Life is a Festival

With self-isolation and shelter in place proliferating the globe, here’s some good medicine from a yogi who spent 5 weeks in lockdown in a small apartment in China. Nino Mendes is a rockstar yoga teacher who speaks seven languages and has taught massive classes with over a thousand students Beijing, Shanghai, and across China. At the time of this recording, on March 10th, Nino had just emerged fro...

What I can personally offer to support you, my dear listener, during this period of global turbulence and necessary self-isolation? Only what has been helpful to me. When you work from home, as I do, it’s important to segment your day and create ritual space for nourishing practices. Otherwise the week can feel like one long unproductive day of scrolling and task switching. Since we’re all going t...

Why do our hearts long for renown and how might we meet that longing in a way that actually fertilizes a garden of rich, creative pursuits? Lately I’ve been re-examining a lingering desire for fame. I experience it in flavors of lack, or envy, or regret as if I somehow missed out on the grand adventure of celebrity. Do you sometimes feel the same? No matter my personal growth, there’s a small of m...

Remember a few years ago when LSD brain imaging went viral on social media? Those images were taken at Imperial College London in an fMRI study conducted with the Beckley/Imperial Research Programme. Today on Life is a Festival, I’m speaking to psychedelic royalty… literally. Who better to discuss the magical molecule lysergic acid diethylamide, than the Countess of Wemyss and March, and the found...

Whatcha know about vasogenic shock? Can you treat an open pneumothorax? Better learn your ABCs if you want to save a life! If you’ve been following this show for a while you may recall in episode 33 when Jamie Wheal challenged me to do a Wilderness First Responder training. Well, friends and countrymen, I DID THE THING! I scooted over to the Hygiene, Colorado fire station and spent 10 days learnin...

It’s Mardi Gras season, oh Carnival Kings and Queens! Today’s guest arrived in New Orleans as Karina Nathan and shortly thereafter Hurricane Katrina blew through. With no krewe for women under 30, she started her own, the Bearded Oysters of which she remains the Mother Shucker. She has many names but is known most widely by the hurricane’s namesake: Katrina. Today on the show we go deep into the h...

Do you know what to do if a friend or a stranger is having a difficult psychedelic experience? Sometimes called a “bad trip,” these challenging journeys can actually be catalysts for healing and personal transformation. The key is to keep them safe and trust their inner healer. Sounds simple right? In fact, it’s a profound art, which requires specialized training and can be incredibly personally r...

Burners Without Borders (BWB) is a community organization within the Burning Man Project that works in disaster relief and civic works projects in communities around the world. From building composting toilets at Standing Rock, to permaculture action at Hoover Elementary in West Oakland, to building a Youth Center in the Calais refugee camp, BWB is Burning Man at its finest. Christopher Breedlove...

Do you party to escape or celebrate to connect? I think we all do a bit of both, and while it’s not a bad thing to be checked out sometimes, fostering deep connections is one of the core tenets of the festive life. Today’s podcast is in two parts. The first section is live at Spotify’s end of year party in Stockholm (please forgive the distortion on the track). The second half is our review of tha...

It is the humility of the failed hero that allows him to truly connect with his brothers. My man Ian has a new podcast called The Mythic Masculine. It’s a bimonthly exploration of myth, culture and the emerging masculine archetypes. On today’s episode of Life is a Festival I’m sharing our conversation from Episode 5 of his show titled The Boy Hero Must Die. If you’ve been following my story, this...

“The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.” ― Steven Pressfield, The War of Art Visionary Art is a style popular in the festival world that depicts mystical realms often touched first through psychedelic journeys, But what’s the difference between work that truly transports the viewer into hitherto unimagined vistas, and rainbow v...

“Beans on Toast… it’s cheap, it’s easy, it’s English, does what it says on the tin.” Jay McAllister, aka Beans on Toast, is a true English folk hero. You’ll find him at a British festival on a Sunday afternoon, belting out his irreverent songs for worn out ravers. From helping Banksy launch sky lanterns, to extolling the virtues of a bamboo toothbrush, Beans is the paradigm of a festive life that...

Happy New Year! Here are the most listened to episodes of Life is a Festival woven into a single narrative arch. This week's show has three movements. We start with festivals as transformational incubators and discuss the creation of these spaces for personal growth, from psychedelic origin stories, through decentralized gatherings to the intersection of safe, sexy and silly. In the second movemen...

