Life is a Festival

The world seems just a bit crazier every single day right now. Luckily on this week’s show we have the guiding light of a brilliant thinker I’ve admired for years, Jordan Hall (formerly Jordan Greenhall). I first discovered Jordan after reading his Situational Assessment in 2017 and his essay On Sovereignty which was pivotal in my the maturation of my worldview. On the show we begin with my own ch...

Last month I spent several days in silent meditation at Azure Village in Southern New Mexico near Gila National Forest. My host was my friend and fellow traveler Andrew Murray Dunn. As we emerged from silence we jumped right into a podcast, sitting out in the expansive desert landscape as the summer monsoons rolled in. On the show we talk about Andrew exploration of his feminine self who he calls...

As part of the Burning Man Project's Multiverse, my camp, Burners Without Borders offered a speaker series projected into the Infinite Playa. I had the pleasure of interviewing a former guest and friend of the show, Jamie Wheal about his vision for Black Rock City’s future. On the show, we talk about the future of Burning Man in the digital realm and how our culture should evolve if Black Rock Cit...

This is a big one for Life is a Festival. Today I’m releasing an interview I conducted a few weeks ago with Marian Goodell, CEO of Burning Man.  On the show, we talk about whether Burning Man is—as is fervently contested—a festival or if we should protect the unique event from that label. We spend the first 20 minutes talking about Marian’s life and how she first came to the Black Rock Desert. We...

Today’s episode of Life is a Festival unfolds through two different audio experiences and much like Burning Man’s Multiverse, I invite you, dear listener to enjoy one or both of these diverging moments. The first podcast takes place in the traditional Life is a Festival format, the second is a conversation recorded from the new audio social network Clubhouse (currently in beta testing). My guest f...

Today’s episode of Life is a Festival unfolds through two different audio experiences and much like Burning Man’s Multiverse, I invite you, dear listener to enjoy one or both of these diverging moments. The first podcast takes place in the traditional Life is a Festival format, the second is a conversation recorded from the new audio social network Clubhouse (currently in beta). My guest for both...

On the second episode of the [in Community] series, I’m speaking to my friend Tony Cho, an unconventional real estate developer in Miami. Tony grew up in the Kashi Ashram, where he was adopted by his grandmother, the guru Ma Jaya, and has gone on to work on innovative projects inspired by the joie de vivre of Burning Man. On the show we talk about magic and place, from the ashram to Argentina and...

Today on Life is a Festival I am interviewing my brother, Quinn Armstrong! Quinn’s first feature film, Survival Skills, is playing on demand as part of Fantasia Film Festival starting on August 20th. This interview was recorded after the film’s debut at Cinequest back in February. However, with the advent of coronavirus, Quinn’s expected festival run was put on hold. Now with festivals going digit...

Today I’m excited to announce a new mini-series within Life is a Festival about communities and land-based projects where we can live our most expressed lives. In a time of isolation and global change, without the festivals, ceremonies, and other gatherings we have used to grow together, many of us are looking to build or join communities that cultivate that particular serendipitous convergence we...

Today’s topic is a challenging one. A few weeks ago, numerous allegations surfaced regarding sexual misconduct by two prominent male musicians in the festival world: Lorin Ashton (ie Bassnectar) and Nahko, who I interviewed on this podcast last month. At the time of the allegations I decided to remove that podcast from my catalogue pending an accountability process. To make sense of this cultural...

The Teafaerie, like God herself, is never serious but always sincere. She has facilitated psychedelic peer support at festivals since her work with Rock Med in the 90s, and boy does she have some stories to tell. On the show, we talk about the art of trip sitting and how we can see a difficult trip as an emergence, not an emergency. We discuss how to protect ourselves from conspiracy theories, per...

“Someone who creates a practice tradition this vast is someone who can't survive in the world as it is.” Today on Life is a Festival, Zhenevere Sophia Dao returns to the show to share, for the first time, the story of her transgender emergence during sixteen months of silence in the Jemez Mountains. We discuss what Zhenevere calls the “Transgender Necessity” wherein transgender people ask society...

You know that oceanic feeling of Oneness you first discovered during that beatific acid journey at Burning Man? Cognitive liberty is a beautiful thing, everyone should have the right to experiment with psychedelics safely. But what methamphetamines? Opiates? Or even cigarettes? Do these lifestyle choices deserve the same support and safety? If these cases seem incongruent, Mohawk the Educator has...

