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Points North
Listen every other Friday, wherever you find podcasts.

Points North is an award-winning podcast about the land, water, and inhabitants of the Great Lakes. Through narrative, sound-rich journalism that is deeply rooted in a sense of place, each episode entertains, informs, and surprises listeners everywhere.

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Latest Episodes
  • Peter Quakenbush’s dream is to create a conservation burial forest – a place that would both preserve the woods and give people the option to be buried in nature. But not everyone is on board with that idea.
  • Lake trout are on life support in Lake Michigan. Every year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spends tens of millions of dollars raising and stocking them. But what if there was another way: genetic engineering. Could it be used for conservation?
  • Two guys are hunting coyotes in Michigan. All of a sudden, they say they lure in the biggest coyote they’ve ever seen and kill it. But, it turns out, it’s not a coyote at all; it’s a federally endangered gray wolf about 300 miles from its normal habitat. So, how did the wolf get there? And did the hunters play any role in it?
  • There’s this biker in the Upper Peninsula. Seems like everybody knows him or knows of him. He competes in some of the most challenging mountain bike races, but he doesn’t even ride a mountain bike. He competes on a single-speed BMX bike. Why does he do it?
  • We think of the Great Lakes as shark-free, but as legend has it, a young boy named George Lawson was attacked by a shark while swimming in Lake Michigan near Chicago in 1955. Is this story true or just a bunch of bull shark?
  • Copper is a key metal for renewable energy, and experts say we’re going to need a lot more of it to transition to clean energy. Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is Copper Country. Some see copper mining as an economic boon for the region, but others worry it could come at the cost of some of the Great Lakes’ most pristine wild spaces.
  • It’s a dry spring – 1984 in Wisconsin – and all these suspicious fires are popping up. A conservation warden named Dave is pretty sure it’s arson, but he can’t catch a break. So, he and a pilot decide to get creative.
  • More than 120 years ago, a Native American village in northern Michigan was burned down at the behest of a white land speculator. Now, the descendants of that village want the federal government to know they’re still here.
  • Donna Martino stuck a photograph from the newspaper of a handsome kayaker on her fridge. A few months later, Donna matched with the guy on a dating website, and they decided to go out. This story is about what happens when two strangers take a chance on each other.
  • Iceland has figured out how to use almost 100% of every fish caught – not just the filet. By making things like durable leather, beauty products, and skin graft bandages, it’s increased the value of an Atlantic cod from about $15 to over $5,000. Can this approach help the struggling Great Lakes fishery?