Welcome to a bonus episode in which Kt and Laurel have award winning author, screenwriter and essayist, Barret Baumgart, in the Smoke Circle. Together we discuss his newest book Yuck: The Birth and Death of the Weird and Wondrous Joshua Tree, Yucca Brevifolia. You might not believe it, but the Joshua Tree has a strange little part to play when recounting the history of the American West and Westward Expansion and Barret is here to tell us about it.
In addition to Yuck, he has also authored some more strange nonfiction--China Lake, his debut novel, is about one of the strangest places in America: China Lake, which is the US Navy's largest single landholding. The top secret base researches and develops about 85% of the country's weapons and armaments...and sits on top of THOUSANDS of Native American pictographs.
He is currently working on a book that might take the care in "weird"--the history of the United State's worst nuclear disaster in Los Angeles in 1959 (no! It's not Three Mile Island! I know! We were shocked too!) that was covered up by the government until the late 1970s and the land is now owned by Boeing....so....nothing weird at all.
We had a blast having Barret on the show! Please check out his Substack and his books, especially if you love your history on the weird side!
We will be back in two weeks with episode 109, back on track for the rest of the season!
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Barret's Website
Barret's Substack "Dumpster Fires"
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Intro/outro music: "Loopster" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/