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,...

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 (Canada). 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...

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...

We committed to be carbon-negative by 2030. How will we do it? We have “Burning” right in our name. When it comes to solar, biofuels, and energy banks, we have many irons in the fire, or rather, we are planting many seeds. Hear how Black Rock City is a hotbed, or rather, a garden bed, for the innovation of clean energy. Stuart talks with George B Reed III, Associate Director of Burning Man Project’s Off Fossil Fuels program about the progress we’re making for a brighter future, or rather,...

The desert seems lifeless, yet it’s home to a whole lifecycle of bugs and animals from bunnies to foxes, from lions to horses to – most dangerous of all – COWS! Hear about the hidden lives of all that’s alive around Black Rock City. Stuart Mangrum talks with biologist Dr Lisa Beers aka Sciprus. When she’s not teaching in remote villages on the other side of the planet, she’s Burning Man Project’s land fellow studying the Fly Hot Springs territory. In the face of mystery, she has the...

How would you overcome shyness at BRC? How would you break people’s brains at SantaCon? How would you acculturate museum docents to Burner culture? Brody Scotland tells how she did it, and how she went from hating Black Rock City to working year round in the Burning Man Art department. Brody and Stuart delve into the uncommon common sense of self-care and “feelings” in the emo roller coaster of BRC. They explore a style of pranking where no one is the butt of the joke. And they celebrate...

Stuart and Burning Man’s Community Services head honcho Terry “Retro” Schoop riff on the streets of our fair city and the naming thereof, from the controversial to the miraculous to the misunderstood. Black Rock City has elaborate art themes, each with street names, each with curious conditions. Why does our recreational refugee camp even need street names? Hear this year’s art theme (ANIMALIA) express itself through cryptids (animals that no one can prove are real). Folklore and fandom...

Yes, Burning Man has a Chief Technology Officer, and his name is Steven Blumenfeld. In this episode Stuart chats with “Bloom” about art, innovation, immediacy, and the power of the unexpected, with trippy side trips into AR, VR, and AI (and TLA). Yes, we have a CTO. We have all the enterprise tech needs of any not-small non-profit, with the added complications of ridiculously challenging work sites, a staff that’s mostly seasonal volunteers, and an ethos rooted in Ten Principles that don’t...

Psychedelics advocate and amateur Burning Man scholar John Turner’s two passions come together in one interdimensional rabbit-hole of a website: Trippingly.net. In compiling the ultimate fan site of Burning Man history, John has captured a lot of great playa stories, and he shares some of the best in this conversation with Stuart Mangrum. He explores the subjective unknowns of Burning Man events and psychedelics as same-same-but-different. Bring your neural nets to be plasticized. Bring your...

She traveled to six continents for Burning Man Regional Events, to get to the heart of an ever-evolving global culture that creates community in a disconnected world. She wrote a book about it, and we published it! It chronicles her odyssey to Afrikaburn (South Africa) Black Rock City (USA) Blazing Swan (Australia) Burning Japan (Japan) Fuego Austral (Argentina) Midburn (Israel) Nowhere (Spain) Hear her impressions of each wildly unique event in this audio travelog. She talks...

Most people in BRC live together in placed camps, aka theme camps, the most unique aspects of a most unique event. There are almost 1300 camps in BRC. The annual Camp Symposium brought together dozens of staff and volunteers to talk out what they do to gift their interactive camp to BRC. Hear (or read) highlights from the Plenary, many voices sharing knowledge and exploring ideas. * Level, Associate Director of Placement * Breedlove: Director of Civic Engagement * Charlie: Director of...

Katie Hazard leads Art Management for Burning Man and the committee that grants more than a million dollars to artists each year to create art that’s first stop (and sometimes only stop) is Black Rock City. She shares about some of the grant recipients that align with this year’s Black Rock City art theme (ANIMALIA). She and Stuart Mangrum discuss Burning Man’s art movement in relation to, and sometimes in opposition to, “capital-A art,” and the default art world's manufactured scarcity and...

As a founder and co-producer of one of the largest and oldest Burning Man events, Monique Shiess has a lot going on. AfrikaBurn does too. Started in 2007, it averages 10,000 participants annually in recent years. Monique shares its origins with Stuart and Andie. From the EDM scene, gallery spaces, queer community, and producers of “weird gatherings,” they birthed AfrikaBurn with roots in anarchy, trickster energy and hippie-dom. They explore how to be welcoming, not just radically...

Athena is a wanderer, an adventurer, a muse. She is Regional Contact emerita from Los Angeles, founder of their nonprofit The LA League of Arts, and a founder of BRCvr — a crown jewel in the tiara of our multiversal experiences online. Athena talks with Stuart about how Radical Inclusion and Immediacy foster human connection, and about how a balance of decommodified spaces and commercial spaces can lead to true Gifting. She says that BRCvr conjured a tight-knit community of creators who...

