The Shadow Of The Man

Episode 93 with Stephen Payne is out now! Meet Stephen Payne, a filmmaker who documented the Burning Man festival during its formative years in the early 2000s. The conversation highlights the logistical and artistic challenges of early independent filmmaking in the desert, specifically Payne’s rapid process of shooting and editing the film Burn Baby Burn on a tight deadline. Beyond the technical...

Episode 92 with Lara Hopwood is out now! Meet Lara Hopwood, a project manager for the Burning Man Regional Network, who discusses the global expansion of the event’s culture. Lara explains that her role involves supporting a worldwide ecosystem of local communities and volunteer contacts who bring the ten principles to life outside of the main desert gathering. The conversation highlights how Burn...

Shadow Shorts #19 is out now! Recorded at UnSCruz in 2026 participants were challenged to explain BM‘s impact in 5 minutes or less. Each Shadow Short is one person’s story, please enjoy this short story of how Burning Man has impacted and influenced people over time. Meet  a veteran participant known as Dr. Slide who talks about the transformative power of radical self-expression and the importanc...

Episode 90 with Yonderman is out now! Meet Yonderman aka Mark Stirling, a New Zealand professor who reflects on his serendipitous discovery of Burning Man while studying geology in Nevada during the 1990s. The conversation traces his journey from a chance encounter with naked cyclists in the desert to becoming a foundational figure in the global regional network by establishing Kiwi Burn, the firs...

Episode 89 with Roxane Jessi is out now! Meet Roxane Jessi, a world traveler and author of Once Upon a Time in the Dust, who documents her global exploration of the Burning Man subculture. After a transformative first experience at the 2015 Black Rock City event, Jessi became obsessed with how the movement's ten principles manifest across different international contexts. She embarked on a sp...

Shadow Shorts #18 is out now! Recorded at BRC in 2025 participants were challenged to explain BM‘s impact in 5 minutes or less. Each Shadow Short is one person’s story, please enjoy this short story of how Burning Man has impacted and influenced people over time. Meet Mariah, who describes how the event replaced her rigid lifestyle with a newfound sense of emotional openness and service. A central...

Episode 87 with David Date is out now! Meet David Date, a skilled fabricator who shares his decade-long evolution from a struggling entrepreneur to a prominent Burning Man artist. The conversation explores the technical and emotional challenges of bringing massive installations to the desert, specifically detailing the mechanical failures and "ego deaths" associated with his ambitious pr...

Episode 86 with Absinthia is out now! Meet Absinthia, who reflects on her transformative decades-long involvement with the Burning Man festival. The conversation traverses the evolution of the event from its early, unmapped days in the mid-1990s to the more structured, high-tech gathering it is today, highlighting how the desert environment fosters radical self-expression and community resilience....

Shadow Shorts #17 is out now! Recorded at BRC in 2025 participants were challenged to explain BM‘s impact in 5 minutes or less. Each Shadow Short is one person’s story, please enjoy this short story of how Burning Man has impacted and influenced people over time. Meet Sarah, who describes the event as a vortex of creativity and a challenging environment that fosters resilience. A central theme of...

Episode 84 with Will Roger is out now! Meet Will Roger, a co-founder of the Burning Man event, who reflects on the gathering's evolution from a small, anarchic camping trip into a global cultural movement. Roger details the early challenges of organizing in the Black Rock Desert, including the legal and logistical hurdles of designing a temporary city and the transition from a chaotic "z...

Episode 83 the Year In Review is out now! Host Andi reviews the evolution and future of Shadow of the Man, an independent, non-commercial audio project dedicated to exploring how Burning Man impacts and influences people over time. Moving into its third season, the show utilizes a sustainable, volunteer-driven workflow to document authentic stories through long-form interviews and "shadow sho...

Shadow Shorts #16 is out now! Recorded at BRC in 2025 participants were challenged to explain BM‘s impact in 5 minutes or less. Each Shadow Short is one person’s story, please enjoy this short story of how Burning Man has impacted and influenced people over time. Meet Meet Lee who discusses her personal transformation, describing how Burning Man allowed her to shed her social inhibitions and embra...

Episode 81 with Megan Miller is out now! Meet Megan Miller who explores the transformative power of the Burning Man event and its enduring impact on her personal and professional trajectory. The conversation details Megan’s transition from a government field representative to a central leader within the Burning Man organization, highlighting her accidental introduction to the event and her subsequ...

