Podcasts about Oregon, United States

Ducks football gets argued about here in three voices before anything else is heard: beat reporters reading NFL Combine numbers on Autzen Audibles, John Canzano at radio speed wanting the playoff bracket torn up, and Oregon Sports Network sounding like a daily athletics desk moving through the department calendar. The Trail Blazers are the other big sound, and that talk belongs to Portland. Around the sports the listening is unusually institutional: The Oregonian's newsroom, and shows from state agencies, OSBA, a rural electric co-op and a university archive, on ballots, nuclear power, guardianship, school accountability and pinot gris.

What Oregon is

Oregon is a Pacific Northwest state between Washington and California. Most of its people live west of the Cascade Range, around Portland, the capital Salem, and Eugene, home of the University of Oregon and its Ducks; east of the mountains it is high desert and ranch country. It is known for its coast, its forests and timber past, and Willamette Valley wine.

The Ducks, three ways

Autzen Audibles sounds like a panel of reporters with a shared working memory, and the clips are built on numbers: Kenyan Sadiq's 43.5-inch vertical, 26 bench reps and 4.39 forty at 240 pounds; Dylan Thieneman's 4.35, which the hosts say may be the fastest forty in Oregon history; and, after Indiana, whether back-to-back January blowouts make the playoff exits a question of systemic problems. The Bald Faced Truth With John Canzano is allowed to be indignant: Dan Lanning owed the world a cartwheel outside Autzen Stadium for drawing James Madison at home, the committee turned Notre Dame and Miami into a beauty pageant, and the fix is a 16-team playoff with no byes and home games for the top eight seeds. Oregon Sports Network keeps the calendar instead, a coach on pitching and putting up runs, then the host laying out a Maryland series on the Big Ten Network, then Elon Butler hitting for the cycle with six hits, a first in program history. It Never Rains on this Podcast is the fan's version by its own description, its clips arguments over softball seeding, pitching that cannot hold a six-run lead, and players who did not want to play in Eugene.

The Blazers belong to Portland

Every Blazers show here is really a Portland show, and Portland's own page has them together. Locked On Blazers, with Mike Richman, and Bleav in Blazers, with beat reporter Peter Sampson, are the reporting end. The Locked On clips from April 2026 are all Spurs series: San Antonio first in opponent free-throw rate, Victor Wembanyama's rim protection, Deni Avdija following three playoff-level games with 28, 35 and 41 points. Bleav argues that new owner Tom Dundon should be judged on whether the team stays competitive, not on billionaire purity. The Firm of Harris and Marang is the same series with the brakes off, going from Wembanyama's minutes to Mike Trout's five homers in the Bronx to a gambling case involving Damon Jones, Terry Rozier and Chauncey Billups.

The Oregonian and KGW

Beat Check with The Oregonian sounds like newsroom reporting edited for clarity, and its lottery clip is the model: Ted Sickinger explains that prizes above $1,250 are public record, that sorting the list turned up people who had cashed hundreds or even thousands of big winning tickets over six years, and that discounters buy winners at a discount and cash them anonymously. Its other clips include Cosmo the talking crow, said to have attacked one woman's kids for months until they wore bicycle helmets. News Updates from The Oregonian carries The Unidentifieds, in which Regan Mertz and Dave Killen follow cold cases to their names: remains found near Multnomah Falls in 1979 and identified four decades on, and Freeman Asher Jr., whose niece remembers him singing Lionel Richie the last time she saw him. KGW’s Straight Talk, with Tim Gordon, interviews the people making decisions: Dan Rayfield on the Trump administration trying to make the Postal Service a gatekeeper for Oregon ballots, Rebecca Wolf asking travelers to remember TSA officers are workers with families, Claire Hamill on the Portland Fire.

The state, talking about itself

Grounded, from the Oregon Department of Energy, has Robert Wallace compare several hundred dollars a month in diesel with charging a Model 3 at home for about eight cents a kilowatt-hour, and Max Woods explain that Measure 7 blocks a new nuclear plant unless a permanent repository exists and voters approve it. The Beaver State Podcast, from the Department of Fish and Wildlife, asks whether kids still pick up lizards and snakes and says April Fool's Day fuels misinformation that harms fish and wildlife management. Employment First, on getting people with intellectual and developmental disabilities into community jobs, has Allison Enriquez on supported decision making as the least restrictive option before guardianship. OSBA Sounding Boards argues school policy from the inside: Colt Gill saying ODE is "not here any longer to name, shame, and blame", Charlene Williams calling accountability reciprocal, Barbara Smith-Warner insisting schools cannot educate children in crisis without money for food, housing and mental health. Class Of 2025 hands the same system to its students, with Valerie Adams-Bass on why unwelcoming schools leave Black students mentally exhausted. Power Eastern Oregon Podcast, from the Oregon Trail Electric Cooperative, is the rural counterpart, friendly and practical: Tony Swart on patients driving two to four hours for care and telehealth that brings specialists closer, and a Steens Mountain rescue in Harney County that needed fire, the sheriff's office, EMS and hospital staff.

Older Oregon, over a drink

Offbeat Oregon History comes from a newspaper column of the same name and deals in the strange-but-true: Carl Bowles and his fiancée walking out the back door during a conjugal visit, Mary Leonard vowing a legal clutch on men who wronged women, State Treasurer Bob Straub becoming Glenn Jackson's worst-case scenario by opposing a highway on the beach. History by the Glass, one of the Portland shows, does it from a barstool, loose and profane by design: Nathan P. Gale and Alfredo Moreno check Pendleton's Rainbow Cafe against Samantha Swindler's 1880s newspapers and maps, and note that Your Inn Tavern was established in 1923 while Oregon's prohibition ran from 1916 to 1933. The Oregon Wine History Archive Podcast, from Linfield University, is oral history, and its clips are all Bryan Wilson: grieving the Benzinger sale to Hueblein for $140 million, and making pinot gris and muscat to sell in a tasting room while Cal Schmidt built the place as he went, no roof on yet.

Music and the outdoors

Oregon Music News is the leisurely one, long conversations that trust digression: Chance Hayden on how the baritone guitar became country music's tic-tac instrument, Charley Gray on building the Portland Jazz Orchestra so players were paid well. Peak Northwest is practical, one person asking and the other answering, and Abiqua Falls is the model: a 92-foot waterfall near Silverton turns up on Redfin, conservationists stir, the state emerges as a buyer with a state park or forest in mind, and the road in is so rough the host parks a mile away. Alongside it are glass float hunting on the coast, complete with a suspected float fairy at the high-tide line, and a Seattle-to-Portland ride Jenna says she did partly out of spite for her father.

Where to start

• Ducks by the numbers: Autzen Audibles. Ducks with an opinion: The Bald Faced Truth With John Canzano.
• Blazers: Locked On Blazers for the series breakdown, The Firm of Harris and Marang for the brakes-off version.
• Oregon news that is not sports: Beat Check with The Oregonian, then The Unidentifieds on News Updates from The Oregonian.
• The odd and the old: Offbeat Oregon History, then History by the Glass.

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