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 travelogue from ancient Damascus, where Saul/Paul stumbled into town after being blinded by the impossible lights over the backroads.

Thanks much to those of you who support this program on our Patreon, and for listening over these many years.

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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/written by Ken Layne. We wish you a very somber & festive Snakesgiving, as well. Thanks much for supporting this show on our Patreon page!

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 a paradise it must’ve been, with people living in pleasant villages on the shorelines, lots of big game for food and fur and leather, everybody zipping around in tule boats made of our famous marshy bullrushes, this was true from the Great Salt Lake to the middle of Nevada to the long valleys on either side of the great mountain ranges.

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. It’ll dry up in time.

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 Joshua Tree on KCDZ 107.7 FM.

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

"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 mysterious new green comet was discovered, only 11 months ago and visible in the skies this week. Thanks much to our supporters on Patreon for keeping this radio show & podcast on the air!

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.com/listener for privacy information.

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)(p) 2017-2023 http://DesertOracle.com

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

"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 pies. Soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver, written & hosted by Ken Layne, and broadcasting tonight in Joshua Tree on KCDZ 107.7 FM at 10 p.m.

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.