Burning Man LIVE

Kevin Kelly is one of the leading thinkers of the digital age. The founding executive editor of Wired Magazine, he helped produce the Whole Earth Catalog, and an early internet pillar “the WELL.” He is a journalist, an artist, and a long time member of the Burning Man community. 

He is a radical optimist.

The future is a construct of the collective imagination. We see utopian stories as pie-in-the sky. We can’t look away from dystopian stories. What’s in between is iterative improvement, protopia. 

Delve into this conversation on the impact of cultura...

Black Rock City's soundscape is a wild ride from Afro-punk to Zydeco. This episode explores the why and how of two styles: 

Stuart, a self-proclaimed EDM newbie, gets a crash course from a DJ in the know. He chats with a legendary DJ about how Burning Man transmogrifies DJ culture into something utterly unique. It’s a refreshing deep dive for aficionados!

Then, Allie spins the radio dial through BRC's sonic smorgasbord and tun...

Leo is a pioneering light artist, bringing teams and tech together to activate buildings, bridges, and bastions. He started Burning in 1994, founded Disorient camp, and is part of Black Rock City every year.

Here he shares his journey from crafting a single beacon at his tent to leading monumental art projects that reshaped skylines. He illuminated the Bay Bridge in San Francisco, the historic bridges of London, and projects everywhere from NYC to Tokyo.

Join Leo and Stuart on how the open-source innovation of BRC impacts the default world. Leo shares his process for conjuring...

Thunderdome has been part of Black Rock City for 25 years. Marisa Winter has led it for most of that time. One need not experience it to benefit from the wisdom of a high-profile, high-intensity theme camp.

Marisa and Stuart talk through the leadership structure and community practices that result in Thunderdome's chaotic harmony of performance, showmanship, and cathartic “consensual violence.” 

Marisa shares insights gleaned from decades of theme camp operation, like

· Letting people make non-permanent mistakes allows them to own the lessons

· Prioritizing community is never the wrong answer

· Making h...

Most people in Black Rock City live together in placed camps, aka theme camps, the most unique aspect of this unique event. BRC has 1200 camps.

At the intersection of Communal Effort, Self-Expression, and Immediacy, theme camps gift a uniquely decommodified ‘third place’ of offerings and ambiance.

At this annual symposium, staff and volunteers share how they gift their interactive camps to participants. There’s an art and a science to it. These highlights are about the art of it.

Solar power is simple now, thanks in part to Burners who gift the power of the sun. The Burners in this episode also gift steamed rolls with savory fillings, called bao — so much delicious bao.

The theme camp “Bao Chicka Wow Wow” has been a part of Black Rock City for a decade. Its campmates share the prosperity of bao with artist groups, volunteer teams, and participants lucky enough to find their camp or their pop-up “restaurant row,” all powered by custom solar kits.

David Hau (Chairman Bao), Marcus De Paula (Next Level), and their campmates...

Explore the magic monuments of Black Rock City 2025.

Katie Hazard, Director of Art, leads the selection, placement, and installation of artwork,  and she leads Burning Man's art grant selection committees. 

The ARTery is in the center of Black Rock City, slightly offset like the human heart. It’s the epicenter of art support for nearly 400 art pieces, from towering sculptures to immersive environments.

Before these art projects are sourced, crafted, and assembled with everything from hot glue to heavy equipment, they are first conceptualized by artists and engineers. Burning Man’s Honoraria project grants...

Legend whispers of a time when Burning Man was a lawless Eden, a fiery playground of unbridled do-ocracy; no rules, just pure creative chaos. But as Black Rock City has grown into a thriving metropolis, so has the need for structure. We've gone from jokey forms for an ‘artistic license’ to complex permit obligations. We’ve gone from giving ourselves permission to taking on a system that can feel overwhelming.

How can we better balance radical self-expression with the necessities of a city? How can we purge bureaucracy, or are all those old rules essential for safety and su...

Mutant vehicles! Theme camps! Art experiences! It all emanates from the community… overlapping circles of people who are everywhere between being newcomers and seasoned, local and global, young and old.

Andie Grace talks with next-gen Burners Taylor Andrews, Kat Ebert, Mani Senthil, and Whitney Wilhelmy about how to find your crew like you never thought possible.

They break down barriers and clear pathways through an initiative called “Rising Sparks” which demystifies BRC and Regional events, and guides Burners to get more from the magic.

They explore the art of participation: 

Hundreds of people create the temple in Black Rock City. It’s a community intent on creating a work of art that is a space for people to grieve and revive.

For the first few years of Black Rock City we didn't have a temple. Now, people can't imagine living without it. Each year, participants create messages, tributes, and altars for who and what they want to release. The event culminates with the burning of the temple in what organically evolved to be a silent Burn.

