Podcasts about Indiana, United States

Basketball roster-building takes up more of the listening here than any single game does. Locked On Hoosiers spends a stretch of its run on the transfer portal, its titles a list of names on the way in, and in one clip Jacob Goins describes Indiana landing six basketball commitments in three days, some recruited over Zoom without a campus visit. CrimsonCast makes the skeptic's case about Kentucky, a $22 million roster that failed, in its telling, because the spending was not intelligent, and Locked On Pacers carries the same habit of mind into the NBA. Around that core sit the statehouse, farm news, county courthouses, local history and an arts desk in the northwest corner.

What Indiana is

Indiana is a Midwestern state between Illinois and Ohio, with Lake Michigan at its northwest corner and the Ohio River to the south. Indianapolis, the capital, holds the Colts, the Pacers and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway; Indiana University is in Bloomington, Purdue in West Lafayette. Most of the rest is corn and soybean country with a well-known attachment to basketball.

The Hoosiers, the portal and the bracket

The IU shows split by temperament. Locked On Hoosiers is the news wire: titles like "BOOM: Aiden Sherrell COMMITS to Indiana Basketball! Hoosiers CAN'T BE STOPPED in the PORTAL!", a clip on the NCAA's ghost-portal penalty of a half-season coaching suspension plus a fine equal to 20 percent of the sport's budget, and a Big Ten crossover with Zach Seco, host of Locked On Nittany Lions. CrimsonCast is the analytical room, comfortable in the weeds: two hosts working through an Elite Eight path, liking Purdue in the Sweet 16 but not past Arizona, Iowa beating Florida on a broken final possession, seven first-year coaches reaching the second round.

Indiana Sports Beat Radio with Jim Coyle covers the whole board, IU and Purdue through the Colts, Pacers and IHSAA, and reaches back: Keith Smart recalling Bob Knight giving him two minutes to save his scholarship in the 1987 title game, and the drilled instruction still in his ear, pass and move, never stand. Older IU conversations sit alongside: Throwing Chairs Podcast - The Hoosier Network, from IU Student Media, with Griffin Epstein comparing the Big Ten schedule release to Christmas morning in Bloomington, and Doyel and Derek Podcast, from the IndyStar, blunt and brisk, demanding a trade for Matthew Stafford in one clip and tracking the 2021 coaching search in "Doyel & Derek Podcast: IU hires Mike Woodson as new head coach."

The Pacers, the 500 and the sectional

Locked On Pacers, a solo show from Tony East, is the most sustained single-team analysis on the page: the Celtics last in assist percentage and fourth in offensive rating, set against a Pacers style of movement and passing that Rick Carlisle, in the clip's account, says the league is trying to copy; Pascal Siakam saying the team must carry the season's rage and disappointment into next year. Its titles go player by player and ask whether these Pacers are already more than Paul George's teams ever were. Crash Course is where the Indianapolis 500 lives: Josef Newgarden retaking the lead from Pato O'Ward on the final lap of the 108th running with an outside pass, a four-hour rain delay that became a van tailgate, a poncho trade and a 77-minute track-drying forecast, and, on the high-school side, a girls' basketball preview of Sectional 8 with four of the top five teams in 4A: Noblesville, Fishers, Hamilton Southeastern and Zionsville.

The statehouse and the county courthouse

Indiana Week in Review treats state politics as who pays and who benefits, on a panel that keeps insider language explained. Its clips have Greg Ballard running for secretary of state as an independent because, he says, both parties are broken, Beau Bayh filing as a Democrat in the same race, a panelist describing an internal war among Republicans, and Governor Mike Braun appointing Abby Gray to take on utility bills against a legislature the show calls tilted toward utilities. The Boss Hog of Liberty works several rungs down, with Jeremiah Morrell, Zach Burcham and Bones Harcourt on county council districts, commissioner platforms and sheriff candidates: Rush County sheriff hopefuls weighing whether a minor traffic stop justifies a pursuit into another jurisdiction, a commissioners' meeting that became a dispute over honeybees and a swimming pool, and Indiana DOT's I-70 plan, which by the show's account would charge passenger vehicles $15.60 and semis $84 between Richmond and Terre Haute.

The rest of the public-affairs listening belongs to particular places. Noon Edition is Bloomington and Monroe County: David Henry on tornado recovery taking months or years, and Vanessa Cruz Nichols setting 2,300 ICE agents against 600 local police officers in Minneapolis. Inside The Squad comes from the Lafayette Police Department's Community Outreach Unit, an institution talking about itself: the chief says it screens out more than 90 percent of applicants, and retiring detective Kurt Wolf recalls a juvenile victim who walked alone to the station and changed how he saw the work. A Vermillion Reasons In Indiana is Vermillion County by guided interview, from what the Clinton Public Library offers to the 3.1 million bricks under the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Farm country

The agriculture shows split into news and field. Hoosier Ag Today Podcast Network has date-stamped editions in its title run, Ryan Martin forecasting one to two inches of rain across 80 to 90 percent of the state, and an agbioscience clip in which Tayo Sanders of Arrowpoint Lab says farmers generate 500,000 data points a day and remain "starving for insight", with Eli Lilly and the GLP-1 shift framed as part of why the state is positioned to innovate. Pioneer Agronomy: Indiana is the field side: delayed corn emergence removing 5 to 20 percent of potential yield, southern rust crossing a field almost overnight, and Keith Schrader recalling the spring of 1965, when he chose a Farmall tractor over a new Mustang and started on rented ground.

Memory and the local desk

Talking Hoosier History, from the Indiana Historical Bureau, is the state's past by episode: Richard Lugar's mayoral years, with Nixon asking him in an elevator to represent the United States at a NATO conference in Brussels; Theodore Luesse putting a dilapidated house on the Statehouse lawn to get a family housed; Fred Rohrer, half of whose Berne home was destroyed by dynamite in September 1903. Indiana Podcasts - Leaders, Legends, and Nonprofits from the Hoosier State is nearer memory, a long lunch-table interview drawn from Chris Spangle's public affairs radio show: Diane Masariu on how the 1988 50-50 split turned the Indiana House into a system of co-chairs and proxies, and guests lamenting how much full-time Statehouse coverage has gone.

Southern Indiana Now and Art On The Air are local desks at opposite ends of the state. Southern Indiana Now is Seymour and Jackson County at radio speed: teams of ten pulling a 37,000-pound fire truck 50 feet, a Special Olympics volunteer on the joy of athletes competing wherever they place, 180RCO covering a Recovery Recognition Dinner ticket if ten dollars is what keeps someone away. Art On The Air is Northwest Indiana's arts desk, warm and interview-led: Rhonda Ashcraft, new director of the LaPorte County Civic Auditorium, on fees and on booking acts a younger crowd would come out for, and Steve Scott on the Dunes Arts Foundation's 75th summer theater season.

Where to start

• For the Hoosiers, Locked On Hoosiers for portal news and CrimsonCast for the tournament argument.
• For the Pacers, Locked On Pacers; for the 500 and the high-school bracket, Crash Course.
• For state politics, Indiana Week in Review, then The Boss Hog of Liberty at county level.
• For Indiana off the sports page, Talking Hoosier History and Southern Indiana Now.

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