Tom Price - From the Playa to the Planet
Explicit content warning
11/13/24 • 50 min
Tom Price co-founded Burners Without Borders, Black Rock Solar, and a company that gifts clean-burning kitchens to people in Kenya.
Tom talks about the weather, specifically hurricanes, and how Burners Without Borders started and grows despite extreme circumstances because Burners are extreme!
Tom’s tales of adventure include paperwork pranks and ad hoc Cajun catharsis. If Burning Man is a permission engine, giving people agency in their lives, he says the lesson of Burning Man is finding out what is too much and then finding the sweet spot.
Note: The company names they joke about in this episode are NOT sponsors, because if we don't have Decommodification, we don't have Burning Man!
Tom Price: Burning Man Journal
Burning Man LIVE: Tom Price and the Benefactor’s Dilemma (2022)
Burning Man LIVE: Creative Solutions to Mass Destruction (2020)
Tom Price co-founded Burners Without Borders, Black Rock Solar, and a company that gifts clean-burning kitchens to people in Kenya.
Tom talks about the weather, specifically hurricanes, and how Burners Without Borders started and grows despite extreme circumstances because Burners are extreme!
Tom’s tales of adventure include paperwork pranks and ad hoc Cajun catharsis. If Burning Man is a permission engine, giving people agency in their lives, he says the lesson of Burning Man is finding out what is too much and then finding the sweet spot.
Note: The company names they joke about in this episode are NOT sponsors, because if we don't have Decommodification, we don't have Burning Man!
Tom Price: Burning Man Journal
Burning Man LIVE: Tom Price and the Benefactor’s Dilemma (2022)
Burning Man LIVE: Creative Solutions to Mass Destruction (2020)
Previous Episode
Burning Curiosity - The Study of Burning Man
Academics from everywhere experiment, collaborate, and even interpret our stories of "This one time at Burning Man."
In this episode, Stuart talks with people from Burning Nerds, an annual gathering of academics in Black Rock City. They keep it light, though; not too many unnecessarily fancy words.
Dr Jukka-Pekka Heikkilä describes the technique used by the Burning Man Project that gives more power to the people.
Bryan Yazell and Patricia Wolf of the University of Southern Denmark use Flash Fiction in BRC to develop a new subgenre of sci-fi called climate fiction (‘cli-fi’), stories that are less dystopian, even less utopian, more protopian (fancy word) — not good or bad, but progress.
Professor Matt Zook of the University of Kentucky extols Black Rock City's unique aspects, from temporality to being a place apart. He and Stuart explore the interplay between digital and physical spaces, and what about community actually makes it good.
Then Jukka-Pekka Heikkilä returns with how the Burning Stories project, now in its 6th year of tracking tales, is a cultural repository and is training a gifted AI on how Burners be Burning.
geography.as.uky.edu/users/zook
burningman.org/programs/philosophical-center/academics
regionals.burningman.org/european-leadership-summit
sdu.dk/en/publications/enacting-hopeful-climate-futures-at-burning-man-2024
Bjørn S. Cience - Founding Board Member at Institute of Performative Inquiry
Next Episode
Burning without Going to Burning Man
Burners often speak about the work it takes to prepare their art, art car, or camp for Black Rock City, but for many, it doesn’t end there. A project sparked in the desert or at Regional Events can take on a life of its own, continuing year-round in surprising ways.
What happens when a camp or mutant vehicle takes a break from Black Rock City? After all the Communal Effort devoted to their playa project, do they even know how to stop? Apparently not... and the world benefits.
kbot and Stuart speak with people who pressed pause on producing in Black Rock City, only to put their time, imagination, and heart into projects that build a better world.
- Leon & Patrizia of New York Dangerous discuss how their resource rescue nonprofit fosters a ‘pay it forward’ form of altruism.
- Leo & Catarina of Jaguara share how their mutant vehicle has become a vehicle for education and expression in Columbia.
- Zoe (aka “Jeff”) of Camp Starbarf tells how a year off for her camp spawned a voter support initiative and a punk rock band!
Their stories share a theme: the 10 Principles (and playa-born fortitude) inspire their year-round endeavors.
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