Listen to Stuart talk with Miguel Arraiz García, the...

Disasters happen. Communities come together to recover and rebuild. Governments and NGOs help however they know how.  

Will Heegaard sees every disaster as a chance to build back greener. His non-profit provides power and water from nature.
· power from the sun – instead of gas generators
· water from the air – instead of plastic water bottles

He helped with disaster relief from hurricanes in Florida, North Carolina, and Puerto Rico.
He helped in West Africa, in the Philippines, and with the Maui Fires.
He helped with the LA Fires.

And he taught h...

Back again by popular demand: more tales from Burning Man’s oral history project, an ambitious endeavor to track down and talk with people who helped shape the culture as we now know it.

Hear stories of early technology on the playa, in Silicon Valley, and on the internet.

 · Andie Grace, aka Actiongrl, interviews from the vantage of having co-created Burning Man’s world of communications, from Media Mecca to this very podcast.
 · Brian Behlendorf - technologist and open-source software pioneer. He developed Burning Man’s online presence and connected people through the Venn diagram of...

He is a celebrated author, entrepreneur, leadership maven, and a founding Board Member of Burning Man Project. He’s a serial contributor to the culture and the cause.

In this episode, Chip and Stuart explore how to use the 10 Principles to make conversations interesting and how a description of Black Rock City always becomes a riddle.

They resist the urge to quiz newbies on the 10 Principles, while they also say that Burners should not take themselves too seriously. 

They try on the notion that nothing matters and everything’s humorous.

They make...

Burners often speak about the work it takes to prepare their art, art car, or camp for Black Rock City, but for many, it doesn’t end there. A project sparked in the desert or at Regional Events can take on a life of its own, continuing year-round in surprising ways.

What happens when a camp or mutant vehicle takes a break from Black Rock City? After all the Communal Effort devoted to their playa project, do they even know how to stop? Apparently not... and the world benefits.

kbot and Stuart speak with people wh...

Tom Price co-founded Burners Without Borders, Black Rock Solar, and a company that gifts clean-burning kitchens to people in Kenya.

Tom talks about the weather, specifically hurricanes, and how Burners Without Borders started and grows despite extreme circumstances because Burners are extreme!

Tom’s tales of adventure include paperwork pranks and ad hoc Cajun catharsis. If Burning Man is a permission engine, giving people agency in their lives, he says the lesson of Burning Man is finding out what is too much and then finding the sweet spot.

Note: The company names they joke...

Academics from everywhere experiment, collaborate, and even interpret our stories of "This one time at Burning Man."

In this episode, Stuart talks with people from Burning Nerds, an annual gathering of academics in Black Rock City. They keep it light, though; not too many unnecessarily fancy words. 

Dr Jukka-Pekka Heikkilä describes the technique used by the Burning Man Project that gives more power to the people. 

Bryan Yazell and Patricia Wolf of the University of Southern Denmark use Flash Fiction in BRC to develop a new subgenre of sci-fi called climate fiction (‘cli-fi’), stories...

Everywhere? 

Regional events actively align with Burning Man's 10 Principles. 85 official events happen in 30 countries, with collectively more participants and more art grants than the original Nevada event.

After 25 years, the combined regional presence is huge, diverse, and evolving, and it all started in one place: Black Rock City. Whether you're Burning in New York or New Zealand, all backroads lead back to BRC.

We called a bunch of the Regional leaders to see how things are going out in their other homes away from home. We heard from Argentina, China, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, I...

Thousands of people volunteer each year in Black Rock City, for days, weeks, or months. Add to that the volunteers at the many Regional events around the world and it’s more than can be counted on fingers and toes. 

Why do we volunteer?

Is it because we feel we received a gift and we want to pay it back, or pay it forward?

Is it the meditation of hard work in a hard place adding a dimension to our experience?

Is it the chance to do something different, for a pix...

Burning Man doesn't make itself. The people who share their time and treasure, they create this weird wonder. Each of these people have stories about how Burning Man influenced their lives and how their lives influenced Burning Man. 

The Flaming Tuba Guy is one of these people. His name is David Silverman aka Tubatron. Andie Grace talked with him about how his animation career started, how his musical career started, how the Mansonian Institute started, how his career with The Simpsons started, and how that influenced his involvement with Burning Man and vice versa. He also volunteers a...

Allow us to introduce you to the people who called the Black Rock Desert “home” way before we did. This is your backstage pass to the original Burners of the Great Basin: The Pyramid Lake Paiute. 

Strap in for a road trip that's part history lesson, part cultural exchange, and essential listening for when you wonder, "Who lived here before we showed up in tutus?"

