Desert Oracle Radio

We've got it all tonight: UFO calls from listeners, albino animals appearing worldwide, and something about reduced expectations and fried chicken. New soundscapes from RedBlueBlackSilver, and a clip from our morning appearance on Z107.7 FM's  Up Close show. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/desertoracle See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There are no visitor facilities. Roads are mostly washed-out jeep tracks. There is no water. And there's no way out, unless you come back the way you came in. The state line between Nevada and California is unmarked in the Mojave Wilderness, so it’s up to you to know what’s legal or not. Do not make a mistake. Subscribe to our pocket-sized print periodical and get our brand-new issue, #10! And tha...

Where is she, tonight? It has been a month and ten days since she mailed this postcard from Idyllwild to Joshua Tree. All we can do is hope that the monster did not put an early end to her Pacific Crest Trail adventure, as so often happens in those movies with Reese Witherspoon. Because there's a real monster in the mountains around San Jacinto Peak, a real monster who murders people & eats th...

Tonight we are joined by Joshua Tree bookseller & publisher Jean-Paul L. Garnier of Space Cowboy Books, along with a transmission from poet & sci-fi author Michael Butterworth. To hear an earlier live broadcast with J-P Garneir and Ken Layne, just call up Episode #065, one of our occasional hour-long shows from 2019. The Micheal Butterworth exhibition at Art Queen opens on June 17, 6:30-8:...

The waxing moon is moving through the constellation of Leo, Mars is fading, and Venus hangs heavy in the western sky. Venus seems enormous, especially late at night, low over our western mountains. Meanwhile on the desert floor, and splashed brightly up the desert hillsides, wondrous carpets of yellow and orange and violet wildflowers delight the eye & the soul. This is EPISODE #186 of Desert...

It's a beautiful spring in the desert, which naturally makes one dream of heading off to war. Maybe a secret war, a guerrilla war, an unknown soldier, wounded deep in psychic battle, like Leonard Cohen in the Sinai, like Che in Bolivia, like good old Ambrose Bierce headed to the deserts down in Mexico for one last campaign, one final outrage. With moody new soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver and a...

On this Good Friday —which wasn't so great for the protagonist — let us be enlightened by the strange koans of the Desert Fathers. These were the 5th Century CE monks who started the whole "move to the desert" trend, leaving their elite lives in the cities for the hardship of a tiny hole dug in a limestone cliff.  With new spring soundscapes by our own musical monk, RedBlueBlackSilver, and hosted/...

During these many months of heavy rain & thick snowdrifts, we look around the southwest and notice all those playas, those alkaline dry lakes, blessed with a sheen of fresh water . . . and we remember this used to be a land of lakes, not so long ago. As the last Ice Age came to a close, some 12,000 years ago, immense freshwater lakes covered much of what we now call California and Nevada. What...

Apologies if you hear the wind whipping around on the roof of this little radio shack out here tonight. There’s some strip of metal the previous owners tacked down to cover a weak spot in the roof, and it’s slapping around the swamp cooler. And until your host robs a bank, well it’s going to stay that way because that's the only way to get the ten grand the roofing company wants. It’s all right. I...

Tonight we escape the freezing late-winter West and enjoy some time in the piney forests on the Tennessee River, in the Alabama counties where a strange visitor brought horror & dismay over the long hot summer of 19&69. Thanks for supporting this program via Patreon.com/DesertOracle . Soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver , written & hosted by Ken Layne , and broadcasting tonight at 10 in...

"What could it be? There was no balloon and there were no aeronauts. Some strange phenomenon had occurred in the higher zones of the atmosphere, a phenomenon of which neither the nature nor the cause could be explained. Today it appeared over America . . . ." Tonight we take a look at the life of George Ellery Hale, pioneering astronomer and the father of Palomar Observatory . . . where the myster...

For as long as people have lived in the desert southwest, they have told stories of Coyote, that peculiar personality that's both a common wild canine and the devious trickster god who created the world.  Also: A lot of people are seeing coyotes stand up and walk away  like a man . This is EPISODE #179 of Desert Oracle Radio. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/desertoracle See omnystudio.co...

