Salem resident Bobby Brown was killed in a shootout with city police in 2022 when he was just 16 years old. As reported in a recent three-part profile published by the Salem Reporter, Brown's birth mother used methamphetamines. When he was born he went into withdrawals and was immediately placed into foster care. He was adopted when he was 4, and later struggled with substance abuse and mental illness, despite repeated efforts by his adopted family to get him help. Reporter Ardeshir Tabrizian joins us to tell us more about Brown's life and how it reflects the gaps in Oregon’s social safety net and mental health treatment system.

It’s been a year since the first licensed psilocybin service centers in Oregon opened – facilities where people 21 and older can legally ingest psychedelic mushrooms in a supervised, therapeutic setting. Oregon became the first state in the nation to approve and regulate the use of psilocybin through a legal framework set up and administered by the Oregon Health Authority. The agency has currently awarded licenses to 28 psilocybin service centers which continue to face regulatory and economic headwinds. 
 
According to recent reporting in the Capital Chronicle, entrepreneurs are struggling with getting customers through the door, given state restrictions around using social media to advertise and waning interest since the market opened last year. The Oregon Health Authority is also threatening to revoke approval for a school in Ashland that is claiming religious exemption from state rules around the training of facilitators who supervise clients during their psychedelic trips. In March, OPB reported on the closure of the Synthesis Institute, a psilocybin training program that declared bankruptcy after charging students thousands of dollars for its curriculum. Joining us to talk about the state of the legal psilocybin industry in Oregon is freelance journalist Grant Stringer.  

University of Oregon and University of California, Davis students were blamed for leaving a large mess at Shasta Lake in California over Memorial Day weekend. In Oregon, the Fourth of July is a busy day for parks throughout the state and 2023 was a near-record breaking year for visits.

More guests, however, typically means more trash left behind, and workers spending hours of their day picking up after visitors.

John Mullen is a park manager for the Southern Willamette Management Unit for the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department. Eric Crum is a North Coast District beach ranger for the agency. They join us with details of their experiences and what they hope to see in the future from park visitors.

Former Oregon Gov. Neil Goldschmidt, one of the state’s most powerful figures before revelations that he had sexually abused a teen, died Wednesday at the age of 83. Goldschmidt’s abuse was hidden for nearly 30 years until it was broken by Nigel Jaquiss at Willamette Week after a long, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation. Jaquiss joins us to reflect on that reporting, and on Goldschmidt’s legacy.

Organizers of Portland’s World Naked Bike Ride have announced that they will take a year off from programming the massive ride this year. The army of volunteers who put on the ride say they need time to make sure that the event is better, safer, and easier to plan in the future. We talk to Meghan Sinnott, longtime organizer of the ride, about the decision and the future of naked bike riding in Portland.

Looking at the history of psychological operations, “Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind” is the latest book by author and journalist Annalee Newitz. It explores misinformation, propaganda and how the stories we hear can manipulate us. The book also features a chapter on the work the Coquille Indian Tribe has done to undo damage these operations did to some Oregon tribes in the past. Newitz spoke in front of an audience with “Think Out Loud” host Dave Miller at a Powell’s Books event on June 4.

Coastal martens, also known as Humboldt martens, are small, catlike members of the weasel family that live in the coastal forests of Oregon and northern California. The animals were thought to be extinct due to logging and trapping, but were rediscovered in northern California in the 1990s. Today, there are only about 400 coastal martens left in the wild, living in four isolated communities. The animals were listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 2020, and just last month received federal habitat protections after a petition from the Center for Biological Diversity. The conservation group also recently sued the U.S. Forest Service to enforce habitat protections for martens in the Oregon Dunes.

Tierra Curry is a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity. She joins us to talk more about the coastal marten and efforts to protect it. 

Global climate change is warming oceans, melting polar ice and causing sea levels to rise around the world. Scientists predict that in the next 80 years, waters will rise at least 3 feet, but that a rise of more than 6 feet cannot be ruled out. That level of increase would submerge small islands in the Columbia River and leave much of Sauvie Island underwater as well. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has released a new mapping tool that helps people visualize various levels of sea level rise around Oregon. Jonathan Allan is a coastal geologist with the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries. He joins us to discuss how sea level rise is already impacting Oregon.

NOAA recently released a seasonal outlook that shows much of the United States will likely experience a hotter than usual summer, including in Oregon. And, last year was already the hottest summer on record. What role is climate change playing in the seasonal outlook? How might they look different moving forward? We dig into these issues with Dan Collins, a meteorologist with the Climate Prediction Center.  

The two new leaders of Oregon’s Planned Parenthood affiliates are pushing to dissolve the political arm of their organization in a move that has blindsided some long-time advocates and has them worried about the future of reproductive rights in the state. Oregon has two Planned Parenthood affiliates. They provide reproductive health care, including abortion access, but do not engage in political work such as lobbying or campaigns. Last week, the leaders of those two affiliates sent a letter to the two groups’ political advocacy arm. They informed the lobbying group’s governing board that they plan to dissolve Planned Parenthood Advocates of Oregon and restructure the organization to focus more on “health care and advocating for the needs of the Planned Parenthood affiliates and their patients.” Lauren Dake, OPB political reporter, joins us to talk about the rift in the organization.