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-[indistinct chatter] -[hands clapping]

[laughing]

[interviewer] So, can we, uh...

-Thank you. -...can go backwards?

Nice, I can see the camera.

Uh, yes, yes.

[interviewer] Backwards to the initial inspiration

for doing the first...

I thought you were gonna try to hypnotize me.

-[interviewer] ... Burning Man. -Let's go back, Larry. Go back.

[John Law] I never expected to hate Larry.

You have to understand, he was a 42-year-old man

when I met him who had never paid taxes.

He didn't exist in the real world.

And I thought, how did you do that?

I was impressed.

But he didn't really have a real job, either.

B-Burning Man was-- was it for him.

It's how he got his standing in the world.

In the early days, Michael Mikel, Larry Harvey,

and I were the legal owners of Burning Man Partners.

-[burner] How's it going, John? -It's going very well.

[crowd cheering]

The early Burning Man, when we were on the playa

with, you know, fewer than a thousand people,

you didn't know what was gonna happen.

It was completely free.

[crowd cheering and howling]

[Larry Harvey] In my imagination,

I thought the whole world was going to come.

[crowd cheering and whistling]

[John] Larry said so many times,

"Oh, we're gonna get a million people on the playa."

Are you out of your fucking mind?

The fucking event went too fast.

We were not a professional event organization.

[flames whooshing]

I warned him repeatedly,

"People are gonna die."

[wind gusting]

[♪ ethereal music playing]

[♪ music swelling]

♪♪

[♪ tense music playing]

[newscaster 1] For the second year in a row,

Burning Man is canceled.

[newscaster 2] It's usually the busiest time

of the year in Northern Washoe County.

It's been estimated that Burning Man

brings in more than $60 million

for the state economy every year.

The loss of that revenue for the second straight year

is really not good for the town

that sits closest to the site of the annual festival.

[newscaster 3] Now, even though the event

is not officially going on this year,

those that live here in Gerlach tell me

they still expect to see plenty of Burners.

[Joel Briggs] When the announcement came,

"Hey, Burning Man's canceled,"

within 20 minutes, Plan B was executed.

There you go.

Alright, Lofax, you're gonna introduce everybody, correct?

Make sure we're following the agenda.

Do we have an agenda?

My real name's Joel Briggs.

Uh, everybody calls me Sergeant Pepper on the playa.

My occupation, I do work for the Department of Defense.

I... do risk analysis and so forth.

1996 was my first year.

And then I went again in 1999, 2001, 2002,

'04, '06, '08, '09, '10, and '11,

'12, skipped '15, '16,

'17 ended up going to Afghanistan,

and then '18 I missed, went to '19.

Those are my burner years.

Originally, Plan B was never a plan.

It was just the name of our camp.

We had about 30 people. That 30 invited 30.

Those 30 invited 30,

and within a week, we were at 3,000.

Very quickly, a decision was made,

'Hey, we're going down a path.

We've got to be very careful."

So, I actually got on the phone with an attorney, said,

"This is what's going on."

She laid out the ground rules.

"Do not set this in motion. Do not say this.

Do not collect dues."

I just want to kinda recap...

Very quickly, a decision was made to structure it

in such a way that there's no power.

Nobody has-- Nobody runs it.

Because there was fear that Burning Man would shut us down.

I mean, that was always in our back, and...

you know, every day, I'd get up

and I, I would go, like, to my email like,

"Ooh, is it there?"

[Marian Goodell] The first time I saw a link

-to Plan B... -Wow.

...I was like, "Ooh, this is cheeky."

But the biggest fear was that

if it went really, really wrong

and people were injured and hurt,

that it would affect our future on the Black Rock Desert.

[Power Surge] Now, it's unclear just how many

brave souls are gonna venture to Black Rock Desert,

but there are over 400...

After the official video from Marian came out,

there was like a divide in the burner community

for a few months.

Everyone was very nervous

about making a super-spreader event of COVID.

People made special requests

to the Bureau of Land Management,

and the response from the federal government

was "No" to almost every request.

No structures may be built,

no burning of structures,

no lasers, no nudity this year.

They don't want Porta Potties to be serviced.

People are gonna really have to pick up their poop.

[Lofax] The idea was to have a map,

who's gonna come on playa.

And the map grew very fast.

[Joel] Everybody was going to Plan B

for the information,

and, uh, it-- it just turned out to be that way.

I mean, we were very factual.

[Lofax] "You may die. This is Plan B.

"The ticket holder, you,

"assume all risk of property loss

"or damage, mental breakdown, serious injury, or death.

"This document entitles you to nothing.

"You will get nothing.

"You must bring enough food,

"water, sunscreen, toilet paper,

and poop buckets to survive."

A lot was riding on our shoulders,

especially when we got to that 15,000 mark

on-- on the Facebook page.

I'm like, "Oh, if this fails...

we are doomed."

[♪ tense music playing]

[Marian] There was a lot of interest very fast.

And if you're not careful,

you could have a disaster,

like in 1996.

[♪ tense music continues]

[indistinct chatter]

[Stuart Mangrum] 1996 was the first year

that we had a Burning Man theme.

The theme was "The Inferno."

[laughing]

[actor] Suffering from a recent bankruptcy?

HELCO can help you rebuild your credit in this world

and the next with our easy qualifying soul debit

ATM check guarantee card.

