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20 Years of Mutant Vehicles - Jon Sarriugarte & Zolie Sep 17, 2025

Show notes

Recorded in Black Rock City, you can hear the grainy gravitas of their voices...

For decades now, Jon Sarriugarte, Kyrsten Mate, their daughter and their team build mobile art.

From a meter maid cart turned space shuttle, to a custom copper retro fire snail on wheels, their creations make up part of BRC's moving landscape. They built a trilobite to ride, a gilded golden zeppelin car, and a noir submarine buggy.

Then there are the Serpent Twins. Back in 2011, when the playa glowed with now outdated EL wire, these 50-foot long slithering dragons rippled with color from a touch of their LED skin.

What about this green insect rocket?

Project: EMPIRE returned to BRC with more sights, sounds, and stories. It’s a NASA spaceship and a giant bug, a bewildering blend of art, engineering, and a delightfully conspiratorial backstory…

On playa we tracked down Jon and his daughter Zolie who has been Burning her entire life. They shared stories of the absurd early days, and the adventure of navigating the desert in a two-ton masterpiece.

We talked about bringing radical self-reliance to the default world, and the mechanics of a legacy built, piece by painstaking piece, in the name of art.

formandreform.com/empire-of-dirt

www.jonsarriugarte.com

projectempire.org

oilpunk.com

20 Years of Mutant Vehicles (Burning Man Journal)

LIVE.BURNINGMAN.ORG

Desert Arts Preview - Hear the Stories Aug 22, 2025

Show notes

Hear the stories of the art and artists. Black Rock City hosts 400 artworks from around the world. This episode features 12 of them, and this year’s Temple.

This is a sonic journey of artist's recordings and chats with Burning Man Project's Director of Art, Katie Hazard.

Desert Arts Preview is your chance to step behind the scenes and listen to the process of creating interactive, collaborative, community-built artworks.

This episode explores:

The Sphinx Gate - Mareesa Stertz & Tania Abdul
Sinksphere - Scott (Scottysoltronic) Whitaker
Afterlife Reincarnate - Adrian (Blitzy) Tay
Resilience - Whitney Webb
Moonlight Library - James Gwertzman (Moonlight Collective)
Desert Air Oasis: BreathCore 7 - Elnara Nasirli (MXNZM)
One Tin Soldier - Mark Deem (Misfit Toy Crew)
Black Rock City Chicken Ranch - Rob Brown, Alysha Cypher, & Aviva Kinoko
Disco Snail - Alyssa Oliveira (Alpine Artists Collective)
DROP - Auli Uiboupin
Pillar of Po Tolo - Antwane Lee (Solar Shrine Collective)
Rose Wonders - Thomas Dambo
Temple of the Deep - Miguel Arraiz

Desert Arts Preview 2025 (burningman.org)

Desert Arts Preview 2025 FULL LENGTH (YouTube)

Temple of the Deep (Burning Man LIVE podcast)

LIVE.BURNINGMAN.ORG

Pro Tips for Black Rock City 2025 Aug 13, 2025

Show notes

REMASTERED FOR 2025: Our most popular episode of all time.

Listen in as longtime Burners talk about the dynamic 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 much more and other and new!

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 being real.

Don’t just pack. Prepare. Here’s how to have BRC overwhelm you in a good way.

Black Rock City 2025

Burning Man Journal

John Craigie (YouTube)

LIVE.BURNINGMAN.ORG

Alexander Rose - Thought Experiments in Time Aug 07, 2025

Show notes

Zander was the executive director of The Long Now Foundation, dedicated to long term thinking. He also helped build their library, a book club for the end of the world, with all the titles we would want to rebuild civilization, if needed.

He is one of the brains behind the 10,000-Year Clock, designed to tick off the years, and chime the centuries. He’s now co-creating the future of the web at Automattic.

He and his team are bringing a library to Black Rock City, to the World’s Fair pavilion under The Man. It’s a refreshing opposite. Like his theme camp inside a refrigerator truck NOT being hot, this library is about NOT being burnt. It’s an ephemeral manual for civilization. We the participants will choose what books to save from burning.

Zander shares stories on the effects of books, websites, and rituals, as well as Burning Man’s past, present, and future.

