Shoshone legends speak of UFOs flying out of the Panamint Mountains—one of several strange and unusual tales from Death Valley, where the Mojave meets the Great Basin and mysterious subterranean cities of gold were supposedly found by various explorers. 

We are still digging out from the Great Hi-Desert Deluge of Autumn 2018. In fact, officials at Joshua Tree Town Hall are considering renaming the village "Dirt-Pile City," in honor of the scenic and massive dirt piles piled alongside every road. Also: Skeletons on the sand in an abandoned and unmarked Phoenix cemetery for Latino ranch workers.

When there’s trouble on the edge of civilization—where the wilderness meets what mankind makes—well, here we encounter fierce things both natural and supernatural. Guest: rock writer Jason P. Woodbury on the accidental monuments of exurban Arizona.

What happens when a civilization collapses? You can't go camping in Joshua Tree, that's what.

It's an old story in the desert: Boy loses girl, boy lures girls to a lonesome desert crossroads at night, boy kills girl, sheriff's deputies kill boy, etc.

The superbloom is upon us, as is the superbloom mob. Instagram mobs. Trampled lillies. St. Minerva help us all!

Author Erik Davis takes us on a weird, wild ride through the gnostic/network experiences of Philip K. Dick and Robert Anton Wilson in the early 1970s, subject of his new book "High Weirdness." Hosted by Ken Layne.

Well you'll never guess who joined us all the way from Whitesburg, Kentucky, to talk about the particular desert landscape of SE New Mexico and East Texas. But we will tell you anyway: Tarence Ray from Trillbilly Workers Party. Oh and we're dealing with the matters at hand, as best we can. Fitting new soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver.

A weird new episode for our weird new decade, featuring some real talk (real strange talk) from George Van Tassel out at Giant Rock, 62 years ago—from the dawn of the UFO contactee movement in the Southern California desert.

Have you heard the Good News about St. Minerva, patron goddess of the desert wilderness? Maybe she is Minerva Hamilton Hoyt, mother of Joshua Tree National Park. And maybe she's something more, like the ancient Roman goddess of wisdom and war.

There will be no coughing on the spaceship. The quarantine lasts for many months. If everyone's healthy, well then the spaceship may be allowed to land at the Martian colony. Them's the rules.

We’ve about had it with the cabin fever and now we’ve got the ramblin’ fever. So let’s pour a couple of drinks and enjoy some saloon time on this fine desert night, with Episode #089, “Back to the Barrooms.” Maybe get a beer back, too. And six more for the road. Our Phoenix friend Jason P. Woodbury of Aquarium Drunkard joins us at the bar.

When it’s Snakesgiving Time in the Mojave, everybody’s just a little more careful. Goes well with these weird new times, being careful. So please make an effort to not run over any tortoises or coyotes or bobcats or gopher snakes when you’re racing through the re-opened national park.

Fifty years ago, there was a radical plan to completely remake a county sheriff’s department in an iconic western town. It almost worked, they almost won. The job still needs to be done.

Thanks to the Time Loop we all seem to be stuck in, our 99th episode is here . . . . directly following our 100th. The border used to be a lot of fun, back before the prison walls went up around our country. And guess what, now we can't leave. PLUS: Jason P. Woodbury joins us with the wild tale of Arizona's own Giant Sand.

How are we doing out there? Pretty bad? Well nobody likes to hear "the ultraterrestrial entities told you so," but, the ultraterrestrial entities told you so.

It was 27 years ago this month—at the Ariel School in Ruwa, Zimbabwe—that 62 students witnessed a miracle. Of the biblical variety. Several strange, wise entities appeared in their bizarre vessel at the edge of the playground, hovering over the brush the way the White Goddess and the Queen of the Universe and the Virgin of Guadalupe always appear, so often to the relatively pure eyes and hearts of the children.

And they had a message. We did not heed the message.

Strange new soundscapes from RedBlueBlackSilver tonight, a fitting musical environment for tonight's tales of environmental terror.

Prepare for the Great Conjunction of 2020, which you can watch happen in real time, by watching Saturn and Jupiter grow ever closer together in our night sky. When the solstice arrives, December 21, you'll sure know it. With guest C. Del Desierto telling tales of counting eagles in the Anza-Borrego wilderness.

