Podcasts about Mississippi, United States

Most of what plays here is college sports, and most of that is an argument among three schools. Mississippi State has the largest share of the talk, spread across a baseball-first analytical show, a faster and more aggrieved one, and one that leaves the seams in. Ole Miss gets a solo monologue. Southern Miss has its own pair of shows planted in Hattiesburg. In the clips the feed plays, baseball is the sport most often on the table: RPI, regionals, bases left loaded, relay throws, a lineup's wRC+. Football arrives through SEC Media Days and a quarterback argument that runs across several shows at once.

Around the sports sits a public-broadcasting strand of oral history, an arts interview hour, a long-form conversation show and a medical program. Then the state's rougher edges: a Jackson talk-radio monologue, a market-minded policy podcast that spends its clips on public health, the wildlife department's own podcast, and two shows about the river rather than the state.

What Mississippi is

Mississippi is a Deep South state with the Mississippi River as its western border and a short Gulf coastline to the south. Jackson is the capital and largest city. The state is known for the Delta and its blues tradition, for its central place in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and for college sports: Mississippi State in Starkville, Ole Miss in Oxford, and Southern Miss in Hattiesburg.

Three schools and the arguments between them

Mississippi State talk is where the listening is deepest. Out of Left Field, with Bart Gregory and Charlie Winfield, is the analytical end of it. A top-five Georgia series in Starkville gets previewed by home-run rate (Georgia averaging almost three a game, with one homerless game all year), the launch of State1878 is explained as a business that makes NIL content rather than a traditional collective, and a stretch of conversation goes to wishing the league would keep Easter and Mother's Day weekends clear of Sunday games. Elsewhere Bart predicts Mississippi State will be picked last in the SEC preseason media poll. Thunder & Lightning covers the same ground at a brisker, more irritable pace. In "7-27-26: Not Much Respect for Mississippi State at SEC Media Days", Brian calls Kelley Jones's second-team All-SEC selection an outrage on the grounds that passes were kept away from him, and argues the season turns on whether the Bulldogs start 3-1 or 2-2; Jeff Lebby, asked about the best high school player he faced, names Kendall Briles. The Maroon Mic is looser than either, two people talking to a small circle rather than a broadcast built for strangers. Its clips make the case that Zac Selmon's extension to 2029 should be judged on fundraising, NIL and facilities, that how you view Selmon is a litmus test for whether a Mississippi State conversation is worth having, and that Elijah McNamee's ninth-inning walk-off in Tallahassee beat Florida State after a rain delay.

The Rebel Report with Michael Borkey is a one-voice show that moves quickly from evidence to judgment to gut reaction. Its clips give the quarterback argument its sharpest form: Borkey says he has never been more confident in a quarterback carrying expectations than in Trinidad Chambliss, compares his intangibles to Drew Brees and Tom Brady, and says he has not felt this way since Chad Kelly. In baseball season the same voice notes Ole Miss leaving the bases loaded four times on a Sunday without scoring.

Two shows refuse to pick a side. Justify Your Existence works through SEC questions with both in-state schools in frame, and its run of titles follows a baseball season from a March Mississippi State–Ole Miss series through Omaha. One clip surveys a conference where seven schools sit tied at 4-2 and nobody is running away; another has Mississippi State's lineup with seven qualified hitters above 100 wRC+ and the SEC's best batting average; a third covers Ole Miss basketball going almost two months without a win and still reaching the SEC tournament semifinals. Crooked Letter Sports, with Rick Cleveland and Tyler Cleveland, treats the whole state as the map. Its clips run from the Saints shedding DeMario Davis (a Brandon High kid who was barely recruited, as they tell it) to the Chambliss injunction, described with the feel of a courtroom crossed with a small-town revival, to Brian O'Connor arriving in Starkville as Mississippi State's biggest addition. Titles like "U.S. Senate is right on top of 1960 football controversy" and "111 years of sports writing..." show how far back the show is willing to reach.

Southern Miss has To The Top Talk and SuperTalk Eagle Hour, both rooted in Hattiesburg. In "The Blade", Courtney Blades Rogers recalls the 1999 softball team that went 52-9 behind her 497 strikeouts, a program with no field that played every game on the road with study hall enforced on the bus. Another guest, Scott Watkins, says the NCAA has "no control" while college sports keeps adding gambling everywhere. Eagle Hour is the more measured of the two, and its best clip is a relay play remembered by a player who was in the outfield behind his brother Nick on the mound and says he never ran after a ball harder in his life. Ostrander says the staff cannot afford "a weak link" in complementary baseball, and one guest admits to not looking at RPI because it causes anxiety.

