The best ‘Think Out Loud’ stories of 2023

As 2023 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 Allison Frost, Elizabeth Castillo, Gemma DiCarlo, Sage Van Wing and Sheraz Sadiq joined host Dave Miller in conversation.

This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller.

Gemma DiCarlo: I’m Gemma DiCarlo.

Elizabeth Castillo: I’m Elizabeth Castillo.

Allison Frost: I’m Allison Frost.

Sage Van Wing: I’m Sage Van Wing.

Sheraz Sadiq: I’m Sheraz Sadiq.

Miller: Happy solstice, happy holidays and welcome to one of the shows that we look forward to all year. It’s the only time when our whole team, or almost our whole team, gets together in the studio. We’ve all chosen some of our favorite moments from Think Out Loud over the last year, conversations that surprised us or moved us or made us laugh, conversations that for any reason stayed with us. I should say that, sadly, it actually is not our whole team. Rolie Hernandez could not be here today, but we are going to persevere.

Elizabeth, you’re up first.

Castillo: Yeah. So OK, we did this segment in January. It’s about a decline in marine parasites in Washington. Our guest was Chelsea Wood. She’s a professor at the University of Washington. And so Dave asked her what’s special about a tapeworm.

Chelsea Wood [recording]: “This tapeworm is one of my favorites. It comes from the order Trypanorhyncha, which is a huge order of tapeworms that all infest sharks as their final host. And there are some unique challenges of living in the gut of a shark. One is that a gut is slippery. You’re trying to stay in the intestine, but of course, the muscular contractions of the intestine are pushing material through. So you’ve got to kind of swim against the stream of poop in order to stay in your position in the intestine. And the Trypanorhynchs have a really lovely and clever solution to that problem. They have heads, no eyes, no mouth and no gut track, but they do have a head and that head is armed with four tentacles which are typically retracted into the head. The animal can actually evert those tentacles one by one at will, and when it does, it shoots them out really quickly. Each tentacle is armed with thousands of backward facing spikes. And this is part of what makes these animals really beautiful. Those backward facing spines reflect and refract light so that you get kind of a rainbow effect on the tentacles. The tentacles themselves coil and the way that they move is just really spinous, almost like a ballet dancer.”

Castillo: So I just really loved how she described a tapeworm, right? An icky parasite. I think sometimes it can be a little challenging for folks in like the scientific world to clearly communicate their work. And this guest was just like so passionate. In a press release, she also called them “unbelievably gorgeous tapeworms.” So, I looked at pictures. I didn’t totally agree but, hey, to each their own.

DiCarlo: Absolutely. I produced this segment actually and in talking with the researcher beforehand, I thought, oh, this is going to be fantastic. It’s not always you just know immediately like this is so going to come across, their passion, their excitement, but it absolutely did. So, I’m excited to see this here.

Miller: Sheraz, what do you have?

Sadiq: So, back in October, we aired the latest installment in our ongoing series focusing on people at work. And this time around we got to spend time with Carlos Sanchez. He’s the head veterinarian at the Oregon Zoo. We followed him as he made the rounds visiting some of his favorite animals from penguins to chimps to his personal favorite, black rhinos. We first stopped at the elephant habitat where we got to meet with Chendra. She’s a Bornean elephant and it was such a delight. I mean, we got to touch the elephant, we got to hear her trumpet as she was being fed sweet potatoes.

And Dr. Carlos demonstrated the invaluable relationship that the medical team has with the zookeepers, who are so looped in and involved in the animal’s care. You asked him at the end of that visit if he had ever gotten hurt on his job, taking care of zoo animals. What he said was shocking, hilarious and kind of illustrative of the occupational hazards of working with animals.

Dr. Carlos Sanchez [recording]: “We had a baby elephant at the National Zoo when I was there. And then the female developed a little bit of what we call edema on her bentrum. So I was checking her and I’m between her legs and we, at that time, we had what we call free contact, meaning we go into the elephants and that was something routine for many zoos. And I’m checking on her knee and I always tell the keepers, let me know if you think she’s going to kick me or something. So I’m checking that skin and one of the keepers says, like, watch out. So I’m looking at what leg she’s going to kick me with or she’s moving and she just defecates and the balls of the head just hit me in the head and the fecal ball just like hurt my neck. I had to go to the doctor, actually. I’m not kidding. I don’t know if you want that on the radio.”

Miller [recording]: “I absolutely do want that on the radio.”

Sadiq: I just love that clip. I mean, I think it also just brilliantly captures his personality. He was charming, funny and you could hear like the genuine affection he has for the many animals in his care. It was such a treat to spend the day with him and to also end it by spending time with the black rhinos. And hey, guess what, those two rhinos, they’re now proud parents of a baby rhino who is just so adorable.

Miller: Something that he clearly had to have known when we were there. He didn’t divulge that.

We’ve heard two of our favorite clips so far. Each of them has included feces [Laughter]. I should have told listeners the entire show’s only clips that include waste of some kind. Also, it was extraordinary to me that when he said, I don’t think you want this on the radio, I thought how can people not not know how basic we are in some ways, and of course, we would want this on the radio. It shocked me that someone wouldn’t assume that this was a hilarious story that would immediately end up on the radio as soon as we edited it down.