[Stuart] We created this whole mythic structure

where Burning Man was going to be purchased by HELCO,

a satanic corporation.

One thin soul. That's all it costs.

And best of all, you won't even notice it's missing.

When was the last time you...

It referenced general concerns about the event selling out

and becoming a, a mainstream consumer event,

which were real.

We're good. We're good.

Lord of Evil. How you doing?

[Larry] Well, I first got the idea

because there were people coming out to the desert artists

who were-- who were in effect doing hell

in one form or another, they're blowing things up.

Extravagantly destructive spectacles.

That um-- And I thought perhaps we should--

We should channel this, uh, hellish energy,

uh, it-- and-- and make it mean something.

[people chattering]

Essentially, a hell is a place

where one confronts whatever one has banished

from one's world.

[evil cackling]

So, this year, our theme is The Inferno.

And whatever you have, uh, cast out of your world

or cast out of yourself, there rises up to confront you.

[motorcycle engine rumbling]

[♪ foreboding music playing]

[John] A couple nights before the event,

a guy I knew pretty well was on his motorcycle

out in the desert,

playing chicken with a van

coming on straight ahead on the van.

And, uh, he miscalculated

'cause he was pretty high and drunk.

And, uh, he impacted the van...

[motorcycle zooming]

...doing 70 miles an hour,

and he was decapitated

by the side-view mirror.

The death of Michael Furey was hard on all of us.

For John, it was definitely harder.

Here's my friend, decapitated, lying on the desert.

[indistinct chatter]

They'd put a coat over his head.

And the Pershing County Sheriffs show up.

-[sirens wailing] -And I'm there helping them

and trying to do whatever we can to--

You know, they have to get an ambulance

to come and take the body away.

So, we were there for many hours.

[sirens continue wailing]

A little bit-- I don't know, like 3:00 in the morning,

Larry shows up.

And, uh, he wanted to know if it was before midnight

that my friend died...

so that when the press found out about it,

it could officially be said

that it didn't happen at the Burning Man event.

It happened before it.

Like, get the fuck out of here.

[♪ tense dramatic music playing]

[Larry] John is a stalwart and full of passion

and thinks continually about others and their welfare.

If we hadn't had that, uh, bone in our bodies,

this thing would have degenerated quickly

into a truly anarchist society.

Larry's way of processing

was think about it from 5,000 feet,

when John was on the ground.

[John] It was terrible,

and the people who dealt with it

were traumatized by it.

So, that's how '96 kicked off.

You're coming to the performance tonight, right?

[camera operator] Uh, yes, absolutely.

-Or shooting it. -[camera operator] Yes.

[♪ rock music playing]

[John] The conceit of this performance piece

was that HELCO,

this giant international corporation,

was trying to buy Burning Man.

We built a bunch of different constructions,

which were parodies of American companies.

[♪ intense music playing]

Including a 32-foot office tower that said HELCO on it.

[burner] No smoking here.

No smoking zone.

This is Cal dousing things with gasoline.

[crowd cheering and whistling]

[♪ intense music continues]

-[flames whooshing] -[crowd shouting]

Evil lurks amongst you!

There are those amongst you

who are not spontaneous.

Those amongst you who are not creative.

Hard though it may be to believe,

you know who you are.

[John] We had wired up the, uh, top of the tower

with a giant pile of explosives,

and I dropped a road flare into it.

[loud pop, flare sizzling]

[explosives booming]

[crowd cheering]

It was awesome.

[glass shattering]

But it was pretty fucking stupid.

[crowd cheering]

That's the whole point of this place, right?

To be able to be doing stuff that pushed your boundaries.

[burner 1] Move back as far as possible.

-We're too close. -[burner 2] Push back, please.

Push back, please.

Push back, please. Push back, please.

-[flames whooshing] -[people shouting]

[Stuart] '96 was a bit of a disaster.

We had pretty much a breakdown of civic authority.

No civic responsibility.

[crowd clamoring]

We had people just running around

and burning everything, other people's art.

It really turned into kind of a scene from hell.

Live every Burning Man like it was your last Burning Man

because it just might fucking be.

[laughing]

-[explosion booming] -[people shouting]

[sirens wailing]

[John] The next horrible, horrible accident,

it was some drunken drugged-out guy

in a stolen car

rolled over a tent with two kids in it,

you know, 3:00 in the morning and injured them severely.

And I can't just say, "Oh, well, people get hurt at events."

You know, "That's how it goes."

And you just, like, "You have your insurance for that."

Blah, blah, blah.

That's not how I operate, you know?

I don't want to be...

involved in creating something where shit like that happens.

[crowd clamoring]

The fucking event was too big.

It grew too fast.

It was going to blow up in our face.

And I said so, repeatedly.

Larry just kept going.

He just kept going.

[Larry] We're about to start something

that's gonna shake the world up.

He was relentless about that. Relentless about that.

[Marian] Burning Man was on the cover

of Wired magazine.

The word was out.

[John] We didn't have the resources

to deal with a real festival with 10,000 people.

We simply didn't have the resources.

And my intent was to not grow it so fast, take it slower,

not be in a fucking rush to get a million people on the playa.

Do you even know what you're talking about?

He didn't do logistics.

He had no idea what was involved.

We'll do it when it's safe so that we don't kill anybody.

You're not dealing with the medics.

You're not dealing with the law enforcement.

I was.

[Harley K. Dubois] Larry was always trying

to create his family that he never really had.

