Podcasts about Upstate New York, New York

Most of what plays here is people arguing about the Buffalo Bills, in several registers at once. Locked On Bills - Daily Podcast On The Buffalo Bills works through draft scenarios like a notebook read aloud; Breaking Tables | A Buffalo Bills Podcast sounds like a roomful of fans talking over each other after the game; The Extra Point is cut from WGR interviews and sounds like local sports radio moved onto a podcast. Behind the football sits Buffalo's other obsession, the Sabres, and behind that a much smaller set of shows: Rochester's public institutions, crime stories from the region, a Buffalo meteorologist. Albany, Syracuse, the Finger Lakes and the Adirondacks do not yet have a playable show on this page. The Upstate New York a listener hears here is western New York, and mostly it is Buffalo.

What Upstate New York is

Upstate New York is the everyday name for the state outside New York City and its suburbs: a large, mostly inland region running from the Great Lakes cities of Buffalo and Rochester through Syracuse and the Finger Lakes to Albany and the Adirondack mountains. It is known for lake-effect snow, for former industrial cities, and for Buffalo's two teams, the Bills and the Sabres.

Bills talk, sorted by how it sounds

The subject is shared: the pick at 26, the receiver KC Concepcion, the change from Sean McDermott to Joe Brady. What separates the shows is the route they take.

Locked On Bills - Daily Podcast On The Buffalo Bills is the most organized. Joe Marino says he is "not trading away from KC Concepcion" because the receiver is "electric" and "a game breaker", and another clip has Joe Brady at the NFL owners meetings saying a day will come when Josh Allen must be a true pocket passer while admitting he cannot stop Allen from running over defenders. The two Cover 1 Sports shows sit beside it. Disguised Coverage gets to the football by tangent, and its draft clips weigh Kenneth Grant, "not great at anything yet" but the player every team thinks it can improve, against Ty Robinson, a "plus run defender" who can "consistently collapse the pocket". Cover 1 Buffalo, with Aaron Quinn and Greg Tompsett, is the postgame version, working through a 30-3 win over the Jets.

The fan-room shows are louder and less tidy, and they are where the city comes through. Breaking Tables | A Buffalo Bills Podcast is the most chaotic: its clip from the final game at Highmark Stadium describes an all-day goodbye with snow, tributes and nobody leaving early, and after the coaching change Sean calls it a "knee-jerk reaction" and the Joe Brady hire the way the team "saved face". Not Your Average Network 716 has the same energy with more opinions per minute; a clip on a possible trade for Dexter Lawrence drifts through the city's other teams, one host marvelling that "The hockey fans are insane". Buffalo Bred, with Dan Roberts and JJ, starts from stories and memories; Overreaction Buffalo | A Buffalo Bills Football Podcast runs from trade-down math at 26 to John Fina's film review of Torrence, who needs "situational awareness" or Buffalo may not extend him.

The Extra Point is different in kind. Its titles are built from WGR interviews and full shows, it sounds like local radio with callers queued and schedules read, and its clips are the guests: Greg Rousseau saying he likes being called "hybrid Greg Rousseau", McDermott counting nine years with a world championship still on his to-do list.

The Sabres

Hockey is the second subject, with its own shows. One Before I Die runs both teams together, and its clip on "Ep. 244: Kevyn Adams fired, Bills insane comeback vs the Pats" catches the mood: an unbelievable Bills game, then the Sabres, in typical fashion, stealing the spotlight, with Jarmo Kekalainen in and Alex Tuch the first major decision. Expected Buffalo | The Podcast tracks the front office more closely; Chad DeDominicis's clips cover Kekalainen's hiring as senior advisor, a mock offseason with Anthony, and a sponsor read for a pizza place on Clinton Street in West Seneca. Baker Fairburn Hockey Show pairs Kris Baker of Sabres Prospects with Matthew Fairburn, who covers the Sabres for The Athletic. By April 2026 the titles read differently: "Ep. 245: Everybody Ropes, Everybody Rides - Buffalo Sabres Playoffs Preview", "Division Champs", "The Comeback"; and The Extra Point has Darren Dreger hesitating to call the Sabres a top Stanley Cup contender for their lack of playoff experience.

Rochester: the sheriff and the children's agenda

Rochester's listening is civic rather than sporting. BEHIND THE BADGE WITH MCSO is Monroe County Sheriff Todd Baxter's look inside his office in Rochester. Its clips go somewhere harder than its titles on parking details and scam alerts: a two-part conversation on therapy in which Linda Zimmerman recounts an assault and the threatening phone call afterward, which she turned into an improvised investigation, and in which memory is framed as biology combined with biography. A third clip has Baxter saying Monroe County has "no capabilities legally to take a drone out of the sky" until a federal change in December.

Raising Rochester, from The Children's Agenda with host Pete Nabozny, is policy conversation about children in the community. Its clips are about early intervention: Amanda Wilbert says more than 375 Monroe County children are waiting for at least one service, and Stacia Paganelli says experienced therapists are "hanging on by a thread" as rates fall behind. The episodes date from 2022.

Two crime stories, and the weather

NXIVM on Trial follows Keith Raniere and the organization based in upstate New York, and its clips are the case in voices: Raniere insisting DOS is "an order" and "this isn't a democracy" while the women in it called it empowerment; Isabella saying she was told "this was going to be a tattoo" and then "they were branded"; Moira Penza saying the strongest proof against Raniere was the man himself, his emails and his remarks about adult-like children. Upstate Unsolved goes beyond the headlines of the region's unsolved crimes, and the clips that play come from a season on the case of Ruth Whitman: reasoning from eighteen inches of water and no sign of a struggle that she was most likely incapacitated when she was dumped, and an autopsy showing her four to six weeks pregnant.

Don Paul Bits o' Blather on Weather, Climate, & Science is a broadcast meteorologist based in Buffalo since 1984 talking through the forecast. The clip that plays is a record-warm stretch, the third consecutive day with a record high and the Buffalo airport already at 75 by noon against an average high of 51; its 2020 titles set forecasts beside lake-effect history and "Lousy Football Weather for Buffalo Sunday".

Where to start

• For the football argument at its most careful: Locked On Bills - Daily Podcast On The Buffalo Bills, then Disguised Coverage for draft tape.
• For what Buffalo sounds like when it is not being careful: Breaking Tables | A Buffalo Bills Podcast or Not Your Average Network 716.
• For the Sabres: Expected Buffalo | The Podcast, or One Before I Die for both teams in one conversation.
• For the region away from the arena: the therapy conversation on BEHIND THE BADGE WITH MCSO, or Upstate Unsolved.

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