Desert Oracle Radio

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.

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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 ...

Tonight we're talking ravens, fishes & loaves, and the soul-crushing indoor indoctrination of the Empire's State Religion. Sir James George Frazer, Pliny the Elder and the Gospel Mark are all involved, whether they like it or not. (And the "Bible Friends" podcast mentioned on this episode can be found here.)

Thanks for listening to the show, and for supporting the show via our Patreon page or at our online store, DesertOracle.c...

Dr. John Milton Bigelow did not shy away from hard work, challenges, or adventure. At the age of 46, he signed on as surgeon and botanist for the Mexican Boundary Survey, following the U.S.-Mexican War that fulfilled the gold-hungry manifest destiny of the Americans. 

This adventure took him through the Chihuahuan, Sonoran and Colorado deserts, where he catalogued the great variety of desert plants along with several other botanist...

Mariposa Grove was a sacred grove for millennia before it became part of the Yosemite Grant, lovingly tended by Yosemite Guardian Galen Clark for more than a quarter century.

Sacred groves and forests are protected for their spiritual and ecological importance. Such groves are found today throughout India (home of more than a million holy forests), Japan (many thousands of chinju no mori surrounding Shinto temples), and Ethiopia (3...

On this Easter weekend, let’s do our best to bring back the ghosts, the supernatural. Let us recognize and respect the mysterious entities that come not from some imagined, distant star system in the cold lifeless vacuum of space, but from right here where we experience them! Backroads, mountains, spooky desert trails at dusk. Jesus loved wilderness and often talked to ghosts, after all. And that's something people of any philosoph...

The pyramids of Guinness 12-packs at our High Desert grocery stores reminded us of St. Patrick's Day coming up, but the grey cloudy skies and green hillsides of the Mojave Desert this month are reminders that the old pagan tales are with us still, wherever the landscape is haunted and strange. And that supernatural entities always gather in their ancient homes: wild forests, dramatic outcroppings of rock, and any lonesome place whi...

Nothing is sacred unless we set it aside as sacred. As Americans rapidly abandon organized religion — and the formerly sanctified church and temple sites go up for sale as designer homes — where are the places that are truly sacred? The places set aside for contemplation, meditation, festivals, the rituals of life? 

There ain’t much. Not nearly enough. But that can be fixed. New soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver. Written & host...

Where's the beautiful part, anyway? Well, start by walking about a mile past the last parking lot or dirt road or residential car-parts dump or informal halfway house or accidental pit-bull breeding farm, and keep going in the direction of the difficult terrain: the hills and the mountains and the boulders. Not the hills covered in radio relay towers, but the ones with nothing up there at all, nothing except more boulders, more spi...

Well here's an episode that fits with the past couple of episodes, as your host Ken Layne dredges up some tales from too many decades as a writer & whatever else. We got our newspaper/podcaster pal Matt Welch on the line to talk about the turn-of-the-century sensation that got everybody very excited for a little while: Weblogs! It sort of became a long career for a lot of people, and many have never quite recovered. We'd like t...

Our old friend and mentor Mojo Nixon passed away this week, after playing a blistering set of rock 'n roll for his fans aboard a hillbilly cruise ship. Tonight, we remember the showman, songwriter and deejay who was a towering figure in American underground culture for a long, long time. RIP Mojo Nixon. With soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver.

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Tonight we go back three decades, to the strange time when a California newspaper hired a New England psychic to find a little girl who vanished in North San Diego County. This is a a true tale by your host, Ken Layne, who was one of the newspaper reporters working on this mysterious case, along with crime-solving psychic Johny Monti. PLUS: An Assessment of the Situation, and what's coming next for Desert Oracle Radio.

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The hermit habit has persisted throughout the four-plus centuries of North American colonization and up to the present day, including such storied American names as Henry David Thoreau, Huckleberry Finn, Georgia O’Keefe, Marta Becket, and Ted Kazinsky ... and many lesser known characters, remembered today only in newspaper stories from the past century. Happy new year from Desert Oracle Radio. Do not listen to the Joshua Tree radio...

Night has fallen on the desert, our first big winter storms soaking the mountains and the coastlines, and now we’re getting it pretty good in the southwestern deserts. There may even be a dusting of snow on the Joshua trees and the Yuccas and the junipers at the higher elevations, here and there. But a wet winter is visiting most of the American High Desert this Week of the Winter Solstice ... which used to be the same day as Chris...

What's better on a desert Thanksgiving weekend than 10 questions regarding the natural and human history of the Mojave High Desert? Get your pencil and notepaper, and enjoy Desert Trivia Night from Thanksgiving Eve at the Tiny Pony, with spooky November soundscapes from RedBlueBlackSilver.

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