The Playa Always Provides
Live from the Playa with Shaka

00:00Yovel:Wow. Welcome to Burning Man Experience, live from the playa — Shaka! It's our second year together. Second year in the Burning Man room, tent next to tent. This year we have an AC, so let's make the experience better. And I'm super excited to do the first episode with you.

00:24Yovel:Shaka — it's a gift. It's a gift for the playa, and that's exactly what the meaning of the podcast is. What is the best experience that you ever had at Burning Man? And then we're going to talk about this week.

00:46Shaka:Burning Man has given me the gift of a community that goes beyond the desert. It feels like it's about building what could be known as a pop-up city. I think it's about something that's more about what we bring individually, and how we care for each other thoughtfully — and how we can even go full circle of being angry and then saying sorry.

01:18Shaka:The biggest thing that I've loved about Burning Man from the get-go is that I've been a part of building a camp. It's the only reason I've come to Burning Man — to build a camp, and to make sure that those in the camp know that we are not just putting a camp here because we want to have a party, but because we are putting our stamp on what's a bigger city that embodies these beautiful principles that makes everybody better.

01:51Yovel:Wow. When I arrived at Burning Man last year, I saw you and I said to myself: Shaka — it's what Burning Man is all about. About giving, not expecting to get anything back. I think that's why I loved you immediately, and I love the connection that started between us.

02:14Yovel:I think the playa is giving something interesting — like right now, we are in the middle of a storm. We can barely see fifty feet forward. And to be able to sit here and drink a beer with you on the playa, full of dust, after we walked all week to build the camp for the forty people that are coming into the camp — that's such a pleasure, my man.

02:49Yovel:So Shaka, what was the most interesting stuff that happened to us this week? We have been building all kinds of things… [storm audio, some words unclear]

02:59Shaka:So we've been building shade structures so we can stay in the shade — but the thing that I think is very interesting is right behind us. You know, in every community, something that just brings people together is obviously the table of food, sharing meals together. Dinner is something that's very, very important.

03:33Shaka:And it's something that you can really sense for the Terrible Turtles this year — the playa really protected and provided for us. Because as first-year burners, you and I being along for the load-in and the load-out, we just didn't quite have it figured out. But now the dream is coming to fruition. I feel like the vision that you and Jeremy initially had, to build the kitchen in a trailer — I think I actually might have seeded a little bit of the idea in your head when we were building Griff's kitchen, and we would unload all these fridges from Griff's semi truck. I remember telling you last year: "Dude, if only Griff just built the kitchen in his trailer."

04:18Shaka:So here we are — we have been building the kitchen in the trailer for the last month. Shout-out Machine [?] and Victory [?], because we would not have been able to make this dream happen. We got here, and then we realized: wow, we probably are not going to be self-sufficient enough to cook with this thing. And then we decided last week to start looking for a chef, filtered through a couple, and we landed on this OG twenty-year veteran burner chef — Chef Marcus. And I've just been able to plug in, being friends with him.

05:01Shaka:And getting to be stoked about Terri — Terri is an AI agent that I'm giving to everyone as a gift, if you want to fork it: Shaka Lei Kaumaka on GitHub has all these open-source repos. Everything that I've done so far is open source and a gift, so people can actually copy the way that I've been organizing this agent — that I also connected on Telegram with our chef, so we can now inventory everything and let everyone know where it is.

05:28Shaka:So I kind of slept right where the camera's sitting, on our semi trailer, waiting for him to show up the first night. And it just became clear that everything we actually needed was now there — because the playa provided the right people.

05:51Shaka:It kind of felt like it was just four of us that showed up initially — Jeremy, Max and I in the RV, and then there was you, who muscled this box truck tied to the kitchen trailer. At first it was maybe just going to be you and I — how are we going to do it? And then we said no, we need to hire a CDL driver.

06:07Yovel:Yeah — I should not try to drive a sixty-foot…

06:16Shaka:Seventy feet of a box truck and a trailer! So thank you — we got a friend who's got his CDL, a professional, and he could drop the truck and the trailer off here. Everything has been a process. I feel like today is the first time that it's finally organized. We've been here now for five days, and chef showed up in the last day and a half.

06:42Shaka:So the kitchen is like the magician for a community. Every night we're going to gather in this area right here, and the Terrible Turtles are going to have dinner. And every morning we're going to rise together for breakfast. But really — the playa is going to provide everyone their own journey. You and I and Jeremy will obviously want to spend a lot more time making sure that everybody's taken care of, because that was our gift with the Turtles: to host everyone. The one thing that always seems to wrap everybody up is that we're giving — we're providing the dinner, the coffee, the breakfast. It's kind of a miracle that the playa provided everything we needed for the kitchen, because it was in the last week that we threw it all together. We did not have things in order, but the kitchen just magically appeared — because the playa provided everything we needed to just be together.

07:46Yovel:Speaking about the playa providing — for the people that have never been to Burning Man, give a little bit more about that phrase, "the playa always provides."

07:53Shaka:It's so much bigger than you and I, because it's the universe. If you look up in the sky you see stars — the stars have led us to have our guide star, man. You know, Jeremy's playa name is Daria [?]. So it's not just the playa, like the dust that goes up — this is the place where we feel it the most, because it's made of us. We're made of dust.

08:27Yovel:I love what you did now. I agree with you. It's so beautiful to see that the playa just gives you the experience that you need to experience in that year. Each of you learns stuff you didn't know about yourself — it teaches. I learned, only in the last week and a half, how important it is to communicate with people and be with people, and don't judge — don't listen to other people's opinions about other people — and to learn. Just yesterday I had a conversation with someone I never met, and she talked about how important it is to understand: everyone has their own journey. It doesn't matter what you're doing in your life — you have your own journey. And I think that's something the playa gives you: to feel that journey at the top.

09:16Yovel:And the playa did provide. It provided everything for the people. For closing the first episode of the Burning Man Experience — let's have a good time, and everyone is welcome, because the playa provides.

09:40Shaka:And forgiveness is something that we all need to hold inside. Because this place will break you. Being out in the desert, it will reveal the sides of you that are toxic, that are angry, that are sad, that are depressed — and it will help you get rid of all of this. Because, you know… it burns, man.

10:03Yovel:Oh, yeah. And everyone that's thinking about coming to Burning Man — join us next year, because that's one of the best experiences that you can experience in your life. Amen. See you the next episode.

Transcribed with Whisper from the original recording · dust storm & wind noise made some words unrecoverable · full raw timestamps preserved in the production files.