The Mississippi Valley Traveler Podcast
Episodes
84 episodes
The First People of the Mississippi Valley, Part 2: A Big Bang and First Contact
A thousand years ago, the largest city north of Mexico rose from the floodplain across the river from present-day St. Louis. In part two of our look at Native America along the Mississippi, we trace Cahokia's explosive birth around 1050 CE — a ...
The First People of the Mississippi Valley, Part 1: Creation, Mounds, and the Path of Souls
In this episode (part one of a two-part series), we trace the first ten thousand years of human life along the Mississippi Valley: who came here, what they built, and what we think they believed about the world they were living in.We sta...
The American Bottom In Focus, with Photographer Jennifer Colten
The area we call the American Bottom is a widening in the Mississippi River floodplain that runs some 70 miles in Illinois from Alton to the mouth of the Kaskaskia River just north of Chester. Just across the river from St. Louis, the area has ...
From Great Sewer to Great River: How the Twin Cities Brought a Dead Mississippi River Back to Life
A hundred years ago, the Mississippi River that ran through Minneapolis and Saint Paul was basically a dead river. Factories, people, and local governments dumped sewage and industrial waste into the river until it was a slimy, fetid mess incap...
Deep Time on the Mississippi: The River's Geologic Origins and Future with Roy Van Arsdale
How do you tell the story of a river that's tens of millions of years in the making? In Episode 79, I sit down with Dr. Roy Van Arsdale, Professor Emeritus at the University of Memphis, to trace the deep geologic history of the Mississippi Rive...
The Decades-Long Effort to Tame the Wild Mississippi River: How Engineers Reshaped America's Greatest River
In this episode, I talk with Dr. David Beadenharn, a river engineer who has spent over 45 years studying the lower Mississippi River. David grew up in Vicksburg, Mississippi, stumbled into river work after leaving the Air Force, and never reall...
Better Safe Than Sorry? My Radical Choice to Trust the World
Travel has played an outsized role in my life, has shaped it in overwhelmingly positive ways. In this episode, I share the story behind my new memoir, Better Safe Than Sorry? Slow Boats, Chicken Buses, and the Radical Choice to Trust the Wo...
The River Is Calling — Will You Answer? River Days of Action and National Mississippi River Day 2026
The weather is warming in our part of the world, which means many of us are working on plans to spend time on or near the Mississippi River. And now we’ve got a couple of excellent ways to kick it off, two events that have quickly become centra...
Lake Pepin’s Legends, Communities, and Future with Michael Anderson
Lake Pepin is a natural widening in the main channel of the Mississippi River and one of the most popular sections of the river. In this episode, I have a wide-ranging conversation about the lake with Michael Anderson, Executive Director of the...
After Andersonville: The Sultana and the Cruelest Twist of the Civil War
Deep into the night on April 27, 1865, the boilers on the steamboat Sultana exploded, triggering the worst maritime disaster in US history. More than a thousand people died, either from the explosion itself or trying to survive in the ...
You Can Make It Illegal, But You Can't Make It Unpopular: History of Brothels and Prostitution in Mississippi River Towns
From the brothels of post-Civil War-era St. Louis to the streets of New Orleans' Storyville, this episode traces the history of prostitution along the Mississippi River — and the endless tug-of-war between tolerance, regulation, and suppression...
The Power of Story: How Cahokia Became North America's Greatest City, with Dr. Julie Zimmerman
Of all the great archaeological sites around the world, I suspect the one near my hometown, Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, is among the least appreciated. While the rich floodplain along the Mississippi River south of Alton, Illinois (know...
Wild at Heart: The Natural World of the Lower Mississippi with Jack Killgore
The lower half of the Mississippi grows to an immense scale that is hard to comprehend until you’re sitting on a small boat in the middle of it. In this season of the Mississippi Valley Traveler podcast, we’re going to go deeper into that world...
Preview of 2026 Mississippi Valley Traveler Podcast Season
Coming soon! The Mississippi Valley Traveler Podcast resumes a new season on March 4. Listen for a quick preview of upcoming episodes.
Beyond Plantations: Getting to Know Louisiana’s River Road
Mary Ann Sternberg has spent twenty years challenging the idea that the River Road between Baton Rouge and New Orleans is nothing more than rows of noxious chemical plants interspersed with 19th century plantation houses, so in this episode, we...
A French Village in the American Heartland: Historian Jim Gass on Sainte Genevieve, Missouri
In this episode, I talk with Jim Gass, Director of Research and Education at the Centre for French Colonial Life, about the long and rich history of Sainte Genevieve, Missouri. We begin with a discussion of what we know about the indigenous peo...
Learning the Language of the Mississippi River with John Ruskey
In this episode, I interview long-time river guide and Sage of the Lower Mississippi, John Ruskey. John has been guiding and living on the Mississippi for nearly 30 years, so I start by letting him describe the Lower Mississippi River that he k...
The Mississippi’s Forgotten People: Life on Shantyboats and the Margins of American Society
A hundred years ago, shantyboat communities could be found along many rivers in the US. Historian Gregg Andrews went in-depth to research these communities, inspired in part by the discovery of a personal connection to them, which resulted in a...
Beyond Mark Twain: Faye Dant on Hannibal's African American Stories
You probably know a little bit about Hannibal, Missouri, because of the books written by a guy named Mark Twain, but I bet you don’t know much about the history of African Americans who’ve lived in Hannibal, even though Hannibal has had African...
Tips for Traveling the Great River Road, Part 2
Our summer road trip down the Great River Road continues in this episode. We start just after Lake Pepin and make our way to the Mississippi’s confluence with the Ohio River at Cairo, Illinois. Along the way, I’ll comment on the following place...
Tips for Traveling the Great River Road, Part 1
It’s summer and many of y’all will be hitting the road to travel and see something new (or revisit places you enjoy). I haven’t done a travel-themed podcast in a while, so in the next couple of episodes, I’m going to go over the highlights of d...
The Missouri River, Part 2: Channelization, Community, and Recreation
In this episode, we continue our detour along the Missouri River with part 2 of my conversation with Steve Schnarr from Missouri River Relief. In part two, Steve describes the process the Corps of Engineers used to channelize the river, how it ...
The Missouri River, Part 1: Geography, Ecology, and Human Impacts
In this episode, we detour off the main channel of the Mississippi River to get to know its longest tributary: the Missouri River. Our guide for this exploration is Steve Schnarr, Race Director for Missouri River Relief. We covered a lot of ter...
The First National Mississippi River Day: Building Community Around the Big River
February 1 is National Baked Alaska Day. April 14 is National Ex-Spouse Day, but April 22 marks Earth Day. We’ve had these (and more!) national days celebrating things silly and crucial, but we’ve never had a National Mississippi River Day. Unt...
River to Table: Chef Josh Galliano on Campfire Cooking
In this episode, I have the pleasure of talking with accomplished chef and St. Louis area resident Josh Galliano. We talk about his path to becoming a chef and the family and cultural influences. He grew up in southern Louisiana near the Missis...
