Northern Journal

Two of the most powerful political leaders in the world met in Anchorage last week. Northern Journal staff was out of town, but Anchorage Daily News reporter Zach Hughes was on site. In this episode, he gives us a behind-the-scenes look at how the Trump-Putin summit developed, and how it all went down — from reporters assembling on school buses to stealth bomber flyovers.

Alaska Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski has been in the news in recent weeks for her decisive vote on President Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill." She's also been featured prominently on national television shows, radio and podcasts, as part of a promotional tour for her new book: Far From Home . In this episode, Murkowski stops in to the Northern Journal podcast. We start by talking about her n...

This episode delves into a secret corner of Alaska's oil and gas industry — an obscure, complicated but important realm where there are billions of dollars at stake. Our two guests have written a newly published paper for the Alaska Law Review that examines the future of the trans-Alaska pipeline — what happens when it's ready to be decommissioned, who's going to pay, and how the state could work...

If you live in Alaska, you likely have some awareness of Captain James Cook — at least because his name is on one of Anchorage's largest hotels, along with the body of water just offshore of the city, Cook Inlet. A new biography, The Wide Wide Sea , recounts the entirety of Cook's expedition that took him to Alaska, and puts the explorer in a new context that I think many Northern Journal listener...

It's been a rough few years for Alaska's fishing industry. Oversupply, competition from farmed and Russian salmon, inflation and rising interest rates — all of these things have combined to put a real hurt on fishermen and processing companies. As the summer salmon season kicks off, there are some glimmers of hope that things are turning around. But there are also still some big questions and chal...

We're excited to revive the Northern Journal podcast for its second season. Have ideas for guests and subjects? Email host Nat Herz at nat[at]northernjournal.com. If you like what you hear, please consider a paid Northern Journal membership . Now, for the good stuff: If you're listening to this podcast, I'm willing to bet you've heard about the Alaska LNG export project — a $44 billion, state-spon...

Anchorage's new mayor, Suzanne LaFrance, has pledged to fix what she describes as a broken city hall.  The team that she's hired so far is a group of technocratic policy nerd all-stars, and their three year term will function as a kind of test: Can an administration rooted in professional competence and policy expertise make meaningful progress in solving some of the deep-rooted, intractable probl...

There may not be any subject as serious as the one the last episode of this podcast covered — the emotional issue of salmon bycatch. So, now it's time to balance out that seriousness with frivolousness. And we mean serious frivolousness. To be precise: This episode is about mammoth resurrection. And the possible transplantation and reintroduction of other charismatic megafauna to Alaska on a massi...

If you listen to this podcast, you probably know about "bycatch," the accidental harvest of fish that aren't boats' target species. The issue — specifically, of salmon bycatch by Bering Sea whitefish trawlers — has become an all-consuming debate for some Alaska commercial and subsistence fishermen, along with leaders of Washington-based seafood companies and Southwest Alaska tribes. This episode f...

For the past two years, we've been hearing about the impending shortage of the locally produced natural gas that we use to heat our homes and generate our electricity in Southcentral Alaska. But there's been little concrete information about how utilities plan to solve the problem. Now, we're hearing that supply gaps are developing sooner than originally expected — as soon as two winters from now....

Last month, we heard outrage from conservation advocate Brad Meiklejohn and tribal leader Aaron Leggett; those two guests thought utilities' new proposed plans to fix the Anchorage-area Eklutna hydroelectric project's harms to salmon were inadequate. Now, it's time to hear directly from those utilities, which own the project at scenic Eklutna Lake. Guests on this episode include two utility spokes...

Alaska regulators first said it was time for the Spurr platform, offshore from Anchorage in Cook Inlet, to be removed in 1992. Then, they backed down, and 30 years later, it remains in the water, where it hasn't produced a single drop of oil since.  The history of Spurr and five other shuttered Cook Inlet platforms are featured in a new story from Nat. It's not a Northern Journal piece — it was pr...

This episode features Pete Chelkowski, one of the two directors of One with the Whale — a new documentary that features the story of Chris Apassingok, a Yup'ik whale hunter from St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea. Apassingok was 16 when he caught a bowhead and was subsequently subjected to a campaign of attacks and death threats initiated by an animal rights activist. One with the Whale is a ro...

Eklutna Lake is a jewel of Anchorage recreation. It's also the source of some of the electricity used by city residents. A major policymaking process has been underway for the past several years to address the Eklutna hydroelectric project's effects on salmon, and it's now coming to its conclusion with intense controversy. This is a complicated story with many different stakeholders. But two peopl...

Brooke Woods is a longtime Yukon River salmon advocate. She is Koyukon Athabascan and a tribal member of the community of Rampart, which is on the Yukon in Interior Alaska, about 80 miles northwest of Fairbanks. She joins the Northern Journal podcast to share a personal perspective on Yukon River salmon declines, and on management measures to address them. Bathsheba Demuth, the Brown University en...

Researchers Paul Denholm and Marty Schwarz just published a new study that says urban Alaska could save a lot of money by using much more wind and solar power to generate its electricity. The interesting part: They don't ignore the fact that it would take a lot of effort to make sure the system still works when the wind stops blowing and the sun stops shining, as we all know can happen periodicall...

Bathsheba Demuth is an environmental historian. Her book Floating Coast explored the Bering Strait region from both the Alaska and Russian sides. Now, she's writing a book about the Yukon River, and recently co-wrote a piece for Northern Journal about salmon declines and how fishing — and fishing restrictions — are managed by the U.S. and Canadian governments. She joins the Northern Journal podcas...