Podcasts about Alabama, United States

Most of what plays here is people arguing about the University of Alabama: two voices on Locked On Bama working up a grievance about how the national media treats the program, a Bama247 panel on Roll Pod sorting out what a viewing window at spring practice told them, Touchdown Alabama Radio talking over itself about Ryan Grubb's game plan against Georgia. Crimson Tide football and basketball are the state's biggest podcast subject by a wide margin, and the shows sound like fans with access more than broadcasters with a script.

The other large body of listening is graver: the statehouse, the jails and the prisons, heard through a news program made inside the Alabama Statehouse, a political talk show, a series on the prison crisis and a cold-case show run by an advocacy nonprofit. One name, Tony Mitchell, abused in the Walker County jail, comes up on two of them. Behind both sits a smaller shelf of history, from pioneer settlement stories to Federal Writers Project slave narratives read aloud.

What Alabama is

Alabama is a Deep South state with a short Gulf coastline, Montgomery as its capital, Birmingham as its largest metropolitan area, Huntsville's aerospace economy in the north and the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. Nationally it is known for two things that both run through this page: college football and the civil rights history of Montgomery, Selma and Birmingham.

The Crimson Tide from several directions

The Tide shows overlap in subject and differ in temperature. Locked On Bama - Daily Podcast On Alabama Crimson Tide Football & Basketball is the most fan-like, two complementary voices quick to take offense on the program's behalf; one clip counts 109 wins in four years, the best four-year stretch in program history, while complaining that Alabama cannot do anything right in some media eyes. Roll Pod: An Alabama sports show from Bama247 is closer to a beat room, a panel that answers fan debates with depth charts and recent games; its clips run from a March Madness bracket with Alabama a four seed against Hofstra to an A-Day scrimmage where receiver Noah Rogers was carted off in a full leg brace. Touchdown Alabama Radio is the loudest, a rapid-fire panel that assumes the listener already cares about the details; it calls the receiving corps the best in the SEC after Georgia and has former Alabama receiver Mike McCoy insisting that weight-room strength means little unless running backs apply it on the field.

Alabama Football Podcast is the game-by-game post-mortem: the playoff game against Oklahoma, with Zabien Brown's 50-yard interception return to tie it before halftime and Ty Simpson going 18-for-29 after three opening punts, then the Rose Bowl exit to Indiana, where Simpson's rib injury changed the tenor of the game. The Joe Gaither Show on BamaCentral is basketball in its clips, built around Labaron Philon's guard matchup with Darius Acuff Jr. and Nick Pringle's return to Coleman Coliseum.

Two shows widen the frame. Alabama Insider has the polish of local sports radio, and its Hey Coach clips are where the other programs get a hearing: Patrick Murphy on a softball team he calls the most athletic in thirty years, Kamari Lewis on rowing trying to hang with the big dogs before SECs and NCAAs, Rob Vaughn on Tyler Fay's no-hitter as a memory pro ball cannot give him. College Basketball Show With Jim Dunaway and Taylor Korn splits its attention between Auburn and Alabama, and its clips come from the Auburn side of a Final Four against Florida, with Dylan Cardwell praying daily for a championship for Bruce Pearl.

Sidelines and surf

1st & Sold takes a sideline microphone to high school football and lets a coach's answer wander: Russellville's Dustin Goodwin on a community that pours into its kids and on football as dealing with being uncomfortable, Grissom's Preston Judah explaining a scheme change and then insisting that "technique is so much more important than scheme". The Media Days titles (West Morgan, Florence, Phil Campbell, Wilson) show the circuit. Alabama Saltwater Fishing Report covers the Gulf Coast, Dauphin Island sheepshead and backwater stripers included, and is as interested in the eating as the catching: Ben Knight calls the pompano bite one of the best he has seen in a decade and gives his blackened pompano recipe, heavy seasoning, butter, foil, seven to eight minutes on the grill.

Statehouse, jail and prison

Capitol Journal is Alabama Public Television's program from a studio inside the Alabama Statehouse, hosted by Don Dailey, with episodes titled by date. Its clips are filed reports rather than opinion: Alex Angle from Washington on how Alabama's congressmen are navigating the government shutdown, Randy Scott at a Montgomery food bank where the CEO warns that hundreds of thousands in Central Alabama will go without food if SNAP benefits lapse. Alabama Politics This Week is the argument to that report: a back-and-forth over whether the straight-ticket voting option should be removed at all, a case that gambling is already everywhere in Alabama with almost no regulation or tax revenue, and Gina Barton saying 20 of 41 Walker County jail employees were involved in Tony Mitchell's abuse. The Dale Jackson Show is commentary with targets, Mo Brooks alleging that gambling interests used the name American Conservative Fund while concealing their campaign financing; The Real Truth with Tommy Spina, hosted by a Birmingham-based attorney, is the lawyerly one, with Lee Levine on why Branzburg v. Hayes still leaves reporters exposed to grand jury subpoenas and a multi-part series on the Alabama Medical Cannabis Program.

Alabama Prison Reform Proposal is the grimmest subject on the page, and its clips put numbers to it: $51 million spent defending officers from misconduct lawsuits while violence escalated, homicides in Alabama prisons tripling in five years to seven times the national average, a $1.25 billion choice between new buildings and overhauling policy. The heard passage lands on a paradox: officers are often a primary source of the contraband the department complains about, and the smuggled cell phones became activists' most powerful tool for exposing conditions. Unforgotten, from the Alabama Cold Case Advocacy nonprofit, approaches its cases differently, a measured conversation that starts loose and tightens into casework read from filings; its Tony Mitchell clips are the other half of the Walker County story, with officers allegedly saying he should have been killed for shooting at deputies. At the county level, Jefferson County Alabama: Podcast for the People has government explaining itself, from sewer bills that can take ten percent of a $15,000 income to road projects linking Morgan Road, Helena and Hoover.

The long memory

Alabama History Podcasts, from the Alabama Historical Association, runs to awards, annual meetings and heritage areas in its titles, and its clips carry the strongest history on the page: John Giggie calling Bloody Tuesday the largest invasion of a Black church during the civil rights movement, with more people jailed and injured that day than on Bloody Sunday eight months later, and Tina Jones arguing that understanding the Black Belt is essential to understanding the American experience. Alabama Grist Mill, dated 2019 and 2020, is settlement-era storytelling from the Alabama Pioneers website, with Reverend J.D. Anthony on a settlement that had no churches and rough log meeting houses. Slave Narratives Alabamas Folk History of Slavery reads the Federal Writers Project interviews in the transcribed dialect, each episode titled for its narrator: Mary Ella Grandberry on overseers whipping workers and confining them in a standing box for months, Joseph Holmes saying it took ten or twelve years to understand that emancipation had made him free.

Where to start

• The Crimson Tide argument: Locked On Bama for fan temperature, Touchdown Alabama Radio for panel volume, Roll Pod for depth charts.
• Alabama sports beyond football: Alabama Insider's Hey Coach clips and 1st & Sold's coach interviews.
• The state's public business: Capitol Journal's reports, then Alabama Politics This Week, then Alabama Prison Reform Proposal.
• The past: Alabama History Podcasts' Bloody Tuesday clip, then Slave Narratives Alabamas Folk History of Slavery.

The Alabama feed on this page plays clips from these shows.