Somewhere along the California coast, between breathtaking cliffs, mineral-rich springs, and ancient forests, Michael Murphy and his friend Richard Price created The Esalen Institute in 1962. This retreat center and intentional community was a magnet for luminaries like Alan Watts, Stanislav Grof, Ida Rolf, and Joseph Campbell who all became long-term resident scholars. Today on the show, I speak...

Marcus Barnes, author and music journalist, is one of the most affable men I’ve ever met, and one of the most knowledgeable about British festival culture. So when Spotify asked me to do a live podcast for their London event “Rewound in Sound,” of course I called up Marcus. On the podcast we speak of Britain’s brilliant festival history from country fairs and fêtes, through the goliath of Glastonb...

This is a more personal installment of Life is a Festival. On today’s episode I ask my friend Tim to explain to me how to get a job. Tim Chang is a Managing Partner at Mayfield, a 50 year old venture fund, but he is much more than a typical VC from the Valley. Child of Taiwanese immigrants, Tim is a musician, a burner, and as will become clear in this episode, a philosopher. On the podcast we talk...

Tricia Eastman & Dr. Joseph Barsuglia: Iboga, the Mount Everest of Psychedelics Here he comes… Doctor Iboga! If you’ve been listening to Life is a Festival for a while, you may recall in Episode 18 I shared the story of my journey to Gabon to initiate with the Bwiti, the spiritual keepers of the psychedelic medicine iboga. Today on the podcast I go very deep with two experts on the plant and the t...

Welcome to a year of Life is a Festival! It has been 12 months and 40 conversations since I launched this project, and what a project it has become! In fact today’s episode opens with the announcement of some incredible news for the show: I have been asked to perform a live version of Life is a Festival for Spotify’s end of year parties in London and Stockholm next month. This exciting honor bubbl...

If you were an international DJ sensation, how would you use your fame to change the world? The Canadian duo Vivie-Ann Bakos and Anstascia D'Elene Corniere created BLOND:ISH at a mid-week club night back in 2008. A decade later and after countless parties and festivals, they have parted ways with Viv carrying on the BLOND:ISH moniker and Anstascia performing under her own name. On the show we talk...

Pranitan "Pete" Phornprapha, scion of Siam Motors Group, has created an innovation lab for sustainability… disguised as a festival. Wonderfruit is a celebration of art and music near Pattaya in Thailand, but more than a simple hedonic gala, the six year old festival is a celebration of Thai culture and experiments in environmentalism. On the podcast, Pete and I talk about his passion for meditatio...

Can we “undrown” ourselves from painful loss through a celebration of death? From Jazz Funerals in New Orleans to dancing ghosts in Japan, there are many traditions that celebrate death. None is more famous than Día de Muertos, the Mexican Day of the Dead, which now exports marigolds, sugar skulls, and Catrina face paint throughout the world. On today’s podcast I’m in San Miguel de Allende with Kl...

At Bass Coast, a beautiful boutique festival in the forests of British Columbia, everyone is a babe. What is a babe? A Bass Coast babe is a person of any gender who’s really feeling themselves. This party is so full of embodied bodies that it’s often affectionately referred to as “Babe Coast.” The festival is also famously run by women, Liz Thompson and today’s guest on the show, the beloved Andre...

Depression. In ancient Mesopotamia, they called it demonic possession. For Hippocrates it was an excess of black bile. In the Renaissance the culprit was witchcraft. In the Enlightenment it was a weakness in temperament. Abraham Lincoln had a tendency for melancholy. Georgia O’Keeffe often wept uncontrollably. For William James it was a crisis of meaning. For Winston Churchill it was a black dog....

An ode to taking up space as boldly, colorfully, and radiantly as you want. This is a special podcast, first describing and then embodying the very philosophy of this show. Life is a festival when we keep saying yes to new adventures until we’re tumbling in the refreshing currents of serendipitous play. In this episode an unexpected conversation becomes a podcast. Lizzie Rose is a fashion and life...

When the search for the Grail Castle becomes the prison of Hotel California, we need some tough love to wake the woke. Luckily Jamie Wheal is here with a midnight message for the 11th hour: Drop the digital narcissism and become a home grown human… before it’s too late. Jamie is the Executive Director of the Flow Genome Project and co-authored Stealing Fire in 2017. At the time, he saw the major t...