Allison, you’re up next.

Frost: Well, now for something completely different. Actually, “The Goonies,” it almost sounds like it could be a parasite or some kind of animal, but it’s not. Of course, it’s the 1985 Steven Spielberg movie filmed in Astoria. And if you’ve been here for any length of time, you know that it’s a huge tourist attraction. It was sold in January, it had a new owner. His name is Behman Zakeri and he is from the Kansas City area. But he had to have this house. I don’t know if I’ve ever talked to anyone who has been as much of a super fan as this.

Behman Zakeri [recording]: “When you mix adventure, treasure hunting, friendship, family action, and then you sprinkle in the bad guys, the Fratellis, you’ve got a great movie and they picked such a neat town. All the shots were just neat, from the beginning when they’re breaking out of jail and the police are chasing him to the Fratelli’s hideout in Cannon Beach and all that stuff. I just think that it was a combination of how the script was written with the music, that symphony that played that music tied in so perfectly. It reminds me of like ‘Back to The Future,’ which is also probably my second set of favorite movies. ‘Back to the Future’ and ‘Goonies’ are like neck and neck, but there was only one ‘Goonies’ movie. So when people say what’s your favorite movie, it has to be ‘Goonies.’ There’s only one.”

Frost: I’m just gonna out myself really quickly. I’ve lived in Oregon for 25 years and every time I heard about “The Goonies,” I thought, oh, that’s so interesting. That’s so funny. That’s such a funny movie, I kind of remember seeing [it]. Well, turns out I had never seen that movie. What I was thinking about was “Gremlins” that came out like within a year of it [Laughter]. And so I’d never seen the movie until we interviewed Behman Zakeri and finally, I got it. It makes so much more sense and I have so much respect for “Goonies” fans now.

Miller: Sage, you’re up next.

Van Wing: Yeah. So, speaking of the news, everything we do isn’t light, of course. And it hasn’t always been an easy news year and fentanyl has been in the news a lot. In September, a nonprofit called Recovery Works NW opened a 16-bed detox facility in Portland for people with fentanyl addiction. We talked to Joe Bazeghi, the director of engagement for Recovery Works about why fentanyl addiction really needs inpatient detox specifically, different from other opioids. And part of it is just that the drug is much, much stronger.

Joe Bazeghi [recording]: “So fentanyl is challenging on so many levels and in many ways, it was unexpected. So we found ourselves, in this profession, almost reacting, but we’re getting to the point of response now. A couple of years ago, folks would come in with serious heroin problems and they might be I/Ving several grams a day. Well, nowadays, because of the proliferation of fentanyl and how cheap and available it is, people are coming in taking just undreamed quantities of opioids into their system. Additionally, one other complication is how it interacts with the body. So traditional opioids, they’re processed through the body in a way that they’re eliminated in about 72 hours. Fentanyl has this very interesting character to it, where it becomes stored in the fat cells and is released unevenly and unpredictably over a much longer period of time than 72 hours.”

Van Wing: I learned so much from this interview. I think like all of us, we’ve been seeing and hearing and reading about fentanyl, really seeing the effects of it on the streets of Portland and all over the country really, and not really understanding what was happening. And listening to Joe working with people who are trying to recover firsthand and understanding just how different this drug is. It really opened my eyes to, we’re in the middle of trying to figure out how to deal with this fentanyl addiction crisis.

Miller: Sheraz, what do you have?

Sadiq: So I’m going to give a big shout out to producer Rolie Hernandez for championing and pitching the story we did back in August and this story focused on local relief efforts being spearheaded by KALOHCC. That’s the Hawaiian Civic Club of Oregon and Southwest Washington. So they were on the show to talk about their efforts to help people impacted by the deadly wildfires in Maui. And I think it’s worth mentioning that this is one of the worst wildfires in U.S. history. It was the deadliest wildfire in over a century and it killed at least 100 people.

So we had on Leialoha Ka’ula, the executive director of the organization, to talk about those relief efforts. And here she is talking about what it’s been like for members of the Hawaiian community here in the Pacific Northwest, struggling to find out what happened to their loved ones back home, and the pain of not knowing.

Leialoha Ka’ula [recording]: “What has happened in Lahaina is definitely not something that we have ever seen. And so to have to go through all of that and find the families doesn’t sit right with anybody, right? And so the families here, that pain of not knowing, we also feel for a lot of the families who aren’t able to make it back to Maui, that pain of not even being able to be there, is also something that’s hitting so many of them. But those moments of silence and even if it was for some of them, it was just a few hours, felt like days for those of them who, were days, they felt like months, like not knowing anything. And all you see is what’s on the news and it’s terrifying. It was absolutely terrifying for them.”

Sadiq: I think this really struck a chord with me also because, some of you know that I grew up in Houston, which has a lot of hurricanes. And in 2017 there was Hurricane Harvey and I remember being at work and struggling to find out what had happened to my brother. He was living in Houston at the time, and I couldn’t get ahold of him and it was only until many hours later that he finally got ahold of me and he told me that he had to pull off by the side of the freeway and he had to wade through waist-deep water to find higher ground and ask for help. And in the process, his cell phone died.

