Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 401: Logan Mirto AKA Cobra Commander

Episode Date: September 25, 2020

Logan Mirto, one of the creators of Black Rock City (an undervalued aspect of Burning Man), joins the DTFH! You can hear more from Logan on The Burning Man Podcast, and follow him on Twitter and Instagram. Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: Squarespace - Use offer code: DUNCAN to save 10% on your first site. Shudder - Use promo code DUNCAN for a FREE 30 Day Trial. Feals - Visit feals.com/duncan and get 50% off and FREE shipping on your first order.

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to the Dunkin' Trussell Family Hour Podcast, being recorded from the Commander Burke, Mausoleum in Asheville, North Carolina. I just wanna say thank you to Asheville Forever Cemetery for hosting the podcast for the next few episodes while I try to find a place to live where I can have an actual home office. And you know, I gotta admit,

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I made friends with the spiders on the shelves by the candles and the lanterns. If flick flickers late at night, I don't mind laying here while my bones turn white. As long as I eat brains, I don't feel pain. It won't be long until no one remembers who you are. 500, 600 years, Max. Can you think of anyone from 600 years ago

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That's the very beginning of House of Leaves, voted on by the Dune book club. And we would love to invite you to come and join us. There's still time to order this book. It's available on Amazon or Kindle. Highly recommend the paperback copy. It's really beautiful. And because of the nature of the book,

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My sweet future forgotten friends, we have got a beautiful episode of the DTFH for you. Logan Murto, one of the creators of Black Rock City. One of the most overlooked delights of Burning Man is a period known as the build, which is the time before Burning Man officially starts when people from all over the world gather together to help build Black Rock City,

which for a little while becomes the most populated city in Nevada. I've been to the build. I came there with my beautiful theme camp, the Enchanted Booty Forest. And one of my favorite memories of all time was digging trenches in the dirt of the desert to lay electrical wire so that my camp could have electricity

for their DJ booth setup. It was like prison labor level work. You're covered with this acidic, sacred dust, but it was such a joy to do something out there that was hard, involved just physical labor and the only payment was the joy of building something with a group of friends. It was really a high point in my life.

And during that particular Burning Man, I was lucky enough to meet today's guest, Logan Murto. Logan Murto, aka Cobra Commander, is the DPW personnel manager at Burning Man. That might not sound very exciting, but what it means is that every year he comes to Burning Man 100 days early and manages 700 people in the middle of an alien desert

who help create Black Rock City. He's a badass. And so now everybody, please raise your hands and salute today's brilliant, philosophical angel of a guest, Logan Murto. Welcome to the DTFH, this is badass, man. Welcome, welcome on you, that you are with us,

shake hands, no need to be moved, welcome to you. It's been Duncan Chassel, thank you. Logan, welcome to the DTFH. This is badass, man. We talked about on the Playa doing a podcast and it's been probably, it's been years since then, but I still remember how cool it was meeting you

and like the kind of mystical significance you have out there on the Playa, because you are, I mean, it's not fair, I guess, to say that you have one of the hardest jobs out there, but holy shit, you're in charge of like somehow managing that whole, getting the whole Black Rock City built, right? It's true, I got a great team.

I have, I'm on a council of eight people and between the eight of us, we run the Department of Public Works and the Department of Public Works is about 800 people in total and we spend anywhere from a couple of weeks to upwards of more than a hundred days on the Playa, putting this thing together

and making sure that everything's ready to go for opening night. And then we stick around afterwards, like I'd still be out there until early October, helping everybody take it apart and managing the crew that is out there doing Playa restoration along with the rest of the members on the council and all that.

Can you, for people who are only familiar with Burning Man from like cheesy Instagram pictures that they've seen, which I think is like for some people, given them the complete wrong idea of what the festival is, but they might not even know what the Playa means. Do you think you could describe those conditions to people? What's it like out there before any of that stuff goes up?

I'll do my best. It's like a 1700 square mile alkali flat. It is like this powder, like baby powder thin dust that just stretches on into like the world's most infinite looking parking lot surrounded by this bowl of mountains, which is just gorgeous and serene and it is overwhelmingly beautiful.

And then you spend a couple of hours out there and your body starts reminding you that it is also hostile and not friendly to life. And it is a place where you have to stay hydrated where you have to stay hyper vigilant about the sun, about exposure to the elements. It is the driest, most, yeah, very, not most, but one of the most hostile places

I've ever been in my life for sure. Yeah. I remember posting something about the sand of Burning Man on the Burning Man subreddit and being immediately people being like, that's not sand, that's alkali. But you think you could talk about what alkali actually is? Oh, not well.

Yeah, it is. No, that gets into a sciency place that I'm not gonna be able to hit you up. It is a fine, fine dust that gets into everything that you have, that gets in places you did not know you had that will disrupt your electronics, that will corrode your vehicles. It is an intense substance for sure.

If you've got your phone out, you can expect it to be dead by the time you get out of the desert. If you've got your, you can't bring modular synthesizers there, you can't bring any of that stuff because it'll eat it alive. Well, you can, but you gotta keep it wrapped in plastic. For the last couple of years,

I've actually been getting a band, some people I know, a band called Spindrift out of LA and I've been getting them to come out and play for the crew. And they bring all their equipment out and then they're just like, I'm sure that they're home just ringing the dust out of it for days.

I mean, I just, it's the most wild thing because it's got a certain smell to it too. What's that smell? You know, the alkali, like any of my stuff from the burn to this day, I get shivers when I pull out like my backpack that has the clothes I was wearing because you smell that specific scent. Sure.

Yeah, and your body's got a sense memory to all of that, right? And it's interesting because I, you know, I've spent a tremendous amount of time out there like a hundred days plus for, you know, decade and a half every year. And so I think of that place as being largely scentless because it really does, it's so dry

that nothing really carries out there to your scent in the normal way. But playa itself, yeah, you smell it off the playa itself. You get out of there and you back in the real world and you smell that dust and it's, it is haunting and familiar and your body just knows it. It's like, it's like nothing else. It's like nothing else.

But maybe you could talk about the temperatures out there because go, I mean, I went in for the build with my camp. It was the best time I ever had working, but holy shit. Can you talk a little bit about, just briefly, what is it exactly y'all are doing out there? What is required in setting up a city in the middle of this alien environment? Absolutely, a tremendous amount is required.

