Podcasts about New Mexico, United States

Whether New Mexico's wildlife is a public trust everyone should pay for, or a resource funded by the people who hunt it, is argued out on Ahi Va, the New Mexico Wildlife Federation's podcast. In "Ep. 11: Selling Cupcakes For Conservation", Kevin Bixby challenges the idea that only hunters should fund wildlife, Jesse Dubelle explains why hunting families cannot afford licenses after a 2005 fee freeze met years of inflation, and Bixby argues for income tax over a backpack tax as the fairest way to pay. The premise put to the guests is blunt: "conservation is not convenient and conservation is also not cheap". Public land, the state and the money between them run through much of the listening here; around that sit true crime, Santa Fe high school basketball and a podcast about running.

What New Mexico is

New Mexico is a large, thinly populated state in the American Southwest, bordering Arizona, Colorado, Texas and Mexico. Santa Fe is the capital and Albuquerque the largest city; the Rio Grande runs through both. Most of the land is high desert and mountain, much of it publicly owned, and the state's pueblos and Hispanic villages predate statehood by centuries.

Wildlife, livestock and the land

The Department of Wildlife answers from the agency side with New Mexico Wildlife Podcast, its own show, which covers Ahi Va's territory without the funding argument. Its clips are practical and exact: walleye over 20 pounds measured during spawns at Clayton, how to mimic an owl hooter so a spring gobbler gives itself away, and a state-record flathead catfish of 78 pounds. Recent titles are a run of This Week in Wildlife entries alongside "Episode 45: Boots on the Ground Biology".

Grant County Extension Connection, from the Cooperative Extension Service, is about livestock rather than game. In its New World screwworm episode, state veterinarians and APHIS treat the parasite's arrival in the United States as a matter of when, not if: the fly lays eggs in a wound as small as a tick bite, the larvae feed on live flesh, and the speaker says the livestock industry is "in defense mode now and preparation mode". Another clip explains how showmanship can decide a market-class placing when two animals are close.

Come Rain or Shine, from the Southwest Climate Adaptation Science Center and New Mexico State University, is the science underneath. A researcher explains that at least 75% of flowering plants are pollinated by insects and animals and that specialist pollinators are losing ground to generalists; in "Wildfire and Post-Fire Recovery", Camille Stevens-Roman describes how aspen can act as a barrier and change fire behaviour. STEM Southwest Podcast adds the October 14 annular eclipse over New Mexico, from "091 Reaching for the Stars, with Dr. Misty Carty".

The legislature and the police blotter

State government gets explained in order on New Mexico in Focus (A Production of NMPBS): a question, a contextual answer, a restatement, then a narrower follow-up. In "Epstein Truth Commission Chair on Scope of Investigation", Andrea Romero says the commission can subpoena the witnesses it hopes will come voluntarily, cites a 1970s legislative inquiry into prison deaths as precedent, and expects a report by July 31; the scale, she says, is "for New Mexico, probably unprecedented". Other clips note that nearly 5% of Santa Fe police calls came from within a 1,000-foot radius of the homeless shelter, from "Urban Alchemy Funds Run Short in First Year", and argue, in "Reckoning with Forced Sterilization in New Mexico", that birth control was sold on a racist eugenics rationale and not only a feminist one. Recent titles include "Blackstone Inc Pursues Purchase of PNM Parent Company" and "Headlines in Focus: ICE Contracts, State Fairgrounds, Uranium Mining".

The KKOB Morning Briefing is the opposite register: an Albuquerque radio news clock, compact and declarative, moving through names, agencies, dollar amounts and vote counts without lingering. Its clips are the state's hard news at street level: a loaded gun with a round in the chamber found on a 13-year-old at Jimmy Carter Middle School; a victim's mother holding ashes in court while asking for the maximum 25 years for Jacob Lovato; police saying an infant had fentanyl in his system while CYFD was monitoring the family.

KKOB is an Albuquerque show, and so is The ABQ Accent, from the City of Albuquerque's Office of Civic Engagement, the warmest listening on the page: a conversation that lets a guest's story run before naming the pattern underneath it. In the Katy Anderson episode the subject is food banks, Roadrunner and Food Depot by name, the training that goes into talking to legislators, and a warning that 50,000 to 60,000 New Mexicans could lose SNAP access because of federal changes; Phia Smith describes a USL academy where every athlete is on a full scholarship.

Gyms and trails

Santa Fe-area high school basketball is the steady centre of Sports Primo Podcast, which talks fast and never stops moving through records, rankings, schedules and matchup context. The clip from "Episode 635 - Sports Primo Podcast" is a close read of Santa Fe High forcing 19 turnovers on Farmington to win 63-61 in double overtime, down to the different defensive looks Coach Rivera's team throws and the warning that "It's one thing to prepare for them. It's another thing to face the speed of the Demons". It ranges past the gym, to New Mexico erasing a 14-point halftime deficit to beat Washington State at the buzzer, and to La Cueva's injured quarterback Cam Dyer returning after halftime to throw three touchdown passes.

Running New Mexico Podcast is about coaching as much as results. David Nunez, the Organ Mountain High cross country coach, talks about athletes who track each other on Strava and want instant success, and answers with a pencil-and-eraser theory of season planning and the line that "Rome wasn't built overnight and neither are distance runners"; the Adam Bitchell episode is about the financial and identity pressure of trying to carry on as a semi-professional runner.

True crime from both ends

Families, not killers, are the subject of True Consequences - True Crime, which is Albuquerque-based. In "True Crime Conversations with Josh Hallmark (True Crime BS) and Patrick Hinds (True Crime Obsessed)", Eric Carter-Landeen describes how listeners helped pressure authorities to revisit Jacob's 39-year-old case, and says the state attorney general closed it after three years while offering a community tree handprint activity. Recent titles are a run of Justice for Jacob entries and "Justice for Dione Begay Thomas".

Four Corners Crime Cast covers Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah with more than one voice at the table trading theories. In "Episode 122: The Death of David Coughlin", a Reddit theory about mushrooms is weighed against a firmer view, "I think it was a mercy killing", of why Rafi killed Dave after days lost in Rattlesnake Canyon; "Episode 121: The Aztec High School Shooting" follows Atchison into the school where Francisco Fernandez and Casey Jordan Marquez were killed.

Where to start

• State government explained without hurry: New Mexico in Focus (A Production of NMPBS), the Epstein Truth Commission clip in particular.
• The outdoors: New Mexico Wildlife Podcast for the fish and the turkey calls, then Ahi Va for the argument over who pays for it.
• A game: Sports Primo Podcast's Santa Fe High and Farmington double-overtime breakdown; for the training behind it, Running New Mexico Podcast.
• Albuquerque itself: The KKOB Morning Briefing and The ABQ Accent, then the Albuquerque page on PlayNext.

The New Mexico feed on this page plays clips from these shows.