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OPB's daily conversation covering news, politics, culture and the arts. Hosted By Dave Miller.
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When you think of a donkey, you might think of some stubborn, more dangerous version of a horse. But the couple that runs the state’s only donkey sanctuary in Oregon City say, if so, you’d be dead wrong. The myths and folklore about these animals is one reason they need special care in the first place. Jim and Rhonda Urquhart formally incorporated their nonprofit five years ago, but the sanctuary has been growing since they took in their first donkey in 2010. They now have 160 volunteers who facilitate visits from the public to spend peaceful time with the donkeys. The Urquharts say educating people about donkeys and creating the space for them to spend time with the animals has become an integral part of their mission. We’ll sit down with the couple to learn more about the Oregon Donkey Sanctuary — and how people respond to these donkeys, which they say are actually more like dogs than horses.
Typically, new WNBA teams have five to six months to acquire players and practice as a team before the season starts. The Portland Fire have only five weeks.
With the WNBA expansion draft on April 3, the Fire were finally able to start building their team roster. The draft was delayed several months due to tense contract negotiations between the WNBA and the players’ union. The season is set to tip off May 9 at the Moda Center.
Kimberly Veale is the senior vice president of communications for the Portland Fire. She joins us to talk about the draft and the team’s upcoming season.
The Portland Clean Energy Fund was passed by voters in 2018. The 1% tax on retail sales of companies that make a billion dollars or more has generated a fund much bigger than expected. Many non-climate projects have asked for some of this money. Now the mayor and other officials want to spend $75 million in PCEF funds to go toward Portland’s share of the $600 million in total taxpayer money for the Moda center remodel. We talk with Portland City Councilor Steve Novick, who is opposed to this plan, about how he’d like to see the fund spent, and what he thinks of the city’s current approach to climate change.
Laurie Marker has spent nearly half a century with cheetahs. Her career began when she moved to Oregon in the early 1970s to open the third winery in the state. She began working at Wildlife Safari in Winston, OR to help support her business. This move would start a decades long career working with cheetahs. She eventually found the Cheetah Conservation Fund and moved to Namibia to create a dedicated wildlife reserve and research center for these large felines. Today, cheetahs are considered to have a vulnerable status, with less than 7,000 in the wild. Marker joins us to share more on her life and work with the fastest mammal on the planet that is racing to extinction.
On Tuesday, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation signed an agreement with Fred Mitchell to acquire his vast collection of Columbia River Plateau tribal artwork and artifacts. The collection includes 15,000 stone points and tools, 1,250 historic photographs, 800 beaded bags and pouches, baskets and other items. Mitchell is a retired former mayor and firefighter from Walla Walla, Washington who started collecting arrowheads when he was 5 years old and amassed other tribal items over the past seven decades.
The Fred L. Mitchell & Family Collection also includes objects collected by Mitchell’s parents and other relatives, according to Bobbie Conner, a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and director of the Tamástslikt Cultural Institute. The museum has featured several temporary exhibits in recent years with items loaned by Mitchell, including one that showcased beaded depictions of horses made by Columbia Plateau tribes. Conner joins us to discuss the cultural and historical significance of the items within Mitchell’s collection, including Native American cradleboards, or infant carriers, that will be featured in an exhibit at TCI in June.
Last spring the U.S. Forest Service cleared out a large number of people living in the forest south of Bend in an area known as China Hat. More than 100 vehicles and numerous personal effects were left behind. According to a new story from Investigate West and FORJournalism Lab, the Forest Service may have fallen short of constitutional obligations to give China Hat residents a “reasonable” opportunity to retrieve their belongings. David Dudley, a special project reporter with the Homelessness: Real Stories, Real Solutions FORJournalism, joins us to discuss the story.
California condors, the largest land bird in North America, almost went extinct in the late 1980s. But successful breeding programs such as the one at the Oregon Zoo have helped raise their worldwide population from a low of 22 birds to roughly 600.
Since 2022, the Yurok Tribe has partnered with Redwood National and State Park to release condors bred in captivity into the wild. A pair of those birds are believed to be tending the region’s first egg in more than a century. The nest is too remote for wildlife managers to see the egg itself, but they say the birds’ behavior is consistent with nesting and incubation.
Marti Jenkins is the lead keeper at the Oregon Zoo’s Jonsson Center for Wildlife Conservation, which hosts its condor breeding program. Chris West is the manager of the Northern California Condor Restoration Program and a senior wildlife biologist with the Yurok Tribe Wildlife Department. They both join us to talk about the significance of returning California condors to the Pacific Northwest.
