Podcasts about Hawaii, United States

The figure that recurs across the Hawaii shows on this page is a dollar amount: a rental-car drop-off fee of about $60 a day that can reach $100, a four-hour private charter at $1,200 to $1,800, an accepted offer that ends up $10,000 dearer because rates moved before the buyer locked, average consumer debt of $138,274 attributed to Experian. Much of what plays here is working out what the islands cost, for someone coming for a week or someone trying to stay.

The counterweight is language: two shows work partly or wholly outside English, and the feed will play a stretch of Hawaiian with no translation. Around those poles sit a ghost-story audio drama, a cold-case true-crime show, Rainbow Warriors football and a campus podcast from Laie. Local news is the smallest beat.

What Hawaii is

Hawaii is the only US state made entirely of islands, a volcanic chain in the central Pacific roughly 2,400 miles from the mainland. Most residents live on Oahu, where Honolulu is the capital; Maui, Kauai and Hawaii Island are the other main destinations. Tourism dominates the economy, living costs are among the highest in the country, and the islands were an independent kingdom until the 1890s.

Visiting: the itinerary and the fees

The two travel shows split the job. Hawaii’s Best Travel, with Bryan Murphy, is the planner: its clips set out a seven-day Kauai itinerary balancing adventure, relaxation and safety, the mistakes first-time Oahu visitors make, and a list of facts about Hawaii most visitors never hear. The titles have the same shape, from "When Is the Cheapest Time to Visit Hawaii?" to "Niʻihau Hawaii: Why You Can’t Visit the Forbidden Island".

Hawaii Vacation Connection is the accountant. Bruce Fisher, also known as Aloha Bruce, spends his clips on what the brochure leaves out: rental-car drop-off fees, restaurants that now add tips and service fees to the bill, a family that canceled its trip once food costs would not fit the budget. The Big Island clip is the exception, a volcano aside in which Mauna Loa has erupted 33 times since 1843 and once stopped four miles from Hilo. Titles around it cover weather, marijuana rules for visitors and "You Get Da Time? I Get Hawaiian Time."

Staying: condos, rate locks and debt

For people who already live here, the money talk turns to condos. Hawaii. Real Estate. with CORE TEAM HAWAII treats the market as a live problem rather than a seminar, and in the clip from "Episode 31 | The State of the Islands: Hawaii Real Estate Live Q&A" Derek argues with his own data: condo days-on-market have risen since January 2024 even though the insurance crisis peaked around then and HOA fees have since stabilized, and his hypothesis is that owners hit by fee increases could not simply sell and move, so those listings are only arriving now. Other clips have Jodi Tonga on second-home rules that can stop an owner buying again on the same island, and the $10,000 an accepted offer can cost when rates move before the lock. The titles are relocation and condo trouble: "Episode 44 | Hawaii Condo Alert: New Financing Changes & Exploding HOA Fees", "Episode 47 | From California To Hawaii (Retiring on Oahu)". The Bankruptcy Law Podcast with Blake Goodman, source of that $138,274 figure, is the far end of the same subject: debt settlement to avoid bankruptcy, what the IRS can seize over back taxes, Chapter 13 as a legal exit rather than a failure.

In Hawaiian, and about the kingdom

The feed changes language for Ka Alala. Its clips hold that returning to Hawaiian means listening to elders, practicing speech and bringing the language back into family life; that hoʻoponopono works by bringing hidden family problems into the open; and that a childhood memory of a pool can tie a grandparent, a grandchild and the language together. By its own description some episodes stay almost entirely in Hawaiian while others use English to frame a subject before returning to it; the titles reach from "PAANI MINECRAFT" to "DR. Keao NeSmith & HAWAIIAN LANGUAGE".

Hula and Talk, from Kauanoeanuhea, works in English and Japanese and pairs the same moʻolelo in both. Its clips come from "Kalākaua王の一生", on King Kalākaua: the treaty that handed Pearl Harbor to the United States, the split between those drawn to an American alliance and those unwilling to surrender Hawaii's autonomy, the pressure that wore on the king's health, his trip to San Francisco, his meeting with Thomas Edison and electricity at Iolani Palace, and his death in January 1891 from Bright's disease.

Ghost stories and cold cases

Paranormal Investigations Hawaii is fiction, by its own description a horror-comedy audio drama that reworks the urban legends and ghost stories local residents grew up with, credited to Harry Wong, P.I. Every clip here is from "Episode 1 - The Demon of 8th Avenue": Harry arriving at a run-down house around midnight, a sulfur smell from the kitchen, a decaying kasha demon feeding on a dead dog, and the demon finished off with soy paste as it goes for his face. The titles name the legends it works through: "Episode 10 - The Night Marchers - Part 2", "Episode 8 - The Phantom of the Iao Theater", "Short Scares No. 3 - A Halloween Nightmare in Waikiki".

Vice Cubez...A True Crime Podcast, with Raven Ico, is the non-fiction counterpart, and its cold-case clip is a catalogue of investigative failure: a forensic pathologist from the University of Hawaii offers to examine a victim's skull and jawbone and cannot, because HPD says the medical examiner has them and the medical examiner says they went back into the casket, while a driver's license listed as missing turns up once someone retraces the victim's last evening, down to a grocery stop for poke. Other clips take on Frank Jonto's 1997 confession, which turns on pepper spray, a dumpster and a body never found, and the scene where Dana Ireland was found near a fishing trail.

The 'Bows, the campus and the statehouse

Hawaii Football Final follows the University of Hawaii Rainbow Warriors; its titles run from "'Bows bust in Las Vegas, drop pivotal rivalry game to UNLV" to a Hawaii Bowl win over California with co-captain Zhen Sotelo in studio. The clips are less about games than about what the sport has become: college football as a business in which players are employees and a head coach cannot make a final decision without asking the athletic director how much money is left, and Timmy Chang, in his first head-coaching job, learning it alongside his players. Another clip has Konsei Matsuzawa learning to kick from YouTube and becoming Hawaii's first consensus All-American; Sotelo's has him calling the program a brotherhood built on synergy, love and sacrifice rather than money.

Ke Alaka'i: The Podcast comes from the Laie and BYU–Hawaii communities, and its strongest clips are Stacy Taniguchi's: a thought experiment about a ladder across a 30-foot crevasse above a 3,000-foot drop, and whether you would cross it to save a child, as a way of locating a core value; and his memory of dislocating a knee in Everest's Khumbu Icefall and watching Sherpas come back through the danger for him.

Local news belongs to KHON 2GO Hawaii News, whose clip pairs Waianae residents meeting Congresswoman Jill Tokuda over the federal farm bill with the end of the state session: a multi-billion-dollar budget headed to the governor, critics saying it cuts millions from the Department of Education and the University of Hawaii, supporters pointing to $15 million for Ohana Zones and $5 million for permanent supportive housing.

Where to start

• Pricing a trip: Hawaii Vacation Connection's hidden-costs clip, then Hawaii’s Best Travel for the day-by-day Kauai plan.
• Buying or moving: the live Q&A clip from Hawaii. Real Estate. with CORE TEAM HAWAII.
• Language and history: Ka Alala for Hawaiian itself, Hula and Talk for Kalākaua.
• After dark: "Episode 1 - The Demon of 8th Avenue" from Paranormal Investigations Hawaii, or the cold case on Vice Cubez.

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