And, you know, there's a lot of teams that put a lot of work into putting Black Rock City together. And I wanna acknowledge that right up front. What my team, the Department of Public Works is responsible for is physical infrastructure for the most part. And then running a couple of services that kind of provide service to people in Black Rock City.

But to sum it up, like we're in there putting in the roads. We're in there building shade structures. We're, you know, we put our teams put together the center camp cafe. We build the man and the man pavilion. All of the arctic stations are physically constructed by us. So we're out there doing physical labor. We're out there doing physical construction.

And that's not to mention the teams that are putting in the power grids, teams that are running our fuel department. You know, there's so much going on there. That is, that is all kind of coming together, not only to support the crew during their extended stay out there, but also to support staff as they roll in to do their part to make Black Rock City happen.

Well, and also, what about the, to me, what was so striking or everything's striking about Burning Man, but one of the most striking things about it is how clean it is all the way through. That's the part where your mind gets blown. When, you know, a few days in, when you realize if you have seen a cigarette on the ground, you're picking it up.

People just, you know, like people are, it's the cleanest festival. It's, it's cleaner than my backyard for sure. And Sherman Oaks with a toddler, it's clean. So what is that like trying to, you know, you know, you've got gas out there. You've got flammable shit out there. All kinds of pollutants.

What is it like working in a place where if you spill anything, you're looking at hours and hours of extra work. You know, it's, it's kind of crazy, but it's, you know, that Black Rock City is so clean because of the participants. You know, we, we, of course, on staff do everything we can to do to make that happen.

But if it wasn't for the cultural buy-in, you know, if it wasn't for us asking everyone who attends to do their part, you know, we wouldn't have that. And so, you know, it's, it's a massive group effort to make that the case. And I'm glad that that's your experience of it, 100%. You know, to work in an environment like that, it just becomes part of the deal.

You know, you don't cut wood unless you put a tarp down. You know, you, if you think you're going to be working with something, you're going to spill. If you think there's some danger of it, like just becoming a mess, you're thinking about that beforehand. You're, you're planning for that, you know, as a part of the process.

And it, it then that bleeds into the way that you do anything in life, you know, once you start actually thinking about leaving no trace, once you actually thinking about how can I make as little an impact on my environment as possible when I do what I want to do or what I need to do. You know, it just gets built into your, your psyche in terms of like how you approach a problem.

Man, I gotta tell you, it lasted for me for about, and this is pretty good for me about a year after that burn. I would, if I stated an Airbnb after my second, but I would like clean the, you know, you don't have to, but you get in your head like, oh, I'm going to leave this place like nobody was here. It's a- And why wouldn't you want to leave something

better than you found it? You know, so I'm curious, what made that fade out after a year? What made that not the case anymore? You know, laziness, like, you know, the world, you are getting, you, again, anything I say is clearly an excuse, but I think there is something about,

and they talk, burners talk about this all the time, you hit default reality, and it is like you're entering into another dimension or something. You drop in to the world that you were born into, and you carry with it like a, I don't know, like a comet or something. You've got a little Burning Man trail that lasts for,

but it burns off in the atmosphere, man. It like, I still think about it, but it's a little bit of a foggy memory for me now. You know, it's not foggy just because of the drugs, but foggy, but foggy. Because a distance over time has made it, yeah. Distance over time, you know. That's been my experience with,

not just Burning Man, but spiritual retreats in general. And psychedelics, it's one of the problems is maintaining the vibe. You and I were talking about that a couple of days ago, and it's, I don't know if it's, I don't know if I would classify it as a problem, you know, it's that wobble, it's that forgetting and remembering,

like that is the process, it's breathing in and breathing out those things that we want to hold on to, you know, and not trying to hold on to them desperately forever, but rather remembering how to recognize that you've dropped them and remembering how to pick them back up. Oh yeah, man.

Thank you for, thank you. Yeah, you're right. And that was the, you know, to me, that's the, well, that's one of the great hopes that Burning Man has given me is, and I remember that was the first, that's when I was getting, when the first one I went to,

when I was getting really like kind of choked up, is this sense of like, holy shit, this is the way human beings can be. This is the way human beings can be. And I've never seen this way that human beings can be before. And you see that, and like, we don't have to be the way that we are.

Like we're in our cities, we're, you know, hunkered down. A lot of us, we're especially now, we're alienated from our community. You know, we don't, everyone says, oh, go check on your neighbors, but come on, who really does that? Who really does- Not many people.

Not enough people. Not enough people. And then you go to this other place, which is an alien environment, where you shouldn't be able to even survive for a few hours. And it's heaven on earth for a second. And I remember getting choked up, and because that, I just kept thinking like,

oh my God, how crazy is it that we chose this other way? The name, you know, the way we're doing it in default reality. But what do you, what do you think about that? I mean, what's the take among the people who are creating this incredible temporary city? Are they so utopian as I am about it, or is there a more realistic view of things?

I can't speak for it. You know, I can only speak for my own perspective, you know, and my own take on it. But I'll do my best to, I mean, I feel like the reason I worked for Burning Man, ultimately, is because I wanted to work for something that I thought was improving the human experience. You know, my priority as a human is that

I am doing everything I can to help my species evolve, and to help myself grow, and to help people around me grow, and just learn how to be the best person I can be, and to help others do that same. And not only for myself, but for my community, and for the world, and for the species at large. And so, when I think about what we're accomplishing out there,

you know, I never use the word utopian, because I have seen plenty of people go out there and have a horrible time, and never want to come back. You know, I've seen people on their worst day out there. I've seen people, I've known people out there that have died, and have died out there. And that is, you know, utopia is loaded as a term, and is loaded as a concept.

I don't go there with it, but at first glance, I think that Burning Man is that, you know, and Burning Man, because it provides this very digestible, and comprehensible, or at least clear alternative to what you're used to. So no matter what culture you come from, in the world, you show up at Burning Man, you're like, oh, this is clearly something different,

and this is clearly something else. And something else isn't usually available. Like most cultures don't want you to really think about something else being available to you as a way of behaving, right? And so just by altering an alternative, you're already kind of shaking people up, and you're already letting people

kind of consider things differently. And when you take them to a place, or when they go to a place of that kind of permissiveness, and that kind of acceptance, you know, they're able to do some of that work, and they're able to look inside themselves, and question things that they may not have questioned about themselves.

