Preview
The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, and that has big consequences for all of us. But satellite images of melting sea ice don't begin to tell the whole story. Four million people live in the Arctic, and they’ve been dealing with the effects of climate change for decades. We wanted to hear from them in this pivotal moment—when the ground is literally shifting beneath their feet.
For Threshold Season 2, we went on a circumpolar journey to find out what the Arctic is, how it is changing, and why that matters.
We traveled on four-wheelers and fishing boats, bush planes, and dog sleds. We camped out on the Greenland ice sheet with a team of scientists and hung out with Inuit rock stars in Canada. We visited all eight Arctic countries, and we discovered countless stories unfolding in the far north. Climate change is just the tip of the iceberg.
Major sponsorship for Season 2 of Threshold was provided by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
Episodes
Episode 1
The Water is Wide
In Shishmaref, Alaska, no one’s asking if climate change is real. What they want to know is how bad it has to get before the world decides to act.
Episode 2
Invisible Hands
When a major storm hit Shishmaref, Alaska in 2005, the town became a poster child for climate change in the Arctic. Dramatic pictures of houses falling into the sea showed up in news outlets around the world. But the story here starts way before that storm.
Episode 3
Impermafrost
All across the Arctic, frozen soil is thawing out. A lot of stuff is buried there—plants and animals that lived more than 10,000 years ago. What happens when a Paleolithic bison bone starts to decompose for the first time? And what does that have to do with climate change?
Episode 4
Becoming Arctic, Becoming Human
An eight-ton concrete ball and a 32,000-year-old needle collection. What's all this got to do with the climate change in Arctic? Find out on this episode of Threshold.
Episode 5
Just Decide
Everyone's heard of Vikings—their daring North Atlantic voyages, their mysterious runes. But there's another ancient culture in Arctic Scandinavia that's much older, and just as fascinating—the Sámi. While the Vikings have been celebrated, Sámi music, language, and traditions were forced underground. Why?
Episode 6
The Things I Can See On The Mountains
After thousands of years of tradition, a shifting climate is forcing changes in the way Sámi families herd reindeer. But some climate solutions are also threatening their way of life. This is the story of the Aleksandersens, a Sámi reindeer herding family in northern Norway.
Episode 7
Hello, Central!
If there's one thing everybody's heard about the Arctic, it's that sea ice is melting, and that's bad news. But what's less well-known is that some people see opportunity in sea ice loss. This time, take a seat in the captain's chair of a Finnish icebreaker, sing along with a very musical Alaskan mayor, and find out what it means when the world gets a whole new ocean.
Episode 8
Oil and Water
What happens when the thing you can’t live without in the short term is the same thing that threatens your very existence in the long term? That’s our question for this episode, viewed through the eyes of two whalers from Utqiagvik, Alaska.
Episode 9
Who Asked You?
Russia has more land in the Arctic than any other nation. It's also a regime that does not tolerate dissent. What does this mean for residents of Murmansk, the Arctic's largest city?
Episode 10
Nickel For Your Thoughts
Half of the Arctic is in Russia, and half of Russia is in the Arctic. Oil, minerals, pollution—it's a web of complicated environmental stories that need to be told. But in Russia, investigative journalists have become an endangered species. Spend some time around a nickel smelter and meet a veteran journalist fighting to do his job.
Episode 11
Life Is Too Hard Without Music
All across the Arctic, indigenous languages are on the decline. But in many communities, people are finding new ways to reclaim both language and culture. Join some Inuit rockers in northern Canada in the recording studio, singing in their own language and making their first new studio album in more than 30 years.
Episode 12
Here Be Dragons
The Greenland ice sheet is basically a giant ice cube the size of Alaska. What happens when it melts? We spent five days camping out on the ice with a team of scientists who are trying to find out.
Episode 13
Try Harder
Eighteen months of reporting. All eight Arctic countries. So many fascinating people. On the final episode of Season 2 of Threshold, we pull back a little and try to see the big picture. Join us as we bust some myths, travel back in time in a Swedish forest, and search for road maps into the future.
Extras
Extra
Scenes from Svalbard
Take a trip through the Norwegian archipelago, meet workers in Norway’s tourism industry, and get a glimpse of some of the Arctic’s charismatic megafauna.
Extra
Blowing in the Wind: Aleksandersens Update
We're following up on the story of a Sámi reindeer herding family in northern Norway—Risten and Reiulf Aleksandersen and their kids. As we learned in episode six, climate change is disrupting this family’s herding traditions. But over the last year, they’ve also been heavily impacted by a new wind farm that's going in on their grazing grounds. Amy Martin visited them in January to get an update.
Extra
What Have You Done for Me Lately?
What do "Ice Ice Baby" by Vanilla Ice and "What Have You Done for Me Lately" by Janet Jackson have to do with the Arctic and climate change?
Find out in this Season 2 special, which will take you on a journey into a permafrost tunnel near Fairbanks, Alaska. This tunnel is sort of a Paleo-museum, a network of human-made caves full of mammoth tusks, bison horns, and clumps of 20,000-year-old grass. All of which is frozen—for now.
Extra
Ada Blackjack
To get us through this trying time, we’re inviting you around a virtual bonfire to share an Arctic story from our vault.
In the 1920s, Ada Blackjack, an Iñupiaq woman from Nome, Alaska, was recruited to tag along on an expedition to a remote chunk of land north of Siberia called Wrangel Island. Along with four men, seven sled dogs, and a cat, she set off in September of 1921. The trip was anticipated to last a year. But just about nothing on that trip went according to plan.
In this Threshold Extra, we follow Ada’s journey, a tale that could have lots to teach us about our own time of isolation.
Extra
Cry, O Sphere
The Greenland ice sheet is the second largest body of frozen water in the world, with the potential to raise sea levels by 23 feet if it melts.
In this Threshold Extra, we’re talking with leading climate scientists and glaciologists about the cryosphere—all the things that are frozen in the Earth’s system: permafrost, sea ice, land ice, and snow. We take a close look at how two of its key elements have fared in 2020: the Greenland ice sheet and Arctic sea ice. Each of these components of the cryosphere has large and immediate impacts on our climate. And their fate will affect everything from health care to migration, national security, and what life might look like in a rapidly changing world.
Threshold Newsletter
Our newsletter is a great way to learn about what we're working on here at Threshold. Stay connected to us between seasons and find out what we're reading, listening to, and watching that makes us think deeper about the world and our place in it.