We're not just passing through, we're digging deep with…

Marian Goodell, CEO of Burning Man Project, talks with a lively audience as part of Robot Heart’s Residency in Oakland, California. She is joined by Candace Locklear (aka Evil Pippi), Erin Douglas of the Black Burner Project, and Robot Heart’s Justin Schaffer and Satya Kamdar.

It’s casual. It’s layered. It’s a room of Burners.

What constitutes culture jamming? Where does Burning Man bridge the divide to bring people together? How have pillars of our culture evolved from awkward beginnings?

They swap stories about the perks of unbranding. They joke about...

Take a trip through the puzzle of porta-potties at a free-range event, highway happenings, and the new news about prep. This is deeper than “What is MOOP?” This is the ART of Leaving No Trace.

It’s part of the Burning Man ethos, and it’s why Black Rock City is the world's largest Leave No Trace event. Now nearly 100 other Burning Man events around the globe adhere to this attitude, this mindset. It’s an ongoing quest to leave less and less of a trace. As the principle is written, it invites us to leave spaces in better...

Burning Man culture brings people together across all kinds of divides, yet we’re seeing an uptick of intolerance toward art and experiences in our community. The default world is often divided by ideology, religion, and politics. Could that division seep into this culture that aspires to welcome everyone?

How can we navigate the turbulent waters between, say, Radical Self-expression and Radical Inclusion? How do we walk the line between free speech and hate speech? How do we keep our global community together in times of outright war?

Listen in on a roundtable discussion about co...

Tony “Coyote” Perez may be the best at thriving (and not dying) at Burning Man. He is the Black Rock City Superintendent, the Burning Man OSHA Instructor, and the 26-year Burner whose job it is to put himself in harm's way and then get out of his own way!

Sit in on a chuckling conversation between Stuart and Coyote. They put the wisdom in wise-crack. It’s not because they’re so smart; it’s because they’ve made every mistake and then asked why and how. 

This is not a list of tips and tricks—those...

400 works of art don’t just appear as if in a desert mirage. Well, they do, but not without a lot of people, tools, and funds. Planners are planning. Makers are making. Art grants are granting! Crews all over the world are creating installations for Black Rock City. 

Katie Hazard, Director of Burning Man Project’s art department curates some artist's tales for us. Hear their stories in their voices. 

Hold onto your headlamp: 

We’ve got an interactive Man Base that looks like an octopus or a fjord or both
We’ve got a la...

“While there are many beloved mutant vehicles out there, El Pulpo, in both of its incarnations, is the most ‘beloved.’” 

~Chef Juke, Communications lead for the Department of Mutant Vehicles

El Pulpo Magnífico is a 28-foot tall giant octopus, a demented windup toy, a mobile kinetic sculpture with articulating legs, eyes, and mouths. It spews fire from its extremities and has been stealing the limelight for a decade now, first at Black Rock City, then everywhere from LoveBurn to EDC.

It’s merely the newest and largest expression of artist Duane Flatmo and his team...

Back by popular demand, more stories from Burning Man's oral history project, an ambitious endeavor to track down and talk with people who helped shape the culture as we now know it.

Stuart and Andie remember to remember the most memorable parts. Here’s a fresh batch:

Burners from around Europe gather to teach and learn and to conjure ideas for the future. Burning Man’s 7th European Leadership Summit just happened, and we recorded some conversations for you.

Passionate people from the corners of Europe share with Stuart and kbot what they get from Burning Man culture and what they gift back to it. Hear a cultural spice drawer of stories about how they persevere through politics and pandemics to bring their flavor of Burning Man to their homeland. 

There are a whole lot of military veterans in Burning Man’s history and Black Rock City’s neighborhoods. Combat veterans Dr Raymond Christian (Army) and Samuel Williams (Marines) share stories with Stuart Mangrum (Air Force) about transitioning into civilian life, bringing survival skills and leadership chops to BRC, and finding tribal camaraderie… and a party.

They explore how hackneyed clichés of the military can wither in an environment of love and authenticity. PTSD, though, that’s still a thing. BRC can be like a military operation: the sights, the sounds, the smells... meeting interesting people, and findi...

Robot Heart started with a simple sound system on an old double-decker bus at Black Rock City. Over the years, it has evolved into a bespoke sound system, light arrays, iconic art, and an all-star lineup of musical talent performing to massive crowds at sunrise on Playa.… all on that same old double-decker bus. 

Robot Heart also expanded its support of arts and artists beyond the playa, including New York’s Central Park, Miami’s Art Basel, and their residency program in Oakland, California. For the 2nd year, the team brings together various Burning Man camps, artists, and mus...