In times of chaos and trouble, look to the grandmothers for wisdom, compassion, and above all, patience. On June 4th, a few days after protests against police brutality roiled across the country, I sat with Loretta Afraid of Bear Cook of the Oglala Sioux Nation and her sister Jyoti Ma, convener of the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers. We came together in a virtual circle o...

This week on Life is a Festival, I am honored to share the vibrant voice of Adah Parris. Self-isolating in her flat in London, Adah offers her perspective on these difficult times, from Covid-19 to racial injustice in the United States. On the show, we talk about Afropunk and Adah’s radical self-expression, including mystical tattoos of imaginary numbers, DMT molecules, and the ancient Ouroboros....

Is it possible to have a mystical mindset without getting lost in magical thinking? Or worse, getting hijacked by harmful fantasies? In the chaos of coronavirus, I’ve noticed an increasing deficit of critical thinking within conscious communities. With an upswell in conspiracy theories and lack of good sensemaking on social media, I asked Dr. Anna Zakrisson of the Swedish Skeptics Association to h...

“How much can I feel?”  When we experience trauma, whether shock trauma (too much too fast) or developmental trauma (too little too long), it is common to disassociate. The healing process begins with reconnecting to the body and courageously experiencing all that we reject and hold inside. Tina Nance, a yin yoga and yoga therapy teacher in Bali, is a true master of the art of cultivating interoce...

The Psychedelic Renaissance is a profound step forward in our understanding of the mind, but there’s growing concern that important lessons and a vibrant culture may be left behind in the rush to medicalization. My guest today, Liana Sananda, has spent a lot of time considering the cultural delivery mechanism of psychedelics into society. Liana is the Development Officer of MAPS and co-founder of...

Coming hot on the tail of a hugely successful digital festival, today I offer you the humor, joie de vivre, big heart, and kookiness of Papa Lee Reynolds, co-founder of Desert Hearts. On the show we get an intimate look inside the mind of a mad scientist, from his days as a BMX rider — including a stint riding for D.A.R.E. — to co-founding Southern California’s premier micro-festival. Along the wa...

“Metamodernism is the marriage of extreme irony with a deep, unyielding sincerity,” writes today’s guest Hanzi Freinacht. If that sounds a lot like Burning Man snark, you won’t be surprised to learn that Hanzi’s enigmatic writings have found a home in the Scandinavian Burning Man community. On the show we begin with the death of the individual and how true freedom is actually relational. Hanzi the...

In this global crisis, financial uncertainty affects us all, especially those whose livelihoods are based on gatherings like festivals and other events. Today on Life is a Festival, my friend and fellow member of Burners Without Borders, Nick Farr CPA, will help us navigate the byzantine networks of government programs so we can get the resources we need now, and prepare for the future. On the sho...

If you’ve discovered my work through this show and you want to know more about the Life is a Festival philosophy and how I met so many fascinating people to interview (or if you just want to hear some silly stories on my birthday) this is the podcast for you! My dear friend David Colón used to have the most delightful weekly radio program on FCC Free Radio called Behind The Mynd​. It was a celebra...

What if the coronavirus crisis is an initiation for humanity? What if, amidst all this suffering and uncertainty, we have an opportunity to rewrite the story of our species? What if this is the moment we’ve been waiting for to step into our sovereignty and forge a mature partnership with our Mother Earth? Many of us have been asking these questions, but to my knowledge, no one has explored these i...

Can we still live life like a festival when there are no festivals for the foreseeable future? When there are no gatherings at all? With a global pandemic, a faltering economy, and profound uncertainty moving through the world, can life still be looked at through the lens of open hearted celebration? Life is a Festival is guided by the belief that we can kinder, more open, and more expressed by ta...

This episode goes out to all the healthcare workers in the fight against coronavirus. If you are an EMT, a doctor, nurse, or hospital janitor… bless you! Richard “Wolverine" Gottlieb is the king of festival medicine. His company RGX Medical manages 30-40 festivals per year including favorites like Lightning in a Bottle, Envision, and Desert Hearts. RGX emphasizes a harm reduction approach and work...