Podcasts about Montana, United States

Montana's sports talk keeps landing on the same two names, the Cats and the Griz. A Montana State fan show, an ESPN Missoula talk program and a betting show all circle the Bobcats and the Grizzlies, and the rivalry's name, the Brawl, runs through their episode titles. Around them sits a smaller spread: a true-crime series working through homicides from Livingston to Billings, a noon news bulletin from north-central Montana, a lender and an agent talking shop, and a gardening show whose range reaches into the eastern part of the state.

What Montana is

Montana is the fourth-largest U.S. state by area and one of the most thinly populated, with just over a million people between the Rocky Mountains in the west and the Great Plains in the east. Billings is its largest city. The University of Montana Grizzlies play in Missoula and the Montana State Bobcats in Bozeman, and their annual football game is known as the Brawl of the Wild. Glacier National Park is in the northwest, and Yellowstone lies along the southern border.

The Cats, the Griz and the Brawl

RnR Cat Cast - A Montana State Bobcat Podcast is the rivalry seen from one side. Ryan Foley and Ryan Thornburg introduce themselves as "two dudes named Ryan from the state of Washington talking about our dear Montana State", and call the show the Montana State affiliate of the Big Sky Podcast Network. Their titles go game by game, with opponents set against reaction episodes such as "Instant Reaction: #4 UC Davis" and "Instant Reaction: gris". On this page that means a playoff preview against UT Martin, Ryan refusing to temper his enthusiasm after a big Montana State win in "#13 Grizzlies", and Zach LaVere, in "Cat/Griz Reactions Pt. 2, Basketball", revealing the heated texts he sent after listening to a rival podcast.

Nuanez Now, from ESPN Missoula, covers both campuses. Where the Cat Cast is fans talking, this sounds like local sports radio with a long memory. It is brisk and conversational, the voices rotate, and it slides from a sponsor read to a recruiting breakdown to a guest interview. Its titles run from "Brawl of the Wild Coaches' Corner - Montana State head coach Brent Vigen" to prep games and NFL talk. One clip has Taco Dowler saying Montana State's national championship belongs to Tommy Malott, Rylan Orr and every generation before them, because "we're just the ones that got it done". Hockey gets its turn as well. In an April episode Hayden Smith picks Nikita Kucherov for the Hart Trophy, and the talk takes in an outdoor game where it was "even colder in Tampa Bay than it was up here in the treasure state of Montana".

Make It Rainey comes at sports from the betting side. Shaun Rainey's titles set NFL weeks beside the rivalry, as in "NFL WEEK 10, CATS AND GRIZ" and "BRAWL BETS, NFL WEEK 12!". His NFL clip goes prop by prop. He takes the Raiders at three and a half, and Hunter Henry over his receiving yards against a Raiders defense he says has not done well against tight ends. The "BRAWL 2.0" clip looks back at how FCS teams have fared when they play each other twice, with North Dakota State sweeping most of those series.

Crime, courts and the Hi-Line

Montana Murder Mysteries, from NonStop Local and Montana Right Now, leans hardest on place. In "The Tragic Tale of The Livingston Ladies: Part 1", host Maddie Olson sets the town down in detail: the junction of Interstate 90 and Highway 89, a historic train town on the Northern Pacific Railway, the road to Yellowstone's north entrance, "the only gate that is open year-round". The case around it is built from Angela Brown's abandoned car, a $400 bundle and a body in the Yellowstone River. Another clip goes to Billings, where Dean Ballew told Dr. Joseph Rich he killed Ruth with a .22 rifle but detectives found no weapon or shells. A third comes from "Courtship Casualties In The Magic City": a scene with no forced entry, a destroyed bedroom door and victims tied with electrical tape. The titles add Florence, in "Florence Salon Slayings".

Hi-Line Today handles the courts in the present tense. Its Montana at Noon editions carry north-central Montana news, and the clip here runs from a windy forecast to the headlines to a promise of local sports. The lead story is a sentencing. According to U.S. Attorney Kurt Ulmey, a Honduran man was given time served of 76 days and remanded to Border Patrol after agents found him at a Havre gas station. The same bulletin notes that Representative Troy Downing has filed for re-election. Another clip reports on a Montana teacher who won a state AI challenge by having students analyze space components and is advancing to the White House.

Houses and gardens

The real estate and gardening shows are both duos, and they sit at opposite ends of the tempo range. Leading Ladies in Montana Real Estate pairs lender Colleen Wood with agent Alicia Rutz, and it moves quickly. The hosts agree over each other, interrupt, and swing from jokes into advice, and the talk stays plain and local, down to clients and Bozeman. The clips are practical and sometimes blunt. One warns that Credit Karma can show 800 while the tri-merge report shows 620. In another, Alicia describes a bad hire that put her into crisis mode and forced her to undo every file. Guest host Pam McCutcheon of Small Dog Realty argues that political posting, American flags and strong opinions help her attract her own clients, and describes a friend group split evenly on politics. The show's titles lean on guest hosts, alongside "Episode 84: Surviving In This Tough Market".

Growing Together: A Gardening Podcast is the leisurely one. Don Kinzler and host John Lamb talk at a kitchen-table pace, often working from a listener question or a seasonal prompt, and rarely leave a technical term unexplained. Its Montana is the eastern part of the state, which the show names alongside North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota and southern Manitoba. Its clips come from that wider upper Midwest. One explains why Irish farmers came to depend on the potato, a crop that yields a lot from a small area and stores well, before late blight brought famine. Another describes a basswood with a 10-foot trunk circumference that looked healthy and was hollow. In a third, meteorologist Jesse Ritka talks about a record tornado season in North Dakota.

Where to start

• For the rivalry from inside one fan base: RnR Cat Cast - A Montana State Bobcat Podcast, especially the clip from its Cat/Griz reactions.
• For Montana sports across both campuses, coaches and prep games included: Nuanez Now.
• For true crime rooted in specific towns: Montana Murder Mysteries, and its Livingston episode in particular.
• For practical money talk: Leading Ladies in Montana Real Estate and its credit-report clip.

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