Moshe Kasher has lived many lives as a subculture vulture - a hearing child of deaf parents, an addict at 15, in recovery at 16, a raver, a culturally Jewish standup comedian, an old school Burner and a longtime Gate volunteer. 

With Andie Grace and Stuart Mangrum he explores how Burning Man is a waterboard of wonder where weirdos go to feel normal, and norms go to feel weird, and that the sweet spot is when you experience something that makes you say “Wait, What?!?”

They talk through how Black Rock City has evolved, from subcultures like the r...

This is one of those full-circle stories that makes our dusty hearts glow a little brighter. It’s the tale of big art that emerged from a fossil-filled trash heap, came to life in Black Rock City, then returned to its source as a proud symbol of what a community can accomplish together.

Tahoe Mack, a Las Vegas artist, tells the story of the Black Rock City Honoraria art piece she started when she was 15 years old. Her final Girl Scouts project became, oh, so much more. Over a few years, she learned to weld, fundraise, and wo...

The Tip of the Iceberg is a 30-foot tall clitoris of stone, steel, and cement, fabricated to be monumental like Stonehenge, thus the nickname Clit-Henge. It aroused a lot of conversation at Black Rock City 2023. It’s the phallic symbol’s sister. It’s highly sensitive and highly talked about, and according to the artist, the more we discover about what it does, the more we can celebrate the birthright of pleasure.

Melissa Barron, a.k.a. Syn, has traveled to many places around the world that informed her lens of creativity, sustainability, and gender equality. She co-cre...

Black Rock City is a temporary metropolis of  80,000 people who inhabit 1,600 theme camps and support camps. That means nine out of 10 participants' plans are coordinated by the Placement team — a handful of dedicated staff who decide which camps go where, and why. This year-round process is an art and a science that takes many factors into consideration — from city dynamics, to campers’ Radical Self-expressions.

As Burning Man Project’s Associate Director of City Planning, Bryant Tan manages the Placement team, and oversees the city’s annual planning and placement process. Naturally, questions about Burning Man lead to more questi...

It's winter where we are. What are the coldest, most teeth-chattering, brrrr-iest of all the sanctioned Burning Man events around the world?

FrostBurn is one of them, and its participants make it happen in the dead of winter on purpose, annually since 2008. Subzero temperatures, rain, sleet, snow, and sometimes sunshine. Why? Because they can.

When the costumes are nothing less than comfy snow pants, when everyone is on the buddy system to ensure they survive the weather, no energy is wasted on facades and FOMO. People collaborate on Radical Self-reliance, Communal Effort, and all those...

Stories. This collection is from Burning Man’s oral history project, an ambitious endeavor to track down and record interviews with people who helped shape the culture as we now know it. 

Stuart and Andie “Actiongrl” Grace share some of the most memorable stories for your gratification and edification. 

Many people are surprised to learn that Black Rock City is home to two full orchestras and a Playa Choir complete with a secular Sunday sermon. Since 2012 Madi has been organizing and arranging the choir’s harmonies and happenings, each year with more and more help. 

In this installment, kbot and Stuart talk with  

They have stories and more stories of inspiration and elevation. We get to hear many voices resonate with music, recorded live at Burning Man 2023 in the Black Rock Desert. Hallelujah!

Some people are surprised to learn that Black Rock City is home to not just one but two full-fledged symphony orchestras. While the Black Rock Philharmonic kicks out the classical jams, the Playa Pops brings the big-ensemble sound to popular music. 

Both are composed (ahem) of passionate volunteer musicians – classically trained, self-trained, and otherwise – who come together once a year to perform in the dust (or mud) the songs they have practiced all year at home.

In this installment, kbot and Stuart talk to members of the Playa Pops and the Black Rock Philharmonic about their...

Have you stumbled upon Midnight Poutine in Black Rock City? Maybe you listened to Québecois rock as you waited for some of that crispy, cheesy goodness? As with many camps on playa, Midnight Poutine is the cultural tip of the iceberg of a vast community of creativity and goings-on; this one in Montréal, Québec. 

Arno Robin, one of Montréal's cultural instigators, spoke with Stuart and kbot about his nine-year journey from Midnight Poutine, to co-creating Montréal's Burning Man Regional Event, to developing a bustling makerspace. 

It’s one of those stories w...

Dana Albany has come a long way since her first art project in the Black Rock Desert, a scrap-wood camel that got her started making things out of found materials, from discarded metal and broken glass to sun-bleached cattle bones and deer antlers. 

She has built flammable targets for notorious machine-art groups, worked as the artist-in-residence at a San Francisco dump, and had her large-scale metal and mixed-media sculptures exhibited around the world, most recently at the “Radical Horizons” show at England’s Chatsworth House. 

She talks with Stuart about her path to becoming an artist...