And even if they come out of that experience with all the same answers that they went in with, at least they took a moment to look, and at least then they leave more affirmed with who they are, you know? I don't know if I personally feel like we're creating a utopia, but I know that we're offering people a chance

to consider things, and consider things maybe differently than they have before. And that goes from everything to like, how they treat their garbage, how they treat their cigarette butts when they're walking around, to, you know, how they treat each other, to what they think is possible,

to what they think they personally can accomplish with the time they have on the earth. And so just offering that up as a space, as a perspective check, and as a permission to explore, to me, is one of the most important things. Yeah. What about, what's your theory on work? You think you can talk about work a little bit?

I can talk about work. Hit me a little more specifically. What would you like to know about work? Well, that was another of my favorite experiences as a human being, is coming in for the build, and helping my camp, you know, like helping build the camp. And, but realizing like this,

we're all just doing this for love. Like we're doing this because we liking it out with each other, we're doing this because people are gonna enjoy what we're offering, the playa, and suddenly the encumbrance of getting paid, if that makes any sense at all. Or the encumbrance of hourly,

working for something other than what most people are taught is the reason you work, was one of the most righteous, beautiful experiences that I've had, and I just, all I could think is like, oh, is this like what the, this must be what people and tribes feel, or this must have been an indigenous, this must have been the experience of people

before there was even such a thing as money, you know? And also the addition, and again, I'm not, I don't know what the rules are for Burning Man, so I'm sorry if this is like saying something I'm not supposed to, but drinking, drinking and drinking being a little high while you dig trenches and listening to music, you know what I mean?

The way work suddenly becomes the celebration, it becomes its own joy as opposed to like, oh, clockin' in, and I'm gonna get away with just a bare minimum that I need to get away with, and I'm gonna go home and get fuckin' hammered and go to sleep, you know what I'm saying? That's what I mean. I do, I'd love to speak to that.

First off, I would like to clear up the fact that my crew works sober, we have an ocean-safe work environment, like we do not allow for any sort of substance abuse while people are working. Of course. Right, so that's a thing. And I think the perception of that is that we're partying

all day and drinking all day and whatever, but no, we're not, we're operating heavy equipment, we're keeping each other safe. Real quick, maybe it would be good to distinguish the difference between what you do and the individual camps. Absolutely, and so my role with the DPW and with Burning Man primarily is the manager,

the personnel manager for the Department of Public Works. And that means I'm recruiting and then ultimately overseeing the experience of almost everybody under, almost everybody on the DPW, so about 800 people. And so for a great many of those people, I'm their introduction to the experience, I'm bringing them in, I'm kind of orienting them to the experience and checking on them throughout it,

so to make sure that they're getting out of it, what they wanna get out of it. And I have thought a lot about the relationship to labor that we have, and especially for the people that come out there, to do a stint with us is at minimum is a couple of weeks, but we get people out there for the long haul. And a lot of the people that can spend three months

of their year going to build Burning Man is, they're on the younger side, they're in a place in their life where they've got a lot more fluidity, right? Yeah. And so when you have someone in their 20s who's going out there to spend their summer doing that, their relationship with work is still pretty, it's still pretty raw,

and it's what society has served up for them. And one of my favorite quotes, in fact, when someone's like, hey, what's your dream job? And the answer being, well, I don't dream of labor, because that notion of labor being something toxic, that labor is something inherently bad, is kind of fused into us because most of us grow up being bribed to do things we wouldn't normally do

so that we can, first, maybe get a little extra because we're living with our parents, but then just so we can survive so that we can pay our rent, so that we can pay our bills. And so, I don't know what the percentage is if you go into the world and we're able to poll and ask people if they're doing what they want to do for money, but I don't think everybody is, of course.

A lot of people are doing what they need to do to get by or what they feel like they need to do to thrive. Out there, you get someone who for the first time has the opportunity to work very hard and to put in a tremendous amount of effort to do something that they want to do and to give them an immediate reward of the fruits of their labor manifested,

just for them to be able to go out there, bust ass, and at the end of it have BlackRock City as an end result and to be able to look at them and be like, hey, you see this thing? You did that, you know? That is, I know for me, that was unprecedented when I went out there for the first time in 1998 and worked on the labor crew.

That was unprecedented for me to have BlackRock City as the reward for me just like working an insane amount and working harder than I'd ever worked in my life. And that in turn, the experience of working in DPW for the first time and in the years that followed helped me redefine what labor is for myself. And I hope very much that it does that for anybody that comes across and gets to be on our crew.

And I hope that it does anybody who just goes out there and bust ass for a theme camp, you know? Because labor isn't about bribery and it shouldn't be about doing something you don't wanna do so that you can get some shiny reward at the end. It should be about effort is directed towards what you love is the best thing you can do for yourself and for your life, you know?

So if we're helping people remember that or recognize that for the first time, then that's fantastic. And I don't just mean DPW, if Burning Man at large gives people an opportunity to go out there and be like, holy shit, I'm gonna counten but now I'm like hammering stakes into the circus tent and I feel better than I've ever felt in my life. There's a lesson there that they can pick up

and take home with them if they want, you know? There's something there for them to remember and to internalize if they can't, you know? This episode of the DTFH has been sponsored by The. Feels, it's magical, delicious, Tolkien-esque CBD delivered right to your door. I have problems sleeping.

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your first order with free shipping feels.com slash Duncan. Would you call it subversive? That bit of wisdom that you get digging a trench and you've applied your whole damn ego to something. You know what I mean? Like your ego gets stuck in like, I'm a comedian and I blah, blah, blah. And then you're out there digging a trench to run cables

so that there could be music and you're happier than you've ever been and you're digging a fucking trench. And it's, you know what I mean? Like, isn't that a little subversive if our whole system is based on this hierarchical centralization of duties? Well, there's something subversive in there.

I'm not sure if it's this part. I mean, I'm pretty upfront about it. It certainly will catch you by surprise, but I'm definitely upfront about the fact that labor towards what you love is what you should be doing in this life. That said, I will also tell you that if you'd come to me as a teenager

and told me that the happiest times of my life would be picking up garbage and sunflower seeds and cigarette, but two weeks after Burning Man was over in the most hostile place on earth exhausted, I would have been really offended and probably not believed a word you said. And yet that's been some of the best experiences of my life because it is, they say labor of love

and that sort of thing, but it's putting effort towards this thing that I deeply care about. It's putting effort towards this thing that I believe in my heart does people good. And that is required. And make no mistake, I get paid. I have a job here, this is my career.

