Podcasts about Chicago, Illinois

Most of what plays on this page is somebody working through the Bears, and the argument moves with the calendar: draft boards and a worst-case mock at pick 25, then free agency and a stadium offer from Indiana, then Caleb Williams and whether a second-year quarterback who keeps winning close games late is a work in progress or already the point. The Blackhawks, Cubs, White Sox and Fire each have dedicated shows; the Bulls turn up only as a line in a title on the general sports shows. Away from the teams, Chicago History Podcast is where the city's suburbs, clubs and people get talked about.

What Chicago is

Chicago is the largest city in Illinois and the third-largest in the United States, on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan, known for its architecture and lakefront, its neighborhoods and suburbs, and for fielding major-league teams in football, basketball, hockey, soccer and, twice over, baseball.

The Bears: draft rooms, front office, quarterback

Bears On Tap, Locked On Bears and 2nd City Gridiron do the draft work. Bears On Tap's titles are draft boards built position by position, and its clips are prospect judgments: Caleb Downs as the safety who does everything well and could go top five, D'Angelo Ponds as the slot corner with a 43-inch vertical the panel keeps returning to, Zaki Wheatley as the one who runs through people near the line. Locked On Bears, from Lorin Cox, runs a worst-case mock that removes the preferred options one by one and still finds TJ Parker at 25, noting that last year's decision to stay at 10 and take Colston Loveland may hint at this year's. 2nd City Gridiron's draft coverage is interviews: its Making Monsters series on Tennessee's Jermond McCoy, a former three-star recruit once talked about as the first defensive player off the board, and Toledo safety Emmanuel McNeil-Warren.

Shaw Local's Bears Insider Podcast is the front-office show. One clip notes every departure from the secondary had been on a one-year deal, which Joe reads as the league not believing in that group, and argues Ryan Poles has drafted offense well and now has to nail a draft defensively. Its clips from the NFL's annual meeting are the stadium: Illinois has not acted while Indiana has made an offer, and George McCaskey told reporters he believes fans would get used to home games in Indiana. Bears Talk Underground's clips come from the 2025 free-agency wave, where Larry D credits Poles with turning the interior line into two All-Pros and two Pro Bowlers plus Drew Dalman after Williams was sacked 68 times. Dalman then runs through the other shows: 2nd City Gridiron has him retiring at 27, and Score Evenings weighs Garrett Bradbury as the replacement.

In season the shows turn on the quarterback. Hoge & Jahns, with Adam Hoge and Adam Jahns, longtime reporters by the show's own description, is the beat-writer version, quick exchanges sharpening into down-and-distance reasoning. Its clip on a miracle overtime win has the hosts reaching for 2001, the Shane Matthews Hail Mary to James Allen and the overtime pick-six; another has Williams throwing a hero-ball touchdown to DJ Moore that his own tight end called ill-advised. The Irish Bears Network is the fan-panel version: its Giants postgame walks through Williams turning a second-and-eight bootleg into the game-winning touchdown behind Colston Loveland and Cole Kmet, after 57 minutes that had people tearing their hair out, and Jeff's case in a first-month breakdown is that Williams's rare throws outweigh the sloppy footwork. The Charter and The Windy City Breeze fill out the season, one with a live interview with seventh-round pick Kyle Monangai, the other reacting to a Tyler Dunne article questioning Williams and Poles' process. Score Evenings, which sounds like live local sports radio thinking out loud and labels its titles by hour, sits over all of it; its clips are the Ravens backing out of a Maxx Crosby trade after a failed physical.

Hockey: grading a rebuild

CHGO Chicago Blackhawks Podcast, which sounds like two long-time friends in a Chicago sports bar, plays the exit interviews: the coach saying the group took more steps in the right direction than wrong and that failure is part of growth, a young defenseman on being chosen captain, and the argument that Anton Frondell might already be the team's second-best forward. Blackhawks Breakaway, from Chicago Sports Network with Pat Boyle and Charlie Roumeliotis, is the more measured of the two and works the coaching hire: Jeff Blashill's forecheck plan, Tony Granato on the meeting that won over the Red Wings, and the moment a reporter asked about timelines in a town that has not won lately and Blashill answered "is that my welcome to Chicago?" Locked On Blackhawks is the numbers show: a five-forward power play producing 18 shot attempts and 14 scoring chances in under six minutes, and Connor Bedard reaching 200 points in the same number of games as Patrick Kane.

Baseball: two teams, two moods

Bleacher Bunch Network's Cubs Pod numbers its episodes by game, often with the record in the title, as in "Cubs Pod Game 148 (82-66)", and recaps inning by inning with the venting and jokes left in; the game 19 clip sets the scene at Wrigley Field for a Friday 1:20 first pitch and follows Moises Ballesteros's third home run turning 1-0 into 4-0. Cubs On Tap is a room of fans interrupting themselves, and its clips are winter debates: Alex Bregman's full no-trade clause and $70 million deferred, Nico Horner as arguably their best player. Sox Machine, the podcast of the White Sox website of the same name with Josh Nelson, Jim Margalus and James Fegan, is where the mood turns: "New Faces, Same Results" is a title, and in the clips Fegan says the biggest risk is fans deciding the team is no longer worth watching, and that it lacks a dependable star whose bad months still produce value.

Soccer

Feed the Fire is one supporter talking through notes after the match, and its clips are player profiles more than match reports: Joel Waterman's route through Cavalry FC and CF Montreal to the Fire, cast as the retribution-style center back the team lacked in 2024, and Favian Renkel saying Greg Berhalter changed the Fire overnight with Jack Elliott, Zinkernagel and Bamba. One title is "Nick Gets Angry Recapping the Chicago Fire Loss to DC United".

The city without a scoreboard

Chicago History Podcast's clips are the most place-specific listening on the page. A sundown-towns episode with Ernest Crim III puts Kenilworth's founding ordinance, with its "sales to Caucasians only" clause, beside Oak Park, ten miles west and racially diverse today but still a sundown town in 1950 when Dr. Percy L. Julian tried to move there. A special episode with genealogist Nicka Sewell-Smith links a Women Who Built Chicago tour to overlooked South Side women like Margaret Burroughs and Vivian Harsh, and "Episode 822 - B'Ginnings: Where Schaumburg Rocked The Suburbs" follows Danny Serafin turning a strip-mall club into a stage for Chicago, The Police and Elvis Costello.

Where to start

• For the draft: Bears On Tap's Building the Board episodes, or Locked On Bears' worst-case mock.
• For a game with the nerves still in it: The Irish Bears Network's Giants postgame, or Bleacher Bunch Network for the Cubs inning by inning.
• For the business of the Bears and the stadium: Shaw Local's Bears Insider Podcast.
• For the city rather than its teams: Chicago History Podcast, starting with the sundown towns episode.

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