One of our great decoders of human con­nec­tion chron­i­cles the aston­ish­ing rise of new rit­u­als around the world — and offers a road map for restor­ing togeth­er­ness with gath­er­ings you’ll love

Since time immemo­r­i­al, humans have turned to rit­u­al to con­nect us in peri­ods of change. Until today. Birth rit­u­als and com­ing-of-age rit­u­als have plum­met­ed; few­er than half of Amer­i­cans are mar­ried; only one in three is buried. ​“It took us ten thou­sand years to estab­lish cul­tur­al norms around how we mark col­lec­tive life tran­si­tions,” writes Bruce Feil­er. ​“It took us fifty years to dis­man­tle them.” Can this threat to soci­ety be reversed?

To find out, Feil­er went on a round-the-world rit­u­al road trip, attend­ing — and par­tic­i­pat­ing in — life rit­u­als in six­teen coun­tries on six con­ti­nents. These spec­ta­cles, some rarely seen, include a mass bap­tism in the Vat­i­can, a trib­al bride price nego­ti­a­tion in South Africa, an ado­les­cent tooth fil­ing in Bali, six wed­dings in Las Vegas, and ten funer­als in Ire­land.

Beyond the decline in tra­di­tion­al rit­u­als, Feil­er dis­cov­ered that we are in the midst of a rit­u­al renais­sance that is push­ing back against apa­thy, lone­li­ness, and dig­i­tal sat­u­ra­tion. Fed up with top-down scripts, every­day peo­ple, from boomers to Gen Z, are reimag­in­ing col­lec­tive rit­u­als at a remark­able pace, invent­ing fresh ways to gath­er around life, love, health, and fam­i­ly — and forg­ing thriv­ing com­mu­ni­ties in the process.

As he did with Life Is in the Tran­si­tions, Feil­er also col­lect­ed sto­ries of a hun­dred rit­u­al design­ers and built a first-of-its kind data­base of ideas to make gath­er­ings more effec­tive — from cre­at­ing sacred space to medi­at­ing con­flict to gen­er­at­ing ​“wows” that guests will talk about forever.