Low snowpack and high temperatures have jeopardized ski resorts across the region this year. While some resorts have held on, most have been facing closures or abnormally short seasons. Skiers are cancelling trips, and seasonal workers have had to shift their plans for work during this abnormal winter. Mountain towns are facing major economic uncertainty – some offering major sales on gear, or pivoting to warm-weather recreation. Mt. Hood Meadows is the latest ski resort to announce its closure - it will officially wrap up this year’s operations on April 12, as it announced in a recent blog post.
Greg Pack is the president and general manager at Mt. Hood Meadows. He’ll join us to discuss the weather’s impact on this year’s ski season.
President Trump signed an executive order Tuesday that instructs the U.S. Postal Service to only send mail-in ballots to people who have been deemed eligible by the administration. Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read has vowed to challenge the order in court, along with other secretaries of state.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court appears poised to overturn a Mississippi law that allows mail-in ballots that arrive late to be counted as long as they’re postmarked on or before Election Day. Oregon has had a similar law in place since 2022.
Read joins us to talk about what these changes could mean for Oregon’s vote-by-mail system.
Kent Thornburg is a Professor of Medicine Emeritus at Oregon Health and Science University. But he is far from retired. He’s actively promoting the research he and others have done into the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease. Thornburg coined the phrase “the 100 year effect” to describe how “early life environment” before and during pregnancy can affect the lifetime risks of chronic diseases — and how those effects can actually be traced to not just not just to both parents, but grandparents as well.
A new documentary about both the research, and Thornburg’s unconventional campaign meant to galvanize people and communities to spread the word about this research premiered at OHSU on March 20. The date was chosen in conjunction with the National Future Generations Day. “The 100 Year Effect” is now available to view free of charge by request for individuals or community screenings on the film website.
Thornburg says the only way anything will change is if young people and community leaders get energized and motivated. That’s where people like Kelsey Mueller Wendt come in. She is herself a young mother and the coordinator for the Nutrition Oregon Campaign Hub in Klamath Falls. Mueller Wendt and Thornburg join us to share more about larger education campaign and the film, which is both a showcase and an invitation into the larger effort to eliminate chronic disease.
When Greta Jarvis was 16 years old and on her high school’s lacrosse team, her menstrual cycle completely stopped. When she went to an OBGYN to discuss the issue, doctors told her this symptom was completely normal for female athletes.
Nearly ten years later, she learned that her period loss, or amenorrhea, was abnormal and actually dangerous. In fact, it’s the body’s response to too few calories, too much exercise, and extreme stress. It’s also extremely common among young female athletes, and intensified by scarce targeted education on nutrition, body image and hormone health within women and girls'sports.
Now, Jarvis coaches the same team she played on in high school, and she wants to provide the education that she didn’t have when she was growing up. She founded the Center for Active Women, where she organizes workshops for teams, schools and sports organizations to equip women and girls with the skills to develop healthy relationships with body, food, and exercise. She joins us to discuss her work.
According to Multnomah County, nearly 3,000 more people are living unsheltered in the county than there were when Wilson took office. The Mayor says that data doesn’t match what he’s seeing, and that disconnect doesn’t help when the city and the county share responsibility for the region’s homeless response. OPB’s Alex Zielinski joins us to talk about her latest story.
After taking home the title in the statewide civics championship earlier this year, the constitution team from Portland’s Grant High School will represent Oregon in the national "We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution" finals kicking off in Maryland on April 17. The three-day competition features hundreds of students from around the nation demonstrating their knowledge of the U.S. Constitution, government and Supreme Court decisions by arguing historical and contemporary constitutional issues.
Sophie Durocher and Caspian Green are two members of Grant High School’s constitution team, and Angela DiPasquale is the team’s advisor. We’ll speak to them ahead of their travels to the national championship.
The rising cost of oil and and fertilizer due to the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran is affecting farmers all over Oregon. On Monday we spoke with local farmers and a nonprofit representing small and mid-sized farmers. They said gas prices are already starting to affect them and although they have the fertilizer supplies they need for this year, they are very concerned about those prices rising the next time they buy.
Tim Delbridge is an assistant professor of economics in Oregon State University’s Extension Services. He says agricultural operations of all kinds and sizes have limited options for dealing with rising costs. Not every grower can just raise prices on consumers to compensate. Delbridge joins us to tell us more about how the rising price of energy and fertilizer are likely to affect Oregon’s agricultural economy in the near future — and how long farmers can continue to operate if prices don’t drop.
