoration. The Portland nonprofit will be using the funds to continue offering free kits containing milkweed and wildflowers for community spaces and working, tribal and public lands in Oregon, Washington and California. 

Emma Pelton is a conservation biologist with the nonprofit. She joins us to share more on the impact this funding will have and what potential protections for the butterfly will mean going forward. 

If you’re not a fan of traditional holiday movies, “Breakup Season” might be for you. It follows a young couple that plans to spend Christmas together, only to break up on the first night of their vacation. A snowstorm makes travel impossible, meaning they’re stuck together for the holiday. The movie was entirely filmed in Eastern Oregon, featuring shots of downtown La Grande and the surrounding snow-capped hills and valleys.  

Filmmaker H. Nelson Tracey developed “Breakup Season” through a residency with the Eastern Oregon Film Festival. He joins us to talk about his debut feature film and why it was important to set it in La Grande. 

Earlier this month, the City of Portland and Multnomah County released data and survey results about Portlanders’ experience with ranked choice voting. According to the survey, 91% of voters said they understood how to fill out their ranked choice ballots. But only 55% of voters in East Portland’s District 1 turned in those ballots, compared to rates of turnout that ranged from 74 to 76% for the other three districts. District 1 voters were also more likely to turn in ballots that had no candidate for city council selected, and nearly a quarter of D1 voters surveyed said they had no awareness of ranked choice voting. 

City officials acknowledged that more work needs to be done to reach voters of color and to better understand the low voter turnout in District 1. The lack of engagement may also be a result of decades’ long neglect for the needs of East Portland voters in City Hall, according to José Gamero-Georgeson, a D1 resident and volunteer at East County Rising, a political action committee that supports progressive candidates in East Multnomah County. He is also the co-chair of the Portland Government Transition Advisory Committee. Gamero-Georgeson joins us to share his perspective on how to engage and boost participation among voters in East Portland. 

During an interview on “Think Out Loud” last month, Portland Mayor-elect Keith Wilson said that he was “an admirer” of Interim City Administrator Michael Jordan when describing whom he would want to hire to oversee the day-to-day operations of city bureaus. Outgoing Mayor Ted Wheeler announced Jordan’s appointment in May as part of the voter-approved changes to Portland’s new form of governance and elections using ranked choice voting. 

Jordan’s contract was set to expire on June 30, 2025 to ease the transition from one administration to the next. But Jordan will now stay on through at least the end of next year, according to reporting by The Oregonian.

Jordan joins us to talk about the transition and his priorities amid a grim financial outlook for the city’s finances and its departments.