Advertise on podcast: The Mississippi Valley Traveler Podcast

Send us Fan Mail The Magdalena River slices a thousand miles through the heart of Colombia. Jordan Salama spent four weeks one summer following the course of that river to learn more Colombians and the importance of the Magdalena to them, a trip that inspired his book, Every Day the River Changes. In this episode, I talk with Jordan about that trip and the river that inspired it. We talk about how the Magdalena got on his radar and the experience of traveling along it. He shares stories about some of the people he met and the importance of the Magdalena in their lives. He discusses some of the threats facing the river, including an unusually large one – hippos that have become established in part of the Magdalena. We finish with a story about how the trip and reaching the end of the Magdalena impacted him personally.

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we dig into St. Louis culinary history with food historian Suzanne Corbett. We look back at the foodways of indigenous cultures and early French settlers, which leads us to a discussion about portable soup. We talk about truck gardens and Corbett’s experience growing up on one. We then tour the various styles of food in St. Louis today, including the Italian specialties in the neighborhood known as The Hill. We touch on a few St. Louis specialties, including St. Louis-style pizza and provel cheese, gooey butter cake, the St. Paul sandwich, and the Gerber sandwich. We end with a short discussion of three local landmarks: Crown Candy Kitchen, Al’s Restaurant, and Ted Drewes Frozen Custard. This is a fun conversation about feeding our curiosity, literally and figurately, and discovering how food connects us with the past and present and tells us something about who we are.

Send us Fan Mail Stories about riverboat gambling and gamblers persist to this day. Why? In this episode, I talk with historian and author Thomas Ruys Smith about the pre-Civil War gambling scene on the Mississippi River. We peel off the patina of romanticism and go deep into the realities of gambling on the Mississippi River. We talk about the presence of gambling on the river before steamboats plied the Mississippi and how the destruction of the red-light district in Vicksburg reorganized gambling activities. We then go deeper into the world of riverboat gambling, touching on which games of chance were common, the background of gamblers, the role of the ship’s crew in supporting or tolerating gamblers, the consequences of getting caught cheating, some common myths about gamblers. We wrap up with a discussion about the eventual decline of riverboat gambling, how and when the image of riverboat gamblers got a makeover into mythic heroes, and the thread in American history of turning outlaws and rule breakers into heroes.

Send us Fan Mail 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 planned metropolis of mounds, plazas, and processional roads aligned to the movements of the sun and moon. We'll piece together what we know about Monk's Mound, chunkey matches, the pilgrims' acropolis, and consider what the shell-bead burials of Mound 72 reveal about power and sacrifice. We'll also ask why a city of twenty thousand quietly emptied out by 1400, and follow the Mississippian world downriver as it carried on without its old capital. Then, in 1541, Hernando de Soto's army reaches the river. What the Spanish army found was a densely settled valley of thriving communities — some at odds with each other — and what they left behind was starvation, disease, and shattered lives. We'll follow the invasion from Casqui and Pacaha to de Soto's death at Guachoya, his body sunk in the river he had claimed to command, and the stunning painted canoe fleets of Quigualtam that chased the survivors toward the Gulf.

Send us Fan Mail 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 start with ice. Glacial Lake Agassiz breaks its bank, Glacial River Warren tears a valley through Minnesota, and a waterfall the size of Niagara begins a slow retreat upriver to the spot we now call St. Anthony Falls. The first Minnesotans arrive to a landscape still reawakening, sharing it with mammoths and mastodons and this massive river.  From there we follow people down the length of the valley as they learn to live off big rivers and floodplains, domesticate their first plants, and build monuments out of soil. At Watson Brake in Louisiana, hunter-gatherers raised eleven mounds a thousand years before the first Egyptian pyramid. At Poverty Point, thousands of people assembled a massive earthwork in about ninety days — apparently without a ruler telling them to.  We also look up. The three-tiered cosmos of Upper World, Below World, and This World; the Earth Diver stories; and the Path of Souls, the star road the dead traveled — and which Hopewell builders in Ohio aligned their roads and mounds to meet.  In the next episode, we’ll go deep into Cahokia and the invasion led by Hernando de Soto.