Castillo: Yeah. And I think something else that I really liked about this segment was that we’re always trying to localize things. Obviously, we’re talking about Hawaii, but finding folks in the Pacific Northwest who are being affected, who do have that impact. I mean, I think everything that was said was just super powerful.

Van Wing: No fewer than four different producers, four of us chose this segment and in fact, almost this exact same clip to play for you all today, which I just think speaks to the power of how affecting this actual interview was on the day.

Miller: In June, we talked to Elliott Hinkle and Mel Jory-Heywood about their efforts to get more people to become foster parents, specifically for LGBTQ youth. I asked Elliott what his pitch is, how he gets adults to actually say, I am going to open my home up.

Elliot Hinkle [recording]: “I think it’s such a gift, to have someone in your home and to help them grow into adulthood, to successfully launch.”

Miller [recording]: “A gift to the adult?”

Hinkle [recording]: “A gift to the adult and the youth. I think both people ideally get to grow and learn from this opportunity and when your home is affirming as a young person, you’ll be able to actually develop a relationship with that family or that person and to launch into adulthood, feeling supported and affirmed. And so I want people to understand that a:) we need more placements, we need them to be affirming for young people. And as much as there can be challenges in being a resource parent, I think many of them are the same challenges any parent faces. And there’s so much reward to sort of helping someone get into adulthood successfully. And so how could we help convince people to say that, this is a journey that may be challenging at times, but really is going to pay off and give you a lot of joy, a lot of self-reflection, a lot of even new connections and family and experiences you would have maybe never had. What a gift to give to that young person as well.”

Miller: I was so struck by this because I just assumed that the answer was going to be, these are the ways you can make an impact on someone’s life, someone who really needs your help. And most of what he talked about there was the opposite. These are the ways that bringing somebody into your home who is in this very exciting, challenging part of their life, it’ll be enriching for you in all these different ways. And that’s really what Elliott focused on. It was just, it was a fascinating reframing for me.

Frost: Yeah. And he was so generous too, just sharing his own background. He was a foster kid as well. And so it also just strikes me as we get so lucky with people coming on and just sharing so much of themselves.

Miller: Gemma, you’re up next.

DiCarlo: Yeah. So in June, we spoke with a Vietnamese American chef, Richard Văn Lê, about his content network, which is called All The Homies. They make all kinds of videos about this collective of BIPOC food creators in Portland and one video in particular won a James Beard Award and it beat out these huge competitors like “Top Chef” and “Bon Appetit.” It was just a total Cinderella story and these videos, they don’t just do recipes or tutorials. I mean, they do do that, but it also documents these people’s lives, them going camping, playing tennis. And Jenn Chavez, who was our guest host this week, actually asked Richard why that aspect of it was so important.

Richard Văn Lê [recording]: “We’re all just BIPOC folks who feel that if we’re gonna really change like the optics and the perspective of Portland, then as a collective, we should be doing that together. And so a big part of it for us is just to push this idea that Portland is changing and we are part of the change. And I think it’s important that we recognize and acknowledge the fact that Portland, five years ago when I first got here, was very different than the Portland I live in now, like my day-to-day interactions are mainly with People of Color now. And so I think part of the whole thing within All The Homies is that we’re trying to exude this lifestyle of, we found like our peoples and we want to keep building off of this community.”

DiCarlo: I just love hearing about people who are kind of remaking Portland in their own image or trying to make it exactly the kind of city they want to live in and for the James Beard Awards to recognize kind of a scrappy effort like that, and for it now to have kind of national leverage I think is really exciting,

Miller: Elizabeth, you’re next.

Castillo: Yeah. So this segment’s about a podcast called “Slaying A Drag-a-thon.” It’s about a drag performance that lasted 48 hours. We spoke to BinKyee Bellflower, one of the drag queens in the show. And she’s going to describe what drag means to her.

BinKyee Bellflower [recording]: “I didn’t realize that I had a voice and sometimes when you think about voice, you think about the loudest or the most intelligent, but actually voice simply means presence. I realized that a lot of previous drag queens such as Poison Waters or even Darcelle herself has created this pathway ahead for us. Their voices might be heard and seen through different ways, and I wanted to mimic that. I wanted to also create that voice, enable myself to have that voice and also write the future for the rest who come behind me. And that’s why I decided to do drag. That’s why I decided to look up to people who actually gave me this path and create this positive change in drag.”

Castillo: I just thought she described this so beautifully. Drag can be like goofy and fun and all that, but it’s very meaningful and very powerful and having the space to show yourself authentically. I was here in the studio and we did this and I just thought it was just like a very powerful segment.

Van Wing: Yeah. And for those of you who didn’t get to see the 48 hours of “Drag-a-thon,” it was a remarkable moment, I think, in Portland history. And they did it to raise money and raise awareness about the power of drag specifically because drag queens in other parts of the country are facing challenges, right? So it was, in a way, a political act, which is kind of incredible.

