Desert Oracle Radio
Desert Oracle Radio is a weekly road trip through the weird American desert from the publisher of Desert Oracle, the pocket-sized field guide published in Joshua Tree, California. Hear tales of mysterious lights, missing tourists, lost mines, venomous creatures, weird history and weirder people. Hosted by editor Ken Layne and featuring a cast of intriguing mystics, oddballs, scientists and artists, Desert Oracle Radio is your soundtrack for a desert night. The program is broadcast on Friday nights at 10 p.m. on KCDZ 107.7 FM in the Mojave high desert, with field reports from around and across the desert lands, and is distributed by Public Radio Exchange (PRX).
Episodes
Friends, this is one of two live call-in broadcasts we're doing for Halloween Weekend, 2026. You can listen live on Halloween Night (10/31) at 7 p.m. Pacific time to the next call-in show and join the spooky scene. Watch and listen at Patreon.com/desertoracle or on our Twitter/X accounts @KenLayne and @desert_oracle. Happy Halloween and please enjoy these creepy tales!
It's Halloweentime in the Mojave and that means tales of madness, chaos, strange rituals in the mountains. A time of social contagion, evil behaviors at the tail end of Age of Dionysus. Soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver.
Thanks to our beloved patrons for making this show possible. Become a patron tonight and support the radio show you love!
Desert Oracle Radio (c)(p) 2017-2026 http://DesertOracle.com
Night has fallen on the desert. So let’s settle ourselves around the campfire and maybe cook up a big cauldron of Hobo Stew . . . otherwise known as Slumgullion Stew! Our pot includes Gila Monster venom, Yucca Man tales, and the various mysteries of Divine Wisdom. Here's how ol’ Cactus Ed Abbey describes such a feast of scraps:
“Slumgullion stew is the name of a dish popular among hoboes and other knights of ...
The Gold Hill Sandman was sighted on September 15, 1980. Location? Just off Nevada State Route 341, north of Silver City, just past Devil’s Gate and to the left, part of the old American Flats Comstock silver mine, as you’re coming up on Gold Hill. The witnesses worked for the mining company, as security guards. A busy job because the various ruins of the old mining complex, which closed down by 1927, were the favorite ...
Tonight we are walking across the desert, out of the canyons, over the rivers, to another kind of country. Another place, another time. Trying to trail behind the slow-walking souls of the dearly departed. Even though we are still alive. Desert myths and strange tales for this hottest time of Mojave Summer.
Thanks to our patrons who support this advertising-free radio show.
Desert Oracle Radio (c)(p) 2017-2026 http://DesertOra...
Night has fallen on the desert, and that’s a joyous time in the heat of Southwest Summer. Too hot, too dry, and we long for the cool misty tales of primeval forest, of strange creatures, of great mysteries!
Soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver. Thanks to our patrons; become a patron tonight and support the radio show you love! This is EPISODE #266: PETRIFIED FORESTS AND GHOSTLY GOBLINS.
Desert Oracle Radio (c)(p) 2017-2026 http:...
With every passing day, scorcher or not, we are on the march towards Autumn, towards cooler days and longer nights, the time of graveyards and ghost stories. But it’s always time for ghost stories, of course. Especially on Desert Oracle Radio. So tonight, after the exciting Monsoon Season forecast and report, we spend a chilling evening in an old mansion with a writer who just wants some peace and quiet so he can finish ...
We're back with Midsummer Tidings from the Mojave, with solstice verse from Sam Clemens & Shakespeare, too. Plus a new campfire story from our recently concluded springtime series in Joshua Tree.
Desert Oracle Radio (c)(p) 2017-2026 http://DesertOracle.com
Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/desertoracle
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
From our Campfire Stories in Joshua Tree on May 23, 2026, here’s a special one-hour edition of Desert Oracle Radio live from the desert behind the Joshua Tree Retreat Center, with the High Desert's own Herb Benham IV opening the campfire festivities with a couple of proper cowboy songs. Ravens, rattlesnakes and other characters appear early and often in the stories & fables that follow.
