Think Out Loud

There were more than 70,000 cases of alleged drug use during pregnancy sent to law enforcement officials across 21 states over six years, including Oregon. As reported in The Marshall Project, these cases involved unreliable drug tests that show inaccurate results, are difficult to read or are simply wrong. In Oregon, and in 12 other states, welfare agencies automatically report any positive test result to authorities. Shoshana Walter is a staff writer for The Marshall Project and reported on this trend with Jill Castellano. Walter joins us to share more on these tests.

Susan Sokolowski holds more than 100 patents, most of which she earned during the nearly 18 years she worked as a sports product designer at Nike. One of her favorite patents was for Flyknit, a knitted fabric upper that’s lightweight and provides a sock-like fit on shoes. The inspiration for it came, she says, from conversations she had with women athletes while working as a designer on Nike’s women’s footwear division, which launched in 2002. While at Nike, she also helped design shoes worn by women gymnasts at the 2008 Summer Olympics and track and field uniforms worn by Team USA at the 2016 Summer Olympics. That same year, Sokolowski left Nike to launch University of Oregon’s first graduate program in sports product design. 

Sokolowski was named by USA Today as one of its 2025 Women of the Year in recognition for her work championing and designing sports apparel and products made specifically for women such as sports bras and women’s running shoes. She joins us to discuss her trailblazing career and the big trends, challenges and future of this industry, from sustainable fabrics to equipment for athletes with disabilities.

Artificial intelligence is beginning to change the entry-level job market. AI often automates the repetitive tasks that might otherwise allow new employees to learn on the job, and some worry it could eventually replace those jobs altogether. A study from Stanford University found these changes were most likely to affect “AI exposed occupations” such as software development and customer service.

Lucas Hellberg is an enterprise reporter for the Daily Emerald newspaper at the University of Oregon and an elections reporting intern for Lookout Eugene-Springfield. He recently wrote about how AI is changing entry-level jobs in Oregon, and joins us with more details.

College newspapers are often on shoestring budget, and at the same time they’re a vitally important source of information — especially for their student readers. At the University of Oregon’s The Daily Emerald and Portland State University’s The Vanguard, reporters have been tear-gassed while covering immigration protests. Though reporters at Oregon State University’s The Daily Barometer have not faced that challenge, the editor-in-chief says the paper would like to be prepared for that situation if it arises. All three papers also cover stories in the community that affect the campus. Managing these competing priorities with limited resources can be a major challenge. We get more details from the editors-in-chief at the University of Oregon, Oregon State University and Portland State University: Tarek Anthony, Jenna Benson and Noah Carandanis.

Next Friday, the 2026 Paralympic Games kick off in Milan Cortina, the same region in Northern Italy which hosted the recently concluded Winter Olympics. Anna Soens is an alpine skier from Bend with incomplete paralysis who earned a spot on the Team USA roster. She will now head to Italy to join more than 650 athletes from around the world vying for victory in nearly 80 medal events. 

It is her first time competing in the Paralympics where she has qualified for five events:  downhill, super-G, alpine combined, giant slalom and slalom. The achievement is even more impressive considering that she has only been skiing with the use of adaptive equipment for less than a decade after an accident at a Portland rock climbing gym left her with incomplete paralysis below the hips. In 2018, Soens became the first woman with paraplegia to summit Mt. Hood, which she did with her father, and she is the first person to descend its summit using a sit-ski. 

Soens joins us to share her remarkable athletic journey and hopes for her Paralympic races.

Portland Playhouse in Northeast Portland is currently performing "Angry, Raucous, and Shamelessly Gorgeous." The play follows four Black women artists as they confront their own and each other’s evolving definitions of art, protest, and storytelling.

Audiences have until March 15 to see performances by Faith Lavon and Ashlee Radney, who play actors of different generations. They join us to discuss the production and its relevance today.

On October 7, 2023, Liat Beinin Atzili and her husband Aviv Atzili were kidnapped from their home in an Israeli kibbutz. The new documentary “Holding Liat” follows Liat’s family — including members in Portland — in the days and months that followed as they fight for her release and face their own conflicting perspectives on the crisis in Israel and Gaza. Lance Kramer, one of the producers of the film, and Joel Beinin, Liat’s uncle, join us.

The Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs were recently recognized by the Wild Sheep Foundation for their ongoing efforts to preserve bighorn sheep populations. They’ve been taking measures to protect wild sheep in Oregon since the 1980s, helping to manage disease and predation. 

Austin Smith, general manager of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs branch of natural resources, joins us to discuss what’s threatening the population, and what it takes to protect these animals in Oregon.

Earlier this month, Oregon Health and Science University released new nationwide data that found low physician participation in Medicaid. 

Researchers deemed these physicians “ghost” providers: physicians who are enrolled in Medicaid, but don’t care for even a single patient covered by the federal health insurance program.

Those findings also revealed that another third of physicians who are enrolled in Medicaid may be overburdened, with higher-than-average yearly patient volumes.

Dr. Jane Zhu, associate professor of medicine at OHSU, joins us with more details.

The Oregon public defense system has been in crisis for many years. The number of defendants who need representation has far outstripped the number of available public defenders. Previous reports found the state’s system violated Oregonians’ constitutional rights. Earlier this month the Oregon Supreme Court ruled unanimously  that criminal charges against defendants must be dropped if an attorney cannot be found. Oregon lawmakers have passed legislation aimed at alleviating the crisis. We sit down with Ken Sanchagrin, the new head of the Oregon Public Defense Commission, to talk about the progress that’s been made in turning the crisis around and the future of the system.