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PODCAST

Dumpster Fires

Barret Baumgart

Every writer dreams of a room of their own. Even better, a room with a view… dumpsterfires.substack.com

arts books

All Episodes

2:12

The "Infernal" "Grotesque" "Demoniacal" Joshua Tree

Dumpster Fires ·

2025/10/27

Did you know that Joshua Tree National Park was founded on Halloween Day, 1994? It’s almost as if federal government had some inkling of the vast hate once heaped upon the lowly, humble, “demoniacal” Joshua Tree. The strange saga of Joshua Tree antipathy was largely forgotten until, well, I dug it up and turned it into a new book—YUCK: The Birth & Death of the Weird & Wondrous Joshua Tree, Yucca brevifolia. For Halloween, I thought I’d toss out a couple of the more merciless and inspired attacks I

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2:59

The Most Sexually Frustrated Cat on Earth

Dumpster Fires ·

2025/09/27

For years I’ve wanted to say something about P-22, formerly the world’s most famous mountain lion (RIP-22). And, well, I finally got around to it—albeit in the form of a deranged 3 minute Instagram Reel, created largely in the hopes of improving my numbers on social media so that I might eventually attract a literary agent to sell my next book, an agent search now being a regrettable necessity as I foolishly fired my previous representation some years ago after he proved unable to seize the moment,

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2:26

The LA Times Stole my Viral Reporting

Dumpster Fires ·

2025/08/14

On Monday, it came to my attention that one of the most prominent journalists in Southern California, Gustavo Arellano, lifted the contents of the viral Reel I shared with you and thousands of other people last week. My El Aliso Instagram Reel, viewed 23,000 times, with a total watch time of 127 hours, 526 shares, 193 saves, and 59 comments, “broke” the story (earth-shaking news, I know!) that the historic plaque for this sacred, little-known, long-dead tree was missing. Beyond that, in a brief and

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3:01

El Aliso Tree

Dumpster Fires ·

2025/08/05

Happy #NationalWhiteWineDay #winelover #winetasting Actually that was yesterday. For years I’ve wanted to create some “content” about this insane spot in downtown LA, a couple blocks a from where I work. And, well, I finally got my s**t together and did it. Watch the video and weep.The below is a brief written excerpt from a chunk of my next book, which is about the Santa Susana Field Laboratory’s 1959 nuclear meltdown in Los Angeles, an event which basically no one has ever heard of and that has

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36:20

Full Metal Book Jacket - Documentary Footage

Dumpster Fires ·

2025/05/07

“Writing is about discovering things hitherto unseen. Otherwise there’s no point to the process.” —W.G. SebaldWeird is an older, stranger word than most realize. It derives from the ancient root wert, “to twist or to wind.” When we ask, “How did you wind up here?” or when we say, “I lost my keys, but then they turned up,” we get a hint of what WEIRD used to mean. Originally weird meant something like fate. Weird was “that which comes…” Whatever arrives unbidden, carrying some kind of import or

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5:14

In a Future Far, Far Beyond the Festival

Dumpster Fires ·

2024/11/14

At the start of November I returned to the Mojave Desert to attend Ridgecrest’s 10th annual Petroglyph Festival. I’d been following the event for a decade, ever since I became obsessed with the petroglyphs on the China Lake naval base while writing my first book, but something felt different this year. At first I couldn’t figure it out. Outside the main gates I met the same protestors, members of the local Kawaiisu Nation, who continue to oppose the festival and the permanent petroglyph

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33:23

Stress Ruins Flesh

Dumpster Fires ·

2024/06/12

I live behind an actual slaughterhouse, and around the corner from a gay sex club, which shares a back wall with a pet hospital and a new charter elementary school. There’s a lot going on here. It’s one of the things I love about Los Angeles—diversity.If you read the first important historical work written on the city, The Fragmented Metropolis (1967), its chapter on zoning weirdly shows, of all the infinite cross-sections of Los Angeles, the two-square miles of the city surrounding my apartment

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15:01

A Mortician's Paradise - Expanding Erewhonian...

Dumpster Fires ·

2024/05/13

Join me as we sink deeper into the Expanding Erewhonian Nightmare and tie it all back to my failed book project about America’s largest nuclear meltdown at the Boeing-owned Santa Susana Field Laboratory.Part 4 of the “singular, hilarious, and groundbreaking study” (The New York Times) available on Apple Podcasts & SpotifyHere the horseshit really hits the fan…Erewhon is an absolutely insane name for a health food store headquartered in Southern California. Southern California was literally settled

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15:36

Utopia Means 'Nowhere' - Expanding Erewhonian...

Dumpster Fires ·

2024/05/11

Part 3 of the “singular, hilarious, and groundbreaking study” (The New York Times) available on Apple Podcasts & SpotifyHere the horseshit really starts heating up…Did you know the obscenely overpriced, celebrity obsessed LA-based wellness grocer Erewhon is actually named after a fictional totalitarian Hell where it’s illegal to be sick or unhealthy? If you’ve followed my last few rants, you may have wondered where the hell all the words were headed. And after hearing three, four, five rambling

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10:48

The Privilege of Continuance - Expanding Erewhonian...

Dumpster Fires ·

2024/05/11

Part 2 of the “singular, hilarious, and groundbreaking study” (The New York Times) available on Apple Podcasts & Spotify.Recently I discussed how I arrived inside Erewhon, Los Angeles’s most expensive health food store, for the first time ever in my life. The traumatic fecal-encrusted episode was somewhat fortuitous insofar as I had been planning to write something about the grocery chain for several weeks. Yet up until that point could not bring myself to Google a single Erewhon location, let alone

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8:30

Joggin' to Erewhon - Expanding Erewhonian Nightmare...

Dumpster Fires ·

2024/05/10

Behold the origins of my dismal errand… to Erewhon.In an effort to improve my health and not commit suicide, I’ve been exercising more the past few months. It feels good to get out early and hate the thing you’re doing to yourself more than yourself. Sometimes, jogging, you can even imagine you’re going places.Such was the case in Studio City the other day when, having finally hit some kind of stride, and feeling a little hot headed, I beelined across Ventura Boulevard, faking out a speeding Ferrari

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29:36

Los Angeles - City of Demons

Dumpster Fires ·

2024/04/20

Los Angeles was for years the most murderous city in America. Newspapers called it Los Diablos instead of Los Angeles. “Some think it odd that there has been no violent deaths during the two weeks that we have been here,” an agricultural surveyor wrote home in 1860. “May the Lord watch over me.” Governors in Sacramento completely ignored the region for the first three decades after California joined the union, apparently hoping everyone down south would just hack each other to pieces and disappear

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