Podcasts about Connecticut, United States

The shot gets replayed from more than one seat on this page. On Tri-State College Basketball Podcast it is argued over: Dan Hurley was right to leave Alex Karaban on the floor through a cold stretch against Duke, because a captain who is making passes, feeding the post and playing defense is doing the things that win. Then Braylon Mullins hits the three that sends UConn to the Final Four, and CBS Sports announcer Ian Eagle explains how the ball struck the broadcast camera and shifted the frame. On Locked On UConn - Daily Podcast on University of Connecticut Huskies Football and Basketball the same run arrives as press-conference audio: a UConn shooter crediting Tarris Reed's screens for open looks, then Hurley at the podium calling Karaban a calming influence, something like an associate head coach embedded in the program.

That is the loudest thing on the page. What separates the Connecticut shows is how far down the sports shows reach, into CIAC football brackets and softball dugouts, and how much of the rest is people explaining the state with numbers: months of housing inventory, inches of snow by town, what a small business pays for health coverage.

What Connecticut is

Connecticut is a small New England state on Long Island Sound, between New York and Massachusetts, with Hartford as its capital, Yale in New Haven, the University of Connecticut in Storrs and ESPN's campus in Bristol. It is among the smallest states by area and one of the most densely settled, and much of the listening below is sorted by town name.

Fields and brackets

The Meat Grinder follows Connecticut high school football through the CIAC playoffs, its titles running from 28 teams playoff bound to a championship recap. Its clips are season-sized facts: NFA scoring twice in 10.5 seconds, Killingly's Hayden Allard tying Connecticut records with five interception-return touchdowns by midseason, Jaden Booth saying the Hartford co-op got past a rough start. The midseason episode turns into a two-person snake draft of the state's players, with Sean taking Windsor quarterback AJ Robinson first overall on 1,600 yards and 18 touchdowns.

THE INSIDE CORNER: The CT Softball Blog Podcast does the same for softball, in a register that by its own audio never stops moving and sounds like someone thinking out loud. Kingswood Oxford's Alexis Nicerios talks through choosing a private school to challenge herself and committing to Oklahoma State on the spot; coach and podcaster Chris Carrara remembers a team coming back from seven runs down with two outs in the final inning, and how ulcerative colitis moved him from baseball to softball coaching. The titles reach Coventry's Liz Mitchell, a Bristol Little League team and Masuk's Julia Bacoulis transferring to Kentucky.

The state in numbers

CT Real Estate Radio sounds, on its own audio, like business talk radio run through a real-estate trading desk, moving from the Fed and bond yields to what a Connecticut buyer or seller should do. Its numbers are stark: about 1.5 months of inventory against just under four nationally; pending single-family sales in March just over 1,900 where March 2019 had almost 2,650; new listings at 2,300 where 2019 had 5,100. That is why the show argues sellers have not had this much leverage in fifteen years, and why it decides the cheapest window of 2026 was February, not spring.

CBIA BizCast is the employers' side: Grace Brangwen says small businesses are dropping health coverage because premiums are "entirely too unaffordable", and the title run tracks the legislative session, tariffs and an energy bill. Scaling Your Business and Wealth, from Eric Tashlein, is owner stories and retirement planning: Autac Inc. CEO Marie-Louise Burkle working out that a demanding client cost a hundred thousand dollars a year to earn fifty, flying to Ohio to show them the numbers, then calling her competitor to say they were all his.

Brad Field Weather counts in inches. In February, with models "bombing" a storm to near-hurricane pressure, Brad Field predicts 12 to 18 inches for the state, allows that localized bands could put down two feet somewhere, declines to promise that to everybody in Connecticut, and calls the gap between bands "the screw zone". Another clip has the HRRR model at 19.6 inches in Waterbury by 7 a.m. Monday; a March episode is about why one degree decides between rain, ice and power outages. The titles from late January to early March are one storm after another.

The state's past, on record

Grating the Nutmeg builds Connecticut history from particular people and places. In "Sports Heaven: The Birth of ESPN in Bristol, Connecticut", Bill Rasmussen finances a 24-hour sports channel with credit cards, family loans and Getty Oil, when the alternative was two minutes of sports on the 6 o'clock news, and moves from a Plainville office to Bristol because a United Cable head end needed a satellite dish site. The title run takes in sculptor Evelyn Beatrice Longman, Abby and Julia Smith and their cows, Alfred Marder and Catherine Roraback in McCarthy-era New Haven and temperance in nineteenth-century Black Connecticut; Elena Rosario, on Hartford and Puerto Rico, insists Puerto Rican history is part of American history, not separate from it.

Connecticut Music Oral History Podcast, from Brendan Toller at WPKN, is slower and closer, a kitchen-table conversation where venues, radio stations and teachers pile up as evidence. Christine Ohlman explains how a 1991 wedding gig became her invitation to the Saturday Night Live band, how the Scratch Band played 28 or 29 days a month with a 300-song repertoire in Connecticut teen clubs, and how a New Yorker article about firefighting in Louisiana became a song called "Burning Sugar". The titles show sessions at Verso Studios at the Westport Library with Big Al Anderson, Rob Fraboni and Lys Guillorn, whose advice is to begin imperfectly and treat each record as preparation for the next.

Talk, news and the rest

WICC The Voice of Connecticut collects several programs under one feed, Melissa in the Morning and CT Today With Paul Pacelli among them; on the latter Chris Powell argues that Connecticut's education funding problems come down to local control, parenting and accountability rather than money. WPKN Local Daily News Podcast, which sits with the New Haven shows on PlayNext, covers Fairfield, Litchfield and New Haven counties plus Suffolk County on Long Island in source-first briefs; economist Jim Campbell of Greenwich tells it Congress has "gone to bed" while Trump shows "no checks on him".

Where We Live is public-radio conversation anchored in Connecticut and reaching out: Leila Philip on beavers as "nature's ecosystem engineers" and the tail slap she took for a gunshot, Celeste Ng on what removing books tells entire groups about whether they matter, and titles on immigration enforcement reaching schools and summer in Connecticut. Community Access, with Alison Demers, has Rebecca Jones on her 21 years in Hartford Stage's A Christmas Carol and a former Bristol police officer who opened a Sicilian-style coffee shop in Southington. People and Pets, with Renee DiNino of The River 105.9, has Bill DeMeo on why talking to a guide dog in harness can make a staircase or a street crossing unsafe. UConn 360: The UConn Podcast is about the university rather than its teams, with Dr. Jeffrey Hines describing its training as "bi-directional" and built around belonging, microaggressions and implicit bias. Faded Out, filed under True Crime, follows the 1988 Doreen Vincent case; a 2022 episode has Jessica and Joe on Mark Vincent found with a stolen firearm at Milford Christian Church, back in Connecticut from Vermont, and on a case resting on about a hundred pieces of circumstantial evidence.

Where to start

• For the tournament: Tri-State College Basketball Podcast for the Mullins shot and Ian Eagle's account of it; Locked On UConn for the press-conference audio.
• For the towns: The Meat Grinder's CIAC bracket, or THE INSIDE CORNER: The CT Softball Blog Podcast.
• For the state in numbers: CT Real Estate Radio's inventory math, then Brad Field Weather in a storm week.
• For the past: Grating the Nutmeg on ESPN in Bristol, then Christine Ohlman on Connecticut Music Oral History Podcast.

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