Send us Fan Mail 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 a deep history. For thousands of years, Native Americans lived in and around the rich bottomland forests and wetlands. About a thousand years ago, one of the largest Native American cities sprung up practically overnight, the place we call Cahokia today. French colonists built communities at the southern end of the American Bottom, and Lewis and Clark based in the area before venturing west on the Missouri River. Before the Civil War, a small group of African Americans – some free, some who had recently escaped from enslavement – founded a little enclave called Freedom Village that later became Brooklyn (also known as Lovejoy). Brooklyn offered a sanctuary for generations of African Americans in an area defined by segregation and prejudice. By the twentieth century, companies eager to avoid the taxes and regulations of St. Louis bought land and founded municipalities they could dominate, then built large factories there: East St. Louis, Sauget, National City, East Alton. In the mid-1950s, organized crime got a foothold in and around Venice. As the American industrial economy declined, so did the communities in the American Bottom.  All that deep history, much of it long forgotten, caught the attention and lens of photographer Jennifer Colten. In this episode, I talk with her about her work photographing this area layered in sediment and history. After she describes her path to professional photography, we talk about the first project that pulled her into the American Bottom. We then talk about some of the history that is too easily overlooked, what catches her attention as she driving around, what remains of the original floodplain forest, how it feels to explore places many people are too afraid to visit, and some of the stories she’s telling with her photography. It was fascinating to learn about the American Bottom from the perspective of someone who has spent so much time documenting it in photographs.

Send us Fan Mail 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 incapable of supporting life. But by the 1930s, attitudes started to shift and the first steps were taken to reduce the flow of pollution into the river. In this episode, Abby Moore and Cassie Champion, two of the people involved with a campaign called Sacred Water, Shared Future, describe how the Great River became the Great Sewer, then how local folks gradually cleaned it up and restored the river’s ability to support life and its status as something worthy of admiration.  They describe the goals behind Sacred Water, Shared Future and who is involved, then we talk about the importance of sharing success stories, especially the ones that unfold across time. They share a few thoughts about how we can continue to build and maintain support for clean water initiatives and what other cities might be able to learn from the success of the Twin Cities. This is a fundamentally a good-news story, one that shows that regardless of how bad something might seem, a better future isn’t just a hope but something that can be achieved, even if it takes a while.

Send us Fan Mail 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 River—and it's a more dynamic ride than you might expect. We go back 100 million years, to a time when rivers in North America generally flowed north and west, then follow the dramatic forces that reversed the continent's plumbing, including a drifting hot spot that lifted part of a mountain range nearly two miles, which then eroded and sank, creating a trough for the river we call the Mississippi. Roy talks about the pre-Ice Age river that was much bigger than today’s Mississippi (and why it carried more water) and explains how glaciers rerouted the river's course. He also describes one of his first studies where he learned how bald cypress tree rings in Reelfoot Lake still bear witness to the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811–12. We even peer into the river's future, describing how uplift that is still in progress will likely change the future Mississippi River, as well as ongoing seismic risks. If you've ever wondered how America's greatest river came to be, this conversation is for you. Listen wherever you get your podcasts, or find show notes at MississippiValleyTraveler.com/podcast.

Send us Fan Mail 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 really managed to leave. Our conversation starts with a picture of what the Mississippi looked like a couple hundred years ago, when the river was wide, shallow, full of sandbars, islands, and massive logjams. Back then, the river was constantly on the move, eating away at its banks and shifting course. That erosion was producing an almost unimaginable amount of sediment — around 600 million tons a year. In comparison, the river today carries somewhere around 120 to 150 million tons.  Then we transition to the engineering projects. The Army Corps of Engineers has spent decades trying to get the river under control — first for navigation, then for flood control after the catastrophic 1927 flood. They built levees, tried to stop the river from naturally shortening itself, and eventually decided to deliberately cut off some of those big sweeping bends. The immediate effect was dramatic — water levels at some spots dropped 10 to 15 feet almost overnight. But shortening the river made it faster and more powerful, and the Mississippi started scouring its own bed looking for more sediment to carry. That process is still rippling through the system today, decades later, slowly working its way upstream toward Cairo, Illinois. On top of the cutoffs, the Corps locked the riverbanks in place with concrete mattresses in the 1950s and 60s, essentially freezing the river's shape. That stopped the bank erosion — but it also cut off the river's natural sediment supply almost entirely. David's big takeaway after all these years? You can't just fix one spot on a river and call it a day. Every change you make sends ripples — upstream, downstream, decades into the future. The Mississippi has a long memory, and it's still responding to decisions made 80 or 90 years ago. Understanding that complexity, he says, is what keeps him coming back to the river year after year.

Send us Fan Mail 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 World. Drawing from 25 years of independent travel, this book is a raw, honest collection of travel stories that will challenge what you think about playing it safe.  These are stories with real highs and lows that showcase my drive to get past the reflexive fears and anxieties that once kept my world small. These stories illustrate how choosing curiosity over caution transformed me and fueled travel to places across the planet. From canoeing to the Gulf of Mexico with John Ruskey to exploring Southeast Asia, Madagascar, and Guatemala, these 18 stories celebrate the joy of saying yes.  The book launches exclusively on Kickstarter on June 15, 2026, and includes the option to buy a hardcover edition featuring 63 full-color photos that won't be available anywhere else. The paperback, audiobook, and ebook will release widely in late summer 2026. Stick around to hear a sample from the audiobook edition, the Introductory chapter to the book.

