Think Out Loud

Ken Kesey’s iconic psychedelic bus leaves Oregon for first time in nearly 60 years

In 1964, Oregon author Ken Kesey and a group of friends, known as the Merry Pranksters, embarked on a cross-country road trip from California to New York aboard a 1939 customized school bus. They painted the bus in psychedelic colors, added a rooftop platform and made other modifications. The bus known as Furthur became a symbol of the countercultural ethos of the ‘60s, from protesting the Vietnam War to ushering in the LSD-tinged anthems of the Grateful Dead in San Francisco.    And now, for the first time since 1969, Furthur has left its home at the Kesey family farm outside Eugene to open a new generation of hearts and minds. As first reported by the New York Times [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/09/us/kesey-furthur-bus-san-francisco.html?searchResultPosition=1] earlier this month, the bus is returning to San Francisco as the centerpiece of “Forever Grateful, Golden Gate Park,” [https://haightstreetart.org/pages/forevergrateful-ggp-furthur] a Grateful Dead-themed exhibition in San Francisco opening on Sep. 5. The Oregon nonprofit Furthur Down the Road Foundation [https://furthurdowntheroad.org/] has been working for years to raise funds to restore the bus, which it hopes to start after the exhibit ends in late October.    Ken Kesey’s son, Zane, joins us to discuss Furthur’s legacy, the plans for its restoration and what lessons he thinks this countercultural icon can offer us today.

How OHSU’s field surgical team prepares to respond to emergencies

When a climber was trapped under a boulder on Mount Hood over Memorial Day weekend, the field surgical team at Oregon Health & Science University responded [https://news.ohsu.edu/2026/06/11/ohsu-field-surgical-team-flies-to-treat-trapped-patients-onsite]. The team is trained to operate on patients outside of the hospital to free them from collapsed buildings, crashed cars and other emergency situations.   Justin Regner [https://www.ohsu.edu/providers/justin-l-regner-md-facs] is the trauma medical director and division head of trauma, critical care and acute care surgery at OHSU. He oversees the field surgical team and joins us to share more about its work.

Financial details of Oregon’s spending on affordable housing murky, ProPublica investigation reveals

Oregon has given developers $1.4 billion to fund affordable housing as the cost of developing each subsidized apartment has nearly doubled. But thanks to a carve-out in its public records law, the state doesn’t have to provide the details of that spending. Rob Davis, an investigative reporter at ProPublica, joins us with the story.

Oregon Secretary of State on what Supreme Court decision on mail-in voting could mean for Oregonians

Yesterday, in an emergency opinion, the Supreme Court decided that the Trump Administration can go forward with an executive order that would fundamentally change the way elections are conducted in the U.S.   Under the order, the Department of Homeland Security would create lists of U.S. citizens eligible to vote that it would send to states, and the U.S. Postal Service would decide who can get mail-in ballots. Though this isn’t the final legal word, the ruling creates a new level of uncertainty just ten weeks from the midterm elections.   Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read joins us for a discussion.

District 4 Commissioner Vince Jones Dixon on the state of transportation safety in East Multnomah County

Last winter, Multnomah County and four cities in the area created the East Multnomah County Transportation Safety Action Plan [https://multco.us/info/urban-east-multnomah-county-transportation-safety-action-plan]. It was created based on survey data the county gathered from East Multnomah County residents to identify problem hotspots for transportation safety Gresham, Troutdale, Fairview and Wood Village.    Vince Jones-Dixon is the chair of the East Multnomah County Transportation Committee [https://multco.us/info/east-multnomah-county-transportation-committee]. We’ll check in with Jones-Dixon about the issues the county has identified, and the steps that are being taken to improve traffic safety in the area.