You know, he was adopted, and so Burning Man

was an outward expression of his desire

to bring people together and create community.

[Larry] I was raised within a family

that didn't communicate within itself

and didn't communicate with the world outside of it

in a state of fairly radical isolation

from the rest of humanity.

And-- and thought from a very early age

that there was something terribly wrong.

And... [stammering]

Uh, and came to realize as I grew older,

that-- that, in fact, my state was not unique.

We are ruthless and looking for a community.

Tremendous desire for it.

I suppose my idea was a childish and crude one.

You know? I always sort of dreamt

of doing some creative thing

that all the neighbors, all these people

that I've-- we're never even allowed to know, really,

would-- might all gather somehow in the fields,

you know, together around some wonderful thing.

Soulful expression of themselves.

It touched a lot of people. I'll give him that.

Is it worth that? There's a trade-off there.

-[fireworks popping] -[crowd cheering]

[Marian] I remember leaving in 1996

and planning to never come back.

It didn't feel safe.

[John] It was not sustainable anymore.

I'm like, "I will never work with this guy again.

I am fucking done."

[Marian] John and others saw that.

[John] It was obvious in '96,

there was a major metaphysical fork in the road.

The event was either gonna end,

or, if it continued,

it was gonna have to have a bureaucratic infrastructure.

And, you know, I couldn't be part of that.

So, that was my swan song at Burning Man.

[burner] Are we done?

[Harley] In a sense, they came to represent

the struggle of Burning Man in that era.

Do we want to remain underground and stay free?

Or are we building a movement that could change the world?

-[crowd cheering] -[bell jingling]

[camera operator] What does Burning Man mean to you?

-Um... -[people chattering]

Death, destruction, mayhem, and lots and lots of fun.

[Stuart] If you were a participant...

you probably didn't really realize that much of anything

happened between '96 and '97.

Burning Man was still awesome.

But if you were an organizer or a volunteer,

you were caught in a very hard turning point.

And a whole lot of people walked away and never came back.

[Sgt. Nathan Carmichael] So this year,

non-festival.

Uh, again, we're...

playing it by year.

We got a week to go.

I don't think anybody knows what's going on.

The federal government has allowed this to happen,

and again, we plan for the worst

and hope for the best.

[Ranger Crow] Gerlach is the closest town

to the site of Black Rock City,

and it has been a love-hate relationship at times.

Burning Man is now the main source of revenue for the town.

It's also the main source of chaos.

Welcome to, uh, Operation Non-Event, 2021.

I'm Crow. I'm the Ranger Operations Manager.

Our main thing here is to address the concerns

of the people who live in Gerlach.

[speaker 1] I don't think there's any preparation

because of the fact that there's no Burning Man,

so that everybody exiting,

that might become a huge issue

and might need emergency ranger help in that situation.

[Crow] We will have approximately 60 rangers

stationed in Gerlach,

or housed in Gerlach, I should say.

[speaker 2] Part of the community's largest concern

is people defecating behind their house,

in their front lawn, in a variety of places

because there are no Porta Potties in town this year.

[♪ quirky music playing]

[Tony Diebold] When I came here in 1971,

it was a lot different then.

It was a little more quiet than it is now.

[burner 1] I'm going now to try to find a spigot

to fill our water jug up.

[Tony] Then the Burners came.

-[burner 2] Burning Man gas. -[Tony] They changed things.

[♪ quirky music continues]

[Sylvia Fascio] In '91, they had 200 attendees.

They were making a mess.

There were no Porta Potties.

They were going to the bathroom out in the desert.

[Brandy Wilber] It's like a little mini circus up here

when Burning Man is going on.

Okay, there's three more bags, Terry.

-[Terry] Alright. -And I'll get your tortillas.

I'll get my big, strong, muscly guy here to help ya.

The rumors are so widespread.

I've had 10,000, 15,000, 20,000.

Somebody tried to tell me 30,000.

Nobody knows.

That's what's making this year hard.

This is one idea that I've just picked up

from the Plan B Facebook group,

is people wanting, you know, five-gallon buckets.

I have 400 five-gallon buckets underneath the store.

So, if nothing else,

if people just want to buy some five-gallon buckets

and figure out how to perch themselves on the edge of it,

fine with me.

I kind of feel like BLM should have found a way

to allow Porta Potty companies to come out

because I feel like it's going to be a shit show.

Literally a shit show.

[Tony] If this experiment goes off well,

they're gonna say, "No, we don't need the organization."

What happens out there this year

will be a maker or breaker for Burning Man.

♪♪

Hello, Burning Man community.

We will not be collaborating

on Black Rock City in the desert.

[chiming]

But we look forward to inviting you

to come to the virtual Burning Man.

[computerized voice] Calling all virtual explorers,

adventurers, swashbucklers and Burners.

[Marian] Black Rock City is in the multiverse.

I truly believe that this gathering is reckless,

so we're pushing the platform

to be a world-class place

for the global community to gather.

Everything is there,

but it's in the digital dust.

At BRCvr, you can dream, create, and elevate,

go as far as your imagination takes you.

Hey, I'm Lindsay.

I was planning to go to Burning Man

physically in 2021.

This was supposed to be my first year on playa,

physical playa,

and then Burning Man got canceled.

I have never gone physically,

but I've been so heavily involved with the virtual one.

I know it like the back of my hand at this point.

