Barret Baumgart
Author
Barret Baumgart is an award-winning author of weird, investigative nonfiction whose research and writing is rooted in California's Mojave Desert, Los Angeles, and the environment. His first book China Lake, about a little-known military base hidden in the Mojave, won the Iowa Prize for Literary Nonfiction, selected by Richard Preston, who called it "an apocalypse of the weird." Baumgart's reporting and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, The Gettysburg Review, Iowa Review, Vice, among others, and his Substack, Dumpster Fires. A SoCal native, Baumgart lives and works in Los Angeles. YUCK is his second book. As Erik Davis says, "YUCK confirms Baumgart's status as one of the leading chroniclers of the California weird."
April 29, 2025
S4E13: Yuck: The Wild, Weird History of Joshua Trees with Barret Baumgart
In this engaging episode of the "90 Miles from Needles: The Desert Protection Podcast," host Chris Clarke is joined by author Barret Baumgart. The conversation centers around Baumgart's book "Yuck," which explores the peculiar and iconic Joshua Tree. From its historical misunderstandings and numero…