Episode 80 with Mark Day is out now! Meet Mark Day, a veteran Burner and filmmaker known for his long-form documentation of the Burning Man festival. The conversation explores Mark's creative evolution from capturing raw footage in the late 1990s to his modern "24 Hours at Burning Man" series, highlighting how he uses meta-fiction, catchphrases, and humor to create a sense of pilgri...

Shadow Shorts #15 is out now! Recorded at BRC in 2025 participants were challenged to explain BM‘s impact in 5 minutes or less. Each Shadow Short is one person’s story, please enjoy this short story of how Burning Man has impacted and influenced people over time. Meet MJ who explores the profound personal transformation and communal spirit fostered at the Burning Man festival. Through MJ’s reflect...

Episode 78 with Francesca is out now! Meet Francesca, a long-time organizer of Dragon Burn, the first Burning Man regional event in China. Her story traces the evolution of this community from its clandestine 2014 beginnings on a small island near Shanghai to its current form as a resilient, 95% local movement that thrives despite sudden venue changes and strict authorities. Francesca highlights t...

Episode 77 with John Jennifer Marx is out now! Meet John Jennifer Marx who discusses the cultural significance of Burning Man as a social experiment rather than just a massive party. The conversation explores the event’s origin as a response to the human condition, suggesting that its principles offer a "forward-looking perspective" on how to organize society through participatory art an...

Shadow Shorts #14 is out now! Recorded at BRC in 2025 participants were challenged to explain BM‘s impact in 5 minutes or less. Each Shadow Short is one person’s story, please enjoy this short story of how Burning Man has impacted and influenced people over time. Meet  a Russian expatriate named Margo, who describes how the event’s culture of creativity and radical kindness restored her faith in h...

Episode 75 with Burner Nurse is out now! Meet Burner Nurse, who discusses her role as a volunteer for the Emergency Services Department (ESD) at the Burning Man festival. The conversation explores the unique medical challenges of the desert, ranging from severe dehydration and environmental ailments like "playa lung" to bizarre injuries caused by amateur engineering. Jen highlights the c...

Episode 74 with Ranger Crow is out now! Meet Ranger Crow, the current operations manager of the Black Rock Rangers, who reflects on his twenty-five-year history with Burning Man. The conversation details Crow’s accidental introduction to the event in 1998, a journey that transformed from an impromptu road trip into a lifelong commitment to community service and a permanent move to the town of Gerl...

Shadow Shorts #13 is out now! Recorded at BRC in 2025 participants were challenged to explain BM‘s impact in 5 minutes or less. Each Shadow Short is one person’s story, please enjoy this short story of how Burning Man has impacted and influenced people over time. Meet Mikey B, who describes how the festival’s unique culture and community provided him with a sense of belonging and purpose after a p...

Episode 72 with Jen Reed is out now! Meet Jen Reed, who recounts her transformative evolution from a curious observer to a professional fabricator and artist within the Burning Man community. Her story begins with Reed’s spiritual calling after watching a 2009 documentary, leading her to join an architecture-focused camp where she realized she needed technical mastery to achieve her creative visio...

Episode 71 with Ian Rowen is out now! Meet Ian Rowen, a long-term Burning Man volunteer and regional contact who played a pivotal role in introducing the event’s culture to Taiwan and China. Rowan details his trajectory from a "newbie" volunteer in 2001 to navigating the complex geopolitical and cultural translation required to establish regional burns like Dragon Burn in mainland China....

Shadow Shorts #12 is out now! Recorded at BRC in 2025 participants were challenged to explain BM‘s impact in 5 minutes or less. Each Shadow Short is one person’s story, please enjoy this short story of how Burning Man has impacted and influenced people over time. The guest, a twenty-year veteran of the desert gathering, describes Black Rock City as a transformative crucible that provides a sense o...

Episode 69 with Justin Credible is out now! Meet Justin Credible, a seventh-generation Nevadan who shares her deep-rooted connection to the Black Rock Desert. She shares her childhood memories of performing archaeological surveys with her father to her pivotal role in the early development of Burning Man during the 1990s. A main story is her portrayal of Empress Zoe in the 1996 opera, a performanc...