Burning Man LIVE

5 leaders from the 5 Regional Burns of Australia!  They focus on collaboration more than contraptions, connection more than complexity. Aurora, Tasmania: Lara, aka Squeaky Queen, on the logistics of being an island off an island. Blazing Swan, Western Australia: Shaz on navigating extreme weather with 3,700 friends. Burning Seed, New South Wales: Leanna, aka Mama, on restructuring into a member-ow...

For decades, Charlie has led some of Black Rock City's monumental works of art. He isn’t just the prolific mind behind iconic pieces like Elder Mother, an illuminated storytelling tree; he’s an architect of human connection. He co-created and develops:  Illumination Village - an early and long running home-within-a-home at Black Rock City The Flaming Lotus Girls - the all-volunteer, women-led art...

Watch it on YouTube . What do you get when you mix 3,200 Burners, a lush Canadian forest, and a summer fire ban? Oh, and an event theme that is literally just the word... MOIST. Wander through the woods of Otherworld, one of British Columbia’s rapidly growing Regional Burns. Coordinators of creative chaos Jax and Zephyr share what it takes to conjure Burning Man culture in the Pacific Northwest Ho...

Watch it on YouTube here .  What happens when Burner behavior goes under the microscope? Sociologists, ecologists, and economists have been on this show. Now we’re looking at this culture through a new lens: primatology. Isabel Behncke is an evolutionary biologist and a Burning Man Project Board Member. From tracking bonobos in the jungle to observing humans on playa, she shares her groundbreaking...

This culture started in dust and ephemerality. We build metropolises of art and fire, then we leave no trace. How do we translate that inspiration into a rhythm for everyday life? What happens when a temporary autonomous zone puts down roots? The Borderland is Scandinavia's largest and longest running Burning Man Regional event. It’s "working out loud" culture fosters radical trust, allowing the c...

Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/irkEajUVRgI Most people in Black Rock City live together in placed camps (theme camps), the most unique aspect of this unique event. BRC has 1400 camps. Theme Camps = Communal Effort + Intimacy + Self-Expression Theme campers gift a uniquely decommodified ‘third place’ of offerings and ambiance. At this annual symposium, staff and volunteers share how they gi...

Remember that whiteout in deep playa? That prepared you for a NASA mission to space, maybe. Andie Grace talks with Samuel M. Coniglio, aka Ranger Cosmonaut, and Spaceman Sam. He isn't just a ten-year Black Rock Ranger and a veteran of the legendary Neverwas Haul (that three-story Victorian house on wheels)... He’s a writer, inventor, and futurist who worked on the Space Shuttle and the ISS. From h...

George Paap, a pioneer of the Burning Man Regional network, talks with Andie Grace. He founded Burning Flipside in Texas, the first-ever Burning Man sanctioned event beyond the desert. What inspired him? Black Rock City 1997. He found freedom there, and it sparked a lifelong mission. Hear his adventures of building a culture from scratch, and why, as a futurist, he believes Burners are steady & re...

There’s a world of civic hacking where "making cool stuff" meets "making useful stuff." Hear tinkerers, gearheads and other makers share about the inventions that won them Burners Without Borders Civic Ignition Grants. These grants are little sparks that fire up the next level of open-source technology for all of our community, and for all the world. Colin Jemmott and MJ Brovold of YOUtopia, the S...

Insightful. World-Building. Spit-take inducing. Mark Day’s videos serve as a digital gateway for many thousands of Burners, capturing that blurry edge where the default world ends and the playa begins.  From his early days building tripper trappers and doing stand up comedy, to his controversial tinkering with AI art (think Dalmatians made of donuts), Mark has put 10,000 hours into his “24 Hours a...

It's absurd. It perturbs. It’s the most wonderful time of the year! (And boy has it been a year!) Following in the footsteps of show-biz luminaries like Stephen Colbert, Jon Stuart, and the cast of Star Wars, we hosted a (non-denominational) holiday show in front of a live online pseudo-studio audience in 2020. Broadcasting from their snowed-in virtual holiday cabins, Stuart and Andie entertained...

His huge steel sculptures have graced Black Rock City for decades, then found forever homes in cities, festivals, and private collections around the world. Hear veteran structural sculptor Michael Christian go deep and wide about his Burning Man art, from a tree of bones to a 65-foot tall tower. He shares about his installation "Down the Drain," a commentary on human alignment, or misalignment......

