Sage Van Wing

Ryan Solee, singer and songwriter for the Portland-based band The Builders and The Butchers, joins us for an acoustic performance and interview.

Portland author Gary Ferguson joins us to discuss his latest book,"The Twilight Forest: An Elegy for Ponderosa in a Changing West."

Student debt in the U.S. has risen dramatically in the last few decades, while recent college graduates are having a harder time finding work. We sit down with students, faculty and administrators from Linfield University and Lewis & Clark College to ask whether a liberal arts degree is still worth it.

The Owyhee Canyonlands area encompasses millions of acres along the Owyhee River on the borders of Oregon, Idaho and Nevada. The land is rugged and remote and beautiful, and efforts to protect it in some way have dragged out for years. There were pushes for the last two Democratic presidents to designate the area a national monument and most recently, a bill to protect over 1 million acres of the land as wilderness failed in Congress at the end of 2024.

Adam Nattress has been playing poker since he was 19 years old, but it wasn’t until he got sober that he was able to really support his family and dedicate himself to the game. Nattress recently won nearly $140,000 in South Lake Tahoe at the World Series of Poker Circuit Main Event. The $1,700 buy-in tournament drew over 400 players from around the U.S. We talk to Nattress about why he loves poker, addiction and what the tournament circuit is like.

When local folk legend Michael Hurley died last spring, his friend Alela Diane was inspired to write “Spring Is A Fine Time (To Die),” an homage to her friend and his career. The song helped catalyze her new album, which was recorded live in the attic of her Portland home. Diane joins us in the studio, along with fellow musician Peter Lalish, for a conversation and live performance.

A series of cascading problems, including financial mismanagement, industry failures, and questionable city contracts, has pushed Lakeview, Oregon, into millions of dollars of debt it can’t pay off.

One of the most popular jazz albums of all time is still “Kind of Blue”, from trumpeter Miles Davis. Over the course of his career, Davis was pioneering in almost every major form of jazz, from be-bop to fusion. Early in his career, he recorded the compilation “Birth of the Cool” with nine other musicians, which is considered seminal to the era of cool jazz.

At 17 years old, Mary Cain became one of few women to ever run 800 meters faster than two minutes. Later that year she became the youngest American runner ever to compete in the World Championships. And all the while she was facing bullying from coaches and teammates and emotional abuse from Nike Oregon Project coach Alberto Salazar. Cain has written a new memoir, “This is Not About Running,” and joins us to talk about her experiences.

Playing in a park or on a street corner isn’t new for musician Johnny Franco. Franco and his brother Domenico are buskers, and during the pandemic they started taking requests from people who wanted to be serenaded from outside their windows with concerts.