Podcasts about Pennsylvania, United States

The statewide argument that runs hottest on this page is about a calendar. On Pennsylvania Woodsman, Mitchell Shirk works through a proposal to move the rifle deer season to the Saturday before Thanksgiving, and his point is that the change would reach into Thanksgiving itself, into deer camp and into bear season. He gets there only after a confession: in the same episode, "Slowing Down Before Reacting: A Response to Rifle Season's Opening Day Proposal", he admits his kids and his wife heard him say things about the proposal he should not have, and starts over from the line that death and life are in the power of the tongue. That is what the shows filed under Pennsylvania as a whole tend to sound like: a state understood through its woods, its county histories, its prisons and its unsigned bands. The loudest material, though, is not statewide at all. Most of what this page plays comes from shows about Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, the bulk of it filed under Sports, and those two cities have their own pages that are the better route to Eagles, Steelers and Penguins talk.

What Pennsylvania is

Pennsylvania is a large Mid-Atlantic state in the northeastern United States, with Philadelphia at its eastern edge, Pittsburgh in the west, and a long stretch of farmland, mountains and former coal and steel towns in between. It was one of the original thirteen colonies; Philadelphia was where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were drafted. Harrisburg is the capital.

The cities' sports talk

Sports is by far the largest filing on this page, and the sports talk here is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh talk. From Philadelphia, PHLY Philadelphia Eagles Podcast is deep in draft evaluation: Bo Wulf and EJ Smith call Keldric Faulk a possible home-run pick at No. 23 and measure Reuben Bain's arms against elite edge rushers. The Philadelphia Sports Table | Philly Sports News & Views keeps one foot in fan frustration and one in beat-writer detail; its postgame from an Eagles game against Buffalo argues that Josh Allen cost his team five points and the win, while the Eagles offense finished with 190 yards to Buffalo's 331. From Pittsburgh, Mark Madden is the chaotic one: rapid-fire, argumentative, Penguins-heavy, with Sidney Crosby's numbers against the Flyers read out as a case. In the Locker Room presented by Neighborhood Ford Store (Pittsburgh Steelers) is looser, two voices thinking aloud, Max Starks and Brett Kiesel reliving Jerome Bettis's goal-line fumble and Ben Roethlisberger's tackle on Nick Harper, and Mayor Corey O'Connor saying the 2026 NFL Draft will bring "50 million eyes" to Pittsburgh.

History told from creeks, mines and county seats

The shows that are genuinely about the whole state are mostly history, and they split by temperament. Art and History Guide to Pennsylvania, by Margaretta Archambault, is a formal, solo, county-by-county survey read straight through like an itinerary; its recent run goes from "070 - Fulton County" to "074 - Lackawanna County" in numbered order, and its clips lay out Philadelphia's firsts (a tea-tax protest in 1773, before Boston's), the 16-by-14-foot huts at Valley Forge, and a City Hall of 662 rooms with William Penn on top of a 550-foot tower. Pennsylvania Oddities is the opposite register, regional true crime with folklore at its edges. In "The Fiendish Fumigator", Homer Sanders, who had tented the Gregg home with cyanide, confesses to finding a child's body in the basement, taking it home and burning it; "The Unsolved Murder of the Schultz Children" turns on 1953 autopsy findings that Gail and Paul Schultz were beaten, not drowned.

Two society podcasts from the west of the state work from remembered lives. Little Beaver Historical Society Podcast follows Joe Fabri out of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, a shortwave station's final broadcast drowned in gunfire, and in a 2019 episode tells of Southern sympathizers setting brush ablaze at a Beaver County mine where freedom seekers were hiding. Alle-Kiski Chronicle Podcast, on the Allegheny and Kiskiminetas valleys, plays wartime stories: Jerry Gray's welding accident at Guadalcanal, a half-hour ceasefire that decided Andrew Madeyski's fate. Codorus Murders is filed as York cold cases and its run of titles names individual cases, but the clips this page plays come from a bonus episode on the Son of Sam and Zodiac cases and from a true-crime reading list. Your Pennsylvania Ancestors, whose episodes here date to 2024, is the practical one: how Presbyterian session records can give a parish of origin in County Derry, what a 1914 SAR scrapbook holds, and Philadelphia's 300 years of Jewish history.

Hunting, from the agency and from the stand

Call of the Outdoors is the Pennsylvania Game Commission's own show, and it plays like it: the executive director on new hunting opportunities, an episode on Operation Game Thief, a "Special Update: Changes for 2026-27 Hunting Seasons". Pennsylvania Woodsman comes at the same seasons from the other side, personal and faith-forward, with Brandon Miller explaining why the first bow was "one of the hardest bows to make" because of bamboo nodes and tiller work. Heard together, they are the regulator and the regulated talking about the same woods.

Government, civic radio and the political left

The PA Prisons and Parole Podcast goes inside the Department of Corrections in its own voice: William Bush on a student at SCI Mercer who went from never working on a car to a state inspection license and tutoring others, the Bureau of Community Corrections' halfway-back housing, a captain explaining retirement at 55 with a 2.5 per cent pension rate. WURD Radio, from Philadelphia, is civic talk radio with the state in view: the chair of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party on voter-registration shifts and election protection, and Black maternal health panels at a wellness expo held in a church. TalkErie.com - The Joel Natalie Show - Erie Pennsylvania Daily Podcast does the same at the other end of the state, interview-led, with Christina Vogel on Erie County's need for more EMTs and paramedics and a manufacturing-conference guest on AI adoption. The Week in Philly from KYW Newsradio is a brisk newsroom explainer, including nearly 100 speakers opposing a plan to close 18 Philadelphia schools. Out d’Coup Podcast, from Raging Chicken Media, is the progressive roundup; its clips are national, on the Biden debate and the Supreme Court, and its run of titles is mostly national too, with a Pennsylvania cyber-charter item among them.

Unsigned rock

the Pennsylvania Rock Show is one show and one beat: unsigned Pennsylvania rock and metal, band after band, with the live machinery of buttons, clips and giveaways left in. Twenty-one years in, the show's own word for itself is "Raw", and The Apotrope explain how an attempt at their shortest song came out at about eight and a half minutes.

Where to start

• For the state as a place: Art and History Guide to Pennsylvania for the counties, Pennsylvania Oddities for what went wrong in them.
• For hunting season: Pennsylvania Woodsman, then Call of the Outdoors for the official side.
• For the cities' teams: PHLY Philadelphia Eagles Podcast and Mark Madden, or go to the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh pages directly.
• For how the state governs itself: The PA Prisons and Parole Podcast and WURD Radio.

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