RootHub (aka Aloha) weaves the core values and shared struggle of building Black Rock City and his work in Hawai‘i. He draws inspiration from the Hawaiian people’s concept of kuleana (responsibility to the land and community). When he’s not building BRC with DPW, or playing music to amplify people’s stories, he’s diverting food waste from landfills and incinerators into much needed, nutrient-dense...

He brought theme camps and art installations to Black Rock City, and yes, he DJed! Now he brings the spirit of kindness and collaboration (and Do-ocracy) into creating public policy. He co-founded a Burning Man Regional nonprofit. He directed a cultural arts center. He collaborated on cultural policy for racial equity, social justice, and creative sustainability. He ran the Seattle Office of Arts...

“I think therefore I am.” ~Descartes John Jennifer adds:  I care therefore we are… and you cannot think your way to ‘we’ He is a poet, an architect, and a cultural instigator. He helped create The Museum of No Spectators which includes Burning Man art of snark and social justice, but no velvet ropes. He’s a paradox embracer. In a world of binaries, he asserts that between black and white is not a...

She’s a longtime senior leader of the Black Rock Rangers and the principal of the Gerlach K-12 School. Keeper lives year-round in Gerlach, one of the smallest and most remote towns in the US, and the closest community to Black Rock City. In this storytelling episode, she shares her unique perspective on blending the worlds of Burning Man and rural life. She tells the tales of keeping the town’s sc...

Black Rock City has an airport, a hospital, a post office... and yes, an observatory! For a decade, the Black Rock Observatory has served as a portal to the cosmos, bringing deep space to the desert. Father-and-son Zoom and Robin Newhouse are at the helm of the observatory that houses several telescopes for viewing planets, galaxies, and even our sun. They offer a museum of meteorites that are bil...

Recorded in Black Rock City, you can hear the grainy gravitas of their voices... For decades now, Jon Sarriugarte, Kyrsten Mate, their daughter and their team build mobile art.  From a meter maid cart turned space shuttle, to a custom copper retro fire snail on wheels, their creations make up part of BRC's moving landscape. They built a trilobite to ride, a gilded golden zeppelin car, and a noir s...

Hear the stories of the art and artists. Black Rock City hosts 400 artworks from around the world. This episode features 12 of them, and this year’s Temple.  This is a sonic journey of artist's recordings and chats with Burning Man Project's Director of Art, Katie Hazard.  Desert Arts Preview is your chance to step behind the scenes and listen to the process of creating interactive, collaborative,...

REMASTERED FOR 2025: Our most popular episode of all time.  Listen in as longtime Burners talk about the dynamic aspects of thriving in Black Rock City: mental, physical, material, and relational. Andie, kbot, Molly, Stuart, and Vav explore: socks secrets FOMO variants saying yes and saying no giving and accepting help No Friends Monday and much more and other and new! Featuring cameos from longti...

Zander was the executive director of The Long Now Foundation, dedicated to long term thinking. He also helped build their library, a book club for the end of the world, with all the titles we would want to rebuild civilization, if needed.  He is one of the brains behind the 10,000-Year Clock, designed to tick off the years, and chime the centuries. He’s now co-creating the future of the web at Aut...

AI is a context changer, a shaker upper, and a force multiplier to what our human minds can do. Andie says that AI is a major philosophical shift in humanity, and when this kind of thing happens, the first people she goes to are artists and academics. Andie and Stuart talked with a few artists and academics about their AI infused art coming to Black Rock City. They share their dreams and nightmare...

Kevin Kelly is a leading thinker of the digital age. The founding editor of Wired Magazine, he helped produce the Whole Earth Catalog, and an early internet pillar called the WELL. He is a journalist, an artist, and a longtime member of the Burning Man community. He is a radical optimist. The future is a construct of the collective imagination. We see utopian stories as too pie-in-the-sky. We have...

Black Rock City's soundscape is a wild ride from Afro-punk to Zydeco. This episode explores the why and how of two styles:  the thumping electronic dance music that makes BRC a DJ's Mecca the anything-goes improv of jazz, a dusty mirror to the Burner spirit Stuart, a self-proclaimed EDM newbie, gets a crash course from a DJ in the know. He chats with a legendary DJ about how Burning Man transmogri...

Leo is a pioneering light artist, bringing teams and tech together to activate buildings, bridges, and bastions. He started Burning in 1994, founded Disorient camp, and is part of Black Rock City every year. Here he shares his journey from crafting a single beacon at his tent to leading monumental art projects that reshaped skylines. He illuminated the Bay Bridge in San Francisco, the historic bri...