EPISODE #183: THE LOST TREASURE OF OWENS DRY LAKE

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Tulare Lake, 1875

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 is EPISODE #183: THE LOST TREASURE OF OWENS DRY LAKE. Thanks for supporting this program via Patreon.com/DesertOracle.

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Soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver, written & hosted by Ken Layne, and broadcasting tonight at 10 in Joshua Tree on KCDZ 107.7 FM. Saturdays at 9 p.m. on KZMU FM in Moab, Utah. Sundays at 8 on Valley 103.9 in Carnation, Washington.

EPISODE #182: THE ECSTASY OF ST. MINERVA

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(PS — If you downloaded the episode Friday afternoon, it was the wrong one! Please re-download, or however you say that.)

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, over time.

This is EPISODE #182: THE ECSTASY OF ST. MINERVA, regarding awe & mystery in the holy wilderness. Whatever that means. Thanks for supporting this program via Patreon.com/DesertOracle.

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Soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver, written & hosted by Ken Layne, and broadcasting tonight at 10 in Joshua Tree on KCDZ 107.7 FM. Brought to you by Silicon Valley Bank.

EPISODE #181: WOLF WOMEN, WILD WOMEN

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The Wolf Woman has front legs that bend up like human elbows, and have terrible taloned fingers at the ends, according to the newspaper article.

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.

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This is EPISODE #181: WOLF WOMEN, WILD WOMEN. Soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver, written & hosted by Ken Layne, and maybe broadcasting tonight at 10 in Joshua Tree on KCDZ 107.7 FM. (We don’t know if the episode got in before they left for the weekend. So listen to the podcast, use earbuds if you like.)

EPISODE #180: THE GREEN COMET

THE GREEN COMET! LITTLE GREEN MEN!!

“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. It’s EPISODE #180: THE GREEN COMET. But what does it mean?

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

EPISODE #179: ENCOUNTERS WITH COYOTE-MAN

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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, ENCOUNTERS WITH COYOTE-MAN.

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

EPISODE #178: SPACE MONSTERS & OTHER EARTHLY DEMONS

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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.

This is EPISODE #178: SPACE MONSTERS & OTHER EARTHLY DEMONS. Soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver, written & hosted by Ken Layne, and broadcasting tonight at 10 in Joshua Tree on KCDZ 107.7 FM, and Saturdays at 9 p.m. on KZMU 90.1 FM & 106.7 FM in Moab, Utah.

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EPISODE #177: THE HAUNTED MOUNTAINS

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Never get out of the car.

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.

This is EPISODE #177: THE HAUNTED MOUNTAINS. Soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver, written & hosted by Ken Layne, and broadcasting tonight at 10 in Joshua Tree on KCDZ 107.7 FM, and Saturdays at 9 p.m. on KZMU 90.1 FM & 106.7 FM in Moab, Utah.

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EPISODE #176: A DEATH VALLEY CHRISTMAS (WITH THE LOST ’49ers)

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San Francisco Call, 1889, via NPS Death Valley

“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 at 10 in Joshua Tree on KCDZ 107.7 FM, and Saturdays at 9 p.m. on KZMU 90.1 FM & 106.7 FM in Moab, Utah.

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EPISODE #175: NED LUDD’S RETURN

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Winter Solstice is coming and the Luddites are celebrating on their flip-phones. Now is the time for EPISODE #175: NED LUDD’S RETURN. Listen on your radio in Joshua Tree or Moab or Fresno or various other community stations. With soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver, written and hosted by Ken Layne — which tonight includes a piece originally written for Popula.

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Listen live on the radio in the High Desert: Fridays 10-11 p.m. on KCDZ 107.7 FM, and Saturdays at 9 p.m. on KZMU 90.1 FM & 106.7 FM in Moab, Utah.

EPISODE #174: THE OLD DESERT REGULAR GNOSTIC ADVENT CALENDAR

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The desert is the kind of place where 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. It’s EPISODE #174, with soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver, written and hosted by Ken Layne. Thanks for supporting this program via Patreon.com/DesertOracle.

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Listen live on the radio in the High Desert: Fridays 10-11 p.m. on KCDZ 107.7 FM, and Saturdays at 9 p.m. on KZMU 90.1 FM & 106.7 FM in Moab, Utah.

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