Justin Higginbottom

Jefferson Public Radio • 22nd August 2025

Volunteer diver searches not for bodies — but 'sons or daughters'

By day, he’s a mortgage broker in Stockton. In his free time, he helps families. “First of all, I don't search for bodies,” Heredia said. “I search for sons and daughters."

Jefferson Public Radio • 1st August 2025

A longterm homeless encampment in Yreka is cleared. Some find relief; others lose a home

It’s 11 a.m. and already getting hot in Yreka. For the first time in two years, Roy Newsom doesn’t know where he’ll sleep tonight.

Jefferson Public Radio • 25th July 2025

Riding the rapids on a free-flowing Klamath River after dam removal

What makes this trip special is that, until recently, the section of river we were on didn’t exist.

Jefferson Public Radio • 25th June 2025

Lions, guns and meth: Inside the takedown of an Oregon roadside zoo

Late at night, Amanda Zamora often heard a lion’s roar cut through the coastal breeze. The sound came from West Coast Game Park Safari, down the street. The roadside zoo billed itself as “America’s largest wild animal petting park.”

Jefferson Public Radio • 6th February 2025

Pineros in Southern Oregon: How Jackson County became a center for guest workers in forestry

Non-logging forestry work, like planting trees or fuels reduction, is big business in Oregon. But if you’re picturing those doing this work as classic lumberjacks — plaid shirts, big beards, white guys — think again. Foreign guest workers make up much of this labor. And Jackson County is a national center for the industry.

Jefferson Public Radio • 25th January 2025

50 years in the woods: How Oregon's forestry workforce has evolved

Since the 1970s, billions of dollars in federal contracts have gone to forestry work like replanting trees or fuels reduction. Oregon has long been a center for businesses getting those contracts. But that industry looked a lot different 50 years ago.

Jefferson Public Radio • 15th November 2024

Chillin' at Oregon's 'first legal psilocybin concert'

Oregon’s first psilocybin service centers opened around a year ago, providing psychedelic mushrooms to treat conditions like PTSD. One center in Southern Oregon is trying to increase access with group-psychedelic experiences — like a magic mushroom concert.

Jefferson Public Radio • 29th October 2024

Can an 'America First' board fix a troubled rural transportation district?

The Umpqua Public Transportation District serves over 20,000 riders. It’s a new district, only formed in 2019, but important in a region with elderly and low-income residents, many left behind after the timber industry declined. Lately, some have been worried about the district's future.

Jefferson Public Radio • 27th June 2024

From train history to train hopping, a California town celebrates America’s rails

The town of Dunsmuir in far Northern California hosted its first Railroad Days in 1941. But the town’s relationship with the railroad industry has changed over the decades. And a subculture of train enthusiasts now celebrate alongside the town — in their own way.

Jefferson Public Radio • 7th June 2024

Mothers struggling with addiction find an oasis in Southern Oregon

The opioid epidemic, boosted by the arrival of the drug fentanyl, has torn through communities in Southern Oregon. It’s also having a devastating impact on mothers struggling with addiction. An innovative facility in the Rogue Valley is helping those parents and their children.

Jefferson Public Radio • 6th May 2024

California mobile home park residents face persistent PFAS water contamination

Man-made chemicals known as PFAS, which stands for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are used to make a lot of modern products. They’ve also been linked to health impacts including cancer. Despite legislation, addressing PFAS contamination at small water systems remains a challenge in California.

Jefferson Public Radio • 10th April 2024

Tree sitters protest old-growth logging from 100 feet above the forest floor

Old-growth trees provide vital wildlife habitat, help forest ecosystems and store massive amounts of carbon. But some activists in Southern Oregon claim the Bureau of Land Management is allowing the logging of old-growth trees despite recent calls by the Biden administration for protection.

Jefferson Public Radio • 13th March 2024

A death doula keeps legacies alive in rural Oregon

“I spend my week reminding this group of people that they matter. That their life's work is just not going to disappear,” she says. “I think that's what we all want — for someone to be able to remember our names.”

