Burning Man

Danny Hillis works for Disney these days.

Walking around the playa with my family at night, this is the time to tour the site because Burning Man is truly weird then.

Black Rock City has no power system, so at night it's all lanterns and chugging generators and tiki torches and lots of chem glow.

Colored strings of chem glow, out in the desert, woven through the spokes of bicycles and mysteriously revolving.

Looming figures in costume, huge dramatic bowl of desert stars overhead, fireworks, and flying flares casting a lurid trench warfare glow above the massive camp.

The draw to me isn't necessarily the burn itself.

The draw to me is Black Rock City and the community.

I think it is on par with the level of positivity and kindness and generosity that the bond room community has.

Maybe even eclipses it sometimes.

And then every year they were like, "This is great." Like, "Let's do it again." And I think they did it on the solstice as like a spiritual thing of like, "All right, we're letting this go, and we're gonna start new, it fresh in the summer in San Francisco." And they started doing it every year, and they would burn a man.

And by 1990, the festival, well, you know, the Burning Man event that they were throwing got to be too big, and the cops actually said, "Look, these-- this is now thousands of people.

You cannot do this on this beach anymore in San Francisco." So they had to find a bigger and better place, and that is when they drove out to a random desert in Nevada called Black Rock City, the place is called, and they wanted to create a space free from commercialism, and it evolved into a radical social experiment focused on art, self-expression, and of course, the community.

Now, it has obviously been at Black Rock City ever since.

Larry Harvey did unfortunately pass away a few years ago.

And in Black Rock City for Burning Man, this whole city and community is built for a week, and then it is completely taken down and no trace left behind.

That is a huge part of their principles.

And for th- I think at least two months after the festival ends, they're still walking around collecting anything that is in the sand, in the dirt.

It's interesting, one last little anecdote is, it's kind of like the ultimate experience.

On my podcast, I have my first episode of season three, which is coming out in September, the CEO Burning Man.

So Burning Man just put out a documentary in conjunction called The Man Will Burn.

And so Marion Goodell was talking about shepherding this experience and sort of the return to humanity.

And it was quite fascinating, but they've had 30 years of this weird, you can't directly manage it.

Couples hoping to visit Burning Man's orgy dome are being urged by organizers to have a conversation with each other before participating.

The Nevada Festival is back for 2026 with revelers flocking to the iconic orgy dome.

The sex positive space can be found inside the and then there's only love camp in Black Rock City.

And once there, guests can explore their sexuality in a safe environment.

The people behind the OG, OG? The people behind the Orgy Dome give a talk about consent before every session.