And a lot of people in the DPW are paid and there's a lot of volunteers work. So that we're not completely detached from the notion of commerce and of the reality that people have bills to pay in the real world and stuff like that. We can't decouple from a civilization that we're embedded in and entrenched in.

But at the same time, there are lessons there for us. And those lessons, you don't have to never get paid again for work to internalize the fact that, oh no, my effort towards something I love has this positive feedback loop for me that I should try to remember and that I should try to internalize and that I should cash in on every chance I get.

Yeah, yeah. And I think the other piece of the puzzle there is this is not happening in a vacuum. This is happening among other people who are also not just laboring for love, but also there's a sense of initiation or something, testing, a sense of the healthy forms of that, a sense of like, hey, I wanna prove to y'all

that I will work hard for you, because you're my friends and I wanna make sure you know I love you. And so I'm working hard for you just so you see how much I respect you. Absolutely. That kind of primordial sort of like, not ego stuff, but just like, hey, how can I help you?

Let me help you. Or like, you know, our camp leader I remember is I'm like, my ego is getting into it on the last day. So I'm like, I'm gonna, I'm working too hard. It's blazingly hot. And I don't know why I'm deciding to be in a hurry, but I remember he like puts his hand on my shoulder, he's like, Duncan, we're all gonna do this together.

Why don't you rest for a little while? You're getting really hot. And it was the coolest thing because he knew what I was doing. He'd seen it before, you know, that other. That sort of like, I don't know, that sort of flow of communication that's happening with the game of work or labor happening.

Whoa, it's so magical. And that's human nature too, you know? You should always check yourself to make sure that you're getting out of something what you feel is fair compared to what you're putting in, you know, and you were doing that in that moment, right? You were tired and you were cranking, you probably hadn't had any water.

And you're looking around being like, wait a minute, I'm supposed to be doing what? Isn't my life something radically different from this? But maybe not, maybe not in that moment. Maybe in that moment, you were just the guy who needed to move some heavy bins and that's just what needed to happen, you know? Yes, that's it, right, right.

And that's- And that is ego and it's identity, right? And it's like, who am I in this moment that I'm picking up sunflower seeds from some camp that was like, yeah, it's just nuts, but who you are in that moment is the guy who sees the sunflower seeds and they need picking up. Yeah.

And that, in that moment, it dissolves your whole game, it dissolves your identity through work, through labor. And I think that when, you know, and opening up as a cheesy Instagram Burning Man pictures and what I meant by that is if you were to, have never been to the burn and you just see the pictures of the cute girls with fire sticks or whatever,

you might get this idea that it's pure hedonism. And it would be easy to think that, but without realizing that actually it's, that's a, you're looking at, that's a work colony there. That's a call, it's like a work, I don't work camp, a labor camp. I mean, it's a city, you know, Black Rock City is a city, cities take effort, you know,

there's so much effort that goes into things. And, you know, my role in it and my team's role in it, we just set the stage, the amount of work that comes into it, once the doors open and once 80,000 people show up and do everything they do to make Black Rock City this incredible magic thing, like there's a tremendous amount of effort happening there.

And, you know, and it's not the traditional job, it's not the traditional, you know, you're getting a paycheck for this, for thousands and thousands of them, they're out there making art, they're out there creating, and they're out there specifically creating experiences for others and building outward for a community

and trying to share and connect and explore with all that. Yeah, I've been thinking about all of that a lot, especially with this year being what it is, you know, we're not in Black, we did get to build Black Rock City this year, the COVID has us all in a really different place. And I've spent this last week, which has been Burn Week traditionally for me,

exploring the multiverse and exploring the virtual spaces that people created. I don't know if you've got to do any of that, I meant to ask you that the other day. But, you know, I have been playing around in all of these spaces and you're seeing the exact same thing, what you're seeing there is people

who've put in a ton of labor to build virtual environments or to build interactive systems for people that are just like browser-based, right? You don't need a VR headset, you just go and click this clickable map and find your way into Twitch streams and Zoom rooms. And it's all just people, and it's a great reminder that like,

you know, everything from that to Black Rock City to just running into somebody on the street and taking a moment to connect with them, like those are all just containers for what we want to do, which is connect with each other, which is, you know, share with each other. And the fact that we, you know,

in lieu of Black Rock City, seeing so much effort going into, you know, we had eight recognized universes of the multiverse, right? We had these eight distinct different experiences that were available to people online, some of which still are, so that they could go and explore and connect and not lose some of that feeling

of what Black Rock City is, which is a space to explore and connect and discover. Yeah. And so the feeling that that is persistent, whether Black Rock City is happening or not, because this community is so committed to it as an ideal and as a concept, is so inspiring to me.

It's really incredible. That's true. Did you get to play around with that at all, man? Well, you know, this is where I'm like, I think this is where I'm a little bit of a weakling in the sense that I saw the virtual Burning Man stuff. I'm like, I just can't do it. I can't do it.

It's just, I don't, and you know, maybe just because I saw one quick video of like a SIM DJ waving his hands in front of digitized people and I just thought, oh, no, no. I, it was a moment of weakness, you know, because I was reading some stuff about it that was actually saying that it was one of the most in alt space, this is like a VR journalist.

And he was saying it was like one of the most impressive feats of VR that he's ever seen. So now I kind of regret not popping in there, but I just felt, you know, it's so selfish and dumb of me, man, but this year I was going to go back. It was the multiverse, which is one of my favorite concepts. I'm like, oh yeah.

My wife was like, go this year to the burn. We just had a baby. I was like, this is going to be a, ah, fuck, really? Really, you want me to go to the Sims burn? I can't do it, man. That is funny, man, and I don't want to call you out, but I mean, the theme was multiverse

and given one alternative to Black Rock City, you passed. I know. You didn't do it. I say it was. You're like, oh, here's an alternate version of something I love. No thanks. I don't think so, not today.

I know, man, it's such a policy. And we were like, how about eight different versions of that? You were like, nah, I'm good. I like the multiverse, but I want to be in this universe. Damn it. That's great. I'll tell you, I don't know if you were more skeptical than me, I was pretty skeptical.

