Life is a Festival

If we want to actually live in our bodies, sexuality should be a daily practice. Today on Life is a Festival, Chloe Macintosh, founder and CEO of Kama, teaches us the importance of pleasure for healing and growth. On the show we talk about the importance of embodiment and the gap in adult sex education. We explore pornography addiction, erectile disfunction and the magical art of squirting. Chloe...

Have you found yourself caught up in a never-ending healing journey? Are you rushing from workshop to ceremony to retreat trying to peal all the layers of your existential onion? Maybe what you need is healing from your healing! Today on Life is a Festival, Adam Andros Aronovich, creator of “Healing From Healing” offers us levity and a much needed reprieve from our hyper-individualistic personal d...

Today on Life is a Festival in a talk recorded live at Burning Man, I share my personal kink journey and how I learned to alchemize adolescent sexual shame through the archetype of “Daddy.” I was interviewed by the brilliant Chloe Macintosh, founder of the sexual wellness app, Kama, who will be a guest on a forthcoming episode. On the show we discuss where kinks come from and how accepting, embrac...

For those about to Burn! I have procrastinating my own packing for That Thing in the Desert by making you this compilation of my best Black Rock City conversations. From asking the Big Meow Marian whether Burning Man is a festival, to fumbling towards inclusivity with activist Nexus, from Burners without Borders to the Nordic Borderland, these are some of my favorite BRC moments from Life is a Fes...

The Wizard of Awe, Jason Silva, returns to Life is a Festival to discuss festival consciousness and how we, the refugees from the mundane, can unleash the brave and reckless Gods we really are at Burning Man and beyond. On the show we discuss freedom from self and expanded circles of moral concern. We talk about using avatars to explore and create our true selves. We touch on ontological and peak...

This podcast has highlighted many long-standing issues with New Age spirituality and the dark side of “good vibes only,” but according to today’s returning guest, rockstar philosopher Alex Ebert, dunking on the New Age has become boring and there is much that is still valuable and relevant from its perspective and rituals. On the show we begin with a review of the issues with spiritual communities...

We who attend Burning Man and other multi day mass gatherings have long felt that these events are personally and lastingly transformational. In May of this year, Dr. Molly Crockett and their team at Crockett Lab at Yale University published research demonstrating what we always believed. Today on Life is a Festival, Dr Crockett explains their findings and what they mean for harnessing the transfo...

Do you want to be a healer? From psychedelic medicine to therapy to bodywork, after experiencing an awakening many hear the call to serve in the healing arts, but how do we create a practice that is both ethical and sustainable? Laura Mae Northrup, author of Radical Healership, breaks it down on today’s episode. On the show we discuss why people get into the work of healing others, as well as what...

Here’s to the women who don’t give a fuck! But should we give a fuck about gender at all? Today on Life is a Festival we meet feminist beat poet and author Janne Robinson, to discuss authenticity, gender, and her no bullshit approach to creating the life you want. On the show Janne shares how she learned not to give a fuck and to create a life and thriving business as a poet and coach. We discuss...

At their best, festivals are platforms for personal and communal transformation by creating temporary immersive worlds, ripe with participation and opportunities for growth. Few gatherings do this with the theatrical flair of BoomTown Fair, a choose-your-own-adventure playground in the English countryside. Today on Life is a Festival, visionary leader, Lak Mitchell, shares how his vast team create...

On a little known shore inland from Los Angeles lies a post apocalyptic seaside town and one of the art world’s most interesting happenings. Founded in 2015, Bombay Beach Biennale is a renegade celebration of art, music, and philosophy. Pushing through a few hours of sleep, cofounder Tao Ruspoli and I sat down at the Biennale for a conversation. On the show we discuss the ecological and philosophi...

Can we take Burning Man principles and apply them to refugee situations? Mike Zuckerman has spent the last six years creating a toolkit for refugee-led spaces that help instill creativity, connectivity, and hope. Now he’s in Poland welcoming 4 million refugees from Ukraine who are crossing over into Europe. Our conversation starts with a brief overview of the situation on the Polish border. We dis...

“And finally, you would dream ... where you are now. You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living today.” - Watts Do you lucid dream? The kind where you awaken inside the dream and can bend it to your will? Do you fly? Make love? Or maybe just let the dream play out? Would you maybe create a festival? Today’s guest Jonah Gabriel Haas is the cofounder and marketing dire...