Oral history, arts and the public-radio strand

Mississippi Moments Podcast, a University of Southern Mississippi partnership airing on Mississippi Public Broadcasting, carries the heaviest history on the page. James Jones's account of the 761st Tank Battalion reaching Bastogne after a Christmas Eve move from the Saar Valley is paired with Dr. Douglas Bristol on how the Chicago Defender and Pittsburgh Courier pushed to get Black men into combat. Roscoe Jones says he begged Schwerner to go to Philadelphia and stayed behind because of a church engagement. Doug Smith calls Freedom Day, January 22, 1964, "our national event here" and "a prelude for the Freedom Summer." The recent titles form a Hurricane Katrina series under the heading "Voices of Our People".

Mississippi Arts Hour sounds like a public-radio conversation that trusts the guest to carry it. David Johnson, describing himself as a guy from New England, recalls knowing Booker White only from a Tom Rush cover of Panama Unlimited before going to find the Mississippi blues musician in hospital after a stroke. Rick Anderson talks about Fabriano paper, which connects him to two thousand watercolor artists and a history reaching back to 1264, and about how a juror scanning a thousand pieces may have one second to notice a painting. The run of titles is a name per episode: Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Patrick Artigues, Euphus Ruth.

Now You're Talking with Marshall Ramsey has a front-porch texture, warm and unhurried. Ramsey himself explains why a Barbara Bush cartoon became his most famous, matching her grief and Robin Bush; Angela Crossley-Ferraez describes Mississippi Antiques Showcase beginning as "just an idea for an event" and becoming a filmed fifth season; Michael Orr explains a foundation that puts a success coordinator inside schools for two students at Lipscomb Academy. Southern Remedy is the medical program, public-radio medicine with a clinic feel. In "Southern Remedy Kids & Teens | Vaping & Smoking" the point is that vape nicotine can run higher than cigarette nicotine and withdrawal brings irritability, anxiety and poor sleep, set against a conversation about smoking as a social habit in high school. Titles show the show's strands: Kids & Teens, Relatively Speaking, for Women, on neuropathy, body image and back to school.

Jackson, politics and public health

The Clay Edwards Show is rapid, confrontational and entirely local. Its clips have Tate Reeves approving most of Jackson's $30 million in projects while vetoing the airport, the golf course and private security cameras, with Edwards arguing the money should follow the neighborhoods that pay the most tax and naming Fondren, Belhaven and Northeast Jackson; another has him arguing Jackson's street culture rewards excuses over accountability. The title run circles the Nolan Wells case and Ben Crump. The lighter clip is "MISSISSIPPI BBQ W/ JONATHAN & TRACEY FROM GRILL OF MISSISSIPPI (Ep #1,199)", a shop carrying "a little over 700 sauces, rubs, injections, and marinades".

Bigger Pie Forum Podcast promotes market-driven growth, but its clips are public health. Dr. Thomas Dobbs says untreated maternal syphilis gives a baby a 40% chance of death while one penicillin shot cures both, that sickle cell has a cure too expensive for anyone to get, and that heavy spending on advanced medicine over public health infrastructure is a football team without blocking and tackling. "The Fight to Bring More Home Health Options to Mississippi" covers Judge Carlton Reeves ruling that the state's 45-year home-health moratorium violated the Constitution. Titles such as "2000 Residents, One Street, and a Chance to Save Jackson" show the capital is a recurring subject here too.

Woods, water and the river

Mississippi Outdoors Podcast comes from the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks, hosted by Matt Wyatt. Anthony Ballard reports a strong cub year from den checks scattered through the river counties from Bolivar down to Wilkinson, and describes belly-crawling into a den to face a bluff-charging black bear five yards away. Dr. Wes Neal explains why fish cannot live in pure water and why freshwater fish do not drink. Titles reach to the best turkey season in years, botanist Dr. Mack Alford on who discovers new plants, and gas station food reviews with duck guiding in Drew.

Two shows are about the river the state borders. Dean Klinkenberg's The Mississippi Valley Traveler Podcast ranges the whole river system: shantyboat people whose way of life was condemned until the wealthy imitated it from luxurious steamboats, St. Louis authorities ordering a boat sawn in half over a property line, the John L. Avery striking a tree, Fort Peck and the Missouri River dams. Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain is the memoir read aloud: the pilots' association and its secret key, a raftsman who eats nineteen alligators and a barrel of whiskey for breakfast, a twelve-year-old girl paddling through floodwater past a raft of sixteen cows and twenty hogs.

Where to start

• Both in-state SEC schools without picking a side: Justify Your Existence, or Crooked Letter Sports if you want the Saints and the state's sports history folded in.
• One school only: Out of Left Field for Mississippi State, The Rebel Report with Michael Borkey for Ole Miss, To The Top Talk for Southern Miss.
• History and civil rights: Mississippi Moments Podcast, starting with the Freedom Day and 761st Tank Battalion clips.
• Away from the ballpark: Mississippi Arts Hour for artists and musicians, Mississippi Outdoors Podcast for bears, ponds and turkeys.

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