I give people tours and teach them

how to walk and fly as an avatar.

Oh, wow.

Being around other people in VR,

I became very close to them.

Alicia!

Oh my God!

[laughing] Let's go.

[Alicia] Yeah.

[Lindsay Handren] We haven't met in person.

We've spent a year together on Zoom and in VR.

Hopefully, we can at least spend Burn Night together.

Being in, like, an open and a loving space,

it's something I really need right now.

But I'm not brave enough to do the Renegade Burn.

Where did everybody else go?

[Ray Christian] Initially, I was gonna go solo.

You know, I'm a commander.

I'm gonna go by myself. That's my expectation.

I don't know any of these people.

People started to mention to me,

there's a regional group out there called Rootpile.

Like... where? In this area?

-Hey, man. -What's up, man?

What's up?

[Ray] When I heard about the camp,

I think I picked up bluegrass and moonshine

and I go, "Oh shit."

[both laugh]

You gonna have a lot of stories, I promise you.

We're a hillbilly camp

because I wanted to take this culture out there

to show them to people because they all think we're

a bunch of racist rednecks, everybody that lives here.

-[Ray] Right, right, right. -And not everybody is.

And that's what I wanted to show by taking it out there.

So, we're not taking any Confederate flags to the playa?

[Fixxer] Nope.

[laughing]

[Ray] But I found out

that the official Burning Man was canceled.

I heard something about the Renegade Burn,

but, uh, I don't know if it's still a good time to go.

[Sheriff Jerry Allen] Burning Man does a great thing

when they bring the city together.

They have landmarks. They have streets.

They have street signs.

So, if we have to respond

to a call for service, we know where it's at.

[ranger] Anyone can transmit on ham in an emergency.

[Jerry] This year, all we have

is the great expanse of the desert.

Hit the button and hope someone hears you.

-[Jerry] What could go wrong? -[ranger] Let's see.

[Jerry] I guess anything.

After this, we have a "stop the bleeding" course.

[Crow] If it's like, "Holy shit, I need an ambulance right now,"

they're asking for resources from Gerlach,

like, this is serious.

We'll be monitoring all of this.

There's a lot of different concerns we have out there,

but personal safety being number one.

And there have been deaths.

[Nathan] There's a mobile jail we bring out here.

We're just gonna try to keep the peace

and make sure everybody goes home safe, including ourselves.

[♪ dramatic music playing]

♪♪

[burner] Hey! Welcome home!

[excited chatter]

Let's go on a little scooter ride here at Plan B,

Black Rock Desert.

[burner 1] Fucking '21. Fucking Renegade Burning Man.

Dude, no other place I'd rather be.

[burner 2] Ethan, are you ready, man?

I think we're about to roll.

-We ride. -We ride!

[♪ upbeat music playing]

[indistinct chatter]

-[crowd] Whoo! -Hi.

[excited chatter]

[burner howling]

[chuckling]

[howling]

[howling continues]

-[train whistle blows] -[burner howls]

[burner] Welcome home.

You guys are now officially Burners.

We're improvising with train whistles.

We don't have a bell.

[train whistle blowing]

[laughs]

[Zoe Nightingale] Alright, we have arrived.

We are following GPS coordinates to a place

that we think could be the place we reserved on the imaginary map

that somebody made that nobody knows.

[laughter]

[Zoe] It is 1:30 a.m.

The moon's out.

We have no clue what's happening or what's going on.

We're exhausted.

We've brought everything that we don't need

and nothing that we need.

[♪ pop music playing]

[crowd cheering]

[Nathan] So, right there, the fire dancers this year

are actually in violation of BLM's rules.

Sometimes, you have to pick your battles.

Uh, do you actually go in there and shut that down

with the amount of people that are there?

We've been having a little bit of trouble finding things.

No streets, no signs.

Out here now, there's really nowhere to tell where you're at.

I took my oath August 31st of 2001.

[crowd reveling]

Out of 20 years,

I have actually worked Burning Man,

I would say right now, it's 16.

I had no-- I had no idea what I was getting involved in.

No idea.

Good and bad, it's awesome what you see here.

Yes, actually I know where we're at now.

That's a crane with the light...

[chuckles]

...in the shape of, uh, somebody's genitals.

[Nathan chuckling]

[indistinct chatter]

99% of people actually say thank you for being here.

It's that 1% that kind of ruins it for everybody.

[indistinct radio chatter]

There's definitely a lack of law enforcement here.

There's nothing saying they can't speed.

[excited chatter]

-[thudding] -[burner] Oh, shit. Oh, shit!

You alright?

[flames whooshing]

[crowd cheering]

[Nathan] It's a little chaotic.

[burner laughing]

Whoo!

[♪ dance music playing]

[screams]

[♪ electronic dance music continues]

[crowd cheering]

♪♪

[siren wailing]

[sirens wailing]

[burner] My friend just flipped his ATV over,

and he's losing consciousness.

He had, like, blood coming out of his mouth.

Like, I was like,

"This could be really serious."

You cannot have anarchists and chaos at 10,000 people.

It just doesn't work.

[♪ dramatic music playing]

'96 really just left the organization in shambles.

One human being lost his life last year.

Other human beings were, were injured

and injured critically.

That had to be brought under control.

[Harley] One officer slipped us a memorandum that said,

"The probability of Burning Man causing a riot

"was so great that all police officers

should be issued bulletproof vests and rubber bullets."

