Even online quite a bit with the burning culture, you realize really quickly that this is actually a global movement. So there’s not just one Burning Man, there’s lots of Burning Man. Burning Man in Nevada is the mothership, but there are roughly 110, maybe 115 burns around the world. There are burns across the US, a number of burns in Canada. China has a burn. Israel has a burn—it’s called Midburn—and there they burn an effigy of Adam and Eve. South Africa has a burn.

And it spun out of that hundreds, potentially even thousands of other events that are all part and parcel of what we would call transformational festivals or evolutionary culture. It’s a huge network, a global network—a global kind of movement—of exploring spirituality in this artistic kind of sense.

When I went to the eclipse festival in Texas last year, I went because it was the epicenter of transformational spirituality. The eclipse festivals are a subset of the burning kind of community. They existed before Burning Man, but they’re all kind of part and parcel, and there’s a lot of bleed over. Like 35,000–40,000 people were at the Texas Eclipse Festival, and it was full of burners, full of Burning Man imagery, full of Burning Man personalities, many references. Every day you’d run into references about Burning Man.

So, it’s not just a party in the desert. It has a global footprint. Here’s the kicker: so much so that by—I think it was—2019, the Smithsonian Institute had dedicated their entire Renwick building to Burning Man for the summer. And then the Cincinnati Art Museum dedicated their building to Burning Man sculptures and Burning Man art. My wife and I toured the one in Cincinnati, and they had this going across different parts of the US.

So, I’m sorry—when you hit the Smithsonian, you’re no longer fringe. You’re no longer a side event. You are mainstream. You are in a position of influence. So, that’s the dynamic that’s happening.