Speaker 1: You're listening to Math and Magic production I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: You pulled off the road to a little, tiny silver
Speaker 1: trailer and there was someone standing there with a machine
Speaker 1: gun slung over his back. Guns were actually allowed at
Speaker 1: burning Man. And the other guy was wrapped in a
Speaker 1: white sheet holding a plastic pink flamingo. You couldn't see
Speaker 1: black Rock City because you actually needed to drive fifteen
Speaker 1: miles towards a mountain peak. You're like, I drive how far?
Speaker 1: And then turn right two miles and then the little
Speaker 1: city appeared in front of you. It felt like you're
Speaker 1: on another planet. I am Bob Pittman, and welcome to
Speaker 1: Math and Magic Stories from the Frontiers and Marketing, where
Speaker 1: we explore that special mix of analytics and creativity that's
Speaker 1: the foundation of so many great business, marketing and cultural successes.
Speaker 1: To day. We're going to the frontiers with a real pioneer,
Speaker 1: the CEO of Burning Man, Maryan Goodell. She came from
Speaker 1: a background that may surprise you thinking about burning Man.
Speaker 1: Republican Irish Catholic Conservative. Her sister's godfather was the late
Speaker 1: Supreme Court Justice Scalia, and her dad was a big
Speaker 1: fan of Ann Rand. She moved around a lot as
Speaker 1: a kid, but finished high school in a small town
Speaker 1: in Ohio where her graduating class only had a hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty students in it. She was the only one
Speaker 1: in her graduating class to go to all women's college.
Speaker 1: She was there in the formative years of Burning Man
Speaker 1: and can tell us how this culture developed and can
Speaker 1: discuss its impact on the greater world. She has an
Speaker 1: open mind, a big heart, and an unlimited imagination. And
Speaker 1: she's a friend. Marian. Welcome, Thank you, Bob. It's great
Speaker 1: to be here. So we're going to get started with
Speaker 1: you in sixty seconds. Ready. Do you prefer desert or ocean?
Speaker 1: Ocean early rise or night owl? Night owl coffee or
Speaker 1: tea Tea San Francisco or Black Rock City Tie Ohio
Speaker 1: or Nevada, Ohio? Catchup? Or mustard mustard pizza or Tacos
Speaker 1: tacos chocolate or vanilla chocolate. Cats are dogs? Cats? Smartest
Speaker 1: person you know, Bob Pittman. Oh yeah right, we'll give
Speaker 1: you a pass on that one. First job Kmart doing
Speaker 1: what check out cashier? Favorite book when I was a child,
Speaker 1: Paddle to the Sea, Last vacation. I don't know what
Speaker 1: that is. Secret talent I make a really really mean
Speaker 1: pumpkin pie. First concert I saw a journey? Is there
Speaker 1: a food you will never eat? I can't stand turnips?
Speaker 1: In Cilantro? Title of your memoir? What would it be? Oh,
Speaker 1: look where I woke up and found myself? Who would
Speaker 1: play you in a movie? A Nut Benning? One place
Speaker 1: you'd like to visit that you haven't been? Mvali. What
Speaker 1: did you want to be a growing up? I wanted
Speaker 1: to be a teacher. What topic can you talk about forever? Cats?
Speaker 1: If you have one superpower? What would it be to
Speaker 1: see the future? Okay, let's start with a little Burning Man.
Speaker 1: I went for the first time in two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: and there were still plenty of people in the world
Speaker 1: who had never heard of Burning Man Man. Of those
Speaker 1: who did know what, the culture seemed very fringe, a
Speaker 1: little crazy. So today, let's fast forward. There's almost universal
Speaker 1: recognition of the culture, and it seems much more part
Speaker 1: of the mainstream. What happened in those fifteen years, culture
Speaker 1: in the world certainly changed. Media got ahold of Burning Man.
Speaker 1: People are looking for ways to connect, and Burning Man
Speaker 1: really strips everything away and gives people an opportunity to connect,
Speaker 1: you know, that's the thing that changed. Burning Man was
Speaker 1: Wired magazine and the tech community. That culture was building
Speaker 1: tools and to keep being inspired aired. Burning Man was
Speaker 1: an environment that was innovative and gave them the opportunity
Speaker 1: to think in a really broadway. And then it's been
Speaker 1: a second generation of that. We've watched cycles of the
Speaker 1: popularity Burnie Man. It sort of slipped back and we
Speaker 1: became quiet again, and then there was a resurgence for
Speaker 1: the same reasons. For the few people who are listening
Speaker 1: who don't know this, would you give us the quick
Speaker 1: origin story, Well, Bernie Man started on a beach in
Speaker 1: San Francisco in Larry Harvey and his friend Jerry James
Speaker 1: built about an eight foot tall wooden man and burned
Speaker 1: it on the summer solstice. It was just an evening
Speaker 1: thing until when too many people showed up on the
Speaker 1: beach and then they moved it to the Black Rock
Speaker 1: Desert over Labor Day weekend and that's where it stayed
Speaker 1: and originally was about three days and now it is
Speaker 1: eight nights in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada. So
Speaker 1: how did they find this location outside of girl Lac.
