Alaska is defined by its environment and its natural resources — the fish in its rivers, the oil and minerals buried underground. The Northern Journal podcast digs into those subjects, with interviews with those who know them best.
Behind the scenes at the Anchorage Trump-Putin summit
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.
20 Jul 2025
Lisa Murkowski: 'The problem with standing on principle is when your constituents get hurt'
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 (https://sites.prh.com/farfromhomebook).
In this episode, Murkowski stops in to the Northern Journal podcast. We start by talking about her new book and her style of politics, and then, around 17:55, we get into her 'yes' vote on Trump's legislation.
The episode includes some discussion of an opinion piece by Murkowski's U.S. Senate colleague from Kentucky, Republican Rand Paul; that piece is here (https://www.courier-journal.com/story/opinion/contributors/2025/07/03/trump-rand-paul-big-beautiful-bill-vote-congress-debt/84461567007/).
A reminder: If you like what you hear on the Northern Journal podcast, the best way to support it is through a paid membership; you can sign up at northernjournal.com (https://www.northernjournal.com/). We're also always looking for advertisers on the podcast and website — you can reach publisher Nat Herz at nat@northernjournal dot com. Thanks for listening.
10 Jul 2025
What happens when the trans-Alaska pipeline shuts down? And who pays to remove it?
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 (https://alr.law.duke.edu/article/making-alaskans-whole-rocchi-vol41-iss2/) 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 to make sure it's not left holding the bag.
Catherine Rocchi is regulatory lead at the Alaska Public Interest Research Group, a watchdog organization that includes the oil and gas industry in its portfolio. Phil Wight is an energy historian and an assistant professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
4 Jun 2025
Captain Cook's name is everywhere in Alaska. A new book retells his story.
Author Hampton Sides discusses his new biography, *The Wide Wide Sea*, which recounts Captain James Cook's expedition to Alaska and offers a fresh perspective on the explorer, in an interview.
29 May 2025
Is there light at the tunnel for Alaska's fishing industry?
Host Nat Herz interviews Norm Pillen, Erick Sabo, and Rachel Sapin about glimmers of hope and looming challenges for Alaska's fishing industry amid oversupply and economic pressures.
6 May 2025
The Alaska LNG project: Is it real?
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 (https://www.northernjournal.com/#/portal/signup).
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-sponsored megadevelopment that would pipe, liquefy and ship natural gas from Alaska's North Slope for customers in Asia. The project has gotten a boost from President Donald Trump, whose administration is pushing Asian allies to sign on, and it's been in the news recently. But it's also been in the news more sporadically for decades...and it's still just a hypothetical project, not a real one. In this episode of the Northern Journal podcast, we dig into the proposal, examine its prospects and break down the obstacles it still faces.
Joining us is Richard Pratt (https://rbnenergy.com/users/richard-pratt), a veteran LNG industry player who recently analyzed the Alaska LNG project for a trade publication called RBN Energy. Check out his analysis here:
https://rbnenergy.com/road-to-alaska-are-alaska-lng-strengths-enough-to-outweigh-its-costs-challenges-of-construction (https://rbnenergy.com/road-to-alaska-are-alaska-lng-strengths-enough-to-outweigh-its-costs-challenges-of-construction)
There's a little bit of insider lingo and discussion, but if you bear with us, we try to explain most of the concepts and acronyms. To help, here are a few terms you might hear:
LNG: liquefied natural gas, a fuel used mainly by power plants to generate electricity
FEED: front end engineering design, a study phase used to develop and define costs so that investors are more comfortable putting money into a development
AGDC: Alaska Gasline Development Corp., a state-owned agency that, until recently, has led efforts to advance the LNG project
Glenfarne: Glenfarne Group is a privately held developer based in New York and Houston that recently took over efforts to advance the LNG project from AGDC
11 Jul 2024
An hour with Anchorage's new mayor, Suzanne LaFrance
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 problems facing the city? Namely, its homelessness crisis, but also the housing crunch, a looming spike in energy costs and the always annoying inability of snowplows to clear out streets within 15 minutes of a snowfall.
LaFrance joined the Northern Journal podcast for an hourlong interview on her background and the priorities and vision for her administration.
If you like what you're hearing on the podcast, the best thing you can do is to buy a paid subscription to Northern Journal. I'm also looking for underwriters and advertisers for this show — you can reach me at nat[at]northernjournal[dot]com. Thanks for listening.
27 Jun 2024
A truly mammoth podcast
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 massive scale.
For this story to make sense, you have to read the original Northern Journal story (https://www.northernjournal.com/something-woolly-is-afoot-in-alaska/). We've got a special guest host, Ephraim Froehlich (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ephraim-froehlich). Apologies in advance for the puns.
If you like what you're hearing on the podcast, the best thing you can do is to buy a paid subscription (https://www.northernjournal.com/#/portal/signup) to Northern Journal. I'm also looking for underwriters and advertisers for this show — you can reach me at nat[at]northernjournal[dot]com. Thanks for listening.
27 Jun 2024
The trawlers speak — another side of the Bering Sea bycatch debate
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 (https://www.northernjournal.com/western-alaska-tribes-outraged-by/) for some Alaska commercial and subsistence fishermen, along with leaders of Washington-based seafood companies and Southwest Alaska tribes.
This episode features a rare interview with two officials from Bering Sea trawling-related businesses, Hunter Berns of Bering North and John Henderschedt of Phoenix Processor Limited Partnership. In it, we talk through the industry's history and operations — and the potential impacts of tighter regulations being considered by federal policymakers.