A little bit of tension there, understandably. [chuckles]

'96 was a shit show.

[Stuart] So, in '97 with John Law gone,

Larry and Michael formed a new organization,

an LLC, with four other friends

we now call The Founders.

That was the actual legal entity

that controlled Burning Man.

[crowd reveling]

[Larry] It became apparent that we were responsible

for everybody's welfare.

It wasn't anybody else. It was on us.

Then we were de facto the state.

Which-- Which was a conundrum for the-- for the hipsters.

[laughs]

You know, what-- what does an anarchist say to that?

[Marian] When I was in my early 30s,

I'd worked in a bank, I'd worked in advertising,

I'd worked at a law firm.

And then I saw photos of Burning Man.

It was just like a big unfolding of, like,

"Wait a minute.

"What kind of magical circus

in the middle of a desert?"

So, I'd read everything I could at the library

on microfiche.

Basically made it my mission to meet the people that did it.

[people chattering]

Would you play with my Dream Date?

This is my Dream Date.

I met Larry at a party, and he was super quirky.

He was absolutely in his own head.

He was a storyteller.

And he was very drunk at this party.

[partygoer 1] I love you, Larry!

[Marian] And being very, very silly.

And I fell in love with him.

[people cheering]

[partygoer 2] He's a real one.

[Marian] And so I came along as Larry's girlfriend.

He had lots of ideas.

He couldn't do it all himself.

Larry was the philosopher and writer

and created context for what was happening.

Harley brought compassion and a deep understanding

of how to bring people together

and help drive them towards some of the goals.

Michael Mikel is a storyteller, historian,

a trickster,

a kind of third eye of who we are.

Will Roger organized a DPW

and turned it into a functioning entity

and intention to build the city and break it down.

And Crimson is the fire goddess.

She oversaw the development of the art program

with Larry Harvey,

and then The Man is hers.

The building of The Man, the fire on The Man,

the burning of The Man, that is still her domain.

[Harley] Before 1997,

we were just a renegade underground event.

In 1997, we-- we came above ground.

We started, uh, you know, paying taxes

and being a legitimate entity.

[inaudible]

So, we started planning basically the structure

that you see here on this map.

It came to fruition in 1997.

We planned a city for the first time.

We made roads for the first time.

We created structures so that people could thrive

and be safe.

[Marian] We sold 10,000 pre-sale tickets.

Drink lots of water. Above all else, enjoy yourself.

And we'll probably get at least 13,000.

It's much more organized this year.

There's a lot of things that we put in place

to make it a safe place to have fun.

[Larry] Culture is based on communion, not consumption.

What we're trying to achieve here in this experiment

is, is to recreate culture in our world.

The new story is not the event. It's gonna be the movement.

That's what's gonna happen.

And it's gonna expand exponentially.

I actually believe that.

[news anchor] The idea of a spontaneous city

does seem an odd one,

but that's exactly what turned up

in the Nevada Desert over the Labor Day weekend,

a city with a curious name of "Burning Man."

What some people have called a proto-apocalyptic,

hippie neo-pagan freak fest.

Yeah!

[shouting]

[Marian] Some people think this is a big party,

and it's in the desert, and Burning Man means

I can do whatever I want.

Uh, when in fact, that's certainly not the case.

[Flynn] [over radio] Hey, this is Flynn.

What's your 20? I have another volunteer.

Maybe I can send them to you, over.

We had to build trust.

But after the chaos of 1996,

it was really hard to deal with the county.

The Washoe County supervisors have decided that Burning Man

is an iffy organization,

so they're gonna place sheriffs in our ticket office

and take money as it comes in

until they reach $321,000,

which is what they're charging to protect us.

[Marian] The costs that have been imposed upon us

by the county are so high that it's entirely possible

and quite likely that we will be in debt...

[clearing throat] ...when this is over.

[Larry] If you can come up with an extra five,

an extra 10.

If you give us $100,

you get a ticket to next year

and you just have to believe it'll happen next year.

That's an act of faith.

[cheering and applause]

That's what the part I hate about this

because it's so stressful, terribly stressful.

And we end up dealing with politics.

We end up worrying about money endlessly.

Even as we speak, we're-- we're--

we're asking people for money.

We're begging them for money at the gate.

I have enough faith that we'll probably just make it, somehow.

[excited chatter]

[Adriana Roberts] Papers! Get your papers!

[burner 1] Newspapers! Come and get Newspapers!

[Adriana] Newspapers!

This feels like 1995 all over again.

There were still no roads back then,

so it was literally just running around,

handing papers to people.

-Hot off the press. -Thank you.

1993 was my first year at Burning Man,

and 1995 was the first year of Piss Clear.

And yeah, I did it for 13 years.

I found this in a fucking free pile at the Mercury Café.

[Adriana] What? Really?

[burner 2] And I shit my fucking pants.

Thank you for all of your years of service.

[burner 1] Did you get this year's paper yet?

Not yet, but I'm a big fan. Big fan.

[Adriana] Well, yeah, like in '95,

there was like this communal party vibe,

and everyone sort of felt like they were in on something.

You know, I'm getting that, that flavor here this year.

[burner 1] Papers! You want newspapers?

Hell yeah! Now, see, that's who I want--

[burner 1] That's what we want.

[♪ whimsical music playing]

[Adriana] Black Rock City is an experiment

in functioning anarchy.