Speaker 1: There are a number of people that point to Larry,
Speaker 1: but he credits miss p and John on Law and
Speaker 1: some others as having been to the area for different
Speaker 1: artistic reasons. And so when the law enforcement showed up
Speaker 1: in and they took the Burning Man away, they actually
Speaker 1: didn't burn it on the beach. In the different groups
Speaker 1: and friends got together and said, listen, there's this thing
Speaker 1: called the Black Rock Desert, and they went and did
Speaker 1: a scouting trip up there. They put the Man in
Speaker 1: the back of a rider truck and they drove it
Speaker 1: up there on a Friday afternoon. That's how the town
Speaker 1: of Girl Act kind of got on the map. Was
Speaker 1: this funky, little cute, quirky town is now the home
Speaker 1: to the Burning Man. As we were searching you for
Speaker 1: this episode, I read that Larry, the late Larry Harvey,
Speaker 1: the founder of Burning Man, just wrote the Ten Principles
Speaker 1: in two thousand and four. I was actually surprised. I
Speaker 1: never realized it had been that long before he committed them.
Speaker 1: The writing and the ten are will you give them
Speaker 1: to us? I can give them to you. They are
Speaker 1: leaving no trace. Radical self reliance, radical inclusion, de commodification,
Speaker 1: communal effort, civic responsibility, participation, gifting, radical self expression and immediacy.
Speaker 1: So had those been talked about before or did that
Speaker 1: just sort of pop into Larry's head? And two, the
Speaker 1: story of the Ten Principles is really one of my
Speaker 1: favorite stories because people do think that we started with
Speaker 1: this sort of dictum of ideas and that we went
Speaker 1: about sort of putting them in place, and it was
Speaker 1: just the opposite. The activities and the culture and the
Speaker 1: community and the engagement that was happening at Burning Man
Speaker 1: was happening very organically. And one of the things that Larry,
Speaker 1: as a philosopher and a writer and have great thinker,
Speaker 1: really would do with the other organizers is think about, well,
Speaker 1: what had gone right this year and what went wrong?
Speaker 1: For instance, gifting. People had barter bars, and he said,
Speaker 1: this is not about bartering, because bartering was transactional. We
Speaker 1: started talking internally about gifting and putting gifting forward. In
Speaker 1: early two thousands, as the regional network of leaders were
Speaker 1: starting to grow, we realized they really were asking for
Speaker 1: reminders about why they weren't allowed to sell anything at
Speaker 1: their events. Why did we not sell burgers, why did
Speaker 1: we not sell water? And so we went through an
Speaker 1: internal process of sort of asking ourselves reminding ourselves, well,
Speaker 1: why has this worked, and how do we tell the
Speaker 1: rest of the world. I had an email list of
Speaker 1: these various leaders from around the world, and I asked
Speaker 1: Larry to watch the conversations and what the questions were,
Speaker 1: and I would periodically beg him to answer a question
Speaker 1: that we were thinking through. And he finally got tired
Speaker 1: of answering these questions and he said, I'm going to
Speaker 1: write something, and he went away for vacation in Maze
Speaker 1: Laan and he came back with these nine points. These
Speaker 1: were these principles, and he presented them to the group
Speaker 1: of us and we kind of chuckled because it brilliantly
Speaker 1: brought together the things we've all been thinking about, what
Speaker 1: we really had talked about separately but not as a group.
Speaker 1: And then we teased him. We said there's nine. Why
Speaker 1: they're nine? And he looked at us stunned, and we said,
Speaker 1: shouldn't there be ten? And he went home and he
Speaker 1: came back and he said, well, actually there was one
Speaker 1: more that he'd been thinking about, and the last one
Speaker 1: was immediacy and that was his favorite. And so we
Speaker 1: ended up with ten principles that were really a reflection
Speaker 1: of what we were doing, and they were descriptive but
Speaker 1: not prescriptive. Any pushback when Larry came out with these
Speaker 1: ten was there an element of burning? Then this is
Speaker 1: oh my god, not those ten Well, so we were
Speaker 1: really afraid of them for that reason. We didn't want
Speaker 1: them to be seen as ten commandments or ten rules.
Speaker 1: So the first thing we did was actually published in
Speaker 1: for the regional network. We put them out on an
Speaker 1: email list. They were so well received that we actually
Speaker 1: put them in a paper newsletter. We actually used to
Speaker 1: send a newsletter out every year. People began to discuss them,
Speaker 1: and we knew we were onto something if we told
Speaker 1: the story about them being descriptive and not prescriptive. So
Speaker 1: it's something to think about and reflect and embody, but
Speaker 1: they're not commanded, there's no police. It grew on everybody
Speaker 1: and then they started imagining, well, how can I participate
Speaker 1: and what does this mean for me? So more of
Speaker 1: a prism than commandments, right, And we really haven't gotten
Speaker 1: pushback from the ten principles ever. Ever. I still remember
Speaker 1: burning Man being referred to as an experiment and temporary community.
