Think Out Loud

The city of Ontario is asking state lawmakers to change the formula Oregon uses to allocate cannabis tax money to cities. The current formula bases tax allocations largely on city populations. But Ontario city officials think the tax money they get should be based on the total amount of sales in Ontario. We talk with Ontario mayor Riley Hill.

Oregon Health and Science University is working on a long-term study about cognitive impairment in older people. They’re doing it by tracking tracking the financial decisions participants are making online. We hear from Kathy Wild, the principal investigator in the study and an associate professor of neurology and psychiatry in the OHSU School of Medicine, along with Jo Ann Walter, who volunteered to participate in the study.

Kaiser Permanente in the Northwest is putting more than $5 million into housing homeless seniors by the end of the year. The goal is to find housing for 300 medically vulnerable seniors, who might otherwise have a higher rate of hospital admissions and emergency room visits. Ruth Adkins, of Kaiser Permanente Northwest, and Alyssa Craigie, Director of Health System Integration at Health Share Oregon, will help to administer the program.

The effects of climate climate change in Oregon range from increased fires to closures of crab fishing sites. Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife wants to address this problem head on by creating the Climate and Ocean Change Policy. We talk to Shaun Clements, senior policy analyst at the department, to see how this proposal will redirect resources to protect Oregon wildlife and natural areas.

“Indigenous peoples are impacted first and worst by climate change.” Those are the words of tribal attorney Tara Houska, who has been a fierce activist against fossil fuels and oil pipelines. Houska is the former Native American affairs advisor to Bernie Sanders. She is also a co-founder of Not Your Mascots, a non-profit to prevent stereotyping of Native Americans. Houska joins us ahead of a lecture she will give in Portland this Friday.

College campuses this week. The museum’s exhibits travel year-round, showcasing historical artifacts from African-American history from the trans-Atlantic slave trade to the Black Lives Matter movement. We talk to the museum founder Khalid el-Hakim about the current exhibit.

Portland chef Jenn Louis was named Best New Chef by “Food and Wine Magazine” and her work has appeared in “The Wall Street Journal,” “Bon Appetit,” “SHAPE” and “The New York Times.” We listen back to our conversation with her from 2015 about her cookbook "Pasta By Hand." The book is a collection of recipes gathered from homes and restaurants throughout Italy, and is the only known work to have cataloged the country’s wide variety of hand-shaped pasta and dumplings. Her Portland restaurant Lincoln has closed since this interview first aired.

My Voice Music provides music lessons and recording opportunities to kids who would otherwise have none. MVM founder Ian Mouser just been awarded a half million dollar Lewis prize to expand his work. We talk with him and Rayawnie Paris, an emerging hip hop artist who walked into an MVM program at 17, and at 21 is one of the program’s teachers.

A new study suggests there could be a connection between kids’ behavior and their gut bacteria, otherwise known as their microbiome. Scientists at Oregon State University and the University of Oregon worked on the study, which examined the microbiomes of 40 children between the ages of 5 and 7. We hear from Jessica Flannery, a clinical psychology doctoral candidate at the University of Oregon, and Keaton Stagaman, a research associate in the microbiology department at OSU.

Trust in journalism in the U.S. continues to erode, but a new Trust Project at the independent student newspaper at the University of Oregon is responding to the problem head on. It’s educating the paper’s readership about how reporters and editors make decisions, soliciting feedback, and increasing transparency about errors and corrections. The Daily Emerald’s editor-in-chief, Michael Tobin, and journalism instructor and researcher Lisa Heyamoto join us to discuss the project and what the research shows about how these and other practices work to increase consumers’ trust in news media.

The term “hikikomori” was first coined in Japan in the 1990s to describe a form of severe social isolation. Alan Teo, a psychiatrist with the Veterans Administration in Portland and an associate professor at OHSU, has been studying hikikomori for several years. Now, he is proposing a revised definition of the term in hopes that it will help doctors everywhere identify and treat the condition

We get opinion and analysis on some of the biggest regional news stories of the week from Christy George, Danielle Pacifico-Cogan and Kevin Mannix.

Portland artist and activist Isaka Shamsud-Din has captured the lives and histories of African Americans in paintings throughout his life. He draws on his experiences growing up in Portland for his work. His exhibit, “Rock of Ages,” is currently on display at the Portland Art Museum.

Oregon’s high school graduation rate is the highest it’s ever been, at roughly 80 percent. But some districts are still struggling. OPB’s education reporter Elizabeth Miller fills us in.

This week, Portland Public School students were treated to a live performance from a Grammy Award winning opera singer. It’s part of a program from Portland SummerFest Opera to expose more people to the music of opera. Soprano Angela Brown performed her one woman show, “Opera from a Sistah’s Point of View,” at Roosevelt and Franklin high schools this week.

The 2020 census is still a few months away from arriving at households across the country, but efforts to get the word out about the census is underway in many states. Oregon has spent nearly $8 million on outreach efforts to historically under-counted communities. We Count Oregon is working to ensure that those communities are represented on the 2020 census. We speak with We Count Oregon campaign manager Esperanza Tervalon-Garrett, APANO’s census equity manager Mar Hirshfield and Shana Radford, the tribal partnership specialist for the U.S. Census Bureau, focusing on Oregon and Idaho.

Jury selection began this week for the trial of Jeremy Christian in Multnomah County Circuit Court. Christian is charged with stabbing three men, killing two, on a Portland MAX train in May 2017. OPB’s Meerah Powell is covering the trial and joins us for an update.

Oregon Native American Chamber (ONAC) connects Native Americans with small businesses, entrepreneurs, and educational classes so they can grow their own businesses in Oregon and southwest Washington. We talk with the CEO of NEO Designs Palani Bearghost and James Parker, executive director of ONAC.

Oregon’s Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum has created a new task force to address labor abuse. We talk to Chanpone Sinlapasai, an immigration attorney, on the Labor Trafficking Task Force’s goals and why this group is important to have in Oregon.

The University of Oregon is considering a program that would allow incoming undergraduate students to lock in their tuition amount for 5 years. We talk with Roger Thompson, the University of Oregon’s VP of Student Services and Enrollment Manager to find out how it would work, and get the perspective of student Sarah Pishionari, part of member of a campus group opposed to the change. We also talk with Dave McDonald with Western Oregon University to hear about its tuition guarantee program.