What made the Owens Valley the way it is, in our time? An accident of history, of water grabs, of one group of humans using easy money to buy out another group of humans, that's what preserved the most beautiful place in the world from the fate of the Central Valley. The same sort of accidental miracle that saved so much of the American southwest's mountains and deserts from wide-scale development, agriculture, housing booms, industrialization, speculation.

A heretical prayer, is what we offer you tonight. With new (and classic) tracks from RedBlueBlackSilver. Find out more about our book, our periodical, and all the other desert creations we make for you at DesertOracle.com.

As we come out of our holes and return to our beloved American Desert, it's time to remember a dozen simple rules to keep your day hike from becoming a disaster.

We're back from the road with a new episode to celebrate the most glorious time of year: October, Autumn, Harvest, Fall, whatever you all it. With new nocturnal gospel music from RedBlueBlackSilver and strange tales phoned in from our listeners, recorded live in Chicago at Illuminated Brew Works Lodge #1.

The ill counsel of a desert place, that would be howled out in the desert air . . . .

Night has fallen on the desert, in this spookiest of seasons. Tonight we travel by the power of darkness and disinformation to Archuleta Mesa, in the Jicarilla Apache town of Dulce, New Mexico. We're going down, beneath the mountain, to see if the reptilian aliens and the gray aliens and the Air Force disinfo agents are really having gunfights down there, again.

Strange new soundscapes from RedBlueBlackSilver, plus the first announcement of our November/December tour dates from California to Tennessee and back again.

Sure are a lot of mostly abandoned churches out here in the California desert. A lot of good community real estate. How do you take over churches? Like the little old run-down church—a religious non-profit—just sitting there. Nobody’s using it. Maybe all you’ve got to do is find the person who runs the joint. Maybe it’s down to the last person, the organist or whoever. The fourth deacon ....

We are meditating upon some various facts and figures here in the Mojave High Desert this week, from the weather in Twentynine Palms to which apostle was crucified upside down and is now remembered with an immense phallic monument to the Egyptian sun god, Ra.

It's Thanksgiving time in America and we are talking turkeys, and sage grouse, and 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 hosted by Ken Layne.

"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 Christmastime.

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 Oracle Radio, The Nature of Color & Vision, by Ken Layne and with lush new soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver. 

Tonight we are joined by Joshua Tree bookseller, author & publisher Jean-Paul L. Garnier of Space Cowboy Books, along with a transmission from poet & sci-fi author Michael Butterworth.

This is EPISODE #187: SPACE RADIO (A TRANSMISSION), with new soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver. 

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.

Tonight we are talking about hidden things: secret societies, international conspiracies. Joining us by telephone from New York is the author Colin Dickey, who has written interesting books about a lot of our favorite topics: ghosts, flyings saucers, and especially the many reasons so many of us are drawn to the supernatural, the occult, the paranormal. His latest, in stores next week from Viking Books, is called Under the Eye of Power: How Fear of Secret Societies Shapes American Democracy. Desert Oracle Radio is hosted by Ken Layne, with new soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver.

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 prey, the mourning dove pair bringing up each of their dozen offspring with the same determination and patience and love, one after another, all summer long.

The United States military branches and intelligence agencies do not control what happens around the world all the time, much as they’d like to. The things we call UFOs occur in the backwoods and on backroads, over the lonely desert playas and mountain lakes, eternally floating around the sacred springs and sacred groves and sacred mountains of every culture and continent, for as long as human beings have existed. If you want to see something supernatural, go somewhere quiet, put down your camera-phone, and tune in.

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 through Coachella Valley to Palm Springs and Desert Hot Springs, maybe it means nothing of the sort. Prepare for a lot of rain, maybe a couple of years worth of rain. Prepare for a lot of water in a lot of place we don’t often see it. And up here around Joshua Tree and Yucca Valley and 29 Palms, prepare to hang around for a while. You may not be able to get down the hill for a while.

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 turned cool again, the wind only whispering.This is Episode #199 of Desert Oracle Radio, broadcasting from Joshua Tree.

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 take you out of the day-to-day, even as you occasionally rub elbows with other people doing the same thing.

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.

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.