Speaker 1: Just that still used today and is it still relevant
Speaker 1: at that time. That's what we called it. It was
Speaker 1: an experiment in temporary community. What was a temporary community
Speaker 1: on the desert floor is not a temporary community anymore.
Speaker 1: It's really a global, active, engaged community year round. It's
Speaker 1: year round. I want to come back and discuss how
Speaker 1: these principles and this view can be used in general
Speaker 1: society today and even in business. But first I want
Speaker 1: to dig into you. At the top, I mentioned your
Speaker 1: family that was definitely business focused and conservative. I think
Speaker 1: your dad was sort of an old style industrialist. Your
Speaker 1: mom was from New Orleans, and you've described her as loving.
Speaker 1: You were born in the early sixties, grew up in
Speaker 1: the sixties and seventies. Can you paint a little picture
Speaker 1: of that time. My uncle was a protester, arrested in
Speaker 1: d C and went to Woodstock, so I absolutely remember
Speaker 1: the energy around the summer of love, the coming of age.
Speaker 1: He was a big pot smoker. He lived in a commune.
Speaker 1: My dad's brother, my dad's brother exactly. That's why I
Speaker 1: remember it. My father was conservative, We had Sunday breakfast together,
Speaker 1: we went to church, and when I would visit my
Speaker 1: uncle at Yale, there was psychedelic colors on the wall,
Speaker 1: and there was a big mattress where everybody's hanging out
Speaker 1: smoking pot although they weren't allowed around us obviously, and
Speaker 1: my mother pressed flowers. My uncle had an influence on her. Also.
Speaker 1: All of my uncles, though some have married, never had children,
Speaker 1: so I had sort of freestyle relatives, but a conservative
Speaker 1: father at least. I think my mother was a little
Speaker 1: bit more of a hippie. For did your dad reject
Speaker 1: that or was he open minded? He was pretty open minded.
Speaker 1: My uncle was sort of like the black sheep of
Speaker 1: the family, but loved the family's Catholic very embracing even
Speaker 1: of the differences. We were talking about the ten principles
Speaker 1: of burning man. Did your family have their version of
Speaker 1: the ten principles? We certainly did. I was reminded recently
Speaker 1: by one of my sisters that my father was very
Speaker 1: into manners. If you caught your sister having bad manners
Speaker 1: at the table, if you had your elbows on the table,
Speaker 1: if you talked with your mouthful and you called your
Speaker 1: sister on it, you could get five cents or ten cents.
Speaker 1: My father was a capitalist with the rules at the
Speaker 1: dinner table. You were the oldest of four sisters, and
Speaker 1: your dad was a businessman, So did that preordain you
Speaker 1: to be a leader? I don't think I was certain
Speaker 1: I would be a leader really until I came out
Speaker 1: of Goucher. My senior year at Goucher, I ran for
Speaker 1: student buddy treasurer and one that gave me the bug
Speaker 1: for what was possible with leadership, how to bring your
Speaker 1: ideas to the service. Right after college, I moved to
Speaker 1: Boston and worked in advertising and knew that I was
Speaker 1: on a search to find where I could be a leader.
Speaker 1: Burning man didn't really exist, and it wasn't a job
Speaker 1: I applied for. You go to this all women's college
Speaker 1: in Baltimore. Why there and why were you so different
Speaker 1: from the other kids leaving school? Well, my mother went
Speaker 1: to Wellesley and her sister went to Wellsley, and my
Speaker 1: father's sister went to Wellesley, and I'm the oldest of
Speaker 1: four women, So I don't remember actually even considering a
Speaker 1: co ed school. It was such an important storyline in
Speaker 1: my family, and certainly nobody in Brian, Ohio went to
Speaker 1: a woman's college. Wellesley, Sweetbriar, Goucher. They were the schools
Speaker 1: that I considered. Goucher College was just a really great
Speaker 1: place to flourish. It was like having sisters. I grew
Speaker 1: up with sisters, and I had more sisters. When you
Speaker 1: started college, what did you intend to be when you
Speaker 1: left college? What did you intend to be? I just
Speaker 1: knew that the idea of getting married and having children
Speaker 1: as being the days for the next five to ten
Speaker 1: years was not the phase that I was looking for.
Speaker 1: I was actually really looking for college to give me
Speaker 1: some tools to be on a journey. I was a
Speaker 1: year into Goucher, and I realized that if I struggled
Speaker 1: too hard to find exactly what I wanted, I would
Speaker 1: miss the opportunity of being in college. So I sought
Speaker 1: out creative writing in English. I loved to read, I
Speaker 1: loved to write. As it has turned out, those were foundational.
