I interviewed him as we sat there in the car, in the most joyous traffic jam I’ve ever been in. People kept getting out of the R.V.s and U-Hauls around us to strut in their Burning Man best: sequins, Speedos, cowboy boots. Mr. Romer and I watched and talked about poverty in other parts of the world and about political norms that seemed to be crumbling.

We ended up spending a total of six days together before and during the event. I interviewed him while we rode mountain bikes across the desert in the dark, the light from a hundred neon art projects competing with the stars overhead. I interviewed him in a four-seater airplane, as a pilot in an open Hawaiian shirt banked hard over the city, an intricate geometric sight below us.

I interviewed him as a series of total strangers we met on the street hugged us, including one topless woman in a camp of fire performers. The next morning, Mr. Romer was still thinking about the encounter, as the possibility struck him that nudity might be empowering to women at Burning Man.

“I was thinking you could do a survey design where you survey all the naked women, and find out their politics, and their views on women’s rights,” he suggested to me. He never once broke character: the wonky economist.

I also interviewed him while we sat at lunch one afternoon, eating grilled cheese sandwiches with Grover Norquist. Mr. Norquist, the anti-tax crusader from Washington, has been going to Burning Man for several years and happened to be staying in the same camp as Mr. Romer, hosted by some of Burning Man’s founders. Mr. Romer had come to believe that Burning Man was a symbol of the essential role of government. Mr. Norquist sees the opposite: a libertarian utopia with few rules.