This would have been 23 years in a row on Playa for me. I've been doing this forever. And there are people that I've worked with that have been doing it longer, but I've been doing it for a good stretch. And the idea of, also for some context, I play video games. I spend a lot of time in virtual environments.

I love exploring games because of what they represent in terms of experiences someone's trying to get me to have or connections that people are trying to get me to explore. And so I love virtual environments for what they offer. And so I was already halfway on board with the idea. And yet I was like, Burning Man's not going to translate to that. And it was just not into it. But I have been working on the Burning Man Live podcast,

as you know. And I got to interview a couple of people that had put together some multiverse, some of the universes in the multiverse. And their enthusiasm for the projects that they were building totally won me over and got me to go and actually bought an Oculus Quest headset. I went and got myself into BRCVR and looked around

and had a really good time doing it. I was running around with and just exploring just the art and the people I made. And of course, it's not Black Rock City. And of course, it's not what I'm used to doing with this time. But it was really fascinating. And then that was BRCVR. After that, I went and spent a lot of time in a thing

called the Sparkleverse. And the Sparkleverse was this map that sort of functioned like a what, where, when. It was like a map of Black Rock City with all these clickable camps on it. And you would click through on these spaces. And sometimes there would be people in there. And you'd suddenly find yourself in a Zoom room with people.

Sometimes you would just click through. And it would be a YouTube video that someone put together about some galactic shrimp trying to find love. And there was all of just this weirdness that was accessible to me. And I explored that for a couple of nights. And then that's ended up being where I wanted to spend my burn night.

And so I spent my burn night. I watched the man burn through BurningMan.org and watched it live. And then we went straight to the Sparkleverse. And we were just in this room where someone was DJing and being ridiculous. And we had maybe 100 people in this one Zoom call. All of them just sharing the camera,

all of them just dancing and in costume and celebrating that connectivity, celebrating the moment and just reveling. And that was as close to an experience as Black Rock City has brought me. That's as close to something as I was going to get without being able to go even to a club because of COVID, without being able to go into the world and see my friends.

Like I was able to sit here in my room and connect with people all over the world. And that was fantastic. Yeah, you know, yeah, I am 100% wrong. I feel like a madder snob, right? I think as VR becomes increasingly realistic, as musk's neural mesh becomes more. Yeah, the neural link.

Yeah, that's exciting and weird. Yeah, very exciting. And yeah, there are going to be people who are considered like matterlings or something. It'll be looked down upon. It's like, oh, really? You need to actually be in stuff for it to be real? OK, you've brute.

But you know what I mean? Yeah, who likes concepts, right? Who likes using their imagination? Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Like, oh, really? You want that? You want density, I guess, is what you're looking for?

Weight? Is that what you're looking for? Weight? You want to be stuck in a gravity well? Fine. But that's where I'm at right now. Interestingly enough, there is a parallel to the conceptualization of beings in alternate dimensions

in the god realms in Buddhism or Hinduism or even angelic beings. They're lighter than us. They're not stuck in matter. They're not entrenched in this goop as much as we are. And I think that's what virtual reality is, an example of us technologically lifting ourselves a little out transcending matter.

I mean, we are stuck in the goop. And that's why so many people refer to that and refer to like hallucinogenic experiences as they're only comparable kind of touchstone for that as the dream space, right? Where you're not bound to matter, where it's just your consciousness and an endless field of what your mind wants to produce and reflect upon.

And so, yeah, I'm fascinated by what virtual spaces have to offer and what we are going to be able to discover the more that ramps up and the more we are dipping ourselves into that. Especially virtual reality is one thing and I've watched it and its limitations shift and grow over time. Augmented reality is gonna change the whole landscape too.

The moment that I can have an overlay and make any room I go into look the way I want to. You'd make every experience filled with data that I'd like out of that experience. That's gonna change the game too. And so, we're on a cusp and we're perpetually on a cusp, but we're on a cusp of something really incredible with what that is going to unlock in terms of

the way that we all experience reality, all of us that choose to engage with it in that way. This is what I love about Burning Man, is that it gives you a chance to go into this bubble and not be whatever the thing was that you walked in there as. And very quickly it lets you become unencumbered by the whatever the moral, ethical,

whatever your own like hangups. It was like two days and I was wearing my friend's blouse and I remember thinking, God, this is perfect. This is perfect for the deserts. I mean, why have I been wearing jeans? This is not fair. This is not fair. Like, you know what I mean?

We've been scammed as men that we don't get to wear this. This is so comfortable. But I look back on that level of freedom. And now we see, it's one of the craziest things when you see how triggered straight dudes are about trans people. It's the weirdest thing. It's like, you know, you don't run into,

how often are you even running into trans people? I'm talking about like, you hear these like dudes who are just doing rants about how unhappy they are about whatever the particular trans right situation is. I find it to be flabbergasting. Flabbergasted? I'm flabbergasted by it. Whatever the fucking word is, I'm confused by it.

But I think what we're looking at there is the very beginning of an earthquake of like true identity tyranny. Because what you're talking about and what augmented reality is gonna offer us, and not just augmented reality, but I think probably is CRISPR technology gets better. We are looking at a time where we do not have to adhere

to the form we were born into anymore. Not just gender, but ethnicity, everything, size, everything. It's gonna become more and more malleable either through some digital overlay or even at some atomic reconfiguration. And I think that's one of the cool things about Burning Man is it produces a place where you can play around with identity itself

and how fucking just manacled we are to ourself. Absolutely. And that's why, when I talk about this stuff, I tend to talk about Burning Man being a place of exploration and acceptance because those things, while not being a part of our principles directly, they're kind of woven into the culture

in this big way for the individual experience, in my opinion and from my perspective. And you're absolutely right about that earthquake coming in culture. That earthquake's already happening in my opinion and started when the internet was able to connect us all. And I remember being in the group of extremely naive and optimistic people

that was like, yeah, we'll just connect each to each other. And it'll be incredible because that'll allow some isolated weirdo that thinks that they're just the strangest thing on earth to understand that there are not only dozens if not hundreds of people just like him, but probably also a magazine dedicated to whatever his weird things are.

And it's gonna allow us to not feel so alone, because we're gonna be able to stare at the vastness of humanity, everyone who can connect. And we're gonna be able to recognize each other in each other. But what I underestimated vastly was how how xenophobic and how hard-baked into culture the preservation of the normal

or whatever normal is from an individual's perspective is. And so seeing how many people looked into that vastness of humanity and could not handle what they saw or just rejected what they saw or were terrified or were filled with hatred. I was not expecting that at all. And I recognized my own optimism in that.