If you like what you're hearing on the podcast, the best thing you can do is to buy a paid subscription (https://www.northernjournal.com/#/portal/signup) to Northern Journal. I'm also looking for underwriters and advertisers for this show — you can reach me at nat[at]northernjournal[dot]com. Thanks for listening.
6 Jun 2024
Inside Alaska's natural gas crisis, with a natural gas executive
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. This recent piece (https://www.alaskaenergy.org/p/why-are-the-warnings-about-cook-inlet) from Erin McKittrick is a good overview.
In this episode of the Northern Journal podcast, we hear from one of the biggest players in the debate about what comes next. John Sims is the president of Enstar, which sells natural gas to households and commercial customers in Anchorage, the Kenai Peninsula and the Mat-Su. Enstar is privately owned, which means that some folks have been skeptical about its motives. Sims addresses those questions, plus many more, in this episode about the future of urban Alaska's energy economy.
If you like what you're hearing, the best thing you can do is to buy a paid subscription to Northern Journal (https://www.northernjournal.com/). I'm also looking for underwriters and advertisers for this show — you can reach me at nat[at]northernjournal[dot]com. Thanks for listening.
11 May 2024
Eklutna 2.0: A robust defense from the dam owners
Last month, we heard (https://open.spotify.com/episode/60tX2cubblcYhc3sXnc2Mt?si=Ks4zeF7xT_KezaHi-kVFzA) 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 spokespersons, Julie Hasquet from Chugach Electric Association and Julie Estey from Matanuska Electric Association, along with their consultant on the Eklutna project, Samantha Owen. They offer a robust defense of the utilities' study and planning process, and they share more details about why certain ideas for habitat improvements were chosen and others dismissed.
You'll get far more from this episode if you listen to the interview (https://open.spotify.com/episode/60tX2cubblcYhc3sXnc2Mt?si=Ks4zeF7xT_KezaHi-kVFzA) with Meiklejohn and Leggett first. Send your feedback and suggestions to nat [at] northernjournal [dot] com.
7 May 2024
How the state is letting oil platforms "rust away" into the ocean near Anchorage
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 produced with Alaska Public Media and APM Reports — but the powers that be signed off on a podcast episode that delves into the details. Curtis Gilbert, Nat's editor at APM Reports, guest hosts.
4 May 2024
The Bering Sea whale hunters and the East Coast filmmaker
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 rousing story, a celebration of Indigenous subsistence culture and a rural Alaska coming of age tale. It also raises some interesting questions about storytelling and narrative and ownership. Chelkowski speaks to that and a lot more in this interview.
You can watch One with the Whale for free on PBS (https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/documentaries/one-with-the-whale/), and this High Country News piece (https://www.hcn.org/issues/49-12/tribal-affairs-a-teenage-whaler-pride-of-his-alaska-village-is-haunted-by-trolls/) by Julia O'Malley also tells Apassingok's backstory.
Send your feedback, criticism and guest suggestions to nat[at]northernjournal.com. If you want to support this podcast, you can purchase a paid subscription to Northern Journal at this site (https://www.northernjournal.com/).
26 Apr 2024
What the heck is happening with the Eklutna River?
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 people who have been among the most involved are Aaron Leggett, head of Eklutna's tribal government, and Brad Meiklejohn, a longtime environmental advocate whose conservation group led a project to remove a derelict dam near the Eklutna River's mouth. They are featured on this episode; we hope to hear from the utilities that own the hydroelectric project in the coming days.
Feedback? Criticism? Ideas for a future episode? Email nat at northernjournal dot com.
26 Apr 2024
"I cannot introduce my son to salmon": A conversation with a Yukon River salmon advocate
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 environmental historian who discussed the same issues on a previous episode, also joins us — if you haven't listened to her interview, it provides context that would be useful before listening to this one.
We've invited representatives of the pollock trawl to appear on their own episode of the podcast, and hope that interview materializes soon. Questions, comments or feedback? Email nat [at] northernjournal dot com.
13 Apr 2024
The wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine. And?
Researchers Paul Denholm and Marty Schwarz just published a new study (https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2024-03/NREL%20Report%20Achieving%20an%2080%20Percent%20Renewable%20Portfolio%20in%20Alaska%27s%20Railbelt%20Cost%20Analysis.pdf) 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 periodically. They join the Northern Journal podcast for a discussion about their findings.
If you like this new show, please share it with others. You can subscribe to the Northern Journal newsletter here (https://www.northernjournal.com/).
13 Apr 2024
A trip down the Yukon River with historian Bathsheba Demuth
Bathsheba Demuth (https://www.brdemuth.com/) is an environmental historian. Her book Floating Coast (https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393635164) 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 (https://www.northernjournal.com/p/amid-salmon-crash-alaskas-yukon-river) about salmon declines and how fishing — and fishing restrictions — are managed by the U.S. and Canadian governments. She joins the Northern Journal podcast to talk about her research and her summer reporting from the river last year.
If you like this new show, please share it with others. You can subscribe to the Northern Journal newsletter here (https://www.northernjournal.com/).
Who has been a guest on Northern Journal
Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.
Hampton Sides
Norm Pillen
Erick Sabo
Rachel Sapin
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
10 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
8 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 46 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
63
Social presence
0
YouTube
0
Engagement
71
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