Today’s show is with an old friend. Ned Buskirk is the big-hearted, emotive MC of “You’re Going to Die, Poetry Prose and Everything Goes” an open mic on the subject of death, dying, and grief. Embracing impermanence is one of the paradoxical keys to a life like a festival, to live in the moment we have to learn to let go. On the show we discuss the important impermanence of a festival and how the...

In 2020 almost 100,000 people died of drug-related incidents in the US, many of those were due to fentanyl adulteration. It’s not just opiates, no white powder is safe and so the cognitive libertarians need to get wise and help each other stay safe. Luckily today on the show we have Mitchell Gomez, Executive Director of DanceSafe, to help us understand why this is happening and how to prevent thes...

Happy Valentine's Day my fellow travelers! In honor of the Day of Love, we’re diving into the wonderful world of BDSM with Dr. Cat Meyer, a specialist on embodied sexuality. Our exploration begins with Cat’s struggles with self acceptance and libido before she discovered kink in her early twenties. After briefly discussing styles of play, we jump right into why BDSM is a path not only to pleasure...

Over the past two years the optimistic spirituality of many within the psychedelic community has morphed into pessimism and paranoia. This synthesis of wellness and conspiracy thinking isn’t unique to the Covid pandemic. As today’s guest, philosopher Jules Evans explains, “Conspirituality” has been a feature of New Age thinking since its gnostic beginnings. Our conversations opens with Jules’ own...

Psychedelic decriminalization is on the move throughout the United States and Colorado is at its epicenter. Today on Life is a Festival Matthew Duffy (Duffy), co-founder of the reform and education platform SPORE, explains Colorado’s upcoming legislation in poetic mushroom metaphors. We begin with Duffy’s initial experiences with permaculture and how a fungi’s mycelial network is the ideal model f...

If we are committed to healing and a joyful life, we must look at our culture’s longest shadows, and change the way we understand justice. The opposite of the expansive freedom of a festival is the national nightmare of mass incarceration. Today on Life is a Festival. Sonya Shah, a specialist in restorative justice, is here to shine a light in our collective darkness and a possible path out. The s...

In the tradition of the English troubadour, Nick Mulvey is a soulful multi-instrumentalist, an Earth protector, and a student of Celtic Shamanism. Most importantly, he is generous with his insights for young artists. This podcast flows in three parts, first we discuss Nick’s musical background from studying in Havana at nineteen, to playing hang drum with Portico Quartet, to his embodied solo care...

I am always available for psychedelic service. When I am called to serve, there’s nowhere I’d rather be than sitting calmly beside someone going through the challenging journey known colloquially as a "bad trip." I recently had the opportunity to offer psychedelic peer support, also called "trip sitting," at a party. Although I’ve covered trip sitting before in episodes with Sara Gael of MAPS’ Zen...

I’ve been wanting to train in sexual, shamanic healing at the International School of Temple Arts (ISTA) for years. Today on Life is a Festival I discuss my ISTA Level 1 training with two of my facilitators Ohad Pele & Jasmeen Hana. On the show we talk about temple arts and why a training like ISTA is so valuable. We discuss the practice of bringing life force to interrupt patterns and liberate se...

LIAF 111: “Queer is Questioning” From Spaces Between Podcast with Al Jeffery What does it mean to call yourself queer? Today on Life is a Festival, I’m honored to share an interview I did on Al Jeffery’s brilliant show, “Spaces Between,” discussing queerness as a form of radical curiosity. We open with a comparison of vulnerability and openness, and how to use embodiment to support good mental hea...

What started as a festival bringing together elders from around the world has become a platform of superheroes! Aniwa is a movement to amplify the voices of Indigenous leaders and today’s guests founders Vivien Vilela & Rudy Randa share what that means in the time of Covid. We start with Vivian and Rudy’s initial awakenings, which started like many of ours. at outdoor dance parties. We discuss wha...

The 2021 Renegade Burn was a marvel of self-organization. Today on Life is a Festival I share my own reflections and a collection of interviews from drone artists to temple builders. The show begins with my own experience. I answer questions, share my philosophy of why we Burn, respond to criticisms, and report on the vibe. Then I interview Nathan Rolshoven, a young, passionate burner and an amate...