I recognize exactly where my failing was. And it was because I was in this, my own bubble of being very technocentric and being very interested in watching us connect and evolve as a species. A lot of people are not thinking about that. And what they're thinking about is their own identity. And when they see something that is not comfortable to them,

they see their whole way of life threatened. And in some cases, they're correct because there are disruptors. And there are things not necessarily negative, but there are things out there that are gonna disrupt your worldview. There are things out there that are gonna make it so that your sense of what the world is

can't remain the same because you've seen these things. But that's a positive thing, man. A tremendous thank you to Shutter for sponsoring this episode of the DTFH. Shutter has an expertly curated collection of some of the best horror movies you have ever seen. They've got exclusives like My Favorite Host, which is this incredible horror movie

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and use promo code Duncan. Again, you can try Shutter for free for 30 days by going to Shutter.com and using promo code Duncan. And definitely watch Host. It is so good. Thanks, Shutter. If your identity is a matter fascist, if that's based on where you're like,

because think how much work people have put into being muscular. You know how much work somebody puts into getting abs. And if anything comes out, anything comes out that gets you insta-abs, insta-ripped, any kind of genetic technology, that is going to be so scorned by muscular people who spent their whole damn lives getting biceps.

Now all of a sudden everybody's ripped. What? This is not fair. You can't just do that. Sure, they are going to be scorned. And then that scorn is going to completely get crushed under the gattaca-like wave of suddenly everybody having what they want in terms of physicality.

And then suddenly there's going to be this entire class system of people who have augmented and are now stronger, faster, smarter and more capable and a bunch of people that are purists for whatever reason they choose to be that are getting outranked and outclassed and outmatched by people who have chosen to level up. And I'm not saying that's any utopian scenario either.

There's going to be disaster inherent at every turn on that path. But that is going to happen because that's almost what almost always happens when something new comes along. You have people who reject it. And then if that thing is really something designed to or by proxy, it embedders people, that's something that is going to help people

have better lives, then the people that reject it get left behind. And that's just how it's always going to play. That is the nature of evolution. That's the nature of growth. If you don't grow, you get crushed under the wheel. That's right. And do you think that's why,

one of my favorite things to read every year when Burning Man happens is the Drudge Report because it's a matter of time before an article pops up on the Drudge Report about Burning Man being like a satanic, hedonistic, pagan festival. Some people have even on Twitter, I remember someone sending me this sinister tweet saying congratulations for participating

in a human sacrifice ritual. And they meant it. And they were really like, disturbed by Burning Man. People are disturbed by it. They do see it as a threat to Protestant fundamentalist concepts. And I mean, not just like basic homophobic people,

but just all matter of people who want things to stay the way they are. They see Burning Man as being a failure. They see Burning Man as being a mark of the beginning of a forest fire, occultism, satanism, sex, drugs. Like, yeah. And so do you think this is why

y'all have been hitting so many roadblocks recently when it comes to the festival proceeding? It seems like every year, but they're making it a little bit more difficult for it to happen. I think there are a number of reasons for that. I don't necessarily think that they're bound to the sort of core tenets of the philosophy of the thing.

I don't think that the people, I would not say that the things that make it difficult for us to throw Burning Man and the challenges that we face on the regular are from, they're coming from a mindset where people think that we're an existential threat to them. I think that that narrative of that Burning Man is this thing that is going to upset

the fabric of society or reality. And that's been around since, I think there was like a 700 Club episode on us forever ago. And that narrative has always been there, but we're just one target in a long string of things that we're going to end the world or upset society because if your worldview is based around the idea

that what we do is right and what everyone else does that's different not only is wrong, but can't exist and can't be tolerated, you're going to run into constant opposition and you're going to constantly be threatened and challenged by anything else in the world. And so I just see us being on that list of things that have come along and that people are threatened by

because they are afraid that we're going to upset reality or society or that their children are going to run off and join whatever we're doing. And I'm not saying that there aren't people out there who don't think that we're some sort of cult, but I can't speak to that worldview because I don't sit in it. I know that, I know that, I know why I do what I do

and I know what Burning Man does is really positive for people. And I see that happening again and again. Not for everyone, nothing is inherently positive for every person. And I've definitely, like I said earlier, seen people go out there and have awful experiences, but ultimately, if our existence is threatening,

I don't think we're the problem. Wow, yeah, well said. Well, I mean, is sugar threatening to a glass of water? You know, no, it's just going to make it sweeter. But there is a, I have felt when I've been out there, oh shit, this is one of the things. Like, you know, they synthesize LSD. They, Hoffman synthesizes LSD.

This simple chemical react, well, not simple, it's actually very difficult to make based on my like late night examination on YouTube. We're like, maybe I'll make some LSD. No, I won't. I don't know what those tubes are. What the fuck is that thing? Where do you get that?

But, you know, if you think about that, chemical reaction takes place at Sando's laboratories and you look at what that chemical reaction then did to the brain chemistry of our entire species and continues to do. And all the subsequent artistic creations that came from it and all the bad trips that came from it and all the rough things you hear about it.

But if you consider that one initial synthesis and the ingestion of the chemical created a neurological wildfire that swept through humanity and completely shifted our consciousness, this is what I'm talking about when I think in terms of like, and I think threat is probably the wrong word. Talking about like things that have the potential

of a sort of conversion, a cultural conversion or something. You know what I'm saying? Sure, and that is an ontological threat for some people, you know, the idea that conversion will shake up their belief system and I get that. But, you know, change is inherent to life. Change is a part of existence and how you react to change, how you react to growth,

how you react to the things in the world that are different, like that speaks to not only your character but the character of the world view that you have, you know? Man, you are the perfect leader for getting people out there organized to work because I would have, I bet you, I would have a million meltdowns, man. I don't know how.

We're gonna find out when you come to DPW, you know, you're gonna come do a couple of weeks on my crew and you're gonna understand it from a visceral level and you're gonna be able to speak to it in a different way because you're gonna see it from the inside and it's not gonna kill you and it's not gonna break you like you're thinking right now. It's gonna change the way that you see the whole affair.

