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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

society & culture places & travel

All Episodes

28:00

Up From the Grave

Desert Oracle Radio ·

2024/10/28

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/desertoracleSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

en-US

28:00

Strange Rituals of Halloweens Past

Desert Oracle Radio ·

2024/10/08

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 long as you ignore the weather, and that means it's time for spooky

en-US

28:00

Greenwashing the Great Basin

Desert Oracle Radio ·

2024/09/16

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 don't really care. Because they've been told "environmentalism" now

en-US

28:00

Ghost Riders and Death Valley Rangers

Desert Oracle Radio ·

2024/09/01

Forest ranger, park ranger, Navy sailor, lumberjack, and cowboy — those were some of the jobs Stanley Jones worked before accidentally becoming a movie actor and composer of classic western music. PLUS: Weird Annie had a bunch of weird raven children. Deus Pascit Corvus. New sounds by RedBlueBlackSilver.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/desertoracleSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

en-US

28:00

Hot August Bites

Desert Oracle Radio ·

2024/08/16

A summertime tour through "strange and weird places," where they held their annual rituals. This is Episode #228. It's on the level.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/desertoracleSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

en-US

28:00

Capricorn Full Moon: When Presidents Quit!

Desert Oracle Radio ·

2024/07/22

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 about now. This is an Emergency Broadcast about Prophecy &

en-US

28:00

Dialogue of the Dogs

Desert Oracle Radio ·

2024/07/13

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 RedBlueBlackSilver. Thanks for supporting this program on our

en-US

28:00

A Midsummer Night's Desert

Desert Oracle Radio ·

2024/06/22

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 Patreon.com/desertoracle .Desert Oracle Radio (c)(p)

en-US

28:00

Slumgullion Stew

Desert Oracle Radio ·

2024/06/08

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/desertoracleSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

en-US

28:00

Call of the Blue Crow

Desert Oracle Radio ·

2024/05/17

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 the thousands of pinyon nuts the blue crow puts away for the winter,

en-US

28:00

Funeral for a Raven

Desert Oracle Radio ·

2024/05/03

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

en-US

28:00

Materia Medica: On expedition with botanist-surgeon...

Desert Oracle Radio ·

2024/04/26

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 botanists on the expedition — including C.C. Parry, namesake of Parry’s

en-US

28:00

Standing With the Giants at Mariposa Grove

Desert Oracle Radio ·

2024/04/12

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 (35,000 primal forests circling Ethiopian Orthodox churches). Sacred

en-US

28:00

The Old, Weird America: Full of Ghosts & Monsters

Desert Oracle Radio ·

2024/03/29

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 philosophy can enjoy.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/desertoracleSee

en-US

28:00

Spooky Tales for the St. Patrick's Storm

Desert Oracle Radio ·

2024/03/15

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 whipped by the winter winds.Support the show:

en-US

28:00

The Voice of the Desert

Desert Oracle Radio ·

2024/03/08

The storms continue, the wildflowers begin to appear, and Chantel our PCT through-hiker probably made it to the Canadian border without any kind of Mountain Monster getting her, which is good. Also: What is the Voice of the Desert? New soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver, written and hosted by Ken Layne.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/desertoracleSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

en-US

28:00

Make It Sacred

Desert Oracle Radio ·

2024/02/23

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 & hosted by Ken Layne. Thanks for supporting this advertising-free podcast

en-US

28:00

Among the Stately Trees

Desert Oracle Radio ·

2024/02/17

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 spiky yucca trees that slash your arms, gnarled junipers and

en-US

35:40

The Typing Life: Warren Zevon, 9/11 & the California...

Desert Oracle Radio ·

2024/02/15

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 to think that we recovered just fine. (Back to the desert on our next

en-US

28:01

The Ballad of Mojo Nixon

Desert Oracle Radio ·

2024/02/11

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.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/desertoracleSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

en-US

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