Desert Oracle Radio

Here’s how the Channel 12 news in Phoenix began the story, Thursday night on the 10 o’clock news: “God sent that dog to rescue my son.” These words were spoken by the toddler’s father, Corey Allen, outside the family’s home on the west side of rural Seligman, Arizona. Corey Allen says he was working on the roof, Sarah Allen was inside with their youngest. And two-year-old Bodin Allen went outside...

It's a cool & pleasant springtime in the Mojave High Desert. The hummingbirds are lingering on the branches of creosote and catclaw, looking around for the flowers. Where are the flowers? Well, that’s always the guessing game up here, isn’t it? Sometimes they’re evident by the end of March, sometimes it’s the beginning of May. Varies by terrain, by altitude, by a hundred little differences from spring to...

Happy Ides of March, happy St. Patrick’s Day, and happy five-year anniversary of the COVID-19 lockdown — the beginning of it anyway: 15 days to slow the spread . . . not a great slogan, for what it cost, but that’s what we got. Much of the world is much the same as it was five years ago. Same iPhone, same president, same daylight savings time. Where did the lockdown time go? What did it do to us?

Soundscapes by Re...

A winter storm cut loose from the mountains, the cold wind whipping around the creosote, rain dripping down through the swamp-cooler vent: 2025 came in like a Lion and it’s the Year of the Snake. We’ve got both out here, in the Mojave Wilderness. Mountain lions, or cougars. And snakes, too, although it’s still a bit early to see our reptile friends up here at 4,000 feet elevation. (Soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilve...

It's a cold, cold night in the wind-blasted desert, and we hear there's snow a-comin', can't come soon enough. Listen to the harrowing sounds of the 1961 Bel Air Fire, prepare for Mojo Nixon's anniversary (of death), and join us in remembering our favorite Intermountain West surrealist, the late great David Lynch. Soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver. Suitable for some families.

Desert Oracle Radio (c)(p) 2017-2025 http://Deser...

Another wild and windy night in these first strange days and nights of our new year. We are monitoring the infernos & catastrophes, but also celebrating the creation of Chuckwalla National Monument in the vast weird desert east of Coachella, all the way to the Colorado River. Plus: A phone call from our High Desert pal Herbie Benham, and soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver.

Desert Oracle Radio (c)(p) 2017-2025 http://DesertOracle...

We've heard some weird news about Saint Nicholas that turns out to be a few years old, but that's all right. Christmas itself is old news, after all. That’s why we love it, because it’s ancient and beautiful, the time for silent walks in the cold night, just the sound of your boots crunching through the snow, the half-moon glowing through the Joshua trees.

Plus: Which phrases and words shall be banned in the new year? A...

Is it Thanksgiving time already? Well let's pack up the car and head out to Joshua Tree, everybody's favorite Thanksgiving destination if they live exactly three hours away and don't have anywhere else to go. Plus: What are the ravens up to now? Soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver.

Desert Oracle Radio (c)(p) 2017-2024 http://DesertOracle.com

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Happy Hallowtide, the three-day festival of the Dead and their various souls & spirits. Tonight we are riding down the nocturnal highway, listening to ghosts of times past crackling through the car-radio speakers. With new soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver. Thanks for supporting this commercial-free show at http://patreon.com/desertoracle.

Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/desertoracle

See omnystudio.com/listener for priv...

Be not a-feared of our yearly remembrance of the dead, of ghostly visits from our beloved and maybe not-so-beloved relations and ancestors. Know Death as an old friend who always eventually comes around, for you and everyone else. If your belief in the immortality of the soul is secure, do not shudder and sputter over the enjoyment of pumpkins and haystacks and comical gravestones made of scrap wood and whitewash. It's October, as ...

Have you heard what the "green energy" corporations are doing to the Great Basin Desert, with your government's approval, on your public lands? The plan is to cover the pristine basin-and-range interior of Nevada with industrial electricity factories over endless thousands of acres of desert woodland. And the people who should be out protesting this, chaining themselves to the desert trees marked for annihilation, etc., well they d...

Did you know the current (?) president's Quiet Quitting (via Twitter) on this Sunday in July was foretold by an astrologer on Twitter, two weeks prior? That's no lie, and you can check it for yourself. The same seer predicted, back in August 2020, that the current vice president would be the party's nominee in 2024, because it coincides with the VP's Second Saturn Return. Which is also hitting your Desert Oracle Radio host right ab...

What does one do, in these bunker days of summer? Too hot to work, too hot to think, too hot to sleep, and time is running away. When it's too hot to walk the dog at night, you know you've made a tactical error in life: You're in the Mojave, in July, in yet another historic heat wave. 

Well, sit yourself down beneath the swamp cooler vent, and get yourself a cold beverage, and enjoy this mid-July episode with soundscapes by RedBlue...

Tonight we are celebrating the full moon and summer solstice, because it's a midsummer night's dream in the desert. Which means we're halfway to winter solstice, and only three months & change ’til Halloween. Maybe that's why we're talking about Puck of Pook Hill and homemade cranberry sauce. New soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver, who has a Bandcamp site worth your attention! And thanks for supporting this radio program via Pat...

It's hot as hell and we're throwing everything in the hobo stew tonight: Desert-animal antics, Wild West extravaganzas, history's mysteries, William Shatner shot up into space, etc., etc. The soundscapes are by RedBlueBlackSilver and the rest is by your host & underpaid mail-order professional, Ken Layne. This is Episode #224, Slumgullion Stew.

Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/desertoracle

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Public-land managers in the US Southwest seem determined to drive the pinyon jay to extinction. A half-century attack on pinyon & juniper high-desert woodland has led to a 78% drop in pinyon jay populations just in the past 50 years. You can take action, and the Pinyon Juniper Alliance is a good place to start.

The pinyon jay is the steward of the pinyon forests, for which the forest feeds and houses this crucial blue crow. Of ...