And if anything, this year's gonna prove

that we don't necessarily need all the shit

that the Burning Man organization brings out here.

I hope it doesn't all turn to shit, literally, you know?

Actually, where the fuck is Robot Heart?

If anything's gonna be a little shit show,

it's gonna be Robot Heart

because you know everyone's gonna do their drugs

and then suddenly be like,

"Oh fuck, I gotta go to the Porta Potties,

but there are no Porta Potties."

[truck beeping]

[Gary Mueller] This camp is called Robot Heart.

We spend a lot of time together with our collective

creating a sound system

that we think is pretty unique and special.

And we give that gift to the playa.

Robot Heart, it was started by my brother in 2008.

It's changed a lot through time.

Wow, this is going way back.

George got this 1972 double-decker bus

straight from England,

custom created the sound system,

put a heart on top, and so began Robot Heart.

[Benjamin Alexander] Gio just wanted to create

this perfect acoustic experience

for people to enjoy music, as a big fan of music himself.

[Gary] You know, the name came from my mom

used to always do this heart sign to us,

to George and to me.

The combination of robot, heart, the technology,

and the soul, this was his passion,

creating the Stradivarius for electronic musicians.

[♪ electronic music blaring]

I mean, if you're a real sound aficionado,

the playa is just the perfect place for sound.

When the bus is playing,

it has this rattling.

You almost feel like you're flying.

[♪ "Let You Go" by P.O.S. playing]

[Lee Burridge] The sonic vibration

is stimulating you on a cellular level.

It's almost like a sort of healing,

therapeutic experience.

[Clare Laverty] The sound just flows

through your body like your body is an absolute vessel.

For us, it's about creativity and self-expression.

You know, we really value the platform

that we give to artists.

[Diplo] The Robot Heart team hit me up and said,

"If you want to come out, we can do a sunrise set,"

which is, I'd say as a DJ, it's like the most coveted set.

[Justin Shaffer] Like, when you think about the essentials

of the Burning Man experience,

there's the man, there's the temple,

and then there's this communal experience often around sound.

It's catharsis.

[♪ "Let You Go" continues playing]

This year, my brother had a sudden brain aneurysm

out of the blue

and passed away.

And I got the call, and...

[♪ plaintive music playing]

[sniffles]

I lost a brother,

and Robot Heart lost its founder...

which for any organization is hard.

I mean, that happened with Burning Man.

When the Renegade Burn was happening,

we decided we needed that.

We needed to go home.

And so, we came together to celebrate him.

[♪ contemplative music playing]

[interviewer] Um, what are your hopes

for the future of the project?

My hopes are-- Are, uh, grandiose.

[phone ringing]

Good afternoon, Burning Man. This is Action Girl.

[Marian] We understood his vision.

But in order to grow past

a quirky little 8,000-person event,

we needed to create a business in order to survive.

If the organization is to last,

we needed to be at the big boys' table.

Well, yes, we do have a lot of meetings

and that's... [laughing]

...something that we struggle with.

[Stuart] While all this was happening,

the internet was also happening.

-[modem dial-up sounds] -And, uh,

when the first commercial browsers came around,

that really changed a lot of things.

[Marian] In 1998,

I started creating the website.

[Stuart] That really, really accelerated

the growth of the Burning Man community.

The tech world was invited, essentially, to Burning Man.

[Larry] What we call now dot-com people

began to show up.

And I couldn't see what wilderness camping

had to do with computers.

You see, in their imagination,

our desert world seemed a lot like cyberspace.

With a few prompts,

anyone could generate a kind of virtual reality.

[burner] Whoo! Yeah!

[Marian] Sergey Brin and Larry Page

are the founders of Google.

They went to Burning Man in '97 and '98.

The first Google Doodle was a Burning Man symbol

over one of the letters because they went to Burning Man.

-[burner 1] Everybody's here. -[burner 2] Yeah.

You can't launch a product when everybody's here.

You know? [laughing]

[Larry] So, we have dot-com millionaires.

We have starving artists.

We have dot-com millionaires

meeting starving artists.

This really interests me.

[Marian] We were selling tickets.

We were growing.

And we started to turn a profit.

[Larry] I was always ambitious to make it bigger.

I saw eight people on a beach turn into 800

on a beach by 1990.

Eighty people turned into 8,000 by 1996.

I saw that number quadruple till it's 32,000.

And you'll think me a lunatic for saying it,

but I think perhaps to millions.

They thought I was crazy when I stood here in 1990

and said they'll come.

But they did.

[Level] The way things used to be

isn't the way things are today.

You used to be able to show up on the playa

and like park anywhere and camp.

Just getting more and more organized.

[Marian] Now, our budget's in the neighborhood

of $60 million,

and we have 140 regular year-round employees.

The biggest journey for me for sure

is to not let us turn ourselves

into a big corporate organization

or a bloated government.

[Harley] We're really collaborative.

That's the way the regional network has come about.

Canada and the Austin area were our first two regionals.

That's when the global movement really started.

And when our regional network was growing

and we needed some way to have people understand

that what's happening in Europe

is the same in some way as what's happening in Japan

as what's happening in South Africa,

so Larry went off and wrote the nine principles.

[Stuart] Everybody said you can't have

just nine principles.

You have to have 10,

like any self-respecting cult.

[Athena Demos] That's the thread that holds us all together.