Miller: Allison, you got the next clip.

Frost: So we’re going to hear from Kaig Lightner. He runs the Portland Community Football Club. It’s youth soccer focused on low income and immigrant and refugee communities. He’s also a transgender man who came out to his kids a few years into running the organization, and of course they embraced him. I don’t want to say of course, they embraced him and it was very moving. In this particular clip, Dave, you asked him about what sports meant to him growing up before he came out as a transgender man.

Kaig Lightner [recording]: “Sports is really what gave me the sense to keep going day after day, even though I would day after day get bullied and teased and picked on and told that I was a freak and told that I didn’t belong and I got all the messaging that there was something wrong with me from society. But when I would step into the sports realm, I could let go of all of that and I could be this one congruent person and that’s what kept me going day after day. And if I didn’t have those sports, I don’t think that I would be here. I just don’t think that I would be alive.”

Miller: It’s my turn. In 2012, photographer Matika Wilbur sold everything in her Seattle apartment and she set out to document the 562 federally recognized Indigenous tribes in the country. This year - so 10 years later - she released a massive book called “Project 562,” based on the photos and the stories that she collected. Her mom is from the Swinomish tribe. Her father is Tulalip. Here she is talking about what she did with the books as soon as they were published.

Matika Wilbur [recording]: “First got the copy, the first copy of the book, I went to the Swinomish Council and I asked them if they would support the book. And they said, yes, and they bought 500 copies to give away to each one of the tribal members. And then I went to Tulalip, to my dad’s tribe and I went into the boardroom and I hadn’t ever asked the tribes to support the work financially. I thought it was the responsibility, of myself and of different philanthropic organizations to fund the work. And so when I went in, I said, like I’ve never come in here and asked you for money for this project, but I really want to be able to give this book to our students. And I gave a whole presentation. At the end, the chairwoman of the tribe stood up and she said, “We’re proud of you and we stand with you and we raise our hands to you.” And everybody in the boardroom stood up and clapped and then my Auntie Judy was there and she said, your grandmother, my grandmother was a judge and she had wanted to publish a book her whole life and had received rejection letter after rejection letter, and her books were never published. And she said it was her lifelong dream to be an author. And here you are making that come true, and I can feel her here with us and I can feel that she’s so proud and it just made me feel so loved and supported and accepted by my community. I certainly feel really blessed by that.”

Van Wing: The photos in this book are really incredible. And I think one of the most amazing things that the photographer did is she really collaborated with the people she was taking pictures of, she asked them like, how do you want to be photographed? Where do you want to be photographed? What’s the most meaningful place to you as a member of your tribe, which is so rarely done, I think, in portrait photography especially. But to her, it was integral to her entire mission to really show people that Indigenous folks are much more complex, much more present, much more real, different than many people perhaps understand in this country.

Miller: Gemma, what do you have?

DiCarlo: Yeah. So this was actually something that Rolie produced. And if there’s two things I love, it’s a good book and a good TV show. And this conversation really delivered on both points. So it was a conversation we had in June with Seattle author Matt Baume. His book “Hi Honey, I’m Homo!” chronicles queer characters and themes in American sitcoms and also has probably the best title I’ve seen all year. And sometimes when we talk about representation and queer representation on television, it automatically elicits some eye rolls, like why does that even matter? There are so many more important issues, et cetera. But I think Matt sets it up really well when Dave asks him about the importance of the ‘90s sitcom “Will and Grace.”

Matt Baume [recording]: “It showed me that I have a culture that I didn’t know that I had, that I belong to something that I didn’t know I belong to. I was around 18, I think, when the show debuted, and it was really eye opening. And it presents a pretty limited slice of American gay life, these pretty well to do white gay men in New York, but it was more than I had seen before and it was that for a lot of people and people focus on how groundbreaking it was to have all these gay characters [be] the center of a show. And I think that sometimes, it doesn’t give enough credit to the value of having Grace. It wasn’t just Will and Jack, it was Will and Grace and having a show that presented a gay man and a straight woman as friends and had them on equal footing and as peers, that welcomed a lot of people into that show and made it feel like something for everyone.”

DiCarlo: I just feel like that’s such a good example of why it’s important to have people both who look like you and don’t look like you, represented in the media. And it speaks, I think, to how television can both reflect our society and push us forward and show us something better.

Castillo: Yeah. And I think like, for me, this segment was just so powerful, really thinking of television in a lot of different ways and sitcoms, especially like another show that was talked about was “All in The Family,” and that was in the seventies. So, I mean, I think that conversations at that time TV was, they were starting to do more on societal issues. I think sitcoms can kind of be a way where [it’s] like, “Hey, this is funny but hey, this is serious” and really help be a gateway into talking about these bigger, serious issues, that maybe not everyone has to deal with on a day-to-day basis but can be really helpful to learn more and to be thinking about.

Miller: Allison, one more before the break.

Frost: So we’re gonna hear a little bit of music from Shireen Amini and we talked to her because she was one of 16 musicians around the country, two of which came from Oregon on a compilation called “Hope Rises II.” And her track was called “Break Myself Free,” exploring what it means to be authentically yourself without any constraints. She came in and played several of her songs live.

