Podcasts about Kansas, United States

Spring in the Kansas clips on this page is transfer-portal season. On Locked On Jayhawks, a Robert Morris big is weighed by win shares and PER. On the Powercat Podcast, a K-State voice named Cole says 95% of the team will be gone next year. College sports is the largest share of what plays here, argued in percentiles on one side and in blunt judgment on the other. Around it sit shows with no scoreboard: a school boards' association following special-education money through the Legislature, a farm program whose titles set cattle prices beside pokeweed, and Lawrence's city boards in session, where an aviation board works out what a place on a waitlist should cost.

What Kansas is

Kansas is a Great Plains state in the middle of the United States, between Missouri and Colorado. Topeka is the capital and Wichita the largest city, and wheat and cattle anchor the farm economy. The University of Kansas is in Lawrence and Kansas State University is in Manhattan. Both compete in the Big 12.

Jayhawks, Wildcats and the portal

Locked On Jayhawks, hosted by Derek Johnson, sounds like a fan working through a spreadsheet out loud (KenPom, quadrant wins, seed lines, percentiles), brisk, dry and skeptical. Its April titles keep circling the transfer portal: visits and targets such as Vyctorius Miller, Alex Wilkins and Leroy Blyden Jr., and how Bill Self fills out a team around Keanu Dawes and Taylen Kinney. In the clips, DeSean Goode, the Robert Morris big the show weighs as a target, was in the 99th percentile in win shares, PER and wins above replacement player. In another, Self said he had not decided whether he would coach next season and would talk it over with his family. The show ranges past Kansas too. One clip replays Kentucky's overtime escape against Santa Clara, where a late Santa Clara three was answered by Otega Oweh from more than 40 feet, and the speaker owns up to being a WCC and Gonzaga fan.

Kansas State gets a looser room on the Powercat Podcast: casual, already mid-conversation, willing to leave its uncertainty showing before it lands a firm take. Under one name it carries The K-State Pregame Show with Tim Fitzgerald, postgame podcasts and The K-State Insiders LIVE!. On the Insiders, Cole argues that K-State repeated its mistake of chasing score-first guards after Marquise Noel. He names Taj Manning as the one likely carryover and holds up Iowa State, a possible one or two seed built through the high school ranks and development. Where the Jayhawks show shops the portal, this is a case for the slower route. Other clips recount a 58-51 win over Texas Tech closed on a 21-0 run after trailing by 14, and insist that nobody on the team has anything given to them, Avery Johnson included. The September titles are football: wins of 34-7 over Washington State and 31-20 over Tulane, and "Assessing Avery and the Cats after two games | Powercat Podcast".

Pete Mundo's Heartland College Sports: The Big 12 Sports Podcast pulls back to the whole conference, and its clips are not about Kansas at all. In an interview, Tim Brando names Houston as the league's next possible breakout because Lubbock cannot match its market size. He calls balance the Big 12's greatest strength, and he argues that Texas Tech against Houston on a Friday night could draw several times what it would in a crowded Saturday window. Mundo argues for replacing eligibility waivers with a five-seasons-in-five-years rule. The titles stay on conference business: UConn and expansion, playoff odds, the spring transfer portal.

Special education at the Statehouse

Money for special education is the running figure in The Advocate - A KASB Podcast, the Kansas Association of School Boards' show on K-12 policy at the Legislature. At the close of the 2025 session it put the special-education shortfall at $440 million, against $10 million added in that year's budget. Another clip from the same spring sorts out what survived. Money for career technical education and student transportation was cut for a time and then went back into the budget, while Safe and Secure Schools took cuts. The attorney general's office got a $10 million state general fund appropriation for gun detection software, and a speaker tells Leah that school districts had not been advocating for it. A March 2026 clip explains that districts lost as much as 20% of at-risk funding when families stopped reporting free-meal eligibility. The 2026 titles stay on the same ground: special education, mandates and funding gaps, vouchers, the sprint to turnaround. One asks simply, "Who Decides?"

Cattle prices and pokeweed

Agriculture Today works in pairs. Its titles set a market item, such as cattle and cutout prices, grain markets reacting to reports or a calm cattle market, beside something else entirely: pokeweed, goat and sheep breeding, hantavirus, whether humans can get New World screwworm, brown recluse spiders, heat on livestock and people. The clips are practical. David Shim, talking through Farm Service Agency programs, explains that the beginning-farmer loan depends on years of active farming, not age. A producer in their mid-40s who had come back to an operation only two or three years earlier could still qualify, given at least three years of management experience. He also flags the agency's 50-50 loans, which producers sometimes forget, for anyone expanding or starting an operation. Chip Redmond reports more than 10 inches of rain in northeast Kansas within two days. And K-State's meat evaluation team is described getting one hour to build a skit about the meat industry in 2028, gene editing and vertical integration.

Lawrence, in session

The plainest thing on this page is civic process. City Of Lawrence, KS carries recordings of the city's boards and commissions: the City Commission, the Historic Resources Commission, the Parks & Recreation Advisory Board, the Building Code Board of Appeals, and the MPO's policy board and technical committee. KU's town shows up here at the scale of taxiways and freight routes. At an Aviation Advisory Board meeting, John demonstrates a Laserfiche waitlist that tracks applications, queue changes, offers and repeated declines. One speaker reasons that $25 per list, electric and non-electric, is a reasonable price to guarantee a place. Caleb outlines doing Taxiway Alpha lighting and a runway rehabilitation at the same time while keeping Lawrence Regional Airport operating. At the MPO Technical Advisory Committee, a speaker explains how freight-corridor designations can improve connectivity, safety and access to federal funding.

Where to start

• College basketball argued in numbers: Locked On Jayhawks, starting with the DeSean Goode clip.
• Kansas State in a looser room: Powercat Podcast, and Cole's case about how the team was built.
• How Statehouse budgets reach school districts: The Advocate - A KASB Podcast and its special-education clips.
• Farm markets and field problems: Agriculture Today, starting with the beginning-farmer loan clip.

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