[Larry] Radical self-reliance, radical self-expression,

they emerged from our own experience

and makes you feel that you belong.

[Jennifer Raiser] The mission is to disseminate

the 10 Principles across the world.

It's what Larry really wanted,

which was to make sure the Burning Man ethos is spread

and continues to be the most important thing

that Burning Man does.

[Harley] And by 2018,

more than a million people had experienced

Burning Man events around the world.

The big family that Larry had always wanted

actually happened.

[Marian] That same year,

Larry passed away.

[♪ gentle music playing]

[Stuart] You know, he never took care of himself.

He was like a brain in a jar, I used to joke.

He was just kind of this thinking machine

that walked around on, you know, the body

only as much as he needed.

But still, nobody expected him to just keel over of a stroke.

I had just arrived in France

for our European Leadership Summit

when I found out the news

and got back on a plane and flew back to, um,

to see if I could see him while he was still breathing.

But, uh...

And I did, but he never woke up.

[♪ gentle music continues]

[Marian] I started running the organization

without his help,

but I never had to do it without his input.

We just lost him sooner than he thought he would go,

and we lost him sooner than we thought he would go.

[firecrackers popping]

[Harley] Functionally, Marian and Crimson and I

have run the organization

since pretty much its inception.

But he was the Chairman of the Board,

um, and our visionary.

[Marian] He wrote the script.

We're all the people in the play that he designed.

[crowd cheering and shouting]

And we're all rewriting it as we go,

and that's what's supposed to happen.

[Chef] So, usually what I do is

go to each of the mouth of the roads

and kinda talk about what's there.

[Marian] Let's do that.

Burning Man has owned property in the Gerlach area

for a long time.

We needed an office.

We bought a bar.

And we had a ranch.

The purpose of the properties

was just to run the Burning Man event.

But are we just gonna use it for the event?

Or do we have a possibility to create community space?

That really appealed to Larry and to all of us.

And we have some very brilliant minds

that are tuned into his concepts

and his ideas to create this philosophical center

so that we can go forward

with his presence into the future.

[Marian] So, why not, in the little town

that is the portal for the culture,

why wouldn't you try to do it here?

My vision's been to buy

-whatever we can. -[Chef] Yeah.

[Marian] Do you know when you bought his property?

I don't know.

-I want it. -[Chef] Um, I know.

Everything. You want everything.

[Jennifer] We've spent a lot of money recently,

And I'm not sure it was money all well spent.

And if we keep spending money at the rate we're spending,

we're gonna have to keep raising more and more money

or raising ticket prices.

And I don't think either of those is desirable.

We have to be fiscally responsible,

and we have to answer to our community.

[indistinct chatter, laughter]

[burner 1] Just a big hologram in the sky.

[burner 2] This is putting down to rest

Burning Man as we knew it.

This is what it looks like when Burning Man is canceled.

This is what it looks like when the people

just create from their hearts.

We've created this here,

but, with, like, no above governing system.

Look at what people can do

-when they come together. -[burner 3] Yeah.

-So, like, let's-- -[burner 3] And, like,

let go of the fear.

Like, through the fear of like...

-Yes. -...what could be

when there's no rules.

When there's no governance, what's gonna happen?

This is by far one of the most beautiful times

I've had here. You know?

Like, I hear you and at the same time, I'm like,

because Burning Man existed for 25 years,

we are an evolved culture now.

We did this because we've been doing it together,

because that organization did give us a place to do it.

[♪ spirited music playing]

[Stuart] It is in fact nine o'clock.

-[crew member] Nine o'clock. -[Stuart] Yes.

-Oh, not a prop. -Yeah.

[Stuart] So yeah, we're gonna burn a man.

Just like every year.

I think this is the 35th, something like that.

So, a bunch of us from the organization decided

to come out to the desert

onto our private land adjacent to the Black Rock

where we could burn a man,

and to live stream it for all the world to see it.

[Lindsay] Like, the atmosphere is...

just like buzzing right now,

waiting to watch the man burn.

Finally, Man Burn Night.

Everybody's pouring onto the Altspace platform

so that they can watch the actual man burn

via livestream that we've got going.

And then, we watch our virtual man virtually burn.

[fireworks popping]

[flames whooshing]

Ah!

[fireworks continue popping]

Oh, my God!

[Lindsay laughs]

Yeah, this is amazing.

You kind of forget that it's not a real thing.

[Crimson Rose] As Larry Harvey said,

we will always burn the man.

[explosives popping]

[♪ dramatic music playing]

[Stuart] The burning of the man is the central ritual.

It's the formative ritual.

[flames crackling]

It's kind of a big deal for people

to be able to witness a man burn.

[Crimson] Happy Burn Day!

[burner] Alright!

[♪ techno music playing]

[whistling and cheering]

[Joel] I do believe the org has come to a milestone.

They do need to look at what they want to do.

2021, it was my best burn ever.

There's no doubt about it.

[laughter]

[♪ techno music continues]

There's many parts of the org that are very beautiful

about Burning Man,

but, guys,

stop the waste of money.

We don't need a lot of money.

Stick to the origins.

The people are Burning Man.

[Joel] 15,000 people came together

to build a city based on the 10 Principles...

and no one lost their life.

It showed that Burners can overcome.

[cheering and applause]

[♪ electronic music playing]

[crowd cheering]

[screaming]

[cheering continues]

[cheering and applause]

[♪ electronic music continues]

[Joel] That drone man,

it just showed the world we are Burners.

