Seems like everyone has a podcast these days: Joe Rogan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, even the Cascade County Sheriff has one. There’s a pod for every subject you could imagine, and that’s true when it comes to Big Sky Country, too.
Thanks to the show Yellowstone and the growing popularity of the National Park System, everyone wants a piece of us. There’s a seemingly endless audience for books, websites, shows, and, yes, podcasts about Montana.
While dozens of Montana podcasts are now being produced all across the state, these are some of the stand-outs that keep me thinking about everything Big Sky Country.
Table of Contents
Podcasts About Montana History & Current Issues
Up and Vanished (Season 3)
I’m honestly not a huge fan of true-crime podcasts, which can come off as exploiting someone’s personal tragedy for entertainment. But I’ll make an exception if the story shines a spotlight on a larger problem and uses the crime’s details to better explain the issue.
Season three of Up and Vanished dives deep into the 2017 disappearance of Ashley Loring Heavyrunner near Browning, but also calls attention to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) crisis.
Host Payne Lindsey tries his best to avoid sensationalizing Ashley’s disappearance and the poverty that exists on the Blackfeet reservation, instead sticking to the details of the case and Ashley’s relationships with witnesses and possible suspects. The podcast explores conflicts between law enforcement agencies, jurisdictional issues, corruption, and our country’s apathy toward missing Native women. Don’t expect easy answers, though, or clarity over what happened to Ashley.
12 episodes (2021)
Episode length: 35 min.
Threshold (Season 1)
If you’ve visited Yellowstone National Park, hopefully, you’ve been lucky enough to see some majestic bison. The American bison was brought back from the brink of extinction at the start of the 20th century, when only a few hundred remained in and around the park.
While Montana’s current bison population is nowhere near the 60 million that roamed the plains at the beginning of the 19th century, their reintroduction is considered one of the greatest success stories of the conservation movement. It hasn’t been without controversy, though.
Bison can carry brucellosis and theoretically transmit it to cattle grazing on land just outside the park’s borders, making ranchers fearful that any further growth in the herd’s size could threaten their livelihood. Ranchers and tourists aren’t the only stakeholders, though. Montana’s Native American tribes have a deep connection with the bison, both practical and spiritual, and limiting the herds to tourist-friendly Yellowstone is a painful reminder of how their way of life was stolen from them.
Season one of Threshold is centered around Montana’s bison population, including their history, current efforts to maintain them, and what the future of bison should be in America. Each episode examines the perspective of a different stakeholder and their concerns about bison management – park rangers, tourists, Native Americans, and ranchers.
Managing the bison in a way that is palatable to all parties has proven a nearly impossible task, and with the establishment of the controversial American Prairie Reserve, an effort to create a home for wild bison on three million acres north of Lewistown, there’s bound to be even more questions and debate.
7 episodes (2017)
Episode length: 30 min.
If you loved Schoolhouse Rock!, you’re sure to enjoy one of the newest Montana podcasts, Shared State, a collaboration by Montana Free Press, Montana Public Radio, and Yellowstone Public Radio.
The first season covers the 1972 Montana Constitutional Convention, with each episode focused on a single phrase in the 55-word preamble. Similar to Land Grab and Richest Hill, Shared State highlights how the state’s experience with robber baron capitalists shaped its psyche and how this historic convention sought to rectify the wrongs of the last century of Montana history.
The podcast also examines how many Montanans have forgotten these lessons over the past 50 years, and are now chipping away at protections the convention delegates fought for so vigorously. A Republican supermajority following the 2022 election opened up the possibility for a new constitutional convention, one that would likely remove many of the protections implied by the 1972 preamble.
Shared State’s second season focuses on Montana’s current politically charged environment and how groups that were once willing to compromise are now digging their heels in. With partisan divisions growing stronger every year, many Montanans now see their neighbors as the enemy. Shared State attempts to find a way forward before the Treasure State self-destructs.
18 episodes (2020-2022)
Episode length: 30 min.
Richest Hill
All Montanans know Butte, but the Butte we “know” is filtered through a series of stereotypes with varying levels of truth to them – “Butte is dirty,” “Butte is violent,” and “Butte is a failing city.” Despite being Montana’s fifth-largest population center, most people who aren’t from there really don’t know anything about it.
Montana Public Radio’s Richest Hill pulls back the curtain on the Mining City with a thorough examination of its history, including where it stands today, and offers a glimmer of hope for the future. The first few episodes paint the grim scene most Montanans are familiar with, highlighting that Butte is home to one of the world’s largest Superfund sites. Later episodes focus on the EPA cleanup of the Superfund site and how political processes and business interests have stymied that work for decades.
Immeasurable wealth once flowed through Butte’s streets, so what happened? How did Butte go from being the most important city between Minneapolis and Seattle to the sleepy town it is today? Richest Hill weaves together history, politics, and environmentalism to tell Butte’s story in a way that few have ever heard before.
