Burning Man LIVE

Guest host Rosie von Lila takes us on a journey through the form and formation of the stories we tell ourselves, the stories we teach, the stories we collectively assume are true. She explores the narratives of conflict and collaboration, of domination and partnership, and how they shape and shift the self and the culture.  She speaks with  Caveat Magister , Burning Man philosopher and author of "...

You and I, we have living laboratories for embracing new ways to do the Earthling thing. They are Black Rock City, Fly Ranch, and 90-something regional events around the world. The Burning Man community is vast, diverse, and creative - and can ripple out a cultural shift around new technologies and practices.  The 2030 Environmental Sustainability Roadmap declared that in the next 8 years we will...

The end of the world? we have been practicing for decades. As more people look down the barrel of climate change, we have something to say (and do) about it.  What must change for it to be better for the ecology for Burning Man to exist, than for it not to exist? Our 2030 Environmental Sustainability Roadmap declared that in a half dozen years we will become carbon negative and regenerative. How? ...

You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll believe in love. Stuart and Andie take a wild ride with author and philosopher Caveat Magister.  They discuss how to transform daily life with psychomagical experiences. They illustrate the power of art, ritual and play, and the magic of love. They reveal the secret sauce of Black Rock City, and the triumphs and failures of experience design. They explain engineere...

Life happens. Art happens with life. The arts are a big impact area of Burning Man culture.  Burning Man Project funds artists each year through our Global Arts Grants and BRC Honoraria . The pandemic put a pause on 2020 grants. Now with no Black Rock City for a second year, we feared the arts grants would also be a no.  However, thanks to generous philanthropy, Burning Man Project is funding a mi...

Black Rock City. We sometimes call it an unnatural disaster zone. We cooperate, survive and thrive in one of the harshest environments. Each year we iterate new ways, and we do it all because we want to.  Black Rock City attracts people who are resourceful, or it turns them into people who are.  The resilient burner community does disaster relief well. The nature of most residents of Black Rock Ci...

It’s true. Really. The United States has an Institute of Peace. It’s also true that they partnered with Burning Man Project to create a new podcast called Culturally Attuned, about how we can all work effectively across our world’s cultural divides.  That podcast complements USIP’s online, self-paced course on Cultural Synergy. Stuart talks with the Executive Director of the Institute about cultiv...

Andie talks with artists Fab 5 Freddy and Rachel McCrafty about diversity in and around the Burning Man world. Rachel is the executive director of ACE Makerspace in Oakland and Freddy is a hip-hop pioneer, filmmaker and a board member of Burning Man Project.  They discuss tokenism, bridge-building, and how people with open sensibilities can widen the path for those who have not felt welcomed befor...

Operating far outside the lines of what he calls the “humanitarian-industrial complex,” freelance culture hacker and FreeSpace founder Mike Zuckerman goes into refugee settlements around the world, and works with their citizens to create spaces that better serve their communities. While the NGOs wrung their hands over how to deliver aid in the COVID-19 pandemic, Zuck spent most of 2020 on the grou...

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. Broadcasting from their snowed-in virtual holiday cabins, Stuart and Andie entertained guests: · Santa Zero - originator...

Does Burning Man really trigger transformative experiences, and if so, what does that look like? Stuart and behavioral scientist Kristen Berman go deep on the psychology of change, and what that looks like in Black Rock City and beyond. Can participating in a Burning Man event really make you more generous, more tolerant, more civic-minded? What’s the role of the 10 Principles in all of this, and...

Fly Ranch is in the middle of nowhere, and yet it's the center of the universe for many bugs, birds, animals, and, uh, thermophiles.  Down the road from the dry lake bed that hosts Black Rock City, Fly Ranch is 6 square miles of hot springs, ecosystems, and a unique variety of life, from wildflowers to wild horses, antelope and mountain lions, eagles, and cicadas. Stuart and Logan talk with Dr. Li...

The Burning Man figure started it all and has stood at the center of Black Rock City for decades. Many myths and legends of its origins have been passed down through the years. It can be difficult to separate fact from fiction. We took a deep dive with the earliest builders of the Burning Man to chart the evolution and decode the mythology. We also spoke with members of the current team that bring...

