Podcasts about Missouri, United States

Kansas comes up on this page almost as often as Missouri does. The Border War with the Jayhawks runs through The Big Show and Missouri Sports Podcast, Locked On Mizzou's title for Bryson Tiller's commitment makes a point of calling him a former Jayhawk, and a Big Show discussion of Kansas City's plan to bring the Royals downtown turns on whether the team stays in Missouri or is lost across the state line. That is what a listener hears first: University of Missouri football and basketball. Behind it sit St. Louis political reporting, a libertarian argument show, history that goes underground, true crime tied to named towns, and the Army Corps of Engineers reading runoff forecasts for the Missouri River.

What Missouri is

Missouri sits in the middle of the country, with the Mississippi on its eastern edge, the Missouri River cutting across it, St. Louis at one end, Kansas City at the other and the Ozarks across much of the south. The University of Missouri in Columbia is the flagship campus; its teams, the Tigers, play in the SEC. The nickname is the Show-Me State.

Mizzou, from the portal to the Border War

The Tigers shows overlap so much that the same transfer, Jamier Jones, appears in the titles of Locked On Mizzou, Rock M Radio and The MizzouToday Show, and each does something different with him. Locked On Mizzou writes its titles like news alerts, in capitals, and sounds like someone thinking through the Tigers in real time; in the clips John Miller wants at least a top-20 portal class. The MizzouToday Show, from On3, is the reporterly one, two people who know the beat walking through how Jaylen Carey and Jamier Jones fit. Rock M Radio is the room, and its fall-sports review is where cross country, wrestling, volleyball and gymnastics get their turn, down to a coach in tears after the meet over the graduating seniors. The Big Show, from Zimmer Radio, is Mid-Missouri sports radio that circles a take rather than delivering it, and the one that reaches past Columbia to the Cardinals and Royals; its Mizzou-Kansas clip is less about the game than the Friday-night window the Big 12 has put it in. Missouri Sports Podcast is the fan pair, relitigating pass-interference calls in a 30-21 loss at No. 2 Georgia. Kirksville gets a version of this from Reigning Cats & Dogs, Truman State University's show, where Henry Jansen gets coaches to explain what happened and what happens next.

Politics, procedural to combative

Politically Speaking is the procedural end, public-radio political reporting comfortable explaining mechanisms. Its Bill Eigel interview plays tape of Representative Jim Murphy of St. Louis County pitching a bill against recurring campaign donations, then lets Eigel answer: he calls the attention an attack on him and says limiting donors is limiting free speech. In the St. Charles County episode Aaron Shetler describes the county's shift as a seriousness wave rather than a blue wave. Missouri Liberty Report is the combative end, two familiar voices arguing through headlines, one setting up and the other pushing it louder: feeding your family is not a left-wing position, and the city of Arnold's TDD has not completed a transportation project in over ten years. The Allman Report with Host Jamie Allman on NewsTalkSTL fills its titles with Missouri names, but what the feed plays from it is national and religious, Allman arguing that Pope Leo was wrong to condemn President Trump's prayer.

Lee's Summit Town Hall treats civic life as table talk between informed neighbors, from LSR7 school board candidates to the 32,000-odd chicken wings Wings 4 Water served in four hours, and its widest-reaching clip is Bob Kendrick recounting how he went looking for a fledgling Negro Leagues baseball museum at 18th and Vine and found a one-room office where Don Motley told him he was standing in it. MO Charters Work is the Missouri Charter Public School Association's own podcast, made school by school, with Lauren Cobb reporting a 98 percent high-school graduation rate among LaSalle students.

True crime with an address

Missouri Mayhem: Mystery & Murder with Mindy & Megan! sounds like a kitchen table, one voice carrying the researched timeline and the other reacting. The Kelsey Smith episode works the forensics of her car, everything she owned found on the driver's side, and the run of titles goes well past murder: the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse of 1981, the 2011 Joplin tornado, a 1906 Easter-weekend lynching in Springfield. Lost Boys of Hannibal treats the boys' disappearance as a case still to be solved, with Terry Hill as prime suspect because of church ties, a 4-H program and Texas prison time, and a confrontation at the Mark Twain Dinette. The Paddlefish Caviar Heist is the polished one, a solo narrator on paddlefish roe poaching in Warsaw and the sting that went after it; six months into the reporting, the narrator admits to having been a dealer and asks whether that meant pushing demand and covering up how the roe was sourced. Still My Baby is a limited series on the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, and its clip is Leslie McSpadden's account of the day: a call from Mario saying someone was lying in the street on Canfield Drive, then her sister's number on the line and three words.

History, caves and the river

Our Missouri is a regional history interview show whose recent run, an Origins series, takes in Ste. Genevieve, Jolliet and Marquette, Mound City and Van Meter State Park. Patricia Cleary follows the big mound as it became real estate, a reservoir and a restaurant before being graded away in 1868 and 1869; from the Cave State series, Anthony Orazio's caver's checklist runs to four people, three lights and permission. Show Me The State is narration cut with interview tape: Barbara Papish, expelled from the University of Missouri for distributing a paper, and the Supreme Court later saying the university had violated her First Amendment rights. Missouri River Basin Water Management is the odd one: the Army Corps of Engineers' Northwestern Division, one briefing call per episode, putting upper-basin runoff at 20.6 million acre-feet, 80 percent of average, in February 2025 and 19.7 million, 77 percent, by June. The outlooks read across Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas before they reach Missouri, which is the point: the state is where the water ends up.

Where to start

• For the Tigers, The MizzouToday Show is the reporterly version and Locked On Mizzou the alert-style one; Rock M Radio for the sports past football and basketball.
• For politics, Politically Speaking, with Missouri Liberty Report as the louder version.
• For a story to follow, The Paddlefish Caviar Heist, then Missouri Mayhem: Mystery & Murder with Mindy & Megan! for the wider run of Missouri cases and disasters.
• For the place itself, Our Missouri.

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