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Points North is an award-winning podcast about the land, water, and inhabitants of the Great Lakes.

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.

Listen and Subscribe:
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

Recent Episodes
  • The “Mitchell Map,” circa 1757. This map features inaccuracies that likely contributed to the Toledo War, the 1800s border conflict between the State of Ohio and the Michigan Territory. (Library of Congress image via Wikimedia Commons)
    Pushing the Boundary
    Ryan Schnurr
    In the early 1800s, a group of politicians decided part of the Ohio border should move farther north. It started a decades-long border fight between Michigan and Ohio. There were winners. There were losers. And in the end, it shaped the states as we know them.
  • Kankakee Mallow flowers, one of the rarest plants on the continent, blooming on Langham Island in Illinois, just an hour south of Chicago. (credit: Claire Keenan-Kurgan / Points North)
    The Pink Prairie Mascot
    Claire Keenan-Kurgan
    In 2014, a group of botanists discovered that a very rare plant native to the Kankakee River in Illinois, had vanished from its only known native habitat in the world. That set off a quest to bring back the missing Midwestern flower.
  • A Petri dish with Physarum polycephalum, or slime mold. Computer science researcher Jasmine Lu used the slime mold as a “living wire” in a smartwatch at the University of Chicago. (credit: Jasmine Lu)
    My Little Slime
    Ellie Katz
    What would happen if our devices were alive? Would it change the way we treat them? One researcher in Chicago wanted to find out. So she made a smartwatch that has to be fed and watered to work.
  • Lake Champlain sits nestled between Vermont, New York, and Quebec. For 18 days in 1998, it was designated as a Great Lake along with Lake Huron, Lake Ontario, Lake Michigan, Lake Erie, and Lake Superior. (credit: Wikimedia / NARA)
    A Good, Not Great Lake
    Ruth Abramovitz
    Lake Champlain is more than 16 times smaller than Lake Ontario, the smallest Great Lake. But in 1998, Congress designated Lake Champlain as the sixth Great Lake, teeing off a historical and cultural fight over which lakes can really call themselves Great.