Episodes

Chris talks with Melinda Matson Spina, Jodi Darby, and Sage Bond about Desert Dispatch Media’s effort to document communities responding to the rapid expansion of AI data centers across the desert Southwest. They discuss a community-led film, public assemblies, and music that draws on sounds from the land.

Why do deserts need protection? For the 150th episode of 90 Miles from Needles, Chris Clarke returns to the reasons this work matters: deserts remain widely misunderstood, receive less scientific attention than they deserve, and cannot be protected without confronting questions of justice. Listeners Kimberly, Nancy, and Diane share what the desert means to them, while Chris considers wildfire, Joshua tree science, environmental inequality, the border wall, urban heat, and the love that ultimately lies behind conservation. An after-credits report examines where the podcast has traveled during its first 150 episodes—and where its coverage still needs to go.

After the Dragon Bravo Fire, Grand Canyon trail staff warned that the North Kaibab Trail faced years of heightened danger from debris flows, flash floods and rockfall. Yet the entire trail reopened in May 2026. Journalist Joe Dana of Phoenix's 12 News joins 90 Miles from Needles to discuss his reporting on internal National Park Service recommendations, pressure to restore public access, and the decisions made before the deadly August 29 Grand Canyon flood.

This week: four things to understand about desert flash floods, why blaming victims makes us less safe, and what both travelers and institutions can do to reduce the danger.

Journalist Kimon de Greef follows the dirty business behind psychedelic “toad medicine”: wildlife exploitation, manufactured Indigenous tradition and a global market selling ego death as transcendence.

The boundary between two ground-squirrel species preserves the memory of a wetter Mojave,and a barrier that disappeared thousands of years ago.

Only a handful of vaquitas have recently been observed, but the species doesn't have to be doomed. Lorenzo Rojas-Bracho explains why these desert porpoises remain capable of recovery, and what must change to keep them alive.

Kate Scott reports from a tree sit in Lochiel, where activists occupied the last of four landmark cottonwoods after contractors destroyed the others for double-wall construction through the San Rafael Valley.

Chris argues that federal environmental law remains indispensable but insufficient, calling for durable local power, community narratives and relationships capable of defending desert places when national protections are weakened or ignored.

Writer Morgan Sjogren describes the emotional and ecological stakes of renewed attacks on Bears Ears and Grand Staircase–Escalante, connecting monument boundaries to rivers, cultural landscapes, resource extraction and everyday life in southern Utah.

Chance Wilcox explains how Dateline Resources’ proposed rare-earth mine could industrialize roughly 20,000 acres beside Twentynine Palms and Joshua Tree National Park, threatening residents, wildlife, water, air quality and a tourism-dependent economy.

Chris examines fireworks as a recurring source of wildland ignitions, explaining how invasive grasses and depleted firefighting capacity magnify the danger while proposing safer celebrations suited to desert communities.