222 episodes
Desert Oracle Radio Ken Layne
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- Society & Culture
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4.9 • 763 Ratings
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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).
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Funeral for a Raven
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/desertoracle
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Materia Medica: On expedition with botanist-surgeon John Milton Bigelow
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 Nolina. The work was so pleasing to Bigelow that he readily accepted similar appointments as field botanist in some of America's wildest lands. New soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver.
Desert Oracle Radio (c)(p) 2017-2022 http://DesertOracle.com
Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/desertoracle
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Standing With the Giants at Mariposa Grove
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 groves protect many rare, threatened, and endemic species of plants and animals, and are often the last stand of ancient forest in a community. Biodiversity thrives within these sanctified nature preserves, while festivals dating back to antiquity provide people with a deep and lasting connection to their culture, religious practices, folklore and history. Learn more about Galen Clark from the National Park Service.
Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/desertoracle
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The Old, Weird America: Full of Ghosts & Monsters
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/desertoracle
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Spooky Tales for the St. Patrick's Storm
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: https://www.patreon.com/desertoracle
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The Voice of the Desert
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/desertoracle
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Customer Reviews
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His is the voice — almost a frequency —of the liminality before sleep. I am a creature of far northeastern forests and ice oceans, a shadow skulker and rain prayee, basically I’m lichen: and so nurse an immediate, unreasonable & loathing of the desert, especially in socal. But I think in listening to this guy I didn’t go far enough past the quote spas, tattoo parlors, and jacked up huff trucks. I didn’t clear humanity for the wild things. The kitchen sink: paranormal, folklore, history, and an environmental— awareness is too clinical a word — devotion. And yet: funny, thanks god.
The Acme
Simply the best podcast ever
Simply…
The best, takes a bit to understand the logic and sometimes a few days to process but it’s always on point and timely.