DW • 13th December 2023

Broken dreams in Sagaing

Myanmar's democratically elected government was ousted in a military coup in 2021. Since then, ethnic minority armed groups and pro-democracy fighters have been battling against the junta's forces. Millions of people are displaced.

DW • 13th December 2023

Myanmar's Buddhists and Christians join fight against junta

In Myanmar's Chin State, Buddhists and Christians unite in the Chinland Defense Force to fight the military junta. DW spoke with the armed group, who said they left civilian life to help free the country.

DW • 4th December 2023

Myanmar's displaced bear brunt of civil war

After the military burned down their village, one community describes their efforts to survive in a diplaced person's camp on the fringes of the jungle in the Sagaing region.

DW • 30th August 2023

Staying Alive in Chin State

More than two and a half years ago, the military in Myanmar ousted a democratically elected government. Attacks on civilians still continue. We hear from people in Chin state in western Myanmar.

DW • 13th July 2023

Finding Love in a Myanmar Scam Center

Crime enclaves have grown along Myanmar's border since the coup in 2021. These new cities are hubs for online gambling, drugs and lately online cryptocurrency scams. It's big money for criminal syndicates and the Myanmar military's allies who control the territory. How are the scams playing out and how are they linked to human trafficking?

DW • 13th June 2023

Myanmar's Young Pro-democracy Activists Fill Up Prisons

Thousands of political activists have been imprisoned in Myanmar over the years. The often overcrowded conditions and human rights abuses have now been documented by a museum in neighboring Thailand.

NPR • 18th January 2023

Authorities don't know who is shooting free-roaming horses in the Utah desert

On a remote patch of Utah desert bordering the Navajo Nation in Utah, hundreds of horses roam free on the shrubby desert that stretches across red rock canyons all the way to the forested slopes of Bears Ears National Monument. To some, they're majestic wildlife that symbolize the freedom of wide-open western landscapes. To others, they're an out of control population displacing cattle and damaging the ec

The New Republic • 3rd January 2023

The “Psychonauts” Training to Explore Another Dimension

Kevin Thorbahn found himself in a hotel lobby without quite remembering how he got there. There were flashes of brilliant light, indescribable geometric patterns, and the feeling of being blasted through a gigantic stained glass window. And then he was standing in the lobby, as if checking in for a long-planned vacation. All he knew was that he was enamored with the woman behind the counter. Although “woman” wasn’t quite right—it was more like an outline of energy, a feminine purple hue.

The Independent • 15th June 2022

Inside America’s ‘Bermuda Triangle for missing people’

On a still-cold April morning at her home in Farmington, New Mexico, Bernadine Beyale knelt next to two of her dogs – the German Shepherd Trigger and a Czech Shepherd named Gunny – and applied juniper ash above their eyes.

Her Frenchie dog thought Beyale was dispensing treats and bullishingly lined up. So Beyale blessed him too in the Navajo way, even though he would be staying behind today.

Trigger and Gunny, meanwhile, were heading to work.

Beyale is the founder of Four Corners K9 Search an

Truly Adventurous • 6th October 2021

Dojo Wars

On the night of April 24, 1970, a historic karate brawl broke out in Chicago between senseis and students from rival dojos (karate centers). The fight was not for an audience or a trophy. No one had seen anything like it outside of the movies. One thing was certain: Not everyone was going to get out alive.

They were introduced as the Dragon Lady and Count Dante.

Christy Carter, a 22-year-old Playboy Club bunny, sat next to John Keehan, 29, one of the country’s best known martial artists, on th

CNBC • 24th November 2019

'They will destroy everything here': Turkish advance forces Syrians to flee homes as winter looms

Sleman Alshallah, 40, gathered his wife and five children outside his home with what little they owned — cooking pots, blankets and a rug — in the small northern Syrian farming village of Am Alkef last week. "We are ready to leave at any hour," said Alshallah.


It would be difficult to abandon his grandparents' farm and only source of income, he said. He looked north, in the direction of Turkey and dull thuds of fighting, where a mile away was the last defense against the adv