Speaker 1: Being a good communicator was often why I was hired
Speaker 1: with burning Man, and really with other employment. I had
Speaker 1: to go to Boston briefly, then San Francisco. What was
Speaker 1: the allure of San franz And why better than the
Speaker 1: East Coast? You know? One winter, I got tired of
Speaker 1: digging my car out of the snow in Boston, and
Speaker 1: I went to visit a friend who was living in
Speaker 1: the hate. The lifestyle of living in California was so
Speaker 1: much more about finding yourself off and then it wasn't
Speaker 1: who you are as to where you worked and where
Speaker 1: you went to college, which I found was very much
Speaker 1: true in Boston. I knew it was a place where
Speaker 1: I could really explore who I am. So you worked
Speaker 1: in sales and pr out there and then you quit
Speaker 1: and went to the San Francisco Academy of Art where
Speaker 1: you got your m f A. What took you on
Speaker 1: that path, because that's not sales and pr I did
Speaker 1: really well in the sales end of things. I was
Speaker 1: selling a product actually back to the government. It was
Speaker 1: information based and it was on CD ROM and I
Speaker 1: loved the work. But I got a really great bonus
Speaker 1: check one day and I realized I didn't even know
Speaker 1: what to do with the money, and I didn't feel
Speaker 1: super inspired. I had as having physical experiences I didn't
Speaker 1: quite understand, and I went to a doctor who told
Speaker 1: me she thought I was depressed. I was like, I'm
Speaker 1: not depressed. I'm doing great. And when I really reflected
Speaker 1: on it, I realized I wasn't inspired. At that time,
Speaker 1: all my sisters were in graduate school and I was
Speaker 1: like the Black Sheep. Not in graduate school, and I
Speaker 1: loved photography. I love storytelling, and pulled the plug on
Speaker 1: the great job and went back for Masters in Fine
Speaker 1: Art with emphasis and photography none. So that's where I
Speaker 1: saw photos of Burning Man. Well, that's what I was
Speaker 1: going to get into. I read that it was another
Speaker 1: student's photo. Then Chincho on the Burning Man path. It
Speaker 1: was such a funny story. We were in a color
Speaker 1: class looking at these gorgeous pictures of a sunset of
Speaker 1: this large piece of artwork. I remember asking and whispering
Speaker 1: about the location, and the teacher shushing me and another
Speaker 1: guy and telling us that this was not about the subject,
Speaker 1: it was the quality of the photos. And afterwards we
Speaker 1: kind of chased her out of the room, and she
Speaker 1: was insistent that you needed to know the right phone number,
Speaker 1: and she just couldn't remember it. Sort of on and on,
Speaker 1: and it took me another year to chase it down.
Speaker 1: I was struck by the desert and the art. Just
Speaker 1: one art piece. There wasn't the hundreds of art pieces.
Speaker 1: There was just the man and look so solitary and
Speaker 1: gorgeous and beautiful. And I wanted to go both to
Speaker 1: the event, but I also wanted to go to the desert.
Speaker 1: You went the birding Man for the first time in
Speaker 1: you show up and it is what it's mind boggling.
Speaker 1: You pulled off onto the road to a little, tiny
Speaker 1: silver trailer and there was someone standing there with a
Speaker 1: machine gun slung over his back, and it was a
Speaker 1: real machine gun, but that was also his personas with
Speaker 1: real bullets, I suppose, because they were all into guns.
Speaker 1: In those days. Guns were actually allowed at burning Man.
Speaker 1: They would go off into a shooting range in the afternoon,
Speaker 1: shooting stuffed animals tied to trees, and the other guy
Speaker 1: was wrapped in a white sheet holding a plastic pink flamingo.
Speaker 1: You couldn't see black Rock City because you actually needed
Speaker 1: to drive fifteen miles towards a mountain peak. The best
Speaker 1: part of it really was you couldn't see where you
Speaker 1: were going. You're like, I drive how far? And then
Speaker 1: turn right two miles and then the little city appeared
Speaker 1: in front of you. And so that part is gone
Speaker 1: because for safety we're closer to the land. But the
Speaker 1: idea that you would drive and drive and drive kind
Speaker 1: of timidly without any roads, without any fences, and then
Speaker 1: this little village of people would appear. Was pretty otherworldly.
Speaker 1: It felt like you're on another planet. You met the
Speaker 1: organizers and ninety six and NT seven you quit your job,
Speaker 1: used your savings and dovan You, Larry Harvey, and four
Speaker 1: others founded the organization that later became black Rock City LLC,
Speaker 1: burning Man's managing organization. You were originally the head of
Speaker 1: business and communications, and you took Burning Man into the Internet.
Speaker 1: You started the newsletter Jack Rabbit Speaks, which is still
Speaker 1: with us today. Tell me a little bit about how
Speaker 1: you made that job, because this is like a real
Speaker 1: big life change for you. I had a job I
Speaker 1: really liked for a small firm that made sales software.
Speaker 1: I was with a really small team doing the internetwork
Speaker 1: to programmers to designers. I was a person doing the
Speaker 1: writing and the editing. I've sort of created a project
Speaker 1: management position for myself. It was super fun. It was
Speaker 1: the very beginning of those kinds of things. But I'd
Speaker 1: gone to Burning Man and came back from Burning Man,
Speaker 1: and when I started the relationship with Larry and began
Speaker 1: to build the Jack Rabbit Speaks, I was running it
Speaker 1: through the servers at work because the Internet was strong
Speaker 1: at work, until one day one of the programmers said
Speaker 1: to me, I know what you're doing. You're doing this
Speaker 1: thing and it's going out to fifteen thousand people through
Speaker 1: our servers, and you can't do that anymore. And I
Speaker 1: remember thinking, Okay, I need to figure out whether what
Speaker 1: I'm doing on the side is affecting what I'm doing
Speaker 1: for my work. And then I started coming to work later.