Culinary excellence in a temporary city in the dry desert? Oh yes, and some decadent offerings too. Andie and Vav rebroadcast a delicious episode about culinary camps at Black Rock City from the podcast “Food Wine & the Culinary Mind.” It’s a montage of interviews from theme camps that gift the perfect food at the perfect time and place. The perspectives on creativity, community and cuisine bring...

What is it like to walk around Black Rock City as a staff member and an academic in participant-observer mode? These tales are of BRC at the turn of the century, and the study of ineffable experiences, ending with old school stories of the organic formation of BRC’s support services, and a healthy respect for law enforcement.  Andie and Logan talk with Sheila Hoover, the Associate Dean of Librarie...

The U.S. trails most developed countries in voter turnout. The thought that your vote doesn’t matter, or that there’s no good choice - some say that thought is manufactured or perpetuated to prevent people from exercising their power. Some say voting is not fun.  Stuart and Logan discuss voter apathy, voter ho-hum, and creative solutions to election spectators.  They talk with Mark Rosenberg, aka...

If you found a “hippie-proof” story-cube at a festival or in a war-zone, would you share your story with it? Stuart and Andie talk with Finnish scholar Jukka-Pekka Heikkilä, about the Burning Stories project, the qualitative research of hope and anger, the innovation at Burning Man Regional events in Europe, and teaching entrepreneurialism in Lebanon and North Korea.  What more can we learn about...

Yomi is an impassioned and jovial part of the small team doing big things in the nonprofit arts organization “We Are From Dust.” The all-Burner team is dedicated to proliferating interactive, participatory artwork in public spaces that transforms the way people engage with art, and changes how they consider their daily lives. In this time of dramatic changes for in-person experiences, We Are From...

Logan and Andie talk with Matthew “Chef” Kwatinetz about Black Rock Power, an ambitious new sustainable energy initiative rooted in the Burning Man community, and how Black Rock City is the ideal laboratory for prototyping and iterating solutions for the larger world. No pressure.  They discuss Burning Man’s 2030 Environmental Sustainability Roadmap and how the struggles of 2020 have affected ever...

In Black Rock City, Burn Week is when everything is happening and everyone is there, just like in this episode, where comedians and philosophers Duncan Trussell and Nick Kroll take over the podcast, and Stuart, Andie, Logan, and Vav are the guests. We discuss everything from permission engines to economic models, everything from Judaism to fuckoism, from artificial intelligence to the unintelligib...

What does it mean to be (or not be) a festival?  Andie and Stuart speak with Eamon Armstrong, host of the Life is a Festival podcast about working Burning Man, Fest300, and the Psychedelic Therapy Podcast, as well as the future (if any) of festivals in a post-pandemic world, the nature of transformative experience, and his quest to achieve metamodern manliness without all the toxic masculinity. Ea...

A whole generation of kids has grown up with Black Rock City as their second address. And they’re amazing. Andie and Stuart talk with Burner kids and Burner parents about the challenges and rewards of going to BRC instead of summer camp. Nine-year-old Charlie (C.Bear) and sixteen-year-old Ava (Dust Storm) share what it’s like for them, and we hear from Lulu and her mother Molly, who’ve been going...

We keep talking about the Multiverse. What does that even mean? Is it actually a thing? Why is sad Stuart sad? It is because of his dead cat? Which human should we put in a supercollider, and why? Are Stuart’s dreams actually interdimensional travel, or just crazy talk?  What is reality?  All these questions and more are answered with even more questions by a theoretical physicist who also happens...

In a time and space without a Black Rock City event in Nevada, volunteer crews are using computer code instead of power tools to create a host of digital Burn experiences. What exactly are the “8 Recognized Universes of the Burning Man Multiverse?” What can you do in these online worlds, and will Daft Punk play at the virtual trash fence? Logan and Stuart go looking for answers with the organizers...

We like to say that Burning Man is made of a million stories.  Catherine Burns is the artistic director of The Moth. It’s a wildly popular, Peabody-award winning storytelling series now celebrating its 20th year. Burning Man stories have been told many times on the Moth stage. As it turns out, Catherine has a few Burning Man stories of her own.  Stuart and Andie talk with her about loving, grievin...