Colorado stories with patient civic context.
Colorado Matters follows Colorado through interviews that make state issues feel close and specific. It moves from farms, water, elections, and policing to ballet, basketball, bagels, and Mars history without losing its steady civic focus.
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Colorado Matters is a daily-style Colorado interview show with a wide civic lens and a patient ear. It is local in the strongest sense. The show pays attention to the details that reveal how people actually live: iron in a rancher’s water, a ski town watching the snowpack, a farming family trying to keep land viable, or a bagel shop measuring itself against a bigger food tradition. Those details rarely stay small. They become questions about climate, infrastructure, state policy, economic pressure, community trust, and cultural memory. Recent episodes move comfortably between rural life and urban politics. Olathe sweet corn leads to a broken food system, crop pests, and the decision to scale back production. Water in La Junta becomes a quality-of-life issue for the Arkansas Valley. Election administration becomes a conversation about vote-by-mail and public confidence. Aurora’s diversity opens onto policing, unhoused residents, consent decrees, and the uneven work of rebuilding trust. The show also makes space for Colorado’s arts and oddities. It follows Colorado Ballet’s Gil Boggs, Denver Center Theatre Company season planning, a documentary about Carl Bean, and the long afterlife of popular belief in Martians. Sports and hometown pride appear through Lauren and Sienna Betts. The tone is warm but controlled. Interviews are allowed to breathe, and the show tends to favor plain questions, specific examples, and careful context over argument for its own sake. It suits listeners who want to understand Colorado beyond headlines: what decisions feel like on the ground, which histories are still unresolved, and how culture, policy, land, water, and identity keep shaping the state.
Made for: For listeners who follow Colorado news, politics, culture, rural life, and public affairs with an appetite for context rather than quick takes. It especially suits people who want local voices and state-level stakes in the same conversation.
What sets it apart: The show’s range is unusually broad without feeling scattered: a Martian-history segment, a water project, a domestic violence bill, and a ballet interview can all belong to the same editorial world. Its advantage is the way it uses concrete Colorado details to reach larger civic and cultural questions.
Hosted by Ryan Warner and Chandra Thomas Whitfield, CPR News' daily interview show focuses on the state's people, issues and ideas.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · August 2026
Colorado Matters turns Colorado's civic fights, local institutions, and cultural stories into grounded News & Politics with a strong Colorado frame.
Colorado Matters belongs in News & Politics, but its center of gravity is Colorado itself. The show works best as a civic magazine: vote-by-mail, Aurora policing reforms, Breckenridge's winter economy, rural skin cancer care, and the search for a cemetery tied to a former Indian…
Only here does a Boulder train sit comfortably beside Judy Garland and rural dermatology.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Breckenridge pressures, a Boulder rail plan, and a Colorado Springs bagel run shape the hour.
Colorado Matters opens on Breckenridge and the strain of building a ski-town budget around winter that does not always cooperate. The town manager's talk of tax revenue and diversification gives the segment a grounded edge, with a quiet reminder that a place shaped by snow still…
A measured Colorado hour linking a missing cemetery, Aurora's reforms, and a hometown sports celebration.
Colorado Matters moves from the search for a cemetery on the grounds of the former Teller Institute in Grand Junction to Aurora's diversity, policing reforms, and efforts to rebuild trust, then closes with Lauren and Sienna Betts and their family after a storybook March Madness…
A civic hour with local grit and a wider cultural reach.
Colorado election coverage, a Grand Junction streetscape lined with garbage on purpose, and a profile of Carl Bean share the hour, and the piece works best when it treats each as a question about how communities define themselves.
A holiday radio hour linking Judy Garland to Colorado's annual tradition.
Colorado Matters builds its holiday hour around a 1963 Judy Garland television special, using it as the spark for the station's annual holiday extravaganza.
A rural skin cancer story gives Colorado Matters its clearest human scale, while books widen the frame.
Colorado Matters pairs rural skin cancer care with independent books, and the episode is strongest when a personal memory widens into a question of access.
Ancient mysteries, field notes, and stubborn questions.
Space ambition, argued from the inside.
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This episode of Colorado Matters covers three distinct Colorado stories.
This episode celebrates the 10th anniversary of the Colorado Matters holiday extravaganza, inspired by Judy Garland's 1963 Christmas special.
This Women's History Month special episode features intimate conversations with three remarkable Colorado women inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame, discussing their work in activism, engineering, community building, and advocacy.
This episode of Colorado Matters provides a halftime check-in on Colorado's legislative session, an expert analysis of the Middle East conflict with a focus on Iran, and a feature on the play 'Brooklyn Laundry' as part of the 'Raise the Curtain' series.
Colorado Matters pairs Lisa Hidalgo’s forecast for Colorado’s late-July monsoon with a report on Denver’s four-hour Laundry to Landscape gray-water class and an interview about Historic Cemeteries of Denver.
Colorado Matters interviews Benita Fitzgerald-Moseley, the Olympic gold medalist who became U.S.
This episode explores the historical belief in Martian life in the early 1900s, featuring an interview with former NPR science reporter David Barron about his book on the topic, including anecdotes like Nikola Tesla's radio experiments.
This episode covers a farming family scaling back production of Olathe sweet corn due to economic and environmental challenges, and profiles the Betts sisters' journey to winning UCLA's first NCAA women's basketball championship.
This episode explores water quality issues affecting ranchers in La Junta and a farming family in the San Luis Valley who turned to brewing to save their legacy.
This episode discusses a Colorado bill requiring law enforcement to use questions to assess deadly domestic violence risk and previews the Denver Center Theatre Company's upcoming season.
This episode explores declining democracy in the U.S.
Breckenridge opens the hour.
Colorado Matters opens with a search for a missing cemetery in Grand Junction.
Colorado Matters opens with reaction to President Trump's vote-by-mail executive order and what it could mean for Colorado's safe and popular mail-in system.
This Women's History Month special episode features intimate conversations with three remarkable women inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame, discussing their work in activism, engineering, community building, and advocacy.
This episode covers the grand opening of Cleo Parker Robinson's new center for the healing arts in Colorado, highlighting its inclusive design and her lifelong dream to create a community dance institution.
This episode covers a Colorado researcher's guide for detecting concussions in youth athletes and features first-hand stories advocating for juvenile justice reform.