Speaker 1: I would be at the office till ten working on
Speaker 1: Burning Man on the side, and so I would come
Speaker 1: in a little later, and my boss said, no, your
Speaker 1: work hours aren't working, and I was put on report things.
Speaker 1: She gave me a pink slip. She said, your hours
Speaker 1: need to change. I thought about what that would mean.
Speaker 1: That meant not doing burning Men, and so I had
Speaker 1: to that change and make burning Man the priority and
Speaker 1: live off my savings and leave my job and make
Speaker 1: it work. Just hold on a second, because we've got
Speaker 1: so much more to talk about. We'll be back after
Speaker 1: a quick break. Welcome back to math and Magic. We're
Speaker 1: here with Mary and Goodell. I want to hit burning
Speaker 1: Man as a giant tribe concept. Usually, if I hear
Speaker 1: some of my dumber man go oh great, and we
Speaker 1: have this instant bond, What is this giant tribe about,
Speaker 1: and what is that instant acceptance of fellow burners. Originally,
Speaker 1: it very much meant it was a shared experience of
Speaker 1: being in the desert, that you had gone through the
Speaker 1: trials and tribulations of the weather, of building a camp,
Speaker 1: of getting there. The experience has gone beyond that now
Speaker 1: because there are many people around the world that feel
Speaker 1: like they've experienced burning Man at the Israel, burn at
Speaker 1: South Africa, in Japan and Argentina. And so that thread
Speaker 1: now is that we know we've been through an environment
Speaker 1: that is supportive of decommodification, that we're encouraging leave no trace,
Speaker 1: that there's no trash cans, that communal effort and radical
Speaker 1: self reliance are all in play. So the feeling of
Speaker 1: burning Man is affiliating yourself with a way of life,
Speaker 1: a perspective, a kindness towards others, of generosity that comes
Speaker 1: from a burning Man experience, not just in Black Ruxity,
Speaker 1: but in other places of the world. And you can
Speaker 1: look at the person a little more safely, comfortably trusting
Speaker 1: because you've had a similar shared experience. To talk about
Speaker 1: how it's so broad outside of burning Man, I think
Speaker 1: we define ourselves my liberal, my conservative? What's got a job?
Speaker 1: Where do I live? But a burning Man? You have
Speaker 1: all these people of all ages, radically different economic backgrounds,
Speaker 1: political views. How can it be so broad? And society
Speaker 1: in general today seems to be getting more and more
Speaker 1: polarized and segmented. That's the beauty of going Burning Man
Speaker 1: and being in a Burning Man environment. The organization in
Speaker 1: particular makes it very clear that we don't want to
Speaker 1: talk about politics, and we don't want people to feel
Speaker 1: divided by their religion who they are. The goal is
Speaker 1: really to bring people together and connect and collaborate and
Speaker 1: do things greater than ourselves. People are often surprised. In fact,
Speaker 1: they're most surprised when conservatives are at Burning Man. It's
Speaker 1: really quite rewarding to see people of different political backgrounds
Speaker 1: finding that they have something magical and common, like building
Speaker 1: an art car together or taking adventure on the playa.
Speaker 1: They may not even realize what their politics are, and
Speaker 1: at this day and age, we need more bridges. We
Speaker 1: need more bridges to understand each other. How does burning
Speaker 1: then minimize that polarization among the burners because in the
Speaker 1: outside world, the very people that are there would be polarized.
Speaker 1: But inside burning Man is it because everybody wears clothes
Speaker 1: that don't identify them as a job or what they
Speaker 1: do is where they came from. What structurally helps that well.
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of different parts of what
Speaker 1: burning Man is that sets us up for that. The
Speaker 1: way in which we're asking for communal effort and civic responsibility,
Speaker 1: that we're also balancing it with radical self reliance and
Speaker 1: radical self expression. The intention is not about the individual
Speaker 1: and the individual's beliefs, but it's more about what we're
Speaker 1: bringing to it together under those conditions. Your radicalized opinions
Speaker 1: on things matter towards the dialogue about being there in present,
Speaker 1: but don't really matter related to the output. So, for instance,
Speaker 1: the best way to express really different opinions would be
Speaker 1: through art. You can also express it through a theme camp.
Speaker 1: Our purpose is to bring people together. Our purpose is
Speaker 1: to create opportunity for people to learn from each other
Speaker 1: and to collaborate on large endeavors. So we are definitely
Speaker 1: behind the scenes learning from activities and responses. We do
Speaker 1: sort of tweak how we manage the camps, of how
Speaker 1: we manage our communications, of how we set the expectations
Speaker 1: for the community. It's not anarchy. We're all doing it together.
Speaker 1: I love walking the playa with people for the first time.
