Podcasts about Portland, Oregon

Victor Wembanyama hangs over this page like weather. Locked On Blazers – Daily Podcast On The Portland Trail Blazers gives him a crossover edition with Matthew Tynan of Locked On Spurs, asking whether he can reach another level and dominate an entire series; The Firm of Harris and Marang works the same problem from the barstool, noting that Deni Avdija came close to averaging a 30-point triple-double against San Antonio this season and then asking who was missing from those games. That is the shape of Portland's listening: the Trail Blazers' spring of 2026, from the race for eighth through the play-in against Phoenix to the series in San Antonio, argued from several directions by shows that agree on the facts and differ on temperature.

Away from sport the listening is narrower and odder. None of it reads the day's city news; civic Portland arrives sideways, through a bar-history show, the police bureau's own interview podcast, a disaster-preparedness series with 2020 dates and a cold-case documentary from The Oregonian.

What Portland is

Portland is Oregon's largest city, in the state's northwest where the Willamette River runs into the Columbia. It is known for rain, bridges, breweries, bookstores and a deliberately offbeat civic culture, and for the Trail Blazers, whose Rip City nickname for the town turns up in several episode titles here. It is not the Portland in Maine.

The Blazers, in season

Locked On Blazers is the structured version. Its titles walk the stretch step by step, from clinching the eighth seed through the play-in win over the Suns to 6 Keys for the Trail Blazers vs Spurs: How Portland Can Extend the Playoff Series in San Antonio, and the clips are built the same way: San Antonio ranks first in opponent free-throw rate and pairs that defense with Wembanyama's rim protection; Avdija followed three playoff-level games with 28, 35 and 41 points.

The Firm of Harris and Marang is local sports radio with the brakes off, jumping from cap logic to locker-room culture to a stray food joke without labelling the turn. Its Previewing Game 1 vs Spurs clip haggles over Wembanyama's minutes and lands on the hosts' real worry, whether Avdija can get into the paint at all with Wembanyama parked there. The titles are stamped by date and hour, 4.17.26 Hour 1 through 4.17.26 Hour 3, and the hours away from the Blazers take in Mike Trout and a gambling case the hosts connect to Terry Rozier and Chauncey Billups.

Holy Backboard is the postgame hang: Dustin and Sage thinking out loud at speed, one setting up a point and the other sharpening it. A clip on Donovan Clingan's February, 14 points and 14 rebounds with three assists and two and a half blocks, becomes a diagnosis of what happens when a stretch five pulls him out of the paint: nobody else rebounds, the driving lanes open, opponents get second and third chances. The other clips are gloomier, arguing that Scoot Henderson's development is being sacrificed to the play-in chase and that new ownership could build patiently or repeat the franchise's cycle of short-sighted decisions.

Sports Saturday with Rashad and Joe is the skeptic's chair. Rashad says he wants Portland to go 2-9 down the stretch so Tiago Splitter is not handed a rushed extension, and the clip runs the remaining schedule calling each game a win before predicting the team will drop the ones it should win and somehow beat San Antonio. The show is comfortable saying it does not know something and looking it up on air.

Bleav in Blazers, hosted by beat reporter Peter Sampson, holds the front-office questions: a clip from The Trail Blazers welcome new owner Tom Dundon argues Dundon should be judged on whether he keeps Portland's team competitive, not on billionaire purity, and another works through a four-year, $90 million extension and why a player would take it rather than bet on a bigger 2027 payday.

The rest of the sports dial

The Bald Faced Truth With John Canzano looks past the Blazers to the Ducks and the college machine around them, and it is allowed a note of indignation. Its clip says Dan Lanning should have done a cartwheel in front of Autzen Stadium for drawing James Madison at home as the five seed, then turns on the selection committee for making Notre Dame and Miami a "beauty pageant" and proposes a 16-team playoff with no byes. The interview titles name Dana Altman, Scott Rueck, Amy Perko and Ryan Harlan.

Rip City Mornings is the older layer, with 2018 dates and FULL interview episodes: CJ McCollum choosing playoff rest over home-court advantage, and Serena Winters arguing that Blazers fans are more in tune to the game than Lakers fans.

Bars, cops, earthquakes and cold cases

History by the Glass, from Nathan P. Gale and Alfredo Moreno, sounds like two longtime regulars talking over drinks in a bar that happens to have microphones: loose, fast, self-aware, with interruptions and the odd burst of profanity as part of the rhythm. The episodes go bar by bar, Dublin Pub, Walter Mitty's, the Golden Nugget Bar, The Trap, Your Inn Tavern, and the clips show the method: Your Inn Tavern's 1923 founding set against Oregon prohibition, which ran from 1916 to 1933; Debbie Boone leading them into the haunted basement at Scooter McQuades after the 9 p.m. handoff; a trip out to the Rainbow Cafe in Pendleton, where Samantha Swindler's research checks the saloon claim against 1880s newspapers and maps while the hosts admire the tilt of the bar top.

Talking Beat - from the Portland Police Bureau is the bureau's own interview podcast, an official conversation trying to be plainspoken, closer to a briefing than a produced show. The titles cover dialogue policing, bias crimes, the wellness program, hiring military veterans and sex trafficking; one clip states a policy flatly, every officer gets one paid wellness hour in a 10-hour shift. The conversation with Chief Bob Day goes somewhere more personal, through faith, his wife Lorna and the week Sam got sick, and arrives at hope as a behavior rather than a feeling.

Seismic Airwaves, hosted by Sabina Roan, builds disaster preparedness from conversations with first responders, scientists and survivors. Its Portland run is a set of episodes titled Portland Politics and Resilience II, with Sarah Iannarone, Chloe Eudaly and Mingus Mapps; the Mapps clip puts mental-health-related 911 calls at about 49 percent. The most quotable clips are Meghan O'Connor's, on why a regulated nervous system beats perfect words in a crisis: plant your feet, breathe, and remember that 200,000 years of evolution built you to survive this.

News Updates from The Oregonian is, in the episodes here, The Unidentifieds, a limited series from Regan Mertz and Dave Killen on four Oregon cold cases and the DNA work that resolved them. The clips follow Freeman Asher Jr., whose niece remembers him singing Easy by Lionel Richie the last time she saw him; forensic anthropologist Nikki Vance on how television misrepresents her field; and remains found near Multnomah Falls in 1979 that went unidentified for decades.

Where to start

• For the playoff series with the argument laid out: Locked On Blazers, with the six keys episode and the Locked On Spurs crossover.
• For the same series at full volume: The Firm of Harris and Marang, then Holy Backboard for the fan postgame.
• For Portland with no basketball in it: History by the Glass, and Your Inn Tavern against prohibition is the clip to try.
• For the city's institutions in their own words: Talking Beat, and The Unidentifieds from News Updates from The Oregonian for a documentary listen.

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