10 episodes (2019-2020)
Episode length: 50 min.
Land Grab
Montana (and many other Western states) was founded on a winner-take-all mentality, where boom-and-bust cycles rewarded those who ignored the rules and took what they could, even at the expense of entire populations. Listeners of podcasts about Montana history can’t cling to a heroic origin story, and Land Grab, which investigates how the darker side of Montana’s history has shaped its present, is no exception.
From the forging of Chief Charlo’s signature on the Garfield Agreement, which effectively removed the Salish tribe from the Bitterroot Valley, to the Missoula Mercantile’s collusion to steal valuable timber allotments from the American people, Montana’s industrialists have often embodied the phrase, “It’s better to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission.”
You need not be a history junkie to enjoy Land Grab, and you certainly don’t need to remember all the dates and names involved. All its tales of corporate debauchery tie back to the present and show how unregulated capitalism and a valuable resource (land/housing) have come together to create the perfect storm that is our current housing crisis.
10 episodes (2021-2022)
Episode length: 1.5 hrs.
Headwaters
Out of Montana’s two national parks, Glacier has always been my favorite. It’s the one fully contained in Montana, it was closer for me growing up in Great Falls, and I’ll just say it, I think the hiking’s better. Glacier is an endlessly fascinating place, which is why I’m so excited the Glacier Conservancy made its very own podcast about it.
Each of the first three seasons, about eight episodes each, has a theme: the coming together of different forces, the whitebark pine’s importance to the park, and how different aspects of Glacier came to be.
The themes don’t limit the episode topics, though; you can still learn everything you need to know about the Logan Pass Visitor Center or how the railroad barons willed the park into being. They’re more of a connecting thread that shows how everything fits together ecologically, historically, and culturally. The latest episodes seem to be going in more varied directions, and I’m thrilled to see what new mysteries are waiting to be discovered in the park.
30 episodes (2020-Present)
Episode length: 45 min.
A New Angle
Booms and busts have always been a major part of Montana’s economy (see Land Grab above). In the last 10 years or so, though, many residents have been feeling especially left behind as traditional industries died out and the service economy exploded. There’s a sense that something has to give.
With a dearth of local high-paying jobs, Montanans who’ve lived here for generations can no longer afford their housing. Many choose to scream into the void that “the Californians need to go home,” but if we’re actually going to solve this problem, we need less screaming and more creative solutions. A New Angle sets aside the politics, fatalism, and sheer bonkers ideas in favor of problem solving and constructive dialogue.
A New Angle’s tagline “Cool people doing awesome things in and around Montana” gives host and University of Montana business professor Justin Angle plenty of space to branch out into different avenues for how we might take advantage of the state’s new and dynamic economy. He interviews a different guest on each episode, ranging from non-profit leaders to authors to business executives.
Most episodes focus on entrepreneurship, innovation, and how Montana is a microcosm for a rapidly changing economy on a global scale. Angle makes a point of tying these interviews back to the larger problems faced by Montana and America at large.
300+ episodes (2018-Present)
Episode length: 30 min.
Fireline
Another short series from Justin at A New Angle, Fireline explores our relationship with wildfires. It’s not entirely a Montana-focused podcast, but fire is a major player in how Montanans work, recreate, and live, especially in recent years. Many of the podcast’s guests are professors at Montana universities or have worked with BLM and Forest Service to limit the human and environmental cost of fires in Montana.
What’s most interesting is how fire isn’t demonized on the podcast, but portrayed as a natural process of the wilderness that we need to work with. Yes, climate change is making wildfires more intense, but it’s human development’s encroachment on nature that makes them truly menacing.
7 episodes (2021)
Episode length: 30 min.
What the Helena
The Montana legislature meets for just 90 days every two years, and oh, what a mess it is. Every. Single. Time.
The grandstanding, the vaguely written bills that sound like they were put together by high school students (maybe they are, unpaid interns and all), and the utter chaos that comes with fitting everything into a few months. So many things about our state can change so quickly and with so little forethought, which are then often reversed after a judge looks it over more carefully.
Someone has to make sense of it all, and What the Helena tries its damnedest.
Legislative shenanigans aside, this podcast covers a wide swath of Montana issues that’ll help make you a more informed voter. Like how do property taxes work, and will supporting this politician actually keep them from going up? What are the intended or unintended consequences of some of the laws that were passed in the last session? Why is it so hard to get anything accomplished? With each issue, you’ll really dive into the weeds, but it’s served with a healthy dose of humor to keep things from getting too serious.
What the Helena is produced by the progressive group Forward Montana, so be prepared for a fairly liberal slant.
40+ episodes (2021-2023)
Episode length: 30 min.