A recent study by the Energy + Environmental Economics, also known as E3, found that by 2030 the Northwest will have a roughly 9 gigawatt energy gap. The study also found that the region will need to rely on natural gas plants and may need to build more infrastructure to support it. But some think this is unnecessary. The think tank Sightline Institute has a new report arguing that the energy shortfall is misleading and says there are other ways to save power, such as asking data centers to temporarily reduce their use during times when the grid is stressed. Laura Feinstein is a fellow at Sightline. She joins us to share more.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, a group of college students across the U.S. began a remote, nationwide project – called Farmlink – with the goal of distributing surplus food to food banks and those in need. The program grew to support a fellowship, which guides students through learning about reforming food systems, provides them with a full-time position at a farm, food bank, or distributor, and finally facilitates the students’ creation of a project that would help to strengthen the infrastructure of food systems in their communities.
Riley Bader is a senior at the University of Oregon, and one of Farmlink’s 6 chosen fellows from colleges and universities across the U.S. Stella Delp is the head of community and student programs at Farmlink, and one of the founders of the organization. They both join us to discuss their work.
The U.S. led war in Iran is not just driving oil prices up. It's doing the same for fertilizer. A third of the world's supply of fertiziler passes through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran still has largely blocked.
Woodburn farmer Jon Iverson grows grass seed, wheat, grapes and tulips, among other crops. Molalla nursery owner Jim Gilbert grows fruiting plants, among others. They join us to share how these price hikes are affecting them. We also hear from Alice Morrison, the co-executive director of Friends of Family Farms, who tells us what she’s hearing from their small and midsized members.
Operation Inflation was conceived last fall when protests at Portland’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement building routinely drew counter protesters and a large law enforcement presence. Jordy Lybeck and his wife Lacy wanted to impact the nature of news coverage as Pres. Trump threatened to send National Guard troops to Portland. As Trump’s baseless assertions that Portland was “war-ravaged,” a “burning-hellhole,” where the mayor and the governor of Oregon were “petrified for their lives” appeared with increasing frequency, so did their determination to help correct the record. They began providing inflatable animal costumes to those protesting at the ICE facility.
The images of people playfully wearing large, inflatable costumes visually contradicted the narrative of a war torn city. They said they are also creating pure “absurdity” as counter-protestors yelled at larger than life frogs, chickens, unicorns and other creatures. Jordy Lybeck and Lacy join us to tell us about their strategy for supporting protests, how the movement has spread to other cities and how this weekend’s No Kings demonstrations went down.
Father Tom Oddo served as president of the University of Portland from 1982 until his death in a car crash in 1989. During his presidency, he helped UP transition to coed housing, oversaw construction of the Chiles Center and reversed the university’s declining enrollment.
Before coming to Portland, Oddo was a key member of the gay rights movement in Boston, advocating for the full inclusion of LGBTQ+ Catholics in the church. From 1973 to 1977, Oddo served as the first secretary of DignityUSA, a nationwide organization that supports LGBTQ+ Catholics.
Portland author Tyler Bieber explores Oddo’s life in the new biography “Against the Current: Father Tom Oddo and the New American Catholic.” Bieber joins us to talk about Oddo’s activism, his time at UP and the legacy he left.
Just over two years ago, Eugene Weekly, the city’s longtime alternative-weekly newspaper, came to a shocking halt. EW’s editor announced that their beloved paper was flat broke — not because of mismanagement, but because their business manager had apparently been embezzling for years. The paper was missing $100,000, with an additional $200,000 in bills that hadn't been paid. Editor Camilla Mortenson said she had no choice but to lay off the entire staff, including herself, just before Christmas in 2023. But with a strong upwelling of community support, the paper resumed printing in February 2024.
In the meantime, a veritable saga unfolded as Elisha Young, the former business manager, was brought to justice. She ultimately pled guilty this week to five felony counts of theft, just weeks before she was set to face a jury trial in May. Mortensen said the paper has been thriving, but is still building back to where it was before the embezzlement began. She joins us to share the more details about the impact these unfolding events have had on the paper, its staff and the community it serves.
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I was impressed by Ms. Hardesty. She had lots of information and data and really seems to know her stuff. The others seemed light on data and heavy on the kind of phrases that don't contain any specifics about policy or plans, unfortunately. Dave Miller, as usual, is a fantastic interviewer. He never fails to ask what I would want to ask. Great episode.
Dave Miller (Interviewer): Let me make sure that we understand the numbers correctly. What I had understood from reporting- Chuck Bennett (the CITY MAYOR WHO AGREED TO THIS INTERVIEW): Well that may be the mistake right there haha Dave Miller: That's not a fair way to talk about the broad world of journalism.
Is this episode the "extended version"? If not where can I find the extended version?
great story Amelia! I can really tell how much work you put into this story