This one is called “Homesick,” and what I love about it is that it’s just so universal, regardless of your gender, your place of origin, your family of origin, what you might be dealing with.

Shireen Amini [Recording]: “Homesick”

[Guitar music and singing]

“With one home

I have to walk away from

because it’s just not right for me anymore

But the home where I’m headed

is still just a dream

I sit in the middle with my pain and longing,

pulling me both ways

I feel my heart

tearing at the sea

But if I settle for the way it was,

I know a part of me will die

and I want to live

and want to give

So I’m getting to know myself,

getting real, getting ideal,

taking one more step

as it’s shown to me

Still my heart aches for familiarity

I just can’t stay there

without tamping down my authenticity

I’m lonely for what I left,

so I sit and it’s ok

I’m yearning for what I need,

I’m in between

I just get homesick,

even though the home

of the past no longer matches

the home within,

Home within

Don’t you get homesick?

There’s a home

where you know you will thrive

you just haven’t arrived…”

[Music fades away]

Miller: Sage, you’re up next.

Van Wing: Yeah, we have a wonderful collaboration with the local nonprofit, Literary Arts, which brings authors to town for events. And for the last few years, we’ve been joining those authors as they visit local high schools and we talk with the author in front of students and no shade to you, Dave, but the students ask amazing questions.

Miller: Yeah that’s why we go.

Van Wing: It is so great to hear the authors interact with the students. In January, we spoke to Lauren Groff, the author of “Matrix” and “Fates and Furies” at McDaniel High School. And here’s a question from a student.

Student [recording]: “I’m Hayden Hardy. And I know working in the arts, you receive a lot of criticism. I know that as a musician, and it could be from like parents or friends or people close to you. Sometimes you’re like a mentor and your Master Oogway. And I was wondering what has been the most important piece of criticism that you’ve received for you?”

Lauren Groff [recording]: “This is a great question. You know too, that if you’re working in the arts, you have to build a second self and the second self is the one that is OK with the criticism. So there’s the artist, who is as vulnerable as a slug, right? And you have to keep the artist that vulnerable in order to make the art. And then there is the person who’s public facing and that person is very different. That person has to be tough, tough, tough.

“So the best piece of criticism I ever got was, I went to grad school in my mid-20s to write fiction. And I have this incredible mentor. Her name is Laurie Moore. She’s a great writer, very funny. You would all love her work. And I was writing at the time a sort of a Laurie Moore story. So I was writing worse renditions of her own stories and I did not want to give her one of these because it was embarrassing. So I wrote this story that was in the opposite direction. It was a piece of historical fiction and I gave it to her and she doesn’t like historical fiction. So she told me, ‘This is great. Now put it away and write something else.’ And I believed in this story, right? I believed that it was good enough to be seen by the world.

“So I think the best piece of criticism was actually the one that made me realize that I have these bells in my head, right? And I have to listen very carefully because the bells tell me when the thing that I’ve written is good and worthy.”

Miller: And Sage, it wasn’t just that the students were asking great questions but that she was truly engaging with them and talking with them as if they were peers, which is such a gift.

Sheraz, what do you have for us?

Sadiq: So back in September, we talked to M.J. Anderson. She’s a sculptor based in Nehalem who has been traveling for the past 40 years to the world’s best marble mines in Carrara, Italy. I mean, that’s the place where Michaelangelo got his marble to make his sculpture of David, for example. So it’s not like the Costco of marble mines. We talked to her shortly after a gallery in Astoria exhibited her work. She’s most famous for these headless female torsos and they basically capture, in her own words, the distillation of what it means to be woman. Here she is talking about her artistic process.

M.J. Anderson [recording]: “I did a large, very sturdy mermaid one time, but the whole back of that stone had probably 800 years of water markings on the back of that stone that was exposed. Geologically, that is just a fabulous surface. So I didn’t want to destroy that surface to make my work. So I needed to design a sculpture where that surface was celebrated, for example.”

Miller [recording]: “And it just happened that you were making a mermaid. So, those watermarks…”

Anderson [recording]: “Well, I decided to make a mermaid because of course it was waterworks.”

Miller [recording]: “I had it the other way around. OK, so the rock can tell you what it should be.”

Anderson [recording]: “Well, almost every one of my sculptures tells me, I don’t tell it. The stone itself inspires who it wants to become in a dialogue with me.”

Sadiq: I can’t think of another time I had such a lovely and instant connection with a Think Out Loud guest. She’s a remarkable person and it was such a delight to work with her.

Miller: Gemma, what’s next?

DiCarlo: Yeah. So this was one Allison produced actually. In August, we talked with director Patrick Walsh about the Northwest Classical Theater Collaborative and their production of Samuel Beckett’s “Happy Days.” This organization has a mission of bringing the arts to underserved and nontraditional spaces, like they performed in prisons and homeless shelters. But this particular play took place in an old Victoria’s Secrets in Portland’s Lloyd Center Mall. And I just love how Patrick described how that came to be and how it relates to the play and its main character.