Speaker 1: The light shows on all these mutant vehicles going around,
Speaker 1: and you can see their eyes wide open. I think
Speaker 1: it challenges their view of what they know and what
Speaker 1: they believe and what's possible. For anybody in the creative
Speaker 1: side of the business, it's a great way to open
Speaker 1: your mind creatively, to go, Wow, who are these people,
Speaker 1: Where do they get that idea? How did they come
Speaker 1: up with that, how did they execute it? How did
Speaker 1: they get the money? Yeah, the engineer exactly, the conservative
Speaker 1: engineer came and looked at Brittingman, and that's all he
Speaker 1: wanted to do, Bob. He wanted to go to the
Speaker 1: base of the big structures and figure out how did
Speaker 1: they do it. The politics didn't matter, and in fact,
Speaker 1: he was really worried that he would see things that
Speaker 1: he didn't want to see. He didn't even see anything
Speaker 1: that he was a rate of. He only saw the
Speaker 1: imagination in an ingenuity that really sparked his imagination. The
Speaker 1: first time I went, it was all fire, hula hoops
Speaker 1: on fire. They were tossing and dancing with fire and
Speaker 1: now it's all electric wires. What was that transition and
Speaker 1: was that the law that we had to get rid
Speaker 1: of fire or was it just an evolution. We saw
Speaker 1: glow sticks for a while. The glow sticks went away
Speaker 1: and that moved on to e L wire and I
Speaker 1: think that that's more accessible for people. I think working
Speaker 1: with fire is more of an art form. It does
Speaker 1: take some work and some lessons. With safety. We do
Speaker 1: have a little less burning of things in general, and
Speaker 1: that's really logistics and safety. It takes a lot of
Speaker 1: work to create a safe perimeter and so we are
Speaker 1: seeing fewer large pieces being burned. Talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about the regional burns. How did that come about and
Speaker 1: how do they compare to burning men in Black Rock City. Well,
Speaker 1: I've been to very few of them. Actually, I've been
Speaker 1: to the one in New Zealand, which at the time
Speaker 1: had about four people. I found it ist, is magical.
Speaker 1: It had all the qualities of making eye contact with
Speaker 1: someone and smiling. It had serendipity, actually had a pond,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't a desert. They had performance. There was
Speaker 1: a group in bathing suits and bathing caps that were
Speaker 1: marching down to the Pond with great fanfare. The regional
Speaker 1: events are I think very important for people to have
Speaker 1: access to the experience of the culture. We can't really
Speaker 1: have more than eighty thousand people in black Rock City.
Speaker 1: The Burners that have been to black Rock City and
Speaker 1: they go to Africa burn and have been going to
Speaker 1: black Rock City for a while say it reminds them
Speaker 1: of the old days, smaller, more intimate, but the energy
Speaker 1: is the same. It's very creative and very self expressive.
Speaker 1: So in Burning Man was profitable for the first time.
Speaker 1: What was the business decisions that put Burning Man into
Speaker 1: the black well? The first one was to raise the
Speaker 1: ticket prices over the ticket prices Originally they were twenty
Speaker 1: five dollars, and then at the gate I think they
Speaker 1: might have been forty, and then I think the gate
Speaker 1: price was sixty five. That was a really important year
Speaker 1: between because as you heard, that's when I left my job,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't the only one. The workload for the
Speaker 1: six of us was such that we really couldn't do
Speaker 1: other work, and that was when it was more important
Speaker 1: to have not just twenty dollars left at the end
Speaker 1: of the year to pay Larry's bills, but the rest
Speaker 1: of us. It needed to help us survive. The only
Speaker 1: way to do it is increase the population and to
Speaker 1: raise the ticket prices. This is a big transformation of Marion.
Speaker 1: What lessons does this have for others? What does it
Speaker 1: say about a life mission. One of the things I
Speaker 1: think it was important for me was taking the things
Speaker 1: that I had done up to that point, and I
Speaker 1: merged them into that opportunity. So through my twenties, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, a time when people are always trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what they want to do. I was on
Speaker 1: a journey, but I kind of wasn't afraid. I worked
Speaker 1: as a bank teller, I worked in advertising, I actually
Speaker 1: worked in a law firm. And when Bernie Man came
Speaker 1: along in my early to mid thirties, those are the
Speaker 1: things I took on. I took on supporting the legal
Speaker 1: I knew banking and finance, the communications work for me.
Speaker 1: The transformation is listening to what it is you're able
Speaker 1: to do or what you want to do when it
Speaker 1: comes in front of you. Knowing enough about yourself, ye
Speaker 1: say yes instead of no. I took on the internet
Speaker 1: and the website for Burning Man, but before that I
Speaker 1: didn't know it existed. What was the web four years
Speaker 1: before that? Not much? Not much. When you went for
Speaker 1: the first time in n there were four thousand atten
Speaker 1: days when I went for the first time. Nine years
Speaker 1: later it was up to thirty thousand. Today it's eighty thousand.
Speaker 1: When I went in two thousand and four, many people
Speaker 1: said it's over, it's ruined. It's so commercial now. And
Speaker 1: every year I hear people say that, what's that about?
Speaker 1: What are they really saying? You know, it's such a
Speaker 1: cherished experience for so many people. They are afraid that
Speaker 1: it's going to deteriorate when more people come. They're protecting it.
