Podcasts about Kansas City, Missouri

A cornerback gets traded and the argument follows him from show to show. Time's Ours, in a 2023 camp episode, insists Trent McDuffie was already the Chiefs' best corner by the end of the previous season. Locked On Chiefs explains the trade as money, a $30 million-a-year demand the team would not meet, and by July one of its titles has the Chiefs facing McDuffie and Jaylen Watson as Rams. That is the shape of Kansas City listening: the Chiefs shows outnumber everything else, they cover the same transactions, and what separates them is the angle. The Royals shows are fewer and carry a civic argument the football shows lack, because the stadium deal is a fight at city hall. Under both is a quieter layer of public radio, labor radio, arts interviews, local history and true crime.

What Kansas City is

Kansas City, Missouri, sits on the Missouri River at the Kansas state line, the larger half of a metro that spills west into Kansas suburbs such as Overland Park. It is known for barbecue, for a jazz history centered on 18th and Vine, for its fountains, and for two big-league teams, the Chiefs at Arrowhead and the Royals at Kauffman Stadium. Independence, home of the Truman Library, is next door.

The Chiefs, measured and argued

The technical end of the football talk is about measurements. Red Gold & Bold, Soren Petro's panel, spends "Short Arms and Bad Grades!" on Reuben Bain's "first percentile short" arms and what they should mean at pick No. 9, and its argument on the clip is that Bain would have to be an outlier to succeed in the NFL. KC Sports Network's draft episodes work the same prospect from the other side, one voice calling Bain his slam-dunk favorite for the Chiefs and another clip weighing how a fatal 2024 crash might move a projected top-10 pick. Locked On Chiefs stays on contracts and depth: the McDuffie money, whether to take Sonny Styles as the best athlete in the draft regardless of need, and a defensive-tackle group its hosts describe as Chris Jones with very little behind him.

Arrowhead Addict has clips from a live Super Bowl LVII episode, where Dan Marino explains why Mahomes' pocket escapes and off-platform throws make him so hard to stop. It's Always Sunny in Chiefs Kingdom, the fan show with Austin and Taylor, keeps its own numbers, Mahomes leading the league in 30-plus-yard completions with Tyquan Thornton driving it. Players Only with Danan Hughes gets closest to the team: Hughes, a Chiefs seventh-round pick in 1993 named the new analyst beside Mitch Holthus in the booth, asks Andy Reid why he holds individual exit meetings, and Reid says he wants to look each player in the eye and give him some guidance.

The Royals and the ballpark

Royals Rundown is where the stadium fight lives. Its clips set out the proposed deal in figures, a $1 annual lease and 5% of certain non-baseball profits, and give Councilman Duncan's objection that the city approved $600 million without a financial analysis; "Polarizing Royals Stadium Vote Overshadows On-Field Hot Stretch" is a title from the same stretch. Then it goes straight back to pitching, with a clip on Noah Cameron and the case that what makes him repeatable is going to the slider or change-up on a night the cutter is missing. Up To Date supplies the other side of the table: John Sherman describing work toward "the next generational home for the Royals" on an Opening Day at Kauffman Stadium with no ballpark plan, and a title in which Mayor Quinton Lucas calls the deal positive economically while economists disagree.

KCSN's Royals episodes stay on the field, with general manager J.J. Picollo defending a young player's rough year as one that came on the biggest stage, for someone who had never struggled before and might otherwise have been minor-league player of the year. The Home Stand, hosted by Keri Lippert-Gillespie, is from 2023 and is guest conversation rather than analysis: Jeremy Guthrie on mowing the lawn, eating Chipotle and cutting his hair before a Game 7 start.

The city between game days

The food talk is on Up To Date, from KCUR, which ranges widest of anything here. Its restaurant episode has Deborah Jones tending barbecue coals before dawn for the 11 o'clock rush, Selena Teo recalling a woman who called the man beside her chef while ignoring the coat with Teo's name on it, and a pitch for Seven Swans Creperie on the Westside, its smoked-salmon crepe described as a bagel sandwich in crepe form. Titles run through North Kansas City's growth plan, Port KC and the Country Club Plaza, and USDA cuts to urban farmers.

Banking on KC interviews the people running institutions: Kathy Nelson of the Kansas City Sports Commission puts World Cup visitors at 650,000, half international, and tells residents not to spend that month at the lake house; Bill Dietrich of the Downtown Council puts downtown's residents at 6,000 grown to 34,000. Heartland Labor Forum is openly on the workers' side. Its transit episode has Tom Gepkin of CWA Local 6360 interviewing Nick Miller, president of ATU Local 1287, about roughly 520 members who drive and maintain the buses and a funding gap Miller puts at about $60 million against a $100 million annual cost. Titles cover Missouri ballot amendments and Kevin King's route from union leader to mayor of Independence.

Poets, Truman and a stolen colon

Poetry gets read aloud on Artspeak Radio, community arts radio built on studio conversation: Linzi Garcia reads the title poem from her book Cravings, and Hugo Ximello-Salido describes a consulate mural of mirrors, eyes and Talavera colors linking 68 Mexican cultures. Homegrown KC does history in series; the third Truman part has the senator touring military bases in 1940 and 1941 and proposing the committee that would investigate defense spending, with the host's own verdict that helping the Tuskegee Airmen get going was his biggest impact as a senator. That's KC!, with Hilari Holt and Hillary Batliner, is true crime and paranormal from 2018 and 2019, and its cases are local ones: a ten-foot inflatable colon worth $4,000 vanishing from a cancer-awareness event in "67. #StolenColon", and a locked Yeater Hall room found open with its duct-taped light switch pried apart in "62. Ghost Bro".

Friday nights

High school football has its own show. PrepsKC's Football Friday Night episodes carry the specifics: Liberty, with eight turnovers all season, committing five in one half at Blue Springs South; Todd Miller on Lee's Summit starting 0-4, losing key players and winning six straight; Jed Paulson on Blue Springs finding its run game. The McCarthy Elite Team episodes single out a returner from Basehor-Linwood, a punter from St. Michael's and a kicker from BVNW.

Where to start

• For the Chiefs by the numbers: Locked On Chiefs on contracts and depth, then Red Gold & Bold for the panel arguing over a draft pick's arm length.
• For the Royals with the stadium fight attached: Royals Rundown, then Up To Date for the mayor and the ballpark question.
• For the city itself: Up To Date's restaurant episode, Banking on KC on downtown and the World Cup, Heartland Labor Forum on the bus drivers.
• For something stranger: That's KC! for the stolen colon, Artspeak Radio for a poet reading her own work.

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