Patrick Walsh [recording]: “I got a tour of kind of all the spaces that were available. And when I went into Victoria’s Secret, this big gust of wind kind of comes at you, because nobody’s been in there in a while, and you just walk in and I was like, oh God, this is perfect. This is perfect.”

Miller [recording]: “Why? What did you see that made you say that?”

Walsh [recording]: “So much space that we could use, so many ways to make the themes of “Happy Days” make sense. So much of what Winnie talks about in the play is that I’m being watched and also like what my worth is like as a woman, as a human being in this place. And what that means is you get older too, as you age out of a certain archetype. And so just seeing that, thinking about all the people who used to use, in this space, walking around, looking, watching, I was just struck by it. I was like, oh, this is going to be perfect.”

DiCarlo: First of all, I just love that this starts with a gust of wind, that is drama, that is theater. But also I just think that this space so easily could have been a gimmick, but it was actually so thoughtful and intentional and it served the play and its themes really well, which I think is what all theater sets and locations should do.

Miller: Elizabeth, what’s next?

Castillo: OK. So for this segment, we talked about the Romance Era Bookshop. You can find lots of romance novels there. We spoke to the owner and founder Ren Rice. Dave asked Ren if people are embarrassed to talk about the books they’re looking for.

Ren Rice [recording]: “No, because I kind of force them to talk to me.”

Miller [recording]: “Really? Why?”

Rice [recording]: “I do it, not to be pushy, but it’s like, I don’t want the space to feel like you got to come in kind of shy and buy what you want and leave. I want that conversation. So it usually starts off with like, hey, are you looking for anything specific? And they’ll say, yeah, no. And I’m like, what do you like to read? And that just opens up that comfortable level, I think because they know that I’m not really gonna judge them because I could just be sitting at a table reading a smut book too, just like what they’re looking for. So, I like that. I like to be able to let people know like, hey, you’re fine here. It’s a safe space here. We’re going to talk about it. We can laugh about it. We can relate because I’m never going to yuck anyone’s yum. That’s also my motto, like you like what you like and if I can provide a service and get you that book in your hands, I will absolutely try my best.”

Castillo: Honestly, this convo was just so delightful. Ren explains the world of fan fiction and bodice rippers and modern romances with hockey players. I don’t know, I just feel like romance is kind of having a moment right now and I love that. I think, yeah, just let people have whatever they want to read.

Sadiq: I’m definitely intrigued with the genre. I didn’t know for instance that there are so many subgenres, there’s something called romantacy, so that’s a portmanteau of romance and fantasy. So, yeah, I think I’ll be visiting the bookshop to pick up a title or two for the holidays.

Miller: Allison, what do you have?

Frost: Well, this is an interview that Elizabeth produced and it’s about a couple of cancer survivors who have a podcast called “Cancer For Breakfast.” And it was just, gosh, I was just so surprised. I didn’t really know what to expect, but it’s Stefanie LeJeunesse and Amy Dials and they’re both breast cancer survivors, they’re talking about serious issues, humorous issues, science, educating. But they’re doing so with humor and nonjudgmentally.

Stefanie LeJeunesse/Amy Dials [recording]: “Some of the appropriate response to when people do get hit by a bus could be applied to what could be an appropriate response to a friend or family member who is going through a cancer diagnosis. I can’t believe this happened to you. I’m so sorry, sorry this happened. This must have been so scary. Like what can I do to help? Like could I send you dinner? It must be hard to get up and get dinner right now. You just got hit by a bus. But instead people who are going through cancer… People are like, did you smoke? You should try Rick Simpson Oil. Do you have a family history? That’s so weird. I thought I had breast cancer once but I just knew it couldn’t be me. I know what you’re talking about. I’m a vegetarian.”

Miller [recording]: “These are all things you’ve heard? Still?”

LeJeunesse/Dials [recording]: “A lot. We joke that we’ll throw our friends and family under the bus to educate other people’s friends and family of things that aren’t that helpful to say. And we do it with humor because we do get that everyone’s trying their best and nobody’s trying to be… They’re not blowing it on purpose. It’s just, it’s so easy to blow it though. It is, it’s hard.”

Frost: I think it can be really helpful treating this subject like this. Funny, serious. I mean, that’s life, like I’ve had cancer people in my life too. And so I think just the way that they approach this was just really awesome and really different and I really appreciated that.

Miller: Sheraz, what do you have?

Sadiq: I love this interview Gemma produced with Matt Jones. He’s a Portland-based creator of crossword puzzles and he’s been doing this since, professionally, since he was a teenager, for about 30 years now. His “Jonesin” crossword puzzle appears in alt weeklies across the country, including Willamette Week. One of his first puzzles was published in the New York Times when he was just 19 years old.

During this delightful interview, and I could tell Dave that you had a lot of fun with it, but you asked him basically, if his brain is wired to always be on the hunt for wordplay and clues. Here’s what he had to say.

Matt Jones [recording]: “I was just at the airport and I saw that there was like a vending machine that said, ‘fly refreshed’ or something. And I looked in and there is like, well, there’s the instrument lyre, L.Y.R.E., right in the middle of fly refreshed, right there, so.”