This is what we can do.

[♪ soft music playing]

We did it.

We freaking did it.

[♪ music fades out]

[softly crying]

[Lofax] Hmm.

[voice breaking] That's all I got to say.

[interviewer] So, how did the drone show

really come together?

Burning of The Man is really the ritual that we come for.

And so, there was no ritual planned

for-- For, uh, for-- For the FreeBurn.

[♪ ethereal music playing]

There was something missing.

And so that's when I called Ralph and I said,

"We'd like to help finance

bringing the drones to the playa."

We just were saying, "Hey, what if we flew the man?"

Then he said, "Who should we ask for permission?

"In the world of Burning Man, there is the org

or there's the government or there's someone."

And I said,

"There is no one to ask.

"Let's just do it.

And we should invite everyone."

That was our gift.

[♪ ethereal music continues]

The truth is, Burning Man is a very expensive event.

Financial resources is a gift.

An extraordinary gift.

And not a gift that everyone else can do.

[interviewer] Um, did you have a chance

to visit the FreeBurn on the playa?

[engine humming]

[Marian] Stay slow.

Stay slow, slow, slow, slow, slow.

[Chef] Okay.

[Marian] I was super curious to see

what would happen.

-[Chef] That's cool. -[Marian] Oh my God, this is crazy.

I'm actually gonna cry!

[crying softly]

It's crazy in a good way.

I wonder what Larry would think. [sniffles]

[♪ gentle music playing]

-[indistinct chatter] -[cork pops]

-Meow! -Meow.

It was like 1996, but in a good way,

where there was no fence

and there was no road,

and the people were gonna be gathering.

And fuck, it was gonna possibly work

that you bring Burning Man values together?

That would be the proof in the pudding.

That's Larry's lounge, you guys!

That's a piece of Larry's lounge!

[burner] Larry's lounge.

[all cheering]

[Marian] I'm really happy to actually be doing this

and I don't have to run it.

[laughs]

Who wants to have to run this?

Yay!

Ah! Yes!

What I don't have a handle on

is whether people are happy with this.

If this is what people want,

they can do it.

I think the organization, though,

still wants to be grand

and make it as big as we possibly can

because the magic is even bigger.

Like, this is special.

But, you know,

you bring 80,000 people together in this environment,

it's off the hook.

[♪ gentle music playing]

[waves crashing]

[Kimbal Musk] One thing that I have heard from Marian directly

for years now

was that she does want to no longer be CEO.

And, um, I think the question is what to do.

After the FreeBurn, we invited heads of all the regionals

around the world

to talk about decentralizing governance.

[burner] From the outside,

it looks like the six people

still are holding on to power.

[Kimbal] The FreeBurn showed me that

this is a wonderful self-organized community

that will gather once a year, no matter what.

The transition between a top-ruled organization...

Many members of the org came down.

Marian was invited. She wasn't able to join.

There is a table that we're sitting at

with the board members

and the founders having...

[Zach Bell] Kimbal decided to host a conference

about the future of Burning Man.

I called Marian a bunch of times.

I was like, "Come on, just come down."

And she was like, "I'm literally in the middle

"of, like, closing a fundraiser

that's actually running the Burning Man organization."

She was busy.

I've been arguing for several years

that leadership should change.

I think that the core problem

originates from its current CEO.

[Zach] Without Marian being there to defend herself,

it started to feel like a coup.

I think that she's a very capable person

for where we are right now.

I don't think that's the number one priority

in the middle of what we're going through.

As Farhad's saying,

destabilizing all the leadership right now,

I think has potential huge downsides.

Some of the changes that people are wishing for

will not happen with the current leadership.

[Farhad Mohit] Marian, she's in a tough spot.

With the void of the spiritual leader,

everyone is scrambling for what is the vision of Burning Man.

Larry's not there to ask.

So few people understand how much energy it takes

to bring people like that together consistently.

They don't understand it.

Black Rock City comes to life,

and you have to be there to know

it's like a functioning city.

And so I told people at Renegade, I was like,

"Burning Man definitely happened,

but Black Rock City was nowhere to be found."

[Farhad] Do you need BurningMan.org

to be able to live a burner lifestyle?

Hell no.

Do you need it to run,

you know, the third-largest city in Nevada

for one week and clean it up

without getting in all kinds of trouble?

You're damn right you need it.

So, the-- So, the next meeting,

which if we schedule

before I leave tomorrow morning at 9:00 a.m.,

I will fund, and I don't care what the size is.

[Zach] Just because you give a big check to Burning Man

doesn't give you a say.

And they expect special treatment.

And Marian tells them to go fuck themselves.

And she's not wrong.

Is that how we did it before?

[Zach] She's protecting the magic

that she's witnessed be created

to the detriment of her personal relationships,

to people hating her.

There have been people trying to get Marian fired

for 10 years.

She never even wanted the job.

If you were to present Marian with a better candidate for CEO,

she'd probably take you up on it.

It's a thankless job.

[Marian] If there's a leadership coup happening

and someone wants me to go away,

I really fucking don't care.

I've been doing this for 28 years.

What are you gonna tell me I've done wrong?

[♪ tense music playing]

Great, you want the rich, white, entitled dude to blow it up?

Yeah. Blow it up.

[♪ techno music playing]

♪♪

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