Latest Yucca man Podcast Episodes

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Dialogue of the Dogs

Desert Oracle Radio - July 13, 2024 00:02 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 759 ratings
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, s...

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A Midsummer Night's Desert

Desert Oracle Radio - June 22, 2024 04:41 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 759 ratings
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. Ne...

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Slumgullion Stew

Desert Oracle Radio - June 08, 2024 00:47 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 759 ratings
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, ...

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Call of the Blue Crow

Desert Oracle Radio - May 17, 2024 22:20 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 759 ratings
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...

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Funeral for a Raven

Desert Oracle Radio - May 03, 2024 23:26 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 759 ratings
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...

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Materia Medica: On expedition with botanist-surgeon John Milton Bigelow

Desert Oracle Radio - April 26, 2024 22:52 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 759 ratings
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 t...

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Standing With the Giants at Mariposa Grove

Desert Oracle Radio - April 12, 2024 22:35 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 759 ratings
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 thro...

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The Old, Weird America: Full of Ghosts & Monsters

Desert Oracle Radio - March 29, 2024 23:00 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 759 ratings
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, mountain...

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Spooky Tales for St. Patrick's Weekend

Desert Oracle Radio - March 15, 2024 22:49 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 759 ratings
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. A...

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Spooky Tales for the St. Patrick's Storm

Desert Oracle Radio - March 15, 2024 22:49 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 759 ratings
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. A...

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The Voice of the Desert

Desert Oracle Radio - March 08, 2024 23:25 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 759 ratings
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...

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Make It Sacred

Desert Oracle Radio - February 23, 2024 23:52 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 759 ratings
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, ...

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Among the Stately Trees

Desert Oracle Radio - February 17, 2024 01:44 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 759 ratings
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 t...

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The Typing Life: Warren Zevon, 9/11 & the California Bloggers (With Matt Welch)

Desert Oracle Radio - February 15, 2024 21:10 - 35 minutes ★★★★★ - 759 ratings
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 exc...

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The Ballad of Mojo Nixon

Desert Oracle Radio - February 11, 2024 07:57 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 759 ratings
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 Moj...

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Horror on the California Backroads

Desert Oracle Radio - January 19, 2024 23:35 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 759 ratings
Tonight we go back three decades, to the strange time when a California newspaper hired a New England psychic to find a little girl who vanished in North San Diego County. This is a a true tale by your host, Ken Layne, who was one of the newspaper reporters working on this mysterious case, along...

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The Hermit's Life

Desert Oracle Radio - December 29, 2023 23:38 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 759 ratings
The hermit habit has persisted throughout the four-plus centuries of North American colonization and up to the present day, including such storied American names as Henry David Thoreau, Huckleberry Finn, Georgia O’Keefe, Marta Becket, and Ted Kazinsky ... and many lesser known characters, rememb...

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Gadzooks! It's Solsticetime in the Desert

Desert Oracle Radio - December 22, 2023 22:37 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 759 ratings
Night has fallen on the desert, our first big winter storms soaking the mountains and the coastlines, and now we’re getting it pretty good in the southwestern deserts. There may even be a dusting of snow on the Joshua trees and the Yuccas and the junipers at the higher elevations, here and there...

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Live From Earth

Desert Oracle Radio - December 08, 2023 21:15 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 759 ratings
Tonight's episode comes to you live from Los Angeles, where Desert Oracle Radio opened the show for "Seattle's Slowest," the legendary group EARTH on its 30th Anniversary Tour for the Sub-Pop album EARTH2, at Glendale's Alex Theater. Sounds by RedBlueBlackSilver, words by Ken Layne. Support the...

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Trivia Night in the High Desert

Desert Oracle Radio - November 25, 2023 07:08 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 759 ratings
What's better on a desert Thanksgiving weekend than 10 questions regarding the natural and human history of the Mojave High Desert? Get your pencil and notepaper, and enjoy Desert Trivia Night from Thanksgiving Eve at the Tiny Pony, with spooky November soundscapes from RedBlueBlackSilver. Des...

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Songs of the Doomed

Desert Oracle Radio - November 18, 2023 02:08 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 759 ratings
Looking down the barrel at 2024, from our perch in the High Desert. Mojave thunderstorms, the strange maxims of the ancient temples, Christmas-tree shopping ideas, and old+new soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver. This is our 9/11 episode: Season 9, Episode 11. Please consider supporting this show ...

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Ode to Harry Oliver, King of the Desert Rats

Desert Oracle Radio - November 10, 2023 23:38 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 759 ratings
From the World War II years to 1965, the artist and humorist and hugely influential architect Harry Oliver published his Desert Rat Scrap Book from a hand-built adobe in the California desert. He called it "the only newspaper you can read in the wind," because the whole thing was printed on a si...

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Samhain Stories For All Hallows' Eve

Desert Oracle Radio - October 27, 2023 22:05 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 759 ratings
Night has fallen on the desert, and here comes the ancient festival of Halloween, as the world begins to die again ... as it does at the tail end of every year. The leaves fall and decay, the green things wither, the sun hides away. And we remember the Dead. Tonight: Samhain tales of changelin...

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The Spiritual Intoxication of the Wilderness Walk

Desert Oracle Radio - October 16, 2023 00:25 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 759 ratings
One thing people like to do when they’re given some liberties — or when they take the liberty that’s usually there for the taking, if anybody wants it bad enough — is to go on a long walk. Whether you call it a pilgrimage or walkabout or "through-hike" or country ramble, such excursions really t...

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Horrors of the Night

Desert Oracle Radio - October 06, 2023 22:18 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 759 ratings
October is the time for ghost stories, in this season of growing darkness. Tonight we are visited by a mysterious geist, in an ancient old city that is notorious for such restless spirits. ALSO: Details regarding the October 20, 2023, show at Jacumba Hot Springs and the October 29, 2023, edition...

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The Autumn Tint of Gold

Desert Oracle Radio - September 22, 2023 22:08 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 759 ratings
This autumn is getting off to a strange start, as here in the Mojave High Desert there are carpets of little yellow wildflowers thanks to the hurricane, old Hurricane Hilary which soaked us all pretty good a month ago. Never seen so many weeds in late September. Happy Equinox from Desert Oracle ...

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Warriors, Poets & Ravens

Desert Oracle Radio - September 08, 2023 21:33 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 759 ratings
Early September, Jupiter tucked under the 2/3 moon at midnight, heaviest of La Luna’s many forms and phases: low over the eastern horizon, like the Death Star under construction. The owls are hooting in three different octaves, a whole choir by relay, a choir of the night. The night air has turn...

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The Dowsing Rod

Desert Oracle Radio - August 25, 2023 21:45 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 759 ratings
Ever seen a water witch at work? It’s a beautiful thing to behold. We have ancient reserves of great power within us. This is Episode #198 of Desert Oracle Radio, after the hurricane. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/desertoracle See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hurricane Hilary in the High Desert

Desert Oracle Radio - August 18, 2023 23:54 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 759 ratings
When you look at the big red danger zone in the middle of the Weather Service maps this evening, you will see that we are in it, right up at the north end of the highest predicted rainfall and flooding. Maybe that means we don’t get it as bad or for as long as our friends from the border zone up...

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The Wild Beasts

Desert Oracle Radio - August 11, 2023 22:31 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 759 ratings
Real gods require no faith, they just are: expressed in the life force of the pronghorn herd racing across the High Desert, the mountain lion traveling hundreds of miles as master of its environment, the invigorating violence of a summer thunderstorm, the lightning strike of a rattler upon its p...

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