Miller [recording]: “And it wasn’t like you looked at it and thought, how do I arrange the words? There is an unconscious part of your brain that, it just happens.”

Jones [recording]: “Yeah. And it’s tough to turn off sometimes, but it is there. And yeah, sometimes if you see things that, if they anagram to something cool, then I will, that’s sometimes an inspiration for what I put in.”

Miller [recording]: “Do you write those down or they just bump around in your brain until you get a pen or…”

Jones [recording]: “It’s a little bit of everything. I mean, the inspiration comes from strange places sometimes.”

Sadiq: I think my TOL love language is hearing from people who explain how their mind works. I mean, and how rare is it that we get the inner workings of what it’s like to be a crossword builder and the kind of magpie-like sensibility they have for finding inspiration and fodder for verbal clues in the most unlikely of places.

Miller: About two years ago, Pastor Gabe Piechowicz started a new temporary housing development of small cottages for people experiencing homelessness in Eugene. It’s called Everyone Village. We went there in the fall as a part of our Solutions Journalism Series that Allison produced throughout the year. Near the end, I asked him what it means to him to say, I am a pastor.

Gabe Piechowicz [recording]: “It’s less about religion or religious practice. And it’s more about for me personally, just looking at the stories of this crazy guy who lived 2,000 years ago in the Middle East named Jesus of Nazareth. He lived his life in such a way, whether you rise to him being the son of God or not, we know his historical path. He lived his life and it just is full of these examples of taking care of each other, looking out for each other, servant leadership. And those are the things that I gather, make up kind of a pastor in life and don’t necessarily need a church building or a Sunday morning to do that kind of good life with other people. And for me, the most powerful expression of ministering is that both ways is setting up such a setting or a village or a place where, when I can, I help out in that kind of a way. And when I need it, that help comes right on back.”

Van Wing: I think that whether you’re a religious person or not or a spiritual person or have absolutely no faith at all, you just cannot help but admire someone who walks their talk in this way. He was absolutely riveting, personable, and you just saw his heart right, right there. And I think you hear it as well.

Miller: Elizabeth, what’s the next clip?

Castillo: So for this one, guest host Geoff Norcross chatted with Ada Limón, U.S. Poet Laureate, author of “The Hurting Kind.” And in this clip, they’re talking about how poetry has the power to elevate the obvious.

Ada Limón [recording]: “It’s making what we know strange again to us, it’s allowing us to witness it in a new way. And I think that so often we’re taught that we have to kind of numb out to the world in order to get from one moment to the next, right? If we felt everything all the time, we would just be lying down on the floor and giving up. So I think there’s a part of us that knows that in order to protect ourselves, we have to shut down some elements because we have to get from point A to point B. We have to go to work or we have to go to school or we have to do a project. We have deadlines, we have obligations, we have to make a living, all of those things. And yet I feel like poetry turns on that part of us that recognizes that we are deeply feeling people and that we are actually really noticing and paying attention to the world, but that sometimes it’s so hard to stop and do that because if we do, we’ll recognize all of the grief that we’re experiencing, some of the joy that we’re experiencing and that can be overwhelming. So, poetry is a way of turning it on. It’s a protected space for those feelings.”

Castillo: Is she in my brain? I am a very sensitive and emotional person and I feel like I have to block off a lot of things during the day. So I really just melted when I heard this for the first time. Thankfully, I was just in the kitchen, I was by myself. So I just, I let all the emotions out. I’m still looking for some protected space for myself and I just loved, loved hearing her talk about this.

Miller: Sage, what do you have?

Van Wing: So in May, we traveled to John Day for a week. We’ve been doing these week-long trips once or twice a year for a while now. And Gemma DiCarlo did a fantastic job producing nearly the entire week of shows while we were there. We spoke to the folks who ran Malheur Lumber Company, which is now actually one of three mills in Grant County. One of the difficulties of running a mill and really any business in a rural area is hiring workers. Rich Fulton, the General Manager explained the problem.

Rich Fulton [recording]: “It’s hard work. I’m not gonna kid, you’re sore, tired, you’re gonna sweat and all that. We usually put them in the back hole for a couple of weeks. It’s, hey, you just, these gray marks here, you pull these couple of units and you watch everybody. We had the 19-year-old, he’d been there for a week, week and a half, moved the next guy up to where he had to rotate. Within an hour, the guy that had been there for a week, he was literally laying on the catwalk, sweat rolling off and, ‘I can’t work anymore, I can’t lift my arms up.’ The guy in the back hole that we just started worked for four hours. We had to send him home. He was so, he could barely walk to the break room. He was sweating so profusely, I had to give him Gatorade and he was hardly doing any work.

“This week they’ve come in and they’ve literally, they worked three hours yesterday and they called in sick today. We have some really good kids that are workers, but they’re gobbled up by the big guys, the Facebooks, the Googles, the Intels, they gobble them up. So that’s what we’re facing. It doesn’t have to just even be a chain pulling job. We’ve hired guys in a boiler, fresh out of high school, never had a job before. They can’t climb a ladder.”

