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

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 that are less dystopian, even less utopian, more protopian (fancy word) — not good or bad, but progress.

Professor Matt Zook of the University of Kentucky extols Black Rock City's unique aspects, from temporality to being a place apart. He and Stuart explore the interplay between digital and physical spaces, and what about community actually makes it good.

Then Jukka-Pekka Heikkilä returns with how the Burning Stories project, now in its 6th year of tracking tales, is a cultural repository and is training a gifted AI on how Burners be Burning.

jukkapekka.com

sdu.dk/en/persons/yazell

sdu.dk/en/persons/pawo

geography.as.uky.edu/users/zook

burningman.org/programs/philosophical-center/academics

regionals.burningman.org/european-leadership-summit

burning-stories.com

kk.org/thetechnium/protopia

sdu.dk/en/publications/enacting-hopeful-climate-futures-at-burning-man-2024

Bjørn S. Cience - Founding Board Member at Institute of Performative Inquiry

LIVE.BURNINGMAN.ORG

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, Italy, New Zealand, and even the far-flung realms of Texas and Kentucky.

Play this mixtape of people sharing stories from everywhere in the world.

regionals.burningman.org

And here's a related episode from 2022: 

burningman.org/podcast/burning-man-is-not-a-place

LIVE.BURNINGMAN.ORG

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 pixel pusher to build an object, an engineer to cook for artists, a project manager to manage a different kind of project?

The answer seems to be YES.

We interviewed a few longtime citizens of Black Rock City about why they volunteer with the Greeters, with DPW, and with the Man Base to hear the stories of Topless Deb, Tamsin, Ruin, Terra, and a guy named Fuckyeah.

Listen to the stories of Topless Deb, Tamsin, Ruin, Terra, and a guy named Fuckyeah.

https://burningman.org/event/participate/volunteering/teams

LIVE.BURNINGMAN.ORG

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 at BRC with the DPW at the Man Pavilion. 

They recorded this at Burning Man and you can hear in their voices the phonic patina of the playa. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Silverman_(animator)

https://x.com/tubatron

David shares more of his story in Episode 27 from 2020: 

https://burningman.org/podcast/holiday-special-santacon-from-home

LIVE.BURNINGMAN.ORG

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…

• Billie Jean Guerrero: Director of the Pyramid Lake Museum 
• Mervin Wright: Environmental Manager 
• James Phoenix: Former Chairman 
• Steven Wadsworth: Current Chairman
• Dean Barlese: Elder and Spiritual Leader
• "Double D": A tribal member at at the Golden Spike Ceremony

Helpful links:

Donate your leftover, non-perishable food to the Pyramid Lake Paiute. Drop it off at Bunny’s Tacos in Nixon! Here are Google Map Directions from playa to Bunny’s. 

Camp or recreate at Pyramid Lake. Buy a permit here.

Volunteer at the Pyramid Lake Visitor Center and Museum. Help build out the new medicine garden or improve the museum’s new haba (traditional Paiute shade structure). Contact Billie Jean Guerrero at [email protected]

Donate to the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe. Stop by the Pyramid Lake Museum and Visitor Center. You can donate in person! Gifting! 

You can also write to the Tribal Secretary at [email protected] with which program, department, or tribal office you’d like to direct your donation.

LIVE.BURNINGMAN.ORG

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 gifting and regifting, and the spectrum between talismans and swag. They go off the rails into how mainstream culture plays with Burning Man tropes.

Then they go beyond making a party in the desert, out into the world, to the Regional Network as a living embodiment of ‘Each One Teach One.’ They show how collaboration creates the community. They explore actually active inclusivity, and the question “Who are we?”

www.theother51weeks.com

Marian Goodell: Burning Man Project Board of Directors

Black Burner Project

The Future of Burning Man (video version on youtube) 

Burning Man LIVE: The Evolution of Robot Heart

Burning Man LIVE: Candace Locklear on Culture Jamming and Welcoming

LIVE.BURNINGMAN.ORG