Speaker 1: But it does keep getting better and more imagination and
Speaker 1: creativity does come to it. I think two thousand eleven
Speaker 1: was the first year that burning Men sold out in advance.
Speaker 1: Since then, the man has gotten so strong that you've
Speaker 1: had to use lotteries and other techniques to allocate tickets.
Speaker 1: What was that tipping point? That was the government They
Speaker 1: started feeling uncomfortable about our growth and their capacity to
Speaker 1: manage and observe our growth in a way that made
Speaker 1: them feel like it was being done safely. That was
Speaker 1: the endgame on that. You know, in the long run.
Speaker 1: It was for the best. It is better for people
Speaker 1: to come prepared and to think of it far enough
Speaker 1: in advance. The numbers of people that were deciding to
Speaker 1: come at the last minute, they were definitely in the thousands.
Speaker 1: Now that we're at eighty thousand people, we don't even
Speaker 1: want eight thousand people deciding at the last minute. But
Speaker 1: the government was the initial halt. How do you deal
Speaker 1: with the government. This is public and I know there's
Speaker 1: some people in government who think it's great and some
Speaker 1: people think it's not so great. Kind a minute to
Speaker 1: talk about that the government is the hardest work for sure.
Speaker 1: Really it's educating the government. We see changes certainly in politics,
Speaker 1: but we don't see quite the same changes at the
Speaker 1: same rate in the administrative side. But when we do,
Speaker 1: it is really a journey to educate them that the
Speaker 1: community is one that's very peaceable, very organized, and as
Speaker 1: a very deliberate cultural intention. That's the work that I'm
Speaker 1: still the most involved in technology communications, Those are delegated
Speaker 1: to other people at this point, but I'm very involved
Speaker 1: in the day to day and week to week strategy
Speaker 1: around government relations. Frankly, it's very important that we have
Speaker 1: good relations with everybody from the local Native Americans to
Speaker 1: Reno City councilman, to the governor, state elected officials, and
Speaker 1: then the federal government BLM Department the Interior. And that's
Speaker 1: a lot of people with differing priorities. You know, burning
Speaker 1: man on the surface of an administrator in the government
Speaker 1: looks like it's just a big party in the desert.
Speaker 1: To have the conversation about at being a global culture
Speaker 1: and frankly changing tourism in northern Nevada, that takes more time.
Speaker 1: Two thousand eleven was also the you and Larry and
Speaker 1: the other founders began the steps to turn the LLC
Speaker 1: into a nonprofit. I remember spending some time with you
Speaker 1: and Larry and some of the others during that time,
Speaker 1: and it appeared you were collecting thoughts from everybody you
Speaker 1: touched and sort of getting these different opinions and information
Speaker 1: to help you make the move. What did you want
Speaker 1: to accomplish with that move from an LLC to a nonprofit. Well,
Speaker 1: the future of the entities and the culture we're not
Speaker 1: going to flourish under the framework of a limited liability corporation.
Speaker 1: The structure doesn't allow it to go on beyond the
Speaker 1: lives of the owners, though we were functioning more as
Speaker 1: a sea corps and we weren't taking any share as
Speaker 1: we really needed the structure that could then go beyond
Speaker 1: the individuals, and so that was really the driving force
Speaker 1: behind it. We were collecting data because it's really somewhat
Speaker 1: unheard of that you take an LLC and turn it
Speaker 1: into a nonprofit. The way in which it changed the
Speaker 1: decision making processes was very important to me. I certainly,
Speaker 1: as you know, came from a fairly capitalist background. We
Speaker 1: would make the decisions and we would act on them.
Speaker 1: The nonprofit structure brought an element of public oversight, and
Speaker 1: so I was kind of resistant in the beginning because
Speaker 1: I just didn't want to take away our autonomy. So
Speaker 1: we spent a lot of time asking, and ultimately we
Speaker 1: found out we could run a nonprofit profitably. All of
Speaker 1: this is built on protecting that culture. I've never seen
Speaker 1: an organization so obsessive about the culture. What advice would
Speaker 1: you give for other executives on managing a product or
Speaker 1: a company culture that you've learned from Burning I don't
Speaker 1: think that it's easy to translate Burning Man into being
Speaker 1: a product, But what I can say that's been successful
Speaker 1: for us is our intention in the journey of where
Speaker 1: we were going, has a cultural path, looking at what
Speaker 1: the end game is as it applies to what the
Speaker 1: culture is, and actually understanding in the case of a product,
Speaker 1: it would be the customer and in the case of us,
Speaker 1: it's just our community and the culture. If I was
Speaker 1: advising a product, understand not what your market is, but
Speaker 1: what your culture is and what your output is, and
Speaker 1: whether there's a culture around that output, and how to
Speaker 1: mobilize that culture in that community to get something done,
Speaker 1: something that's productive. Larry Harvey, founder cultural guru as well
Speaker 1: as the philosopher, passed away in two thousand and eighteen,
Speaker 1: actually a young age seventy. I know it was very
Speaker 1: hard for you personally, but as an organization, how is
Speaker 1: Burning Man coped with this loss? Well, the first thing
Speaker 1: we did was grieve. We spent most of doing that.