Night has fallen on the desert. The year is still fresh and new. We don’t all have to talk about stoves, all the sudden. We can do better. Let’s do better. Let’s talk about monsters . Desert Oracle Radio (C)(P) 2017-2023 • http://DesertOracle.com Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/desertoracle See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Four decades ago, Betty and Barney Hill were driving back from a visit to Niagara Falls when they endured a strange assault in the deeply haunted White Mountains. Ever since their strange story went national in the mid-1960s, we all know the scene: a dark night on a lonesome highway, and  something comes out of the sky, or out of the woods, and then it all becomes very hazy. Desert Oracle Radio (c...

"Gentlemen!" yelled their frontier guide, Captain Jefferson Hunt, "All I have to say is that if you take that route, you will all be landed in Hell!" So began the four-month-long "shortcut" that left the starving Lost '49ers in the middle of Death Valley at Christmas. Hopefully your holidays won't be quite so exciting, although it's generally better to have an adventure than just sit around eating...

Winter Solstice is coming and the Luddites are celebrating on their flip-phones. That's all we've got to say about it. Listen on your radio in Joshua Tree or Moab or Fresno or various other community stations. And don't forget to support Desert Oracle Radio when you're filling the Christmas stockings with money! Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/desertoracle See omnystudio.com/listener for...

The desert is the kind of place you think maybe you might *discover* something. A treasure, maybe. The Lost Ark. Some old glass bottles, some old human bones. Maybe a secret history of the ancient world, hidden for 1,500 years in a sealed jar buried in a pile of guano. Soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver. Hosted by Ken Layne. Supported by fine listeners like yourself, on our Patreon: https://www.pat...

It's Thanksgiving time in America and we are talking turkeys, and sage grouse, and we are taking your calls on our scary-story line. What does the arrival of the Northern Flicker mean, in augury? How has the Triple Goddess survived relentless persecution by the patriarchal religions of bureaucracy? And why did Benjamin Franklin adore the wild turkey? Soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver, written and...

What sort of religious nut was John Muir? What was the mystical and spiritual argument for the creation of America's national parks system? Who planted the tall tales that would become global UFO mythology? And why did the cold voice of recorded robots tell Desert Oracle Radio to immediately leave the Los Angeles Central Library, last night? It's Episode #172 of Desert Oracle Radio, part of our fi...

We are back in Joshua Tree with tales of desert creatures, snowy mountains, and the secret journals of Jack Kerouac newly published as Desolation Peak. ALSO: Our last stage show, coming up Nov. 10 (next week!) in Los Angeles, with Ken Layne & RedBlueBlackSilver. PLUS: Campfire Stories in the Utah desert, a benefit for KZMU FM in Moab. Desert Oracle Radio (c)(p) 2017-2022 • https://DesertOracle...

Happy October, friends. This episode comes to you from the West Village, NYC. We'll see you next in Oakland (10/21/2022) and Portland (10/23/2022). Thanks to RedBlueBlackSilver for the magical soundscapes & to you for supporting this independent radio show via our Patreon page. Keep the desert in your hear & your money in your front pocket. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/deserto...

It's tourist season in the Mojave again, never mind the lingering heat and $6-a-gallon gasoline. What's the attraction to this dried-up old desert? Did the fad peak in 2020? Now is the time for Desert Oracle Radio #169: FAMOUS FOR NOTHINGNESS. Soundscapes and Old Desert Regular haunted-gospel organ by RedBlueBlackSilver. PLUS: Details of our October tour, New York on October 6 [Get Tickets] and th...

Night has fallen on the desert, and if you’re in the Western Mojave around Joshua Tree National Park and all the way out to Kelso and Las Vegas, you might already have the buckets out for any newly discovered leaks in the roof, because rain is in the forecast for the whole region. Up to 80% chance of heavy rain tonight in Yucca Valley, and really getting soaked along the Mexican border, flood watc...

An interesting thing about a raging flash flood is how quiet it is, for the most part. Sometimes you’ll hear a pinyon log sort of bonk against a boulder, but the silt and the mud absorbs most of the sound. Sometimes, you feel a rumble from the ground below, a pleasing sort of rumble. Like it’s far away, a distant freight train. But it’s right there, ready to pull you down to the Underworld. You ca...

It sure has been a wild week or two, especially here in the Mojave. Just a few days after massive flash floods washed out a number of roads within Mojave National Preserve — the completely washed-out Baker-Kelso road in particular — Death Valley got it hard. Weather chaos, monsoon deluges, UFOs and the supernatural world of science, all in tonight's new episode of Desert Oracle Radio, hosted by Ke...