The Dangerous Desert: new episode of 90MFN

Hello, all! We have a new episode up for you, but let's take care of a couple of administrative items first.

Going on tour

As regular listeners will probably remember, we are working to get the podcast to El Paso on September 27 for the 21st Annual Chihuahuan Desert Fiesta.

This event will help us get in touch with environmentally inclined desert dwellers from the greater El Paso, Juárez, Las Cruces area, not only letting them know about the podcast, but finding out what they've been working on, with the goal of perhaps bringing that to the podcast. It is increasingly clear that, despite all of the different tools we have for reaching people, whether that is social media or advertising, or even emails like this to our several hundred closest friends, one on one real time conversation with desert, activists, and sympathizers is the most effective way of bringing new listeners to our podcast.

We have been doing a special designated fundraising campaign to pay for this trip, which you can find at this link. We started out with a bare-bones, nothing fancy budget of 850 bucks, which should just pay for gas and lodging. Response has been pretty good so far, with a bit under 75% of that goal reached. (We may well bump up our ambitions with a so-called "stretch goal" to cover contingencies, like flat tires or buying prospective new donors a cup of coffee.)

Also! Since the road between 29 Palms and El Paso goes through Tucson, Arizona, land of thousands of desert lovers, we are busy setting up an event in the Old Pueblo either just before or just after the Chihuahuan Desert Fiesta. Once we get the details set you will be among the first to know.

100th Episode coming soon

We are getting close to our 100th episode since we launched on January 1, 2022. (The one we just released is #96.) We’re starting to put together a special event, taking advantage of our online recording studio, to let you take part in recording that episode. I hope to round up a few desert writers to read some of their work. Details to come.

Scheduling tweaks

After discussions with family, I’ve decided that I need to make sure I get weekends off. Publishing episodes almost every Tuesday, which we have done for quite a while now, didn’t really work for that. So Fridays are now Desert Protection Days. We put out a quick teaser this past Tuesday to let people know.

Finally: that new episode we mentioned

With all the controversy, unpleasantness, and astonishing human rights violations taking plce as the federal government increasingly targets anyone with slightly brown skin for garassment, detention, and deportation, I figured we should celebrate July 4 by talking about the human rights atrocity that all the grandstanding works to obscure: the death toll among people migrating through the Sonoran Desert in Arizona.

Thank you all for reading, and for supporting 90 Miles from Needles. Don’t forget that reviews on podcast sites really help us out. It’s easy to leave one, and you will be nudging the algorithm in favor of recommending the podcast to new listeners. You can leave a review at Apple Podcasts here and at Spotify here. If you don’t like either of those options you can leave a bespoke review on our website. Thanks!