So just you wait, man, you're gonna do fine. And thank you for saying so. You know, I try to lead from a perspective of, you know, I started off in DPW as a volunteer. I started off just like doing whatever jobs there were and then I was on a couple of specific crews as a volunteer. So I didn't get hired on to just manage a bunch of people. Yeah.

I came up from the volunteer ranks because I believe in this thing and because that I've been a part of it for as long as I have. Well, you're also a legend out there. I don't mean to flatter you, friend, but you're kind of, you are a legend. I mean, like, and I'm sorry if this, like people working

in the org or whatever, like, come on, man, don't do that to him. But you kind of are, you know what, there, you, like I remember when I met you, there was like a lot of like, you know, that is, you probably are aware of that, right? That's really kind of you to say. One of the functions of my job is that every morning

at 7.30 sharp, I stand on a podium and I deliver a morning meetings, I host a morning meeting, but really what I'm up there doing is orating and kind of rallying the crew to get everything done, right? And it's, everybody comes down to our place, our depot where we kind of stage out for the morning and I shout, good morning, DPW to hundreds of people.

And then I just start talking and I tell them about what's on the docket for the day and they all know their jobs, they know what they're doing, they don't need me to do that, but I'm there just kind of given them the lay of the land and I'm telling them how the day is gonna be. And what I have found in doing that for more than a decade is that when you are the person on stage in the morning,

people start to associate you with the thing, very strong. And so for a lot of people, you know, I am the voice of the organization. For a lot of people, I'm the voice of DPW because that's the role that I've been able to play here. And so yeah, I get recognized for that and for the role I play with DPW very specifically, pretty regularly.

And it's very flattering to be associated with something so amazing that I really, truly do believe in. And to be able to represent the hard work of so many people who I love and respect, it's a true honor to be able to represent that. May I ask now, definitely say no if you need, if you can't, we've got about, let's see here, eight more minutes, something like that.

Oh man, I could talk to you all day, what a shame. Okay, beautiful, but I wonder if I could get you to give a good morning DPW to the planet right now, as though you- Oh man, I don't know if I couldn't, here's why. It's because I have my speaking voice that you hear right now and then I have this growling shout of, that's my orating voice.

And I don't know if I could do a growling shout in my room without, like, I don't know how that's gonna play. Plus I'm not in the dust, I'm not in care. You gotta be there. You have to be, you become a reservoir for, you become a reflector of the group, I get it. Look, you're a matter snob. See, you gotta be in that, you gotta, we still are matter.

We're still in matter, I understand man. But like, can you speak a little bit though to the, you know, another thing I took away from Burning Man is a real sense of the dangers of centralization, the dangers of charismatic leaders. The, you know, what I, maybe this is different in different camps, but what I loved about my camp is that obviously someone's gotta facilitate

and organize and be in charge. Like you can't just, it's not gonna happen like a coral reef or some bullshit like that. Someone's gotta be like, put a tarp under the generator or we, you know, you've gotta get that fixed or, but can you talk a little bit about like dealing with simultaneously being a leader, but in a society that seems to promote,

I don't wanna say leaderlessness, but definitely the idea is it's more of a team than a... Sure, and if you wanna meet a group of people who are not interested in being led or in authority, I can't wait for you to meet the rest of the DPW because managing people who have less than zero interest being managed has been a fantastic and fascinating journey. And I'm honestly, I come to it from a place of,

I have a tremendous amount of personal disdain for authority. And so being in authority myself, you know, I get it. When I see some kid that's like, who the fuck are you trying to tell me what to do? I'm like, well, you know, that's a fair point, man. And honestly, I'm the person who is responsible for trying to get you to do the thing. And it's gonna help us both have a good experience

if you do, and if you don't, I get it, but also you're gonna have to go, you know? So it's like, I don't resent anybody who's not interested in leadership. And I can't, it was not interested in being led, I should say, it was not interested in being managed. She's not interested in just falling under the mechanisms of authority.

But, you know, and anarchy, you know, I don't want to speak to it in a critical way. Anarchy is a philosophical concept is something that's incredible because self-determination is incredible. But at the end of the day, you know, if you want to get complex things done on a large scale, some sort of organization is necessary.

And hierarchical organization is something that we are familiar with and used to and that we understand internally at a base reptile brain level and tribal level, wherever you want to place that in our evolutionary history. And so it is easy to apply hierarchical leadership to things and have everyone just get it. And if you want to accomplish things that are complex,

if you want to accomplish things that are large over time, you know, you do need some sort of structure and this structure works. And I've had that conversation with people many times too, when they're just like, I thought this was just like a, you get to just feel however you want and do, which is like, no, no, this is a job.

It's not just an adventure, it's a job. And you, and this is a thing that needs doing because you're a piece of the puzzle here. And then this other department is an intrinsic piece of the puzzle here. And all of these things have to come together in order for us to do this amazing large scale thing. And so it's easy in my experience

to give people to buy into that once they understand that, and again, this ties back to what we were talking about earlier with them, their whole relationship with labor and my whole relationship with labor when I was young, being tied to being bribed to do stuff I don't want to do. You know, and that's where part of the disdain for authority comes from. It's because authority in most of our lives

has come along to us and made us do a bunch of stuff that we weren't interested in doing or punished us for doing what we wanted to do in the first place. And so to help people contextualize it in a different way and start to internalize it in a different way and understand that structure can be used for good or can be used for something that they want to see accomplished

and that it is there to help them understand how they can be a part of it most effectively. You know, I feel like that's really valid in something that I encounter really regularly. Wow, thank you for that. That's a very, it's nice to hear that. I feel to say, I mean, as much as I love the, well, I can't say I even understand anarchism,

but from what I've read, it's a beautiful humanist. It's an idea that we're all humans are amazing. Humans are amazing. We tend to do good things together, but yeah, it's like, there's a saying that emerged, I believe, from before Ram Dass became Ram Dass when he's Richard Alper hanging out with Tim Leary. There's a story of someone going up to Millbrook

that incredible mansion where they're all tripping out at. I think it was there. They're all doing acid. They were like painting weird shit on the side of the mansion and like Tim Leary's riding a horse around and stuff. And they were like, you know what, they'd be drinking vials of LSD, but there's a story of someone going in there

after like, you know, I guess it'd been some time that they'd been sort of, they really were trying to, they were scientists who were sort of trying to push it to the furthest boundary they could, you know, and it's a beautiful thing they were doing. But I remember the story is someone went in there and like the dishes, no one had been doing the dishes. It was like the flies in the kitchen

and piles of food everywhere. And that's where the saying, someone's gotta do the dishes came from, which is somebody's gotta do the damn dishes while all y'all are like melting your DNA and traveling back in time to your protoplasmic identity. Somebody's gotta get you some food. Someone's gotta cook for you.