If you love flying saucers, maybe you’ve been following the release of a bunch more UFO files. Maybe you're disappointed that E.T. isn't in there, signing a treaty with F.D.R. But it's a very interesting window on the American UFO era, which is now 80 years old!
PLUS: A tale from Death Valley, told at our recent Campfire Stories event in Joshua Tree.
Desert Oracle Radio (C)(P) 2017-2026 http://DesertOracle.com
Tonight's episode features a previously secret recording of Campfire Stories from years gone by, plus an examination of the so-called "Mosquito Hawk" (or Skeeter Eater), which does not eat mosquitos. It doesn't really do anything but fly into your mouth while you're driving, or eating, or just trying to walk through your own house. Information regarding our May 2 / May 16 / May 23 "Campfire Stories" in Joshua Tree is also provided,...
We still live in the Time of Ancient Gods. At this very moment, in memory of a mission named for the god Apollo, astronauts of the Artemis mission are aboard the Orion spaceship, headed for La Luna. The mission is named for Blessed Artemis, goddess of the night, of the hunt, of the Moon. Daughter of Zeus. And just south of Death Valley National Park, one of the world's three Deep Space Network bases is bringing in the data fro...
What's going on with all these meteors & fireballs in the dark skies above? Where did Elvis Presley see a big UFO hovering over the Mojave Desert? And what drives so many people to the pilgrimage shrine of Graceland?
Desert Oracle Radio (c)(p) 2017-2026 http://DesertOracle.com
Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/desertoracle
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
It's the magical time when the cold winter desert becomes an Eden of Wildflowers, as we luxuriate in the the spring warmth of the Sun & the birds are all delirious. Just like that, way up here in the Mojave mountains. ALSO: We dedicate this episode to the memory of Ray Barnes. PLUS: It's the 50th anniversary of the desert-fanatic classic The Monkey Wrench Gang.
Desert Oracle Radio (c)(p) 2017-2026 http://Des...
Celebrating Ed Abbey's 99th Birthday with a road trip to Arches National Park, setting of his beloved 1968 book, Desert Solitaire. AND: What's going on within the federal government's "experimental forests" in Sasquatch Country? New soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver.
Desert Oracle Radio (c)(p) 2017-2026 http://DesertOracle.com
Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/desertoracle
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy inf...
It’s time for Strange & Unusual Facts. Mostly about the desert, the wilderness, critters and criminals. We are not using our usual flurry of em-dashes because we've heard that's a sign of AI-slop writings. New soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver, for this new year and new springtime on the way.
Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/desertoracle
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Join Desert Oracle Radio for an audio tour of how the American Desert celebrates Christmastime, or Christmastide. With festive soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver.
Desert Oracle Radio (c)(p) 2017-2025 http://DesertOracle.com
Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/desertoracle
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
From Desert Oracle Radio, this is The Eldritch Republic, our new series about America’s strange history & uncanny folklore.
Tonight we visit the beautiful country estate of Clement Clarke Moore, the big house called "Chelsea" where he read his Christmas poem to the family. The poem is "A Visit From St. Nicholas," and the country estate is now the neighborhood of Chelsea, New York City.
Santa Claus, it turns out, is a New ...
Snowy mountaintops across the Western Mojave, all the transverse ranges have at least a dusting, with the big peaks covered in white. San Gorgonio looks so pretty right now, you can almost forget it’s a haunted mountain that eats people alive and is usually known by its grim local nickname “Old Grayback.” It must be Thanksgiving in the High Desert! An all-new episode with new soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver, thi...
Recorded live in New York before an audience of DOR Patrons & assorted Manhattanites, this is Desert Oracle’s special Halloween Ghost Stories. Thanks to our special guests Matt Welch from The Fifth Column and Nicholas Lowry from Antique Roadshows & the new Czech graphic-design documentary Identity.
Special thanks to our listeners who told ghost stories, RedBlueBlackSilver for the spooky soundscapes that surrounde...
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