Speaker 1: That was actually in the form of a number of
Speaker 1: celebrations when you have a loss like that so quickly.
Speaker 1: My goal was to allow all of the opportunities for
Speaker 1: the organization, in the community and the friends to gather
Speaker 1: around a conversation around Larry and to celebrate him and
Speaker 1: to talk about him. And tell stories, and by the
Speaker 1: end of I think that the retelling of the stories
Speaker 1: really sort of sealed in a lot of our minds
Speaker 1: how important and powerful the story is of who he
Speaker 1: is and what he brought to Burning Man. The theme
Speaker 1: for the event this year was metamorphosis. That really describes
Speaker 1: the next layer of the process, which was not to
Speaker 1: forget him, not to over reference him, but to look
Speaker 1: to the future and recognize that we need to set
Speaker 1: the culture up, in the organization up so that it
Speaker 1: goes on beyond us. That's my personal lesson. I better
Speaker 1: get to work, because there's things that I intend to
Speaker 1: leave behind better than I found it in the Burning
Speaker 1: Man culture. That was a wake up call. I've always
Speaker 1: been impressed by your calm, even in the most trying situations.
Speaker 1: How did you get that calm? Is that learned or
Speaker 1: is that hereditary? On the one hand, I would say
Speaker 1: it would be from my parents, but both of them
Speaker 1: are known for their strong personalities. I really don't know
Speaker 1: where I got it from, but I do know that
Speaker 1: when I got the call that Larry had had a
Speaker 1: stroke and I was in France, I knew that I
Speaker 1: had to be the one that was gonna be calm
Speaker 1: and was going to be focused. I knew that everything
Speaker 1: was about to change. He was the yang to my yang.
Speaker 1: Often he would have strong opinions about things, and I
Speaker 1: would be the one to sort of calm him down
Speaker 1: and point in a particular direction. Burning Man actually taught
Speaker 1: me to be strong in the face of a storm.
Speaker 1: You've seen a lot of this enlightened community at scale.
Speaker 1: This podcast is for marketers and entrepreneurs. What lessons have
Speaker 1: you learned from looking at that enlightened community at scale
Speaker 1: that might be abstible to help them? We need to
Speaker 1: be more playful. We need to be innovative. We need
Speaker 1: to allow more big ideas to the surface, and we
Speaker 1: need to help others manifest them giving people the opportunity
Speaker 1: to think differently, to be themselves if you could, what
Speaker 1: advice would you give yourself in when you first heard
Speaker 1: about Burning Man for the first time. When I first
Speaker 1: went to Burning Man, I was afraid. I was fascinated,
Speaker 1: but I was afraid to play. And I remember observing.
Speaker 1: Once I got through that, I thought, I'm never gonna
Speaker 1: be an observer again. I want to be a participant,
Speaker 1: and I want to pick something up and I want
Speaker 1: to play and I want to learn. So as we
Speaker 1: wrap up, we always give a shout out to the
Speaker 1: person who's the most analytical person, you know that math
Speaker 1: part of the equation, and to the person who's the
Speaker 1: showman of the showwoman, who's just the magician had to
Speaker 1: pick two people who would be your favorite for the mathematician.
Speaker 1: Paul Romer's article the Nobel Prize winning Economist about Burning
Speaker 1: Man really gave me some insight about Burning Man around
Speaker 1: culture and economy. So, magician, I probably can guess who
Speaker 1: you're gonna say, Well, it would have been Larry Harvey.
Speaker 1: I figured that I had to ask the question. Mary,
Speaker 1: and you have been entrusted with a very special culture.
Speaker 1: It's come a long way since the summer solstice of nineteen.
Speaker 1: I'm certain you and your teammates will continue that evolution.
Speaker 1: And thanks for joining us. Thank you very much, Bob,
Speaker 1: it was great to be here. Here are a few
Speaker 1: things I picked up in my conversation with Marian. One,
Speaker 1: when looking at culture, be descriptive, not proscriptive. It's how
Speaker 1: Larry Harvey first came up with the ten principles that
Speaker 1: drove Burning Man's success and continued growth to communal efforts
Speaker 1: can transcend our differences At burning Man, Marian says a
Speaker 1: common goal and community spirit can forge unexpected relationships. Three.
Speaker 1: Be a participant, not an observer. After Marian first experienced
Speaker 1: Burning Man, she volunteered to help it succeed. This is
Speaker 1: a part of the burning Man culture for everyone involved.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. I'm Bob Pittman. That's it for today's episode.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for listening to Math and Magic, a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. This show is hosted by
Speaker 1: Bob Pittman. Special thanks to Sue Schillinger for booking and
Speaker 1: wrangling our wonderful talent, which is no small feat. Nikkiatore
Speaker 1: for pulling research bill plaques, and Michael Asar for their
Speaker 1: recording help, our editor Ryan Murdoch, and of course Gayle Raoul,
Speaker 1: Eric Angel, Noel Mango and everyone who helped bring this
Speaker 1: show to your ears. Until next time,