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 also refined their solar systems to power a charging station for EVs and e-Mutant Vehicles. They share their learnings with neighboring camps, the Temple Builders Guild, and us right here in this episode.

This is how to wean off gas generators, or bring more power to your offerings at BRC, your Regional event, your home, or even the collapse of civilized civilization. 

This conversation is lively and informative. It’s a feel-good story set for foodies and those of us growing into gifting and solar energy.

BaoChickaWowWow.com

GoGridSystems.com

Burning Man 2025: Tomorrow Today

Burning Man Inspires Sustainable Solutions Worldwide (Burning Man Journal)

Net Zero Black Rock City 2022

LIVE.BURNINGMAN.ORG

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 76 of these art projects about half of the funding they need, a total of $1.3 million.  

Katie and Stuart explore how to foster accessibility and agency in artist groups. They describe some of the installations coming this summer, from interactive Sphinxes to a sphere of sinks, from a lost troll of sustainability to a fire-spinning pigeon. 

Some of the experiences include:

• an inflatable black cloud from Ukraine
• an Indigenous deer destined for ceremonial land
• an Afrofuturist pillar with an ancient modern secret
• a screaming booth that displays visual reactions to sound
• a woman with a merry-go-round crown, jump rope dreadlocks, and swing earrings

Listen in on this sonic journey of how Burner art is co-created and curated, and how BRC’s surreal skyline is taking shape.

Introducing 2025 BRC Honoraria Art (Burning Man Journal)

Black Rock City Honoraria Program

ARTery (Art Services)

The ARTery Volunteer Teams

Katie Hazard (Burning Man Journal)

2025 Art Theme: Tomorrow Today

Burning Man Art Installation Archive

LIVE.BURNINGMAN.ORG

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 sustainability?

This episode delves into the "agonizing reappraisal" within the Burning Man Project, a movement to streamline processes and discard red tape.

Stuart explores the dusty trail from Black Rock City's anarchic origins to the sign marked 2025. He talks with Louder Charlie, the Operations Director of the whole place. He also talks with Chef Juke of the DMV Council, and Level Placerman, Manager of the Placement team.

Here’s a sneak peek behind the scenesters who are preserving the unique magic while navigating the complexities of growth, and how they ensure that the spirit of creation remains accessible to all.

Is it possible to balance the wild heart of Burner culture and the grown-up practices of a city? We’re about to find out.

The Camp Symposium - March 22, 2025

Camps and Placement

The Department of Mutant Vehicles

2025 Ticket Info 

The 10 Principles

Bureaucracy (Burning Man Journal)

LIVE.BURNINGMAN.ORG

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: 

• seeing the sweet spot between being unmoored and overdoing it
• balancing of survival and self-expression
• finding fresh takes on mentorship

Hear how they claim their place and shape the future. 

"Rising Sparks is a grassroots collective fostering intergenerational collaboration, connection, and cultural continuity within Burning Man.

We cultivate community-driven spaces where emerging leaders, newcomers, and seasoned Burners can connect, dream big, and contribute to the future of Burning Man—both within Black Rock City and globally.

Our mission is to inspire participation, address barriers to entry, and cultivate leadership across generations by providing mentorship, community-driven tools, and creative collaboration opportunities.

We are igniting the next generation of artists, leaders, and changemakers by stewarding an accessible, culturally diverse, and evolving Burning Man culture." 

https://linktr.ee/therisingsparks

LIVE.BURNINGMAN.ORG

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 lead artist for this year’s “Temple of the Deep.” Hear stories about how a temple is built, from crew selection to fundraising, from chances taken to lessons learned. This poetic and playful conversation exemplifies how this year’s temple is already healing.

Miguel says, “We are always looking for the answers above us. I was trying to make something just to look for the answer between us or among us. So it is not that much building a temple, it is more building like a shelter for emotions, a safe space where you can be with people.”

Burning Man Journal: Introducing the 2025 Temple

www.2025temple.com

www.miguelarraiz.com

TempleGuardians.burningman.org

Renaixement: Burning Man 2016

Burning Man Journal: Tomorrow Today

LIVE.BURNINGMAN.ORG

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 himself to create power and water from nature while serving as a paramedic in Black Rock City.

These adventure stories include laughter and levity in learning.

FootprintProject.org

BurnersWithoutBorders.org

Burning Man Project: Philosophical Center

LIVE.BURNINGMAN.ORG

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 luminaries from SFRaves to Wired Magazine to the Apache Software Foundation.
 · David Beach - designer, creative director, and instigator of the impossible with early dynamic content on the web. He helped create Burning Man’s first live streaming and web presence.
 · Scott Beale - documentarian, founder of Laughing Squid, subculture super-connector of various tentacles of the meta-scene.
 · Stuart Mangrum - zinester, cacophonist, billboard liberator, Minister of Propaganda, Director of the Philosophical Center, publisher of the first on-site newspaper of Burning Man (the Black Rock Gazette), and always in the same place at the same time as Burning Man’s media experiments.

Andie Grace

Brian Behlendorf

David Beach

Scott Beale

Stuart Mangrum

Laughing Squid: Burning Man 1996 Netcast

dispatch2023.burningman.org

journal.burningman.org/philosophical-center

burningman.org/programs/philosophical-center

Burning Man Live: A People’s History of Burning Man - Volume 2

Burning Man Live: A People’s History of Burning Man - Volume 1

LIVE.BURNINGMAN.ORG

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 sense of big ideas like collective effervescence, emotional equations, and the need for aesthetics and beauty.

They talk about a deep diversity of ritual gatherings around the world, and the influence of the global community emanating from Regional Burns.

They tell stories about all this and more, and somehow it all flows. 

wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_Conley

chipconley.com

www.meawisdom.com

LIVE.BURNINGMAN.ORG

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 who pressed pause on producing in Black Rock City, only to put their time, imagination, and heart into projects that build a better world.

• Leon & Patrizia of New York Dangerous discuss how their resource rescue nonprofit fosters a ‘pay it forward’ form of altruism.
• Leo & Catarina of Jaguara share how their mutant vehicle has become a vehicle for education and expression in Columbia.
• Zoe (aka “Jeff”) of Camp Starbarf tells how a year off for her camp spawned a voter support initiative and a punk rock band!

Their stories share a theme: the 10 Principles (and playa-born fortitude) inspire their year-round endeavors.

https://nyd.nyc

https://jaguara.co

StarBarf (instagram)

LIVE.BURNINGMAN.ORG

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 about in this episode are NOT sponsors, because if we don't have Decommodification, we don't have Burning Man!

Burners Without Borders

Black Rock Solar

Tom Price: Burning Man Journal

Burning Man LIVE: Tom Price and the Benefactor’s Dilemma (2022)

Burning Man LIVE: Creative Solutions to Mass Destruction (2020)

TEDx Black Rock City: Tom Price: Beyond Burning Man (2011)

ecosafi.com

LIVE.BURNINGMAN.ORG