And that to me is the one of the, I keep saying things I love about burning. That's another cool thing about it is those rolls switch. Do you know what it's like? It's a place where, yeah, sometimes you could be traveling backwards in time to check out your protoplasmic identity, but sometimes look, it's your turn to fucking do the dishes, man, you don't need to travel back in time right now

and be a protoplasm, because everyone else has been doing dishes for you or cooking for you. That's exactly it, man, that's exactly it. And that's when I talk about the baggage of utopia as a term, it's like, I always picture all these philosophers dreaming of some world where they don't have to shop, wouldn't carry water, but shopping wouldn't carry water

is the thing, you do it before enlightenment, you do it after enlightenment, it is the thing, it's the work that you have to do to get by in this life. And yeah, you look at any communal living situation and I feel constantly in danger of that if they don't have structure in place, of everyone suddenly opting out of the thing, because the work has to be done, right?

That's the nature of the reality that we're in, is that there's work that has to get done. And if you don't commit yourself to contributing to the work, you're never gonna find yourself in a happy situation. And if you try to design a system where no one has to do the work, you are gonna find failure again and again because that work has to get done.

And in the system where no one has to do work, which I honestly, I think that is one of the things we can look forward to, unfortunately, is full automation. I would say there is a real possibility of full automation. I'm not saying in our lifetimes probably, but who the fuck knows? But at some point, swarms of nanobots that can make themselves into any tool

and listen to you like you're Alexa. You know, and then at that point, that's where things get really interesting because so much of our identity is attached to work and to not just work, but the heroics of work. You know, how wonderful is it when somebody gets up and washes the dishes when you don't want to?

You know, they feel good, you're happy, so much of like how we express love is through work. Would it, would fall? You hear those arguments come up a lot, especially, you know, in these last few years around things like universal basic income, right? If you take away people's labor, you take away their identity.

And I do think that that is true for a minute, you know? But the scary part of that is that, to society as it stands at the moment, is that that won't last. People will find out what else they like doing besides identifying as, you know, an electrician or whatever it is that they have done. Not to say, you know, that any profession that you choose

can't be wonderful and fulfilling. But if you take away people's ability to identify as what they have identified now, I truly believe, what they have identified as now, I truly believe that they will find the next thing and they will find their identity in other pursuits. And I hope that those other pursuits are things that they are passionate about

rather than the things that they found themselves skilled at enough to get by or that they had access to and fell into but were never thrilled by, you know? And there will always be people that love doing things, whether money's involved or not. And I believe that we all have those things in us. And, you know, I don't see an absence of those things

in people, I see an absence of the luxury of exploring themselves to find out what those things are. And so. Do you worry though that with Burning Man itself, do you ever, you know, I'm just gonna ask it straight out. Do it, man. Do you think it'll go on forever? Nothing lasts forever, Duncan.

I mean, it's not even happening now, man. But that's Black Rock City, right? So when you say Burning Man, I know you mean Black Rock City. Yeah. But Burning Man's not just Black Rock City. You know, Burning Man is you and me meeting four years ago and then making time to talk over the internet, you know,

right now and spend an hour together connecting with each other and sharing ideas. Like, you know, all of that stuff, like I said earlier, that's just a container for what humans wanna do. And that's grow and learn and connect. And that's again, that's me being an optimist. That's me being who I am and bringing my perspective to the table.

You ask the next person sitting next to me at work what Burning Man is, they'll give you an entirely different take. Yeah, that's, I know it, right. And I'm glad that you keep saying that over and over because that's another beautiful thing about it is like, you know, everyone has a different conceptualization of this beautiful event that happens once a year.

And for me though, you really do embody it, what the utopian qualities of it. And it really is a thrill to get to chat with you. And I really appreciate your time, man, because you have made my day and your invite to come work for a couple of weeks out there has made my year. And I will take you up on that. You're gonna have to talk to my wife.

I will take you up on it. If I can get, if I can go, I got another son on the way, but I would love it, love it, love it. Thank you, brother, so much. Absolutely, man. Thanks for taking some time today. It was really great talking to you.

And where can people find you? Oh, you know, I'm Logan Mirto on Twitter, I'm Logan Mirto on Instagram. Sometimes I get to post some things that are a little behind the scenes during the build. If you want to see Burning Man before it's up and running, there's, I usually get a couple of good shots during the pre-build when we're out there

building Blackhawk City. So you can find me there for now. Hare Krishna, thank you, my friend. I really appreciate your time. Absolutely, man. Take care of yourself. A tremendous thank you to Logan Mirto for joining this episode of the DTFH.

And also thank you to all our sponsors. If you forgot the offer codes, just go to ducatrustle.com and thank you for listening to the DTFH. And now for those of you feeling a little gloomy about the current world situation, I'd like to leave you with a beautiful song founded online.

It's created by Jason Danny Yellow. He was kind enough to give me permission to play it on the DTFH. It features the color Fred on guitar and vocal harmony. And it's on the label Organic Vinyl. You can find it at Bandcamp. The link is gonna be at ducatrustle.com along with all the links you need to find.

Jason Danny Yellow, here's darkest of days. You're in front of the fire dreaming of everything you want to be. Your heart's out of control knowing that you won't believe what you see. These are the darkest of days. It changes you under your skin. You see the air in your ways.

It's only a moment of fear. The moment is gone, you're still here. The old path that is worn ridden by thousands of unequal men. The attacks and the scorn leave them to die in the field without kin. These are the darkest of days. It changes you under your feet.

You see the air in your ways. It's only a moment of fear. The moment is gone, you're still here. The moment is gone, you're still here. When you live on your own do as you wish to be done unto you. We're all skin and we're bones waiting to cycle back into the use.

These are the darkest of days. It changes from hour to hour. I see the heart in your gaze. It's only a moment of fear. The moment is gone, you're still here. The moment is gone, you're still here. We're all skin and we're bones waiting to cycle back into the use. We're all skin and we're bones waiting to cycle back into the use.