Send us Fan Mail 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 central to celebrating the river and doing our part to help restore the health and beauty of the river: River Days of Action (June 1-15) and National Mississippi River Day (June 2). In this episode, I talk with Michael Anderson, the Director of Outreach and Education for One Mississippi, and one of the prime forces making them happen. He describes each event’s unique focus, what events are happening to mark them, why these events are important to the present and future of the River, and what he’s learned from his years working so diligently on issues related to the Mississippi River.  After the discussion with Michael, you’ll hear a couple of other people describe why the Mississippi matters to them and the organizations they are affiliated with, and why they believe carving out time to celebrate the Mississippi and give something back to the river are important. You’ll hear from  Amanda Wigen from Owámniyomni Okhódayapi and avid kayaker Perry Whitaker who also volunteers with many river-related groups, including the Mississippi River Water Association.  To find out more about these events and to see the full schedule of events and opportunities to help the river, head to mississippiriver.org.

Send us Fan Mail 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 Lake Pepin Legacy Alliance. After we cover the basics about the lake (where it is, how it formed), we talk about the long human history in the region and delve into the lore about monsters that many believe inhabit the lake. We then take a virtual tour around the 100-mile perimeter of the lake, highlighting the communities and offering tips about what to visit, including recreational options such as paddling and hiking. We also take a brief detour to talk about one of my favorite events, Grumpy Old Men Days in Wabasha, which celebrates the joys of winter. We finish by talking about threats to the health of the lake, focusing mostly on sedimentation, and what the Lake Pepin Legacy Alliance and others are doing to address those threats. In the introduction, I offer a few additional tips on making the most of a visit to Lake Pepin.

Send us Fan Mail 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 freezing cold Mississippi River afterward. The disaster was tragic well beyond the number of casualties as most of the dead were Union soldiers returning home from Confederate prison camps at the end of the Civil War. In this episode, Jeff Kollath, the executive director of the Sultana Disaster Museum, gives a detailed recounting of the events that led to the Sultana’s demise, from the corrupted boarding process at Vicksburg, to the conditions on the boat before the boilers exploded, to the immediate impact of the explosion, and how people scrambled to survive. We finish the episode with a discussion about the Sultana Disaster Museum’s plans to expand their ability to tell the story of the disaster and its victims.

Send us Fan Mail 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 that has defined it. We start with Eliza Haycraft, a remarkable St. Louis woman who arrived penniless by canoe in 1840 and built a fortune running brothels, becoming one of the city's most generous philanthropists — and one of its most socially shunned residents. Her story opens a window into how 19th-century river towns grappled with an industry that was everywhere and officially nowhere. The episode moves through St. Louis's short-lived Social Evil Ordinance of the 1870s — a bold experiment in regulated prostitution that sparked fierce debate, drew powerful opponents like Washington University co-founder William Greenleaf Eliot, and ultimately collapsed under the weight of corruption and public backlash. Then it's downriver to New Orleans, where Storyville's cleverly worded 1897 ordinance created a ten-block entertainment district that boomed for 20 years before the federal government forced it shut in 1917. We also stop in La Crosse, Wisconsin and Winona, Minnesota, where local officials spent decades cycling through raids, crackdowns, quiet reopenings, and willful blindness. Throughout it all, one theme keeps surfacing: no matter what officials decided, the industry simply adapted and carried on.

Send us Fan Mail 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 (known as the American Bottom) has a long history of human settlements, around the year 1050 a new community sprung up that would grow into the largest pre-Colombian settlement in North America, what we now call Cahokia Mounds. In this episode, I talk with Dr. Julie Zimmerman about how Cahokia grew into such a large and important city. We talk about the immigrants who migrated into Cahokia and what their daily lives might have been like, as well as how the community was connected to other indigenous people in North America. Julie theorizes that storytelling was the primary factor that attracted so many people into Cahokia, and she describes what we know about a couple of the stories that were likely the centerpiece of Mississippian beliefs. Julie offers her insights into the factors that may have led to the eventual decline and depopulation of the city, although Mississippian people and culture didn’t go away, they just spread out. We finish with a discussion of the role of contemporary Native American communities in the interpretation and preservation of the site. In the introduction, I offer a couple of tips for making a visit to Cahokia richer and more meaningful.