Podcasts about Kentucky, United States

The loudest thing on this page is the University of Kentucky basketball program being argued over by people who cannot leave it alone. Sources Say Podcast, Locked On Kentucky, the Kentucky Sports Radio Podcast Network and Bleed Blue Network are one conversation held in different rooms: what Mark Pope is doing with the roster, who is in the portal, why the Wildcats keep losing to Florida. Underneath is a quieter Kentucky: a politics roundtable that wanders into a shooting case, legislators at a town hall, state geologists counting arches, two men heckling an old camp-meeting account. Louisville has its own sports voices here, and none of them cheer for the Wildcats.

What Kentucky is

Kentucky is a state in the east-central United States, bounded on the north by the Ohio River, with Appalachian coal country in its east and the Bluegrass horse-farm region around Lexington at its center. Louisville is the largest city and Frankfort the capital. Beyond its borders it is known for bourbon, the Kentucky Derby, Mammoth Cave and Wildcats basketball, all of which turn up below.

Big Blue Nation, arguing with itself

Sources Say Podcast, from Kentucky Sports Radio, is the most immediate, a panel arguing once a game has cooled just enough to argue about. Brandon Garrison hits back-to-back threes against LSU and the panel exhales at not needing another eighteen-point comeback; after Pope beats Pitino the case is that this team can win on "17 offensive rebounds a game" even when the shooting is cold; after a loss to Georgia, Jack Pilgrim and Steve trace Kentucky's "worst six-year stretch" season by season back to Adolph Rupp.

Locked On Kentucky, with Lance Dawe, is the news wire: Pope in Philadelphia watching 19-year-old G League standout Dink Pate, read as a change in how Kentucky treats G League additions, and a post-Florida verdict that the squad is mentally weak, short on talent and undone by its coach's substitutions during a 13-0 run. The Kentucky Sports Radio Podcast Network sounds like two fans at a bar who happen to have sources, and its clips are the most reported, among them Malachi Moreno's mother admitting she reads every nasty remark on social media while her sons tell her not to answer. Football surfaces in the network's episode titles, which bill a Will Stein era, and in a spring-practice clip on Kenny Minchie's deep-ball touch.

Bleed Blue Network is where the anger sits closest to the surface: after the 84-77 loss to Florida one host asks whether people who spend money on merch and tickets are allowed to complain without handing in their fan card. Kentucky Crazies Podcast's clips date from December 2016 and the John Calipari era; Cats Talk Wednesday drifts furthest from campus, into NBA free agency and the draft. Behind the Blue treats the University of Kentucky as a working institution rather than a brand, and in "March 25, 2026 - UK President Eli Capilouto" the president says athletics must "think and act differently" now that college sports is a business.

Louisville's side of the state

The Louisville shows here are really Louisville's own listening. Cards Cast follows the Cardinals to Omaha, where the atmosphere is likened to "Omaha's Kentucky Derby", and back to football with Jeff Brom on Friday night crowds. What High School Did You Go To? is looser and more frustrated, its football clip less bothered by losing to Clemson than by the message afterward. Soccer City Podcast, from ESPN 680, is the one place on this page to hear a match rather than a discussion of one, play-by-play from Lynn Family Stadium as Louisville City go three up on Miami FC. Louisville Real Estate Show is the outlier, sounding like local radio as it works through listener questions about condo assessments and home inspections.

The statehouse and the kids' table

The titles on Kentucky Politics Weekly, "Cocaine and Vapes", "Trophy Catfish", "Rights for Rice", do not pretend to be a civics class. The clips are substantive underneath, state systems still running 1970s software that auditors reportedly broke into in under five minutes, but the roundtable also detours, as in a retelling of a shooting case where the defense insists the defendant could not have fired a gun and the hosts have watched video of him playing cornhole. Making Kids Count, from Kentucky Youth Advocates, is the sober counterpart: at its town-hall legislative panel Cassie Chambers Armstrong credits Medicaid, food assistance and Pell Grants for her route from poverty to Yale, and David Givens calls House Bill 1 a zero-cost anti-poverty measure built on a $1,700 federal tax credit.

History with and without the jokes

Brent and Jason, on Old Kentucky Tales, read odd corners of the state's past and talk over them: in one clip a period account of a camp meeting, more than a thousand people shouting at once and heard for miles, keeps getting interrupted by a host asking how anyone follows seven people speaking at the same time. The Reckoning is the serious one, tracing slavery in America through Kentucky, and its Copperhead Conspiracy run goes wherever that thread leads: Luke Blackburn, Confederate surgeon and yellow-fever specialist, packing infected clothing into six trunks; Illinois Republicans asking Governor Richard Yates for rifles over fears of "Democrats marching in the woods". Two Glasses of Bourbon is guest conversation, Will Updike on Shaker Village journals, Mack Cox on how Kentucky furniture absorbed New England, the Mid-Atlantic and the British Isles. Tales From The Kentucky Room is Lexington's: Sarah Hubbard on a free, searchable digital archive of the Gazette and Elmer Foote's photographs of Kentucky, and Jennifer Cramer on eastern Kentucky students told they "sounded poor".

Rocks, water and the cocaine bear

Geology comes from the Kentucky Geological Survey at the University of Kentucky, whose Big Blue Rock Pod clips are working science: why Earth's most defensible age, 4.567 billion years, comes from meteorites rather than terrestrial rock, and the state's 2,209 documented arches, more than 150 of them in Red River Gorge. KYH2O, from extension specialists Carmen Agouridis and Amanda Gumbert, is practical down to lawn care, with a detour into scuba in Kentucky. Creepy Kentucky, with Quinn and Laura, closes out its Bluegrass Conspiracy series with the December 1985 black bear that died after getting into 75 pounds of cocaine, a bear the hosts note now lives at the Kentucky for Kentucky mall. AB4WS Radio Show is a noticeboard for amateur radio operators across greater Cincinnati and northern Kentucky, from the Hamshack Hotline's sunset to a bill on HOA antenna restrictions.

Where to start

• For the basketball argument at full temperature, Sources Say Podcast, then Locked On Kentucky for the news underneath it.
• For the state beyond the arena, Kentucky Politics Weekly for the roundtable and Making Kids Count for legislators on the record.
• For history, Old Kentucky Tales with the jokes and The Reckoning without them.
• For the strange side of the state, Creepy Kentucky; for Louisville on its own terms, Soccer City Podcast.

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