This episode is on YouTube here.

rosefutures.com

BRC Honoraria Art (Burning Man Journal)

A group for those who want to participate (Facebook)

https://longnow.org

A Pavilion for Tomorrow Today (Burning Man Journal)

wikipedia.org/Clock_of_the_Long_Now

Kevin Kelly: Optimists Create the Future (Burning Man LIVE)

Photo by Brendon Hall

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AI in Art in Black Rock City Jul 23, 2025

Show notes

AI is a context changer, a shaker upper, and a force multiplier to what our human minds can do.
Andie says that AI is a major philosophical shift in humanity, and when this kind of thing happens, the first people she goes to are artists and academics.
Andie and Stuart talked with a few artists and academics about their AI infused art coming to Black Rock City. They share their dreams and nightmares, and how to 'go beyond.'

· Chad Elish — Verse-O-Matic

· Kate Greenberg, Deva Temple, Eric Vicenti — "Out the Other"

· Dr Jukka-Pekka Heikkilä, Kiana Kaiser, Michael Zeltner — Burning Stories & Burner AI

This is transforming personal stories, creating unique dialogues between humans and the machines that reflect us, the good, the bad, and the ugly… and the beautiful… and the surprising.
Here is how artists conjure creativity and empathy using AI at Burning Man, a home for art to push against and learn from.

Burning Man LIVE: Dr Heikkilä and the Science of Participatory Culture

Burning Man Journal: Burning Stories Research Team

LIVE.BURNINGMAN.ORG

Kevin Kelly - Optimists Create the Future Jun 26, 2025

Show notes

Kevin Kelly is a leading thinker of the digital age. The founding editor of Wired Magazine, he helped produce the Whole Earth Catalog, and an early internet pillar called the WELL. He is a journalist, an artist, and a longtime 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 too pie-in-the-sky. We have a morbid curiosity for dystopian stories. What’s in between? Iterative improvement. Protopia.

Delve into this conversation on cultural narratives, the transformative potential of AI, and the context shift into lifelong-learning.

"It’s not that our problems are smaller than we thought, it’s just that our capacities to solve them are greater than we thought."

wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Kelly_(editor)

kk.org

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Playa Music - From Bebop to Dubstep Jun 11, 2025

Show notes

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

the thumping electronic dance music that makes BRC a DJ's Mecca
the anything-goes improv of jazz, a dusty mirror to the Burner spirit

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 tunes into jazz. For decades, the Playa Jazz Cafe has been hosting live musicians in a dreamy, pop-up club. Camp lead and "hack” jazz musician Neil Kelly shares stories of serendipity, alchemy, and in-the-moment vibes of jazz at Burning Man.

What's the harmony between a big-name beat-dropper and a jazz flow pro? BRC magic cannot be bottled without a loss of taste and potency. You just gotta be there.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scumfrog

campsite.bio/thescumfrog

playajazz.com/tunes

instagram.com/playajazzcafe

facebook.com/PlayaJazzCafe

zingari.com/niel-kelly.html

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Leo Villareal - Light Up the Dark May 23, 2025

Show notes

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 tech, from customizing LED fixtures to coding sequences.

He describes how artists can engage with their communities outside of their comfort zones.

He tells stories of the convening power of photons as an artistic medium, as a digital campfire for all.

Hear him flip the switch, and stay until the brilliant end.

villareal.net/bio

villareal.net/urban-scale-artworks

burningman.org/about/board-of-directors/#LeoVillareal

disorient.info

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Thunderdome's Leadership Lessons Apr 23, 2025

Show notes

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 hard decisions ASAP attracts quality people

· How to schedule your crying day!

Listen in on their laughter, and tolerate the cringe stories (that prove Thunderdome is not cosplay), and you will be rewarded with the inspiration and institutional knowledge of the infamous Death Guild Thunderdome.

www.divamarisa.com

www.deathguildthunderdome.com

journal.burningman.org/author/diva-marisa

playaevents.burningman.org/2024/playa_event/48007

https://burningman.org/programs/philosophical-center

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Theme Campers Unite Apr 09, 2025

Show notes

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.

Bryant Tan (aka Level Placerman): head of Placement
Andie Grace: Producer in the Philosophical Center
Charlie Dolman: Director of Event Operations
DA (aka Dominic Tinio): Environmental Restoration Manager
Harley K Dubois: Founder & Chief Cultural Officer
Stuart Mangrum: Director of the Philosophical Center

and a keen crew of Placement Team volunteers