Montana Podcasts About Travel & Entertainment
Montana Road Trippin’
If you’re planning a Montana road trip but aren’t sure where it should take you, this podcast is perfect for brainstorming destinations. Hosts Dia and Jewels trade fantastically corny jokes throughout the series and venture off on lengthy deviations from the topic, but I enjoy their coverage of out-of-the-way places like Philipsburg and lesser-known events like the Utica Hay Festival.
Montana Road Tripping highlights a side of Montana that travel magazines rarely cover, and these locales are what amazing summer road trips are made of. Most episodes are around 30 minutes long, and they’re great for throwing on while you commute to work, dreaming about your future travel plans.
49 episodes (2014-2016)
Episode length: 30 min.
Trail of the Week
We’re surrounded by spectacular landscapes here in Montana, and yet many of us hike the same familiar trails year after year. Why is that? Because it just doesn’t cross our minds to try something different, which is where Trail of the Week is a huge help.
This podcast is short and to the point, and I love the concept of it. Each one briefly introduces a different hiking trail somewhere in Montana (there are no tangents or pontificating on this show). Episodes are just a minute or two long, enough time to rattle off the credits and give you a snippet about the trail’s location and its interesting sights. The episodes may be short on details, but they get you in the mood for exploring new places.
200+ episodes (2018-2023)
Episode length: 2 min.
Smalltown Shenanigans
Remember the good ole days, before social media, when teenagers got into mischief like making prank phone calls, throwing water balloons, or attempting to rip down an outhouse using their mother’s station wagon? Yeah, me neither, because I didn’t grow up in Cut Bank, Montana, and can’t come close to the tally of misdeeds the Burns Brothers showcase in this podcast
Billy and Brian Burns, along with several of their childhood friends, take turns telling stories of what it was like to grow up in small-town America. They had little to entertain themselves with in 1980s Cut Bank, aside from concocting schemes and irritating the town’s adults with their hijinks.
In hindsight, many of their pranks come off as mean-spirited. But with a few decades in the rearview mirror, the brothers feel safe retelling these tales – surely the statute of limitations has long since passed. On top of that, the most likely victim of any of their schemes is each other.
Each episode of Smalltown Shenanigans is about an hour long and focuses on a theme, like how Brian hates losing at anything and how his unsportsmanlike conduct manifests itself in the most hilarious ways. As the show goes on, Billy and Brian will be inviting guests from outside of Cut Bank to tell their stories, illustrating how misspent youth connects us all.
37 episodes (2022-Present)
Episode length: 1-1.5 hrs.
The Big Why
Got some burning questions about the Big Sky State, but aren’t sure who has the answers. The Big Why covers everything from “Why’s Montana shaped like that” to “How do cows survive in our blistering cold winters?”
Each episode is a learning experience you didn’t know you needed, and they’re all about eight minutes long, perfect for popping on during a morning commute. Listeners submit the questions and get to choose which ones are answered on-air during the next episode.
30 episodes (2022-Present)
Episode length: 8 min.
We’re No Dam Experts
Being from Great Falls, I didn’t expect to find this podcast as fascinating as I did. Is there really that much more to know about the Electric City? The answer is a resounding yes. Most of the episodes consist of an interview with an expert in Great Falls (because hosts Shannon and Rebecca are no dam experts… get it?) on topics ranging from the history of the First People’s Buffalo Jump to how to get a reservation at Glacier National Park.
Maybe it wouldn’t be as appealing to someone who’s not from Great Falls, but as a resident, I’m impressed by how exciting they make our city sound. It’s no secret that Great Falls doesn’t get a lot of love from our fellow Montanans, and we deserve a shout-out every once and a while.
150+ episodes (2020-Present)
Episode length: 1 hr.
Other Local Montana Podcasts
Similar to No Dam Experts in Great Falls, most of Montana’s cities have their own podcasts covering local issues and interviewing interesting people from the area. Whether you’re a first-time visitor or a lifelong resident, they’re a great way to learn about what’s going on in these Montana towns.
Venture Boldly – Kalispell
Explore Big Sky with the Hoary Marmot – Bozeman & southwest Montana
The Missoula Podcast – Missoula
This is Billings – Billings
The Buttecast – Butte
More Montana Podcasts
Yes, there are even more podcasts about Montana. So if the ones listed above don’t get you all the way through your road trip, here are a few others for your listening pleasure!
Field Notes – podcast on Montana plants and wildlife, in collaboration with the Montana Natural History Center
Montana Murder Mysteries – historical true-crime podcast
Montana Outdoor Podcast – weekly podcast covering issues related to Montana’s outdoors
SubSurface – niche podcast about invasive species in the lakes and streams of Montana
The Gravel Road – six-episode true-crime series
Voices of Montana – talk show-style podcast voicing the opinions of everyday Montanans
Have you listened to any Montana podcasts? Tell us what you thought of them in the comments!
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