How are films shot in Black Rock City? Why? And really, HOW? "Profiles in Dust" is the most prolific video troupe that dares to document the dynamic Burning Man events. Since 2011 they have produced 50 mini-documentaries, profiling the inspirational creators in the scene, and behind the scenes. Terry Pratt is their nominal leader. He talks with Stuart about the joy and the turmoil, and adventures had everywhere from Egypt to Ukraine. and with Crimson Rose, Larry Harvey, Pablo González...

What happened at BRC? What didn’t happen? Why did it seem that we couldn’t get back to interdependence? After the traumas of the pandemic and political vilification, we somehow didn’t trust each other at BRC. Or if we did, we didn’t seem to know it, or feel it, or enjoy it. Andie Grace swaps stories with Buck Down, a 25-year Burner, Gate Manager, and author of the wildly popular article “What the F**k Just Happened at Burning Man?” They spitball on how to encourage more play, work, and...

The kids ask the questions. These longtime Burners have participated in BRC most of their young lives. 6-year-old Teapot offers sage advice on the radio. Teen brothers Atticus and Colby interview deep-rooted DPW adults: Coyote is the city superintendent of BRC, and author of the book Built to Burn. Melissa Waters is an office administrator and a wellness educator for Burning Man Project. Atticus and Colby are their sons. Who better to ask about families at BRC. We also hear from: ...

More and more studies are happening at transformative events around the world. This summer a research paper was published about how transformative effects of these gatherings are lasting. This 5-year experiment compared findings from a half-dozen mass gatherings. The results explore generosity and altruism, describe collective effervescence, and consider the biases of self-selection and psychedelic substances. People report that transformative experiences are common, increase over time, and...

Black Rock City. We miss it already. If you miss it too, or you missed it altogether, here are some sounds and sentiments of being there. BRC is filled with amateurs, people doing it as a labor of love. When things go wrong, we celebrate it as a glorious opportunity to adapt, or simply as things going the way they go. Spaces like BRC allow for joy, mourning and reflection. Spaces like BRC are practice grounds for new possibilities, and things going wrong — sometimes wonderfully, sometimes...

When Candace found Burning Man in 1996, she jumped right in to help the media tell the whole story of Black Rock City, not just the sensationalism. She also jumped right into culture jamming, twisting iconic characters, from Cacophony Society’s santas to public pranking as porn clowns, and playfully pushing people in immediate theater. She also brings the transformative power of interactive art to public spaces around the world, as part of a non-profit We Are From Dust, and she’s working to...

Listen in as longtime Burners talk about the aspects of thriving in Black Rock City: mental, physical, material, and relational. Andie, kbot, Molly, Stuart and Vav explore: · socks secrets · FOMO variants · saying yes and saying no · giving and accepting help · No Friends Monday · and all else! Featuring cameos from longtime Burners: Anjelika, Chef Juke, Crimson Rose, DA, Dave X, Halcyon, KJ, and Lulu Lurine. They discuss doing it all, doing it right, and doing it wrong as access to...

Who can share about the beginnings of Burning Man Project’s Board of Directors, the Meta-Regional Committee, and a blacksmithing collective? Kay Morrison can. Who can tell of getting banned from a country, cooking at Fly Ranch, and hosting a croquet match between Army burners and Navy burners? Kay Morrison can. She laughs with Stuart Mangrum about how everything in Black Rock City (in VR and in IRL) is seven times greater, be it a win, a loss, or a sandwich.

It’s really real. Makers are making. Planners are planning. Crews all over the world are creating installations for Black Rock City. Katie Hazard, Head of Burning Man Arts, speaks with ten of the 400 artists whose work will rise on the playa. Hold onto your headlamp: We’ve got an alien drive-thru, a library for solar power, and architecture that defiles the laws of physics. We’ve got stories from France, South Africa, the Netherlands, and oh so much more.

For 25 years now $teven Ra$pa has directed discussions for Black Rock City and Regional communities. Hear him and kbot explore why this Burning Man thing is so important for humanity and the world. BRC is a city of imagination, a social experiment, organically cultivated and running on pure encouragement. They discuss the inspired interactions that allow for reinvention big and small for one and all.

Dave X. Man of fire, bacon, and “the ponytail of approachability.” An enigmatic shaman of fireworks, flame effects, and deep thoughts, his stripper name is Sweaty Dynamite. His spiritual calling is to bring joyful, fiery experiences to the masses. Could one man be a hippie and a redneck, and in charge of Fire Art Safety in Black Rock City, and also fill the role of Cake Marshal for Burning Man Project? Yes, yes he could. A pyrotechnician, a peaceful perturber, and a Burner from days of...