DiCarlo: I’ve got another from the same trip. Actually, it was this lovely older couple we met named Ken and Marlou Delano. They met in a grief group after their spouses had died and their story was so full of joy, but also very real, like Dave asked why it took Marlou several times of Ken asking her to marry him before she finally said yes.

Marlou Delano [recording]: “I was building my courage during that time. I shared with him, I said, I don’t even know if I’ll remember how to kiss anymore. All those things that you don’t think about. I don’t know what foods he likes. I don’t know all of those things that you’re going to have to learn. Would I be able to do that? I mean, you just feel like you don’t have any tools. I’m gonna be 82 here in a few months and I didn’t have the tools, the up-to-date tools, so to speak.”

Ken Delano [recording]: “But I told her that we could spend the rest of our life practicing these things, like kissing.”

DiCarlo: I just love how this shows their closeness and their rapport and these two were so wise and just grateful to have each other at their current place in life. It was very moving, and I hope they’re doing well.

Miller: And it was also an example of the kinds of things that we never would have happened if we hadn’t been there. And I don’t know if you mentioned this, but it was just by chance. You’d been producing other segments. You heard about this couple, and we followed up because it seemed irresistible and they were as delightful as they came across on the radio. Also, I should say, I think I said this on the show when it first aired, that those wind chimes you hear, those were totally real. There were times when they would say moving things about their relationship, but the wind would pick up and the chimes would ring. It seemed like we faked it, but none of it was fake.

All right. In August, we talked to the owners of some of the first supervised psilocybin centers in the country, in Oregon as well. After that, I got an email from 88-year-old Vivian Anderson in Woodburn. She said that she had been living with PTSD from childhood trauma she experienced when she was 13 years old. She had tried a lot of different forms of therapy over the years. None of them really worked for her and she told us that she was going to be taking psilocybin. She’d never done any drug, anything like that in her entire life. And she was about to do this session. And I said, hey, can we talk to you before and after? And she said, yes.

Here’s part of the interview from after her session.

Vivian Anderson [recording]: “Well, at 88, I don’t know how much time I have. And as I told my brother, when he emailed me the other day, I said, well, if I die tomorrow, it was worth it. Yes, it was worth it. And I don’t care how much time it takes or if I don’t have any time. And I’m sure at my age, I’m not likely to get some kind of a degree and go on to this great career. I’m just happy now that my daily life feels so whole, feels so peaceful and calm. I’m not carrying around this horrible feeling of anxiety and there being something so missing in my life, that this big hole is no longer there.”

Frost: I think this just really speaks to a life of trauma that she went through and tried many things. And then she had this one experience and it changed the quality of her life. It’s just amazing.

Miller: There was so much to it too. She also said if she had known how intense and scary and terrifying the session would be, she’s not even sure that she would have done it. And yet she is glad that she did do it. It was such a helpful reminder that there are these huge public policy questions and then at the end of all of them, there are real human lives that are deeply impacted by, in this case, a voter passed measure.

Sage, you have the last one for us for this hour.

Van Wing: Yeah. So in September, we talked to the singer-songwriter Julian Saporiti,

whose musical project is called No-No Boy. He got a PhD in history and he wrote about popular music and Asian American history in his dissertation. But he ended up feeling that some of that history can be better communicated in song. So this is him talking about and playing his song, “Western Empress.”

Julian Saporiti [recording]: “There’s a very visitable place called the Gresham Pioneer Cemetery from where we sit today. And in that cemetery, there is a very important tree, a Japanese cedar tree. And this was planted to mark the space where Miyo Iwakoshi, who was the first Japanese settler in Oregon, came over in 1880. It was planted to mark her grave because when she died, like a lot of places in Oregon, it was a whites-only space and she was sort of buried secretly. And it was, for me, as an Asian American walking around the Oregon woods all the time, rethinking who this landscape has always belonged to, obviously the Native history but many different kinds of people, including this woman who came over and started the sawmill in Gresham. And her nickname was The Western Empress. So it goes like this.

[Music and singing]

“Oregon Nikkei

First of the forest

Steam-powered sawmill town

Patience and patience now

Samurai plowshare

Old Nagasaki

The Scotsman makes funny sounds

Turnin’ the language round

Learnin’ enough for asking her out

Rafts made of hardwood

Wide as the river

Orient girls confound

Like Monarchs on frozen ground

Miyo buried Andrew’s body

Gresham Pioneer

Tama and the Kyoto salesman

Married earlier last year…”

[Music fades away]

Miller: Thank you all so much.

Van Wing: Thanks, Dave.

DiCarlo: Thank you.

Castillo: Thank you.

Frost: Thank you.

Miller: It is an incredible pleasure to work with all of you. I can’t say this enough. Think Out Loud is not me. It is our producing team, the people you heard this hour, Elizabeth Castillo, Gemma DiCarlo, Allison Frost, Sheraz Sadiq, Sage Van Wing, along with Rolie Hernandez.

Think Out Loud is also our engineering team, Nalin Silva and Steven Kray. They sweeten our sounds, they fix our flubs, they roll with all kinds of scheduling punches. They make every single day brighter and merrier.

Contact “Think Out Loud®”

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