Episode
Why Rituals Matter More Than You Know, And How to Design Your Own | Bruce Feiler
- Podcast
- Good Life Project
- Published
- Jun 8, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 3277
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Summary
There is a particular kind of loneliness that hits in the middle of a full life. Not because you are isolated. Because the relationships that used to hold you steady are all being renegotiated at once. Your kids have left. A parent has died. A marriage needs new terms. A friendship has frayed. And the cultural rituals that once helped people move through moments like this are mostly gone. Bruce Feiler has spent the last three years traveling to 26 countries, attending over 100 ceremonies, and interviewing hundreds of people to understand what happens when we stop gathering in intentional ways. He's a seven-time New York Times bestselling author and the creator of the LifeQuakes framework. His new book, A Time to Gather , makes the case that we are living through both a celebration recession and a ritual renaissance at the same time. In this conversation, Bruce and Jonathan explore what it actually means to feel homesick in your own home, why the four traditional life rituals no longer match the lives most of us are actually living, and what it looks like to design a ritual from scratch when the ones you inherited don't fit. What you'll explore in this conversation: Why 5,000 Civil War soldiers were officially diagnosed as dying of homesickness, and what that history reveals about the longing you feel now The five building blocks of any ritual, from drawing the circle to creating a web of hope, and how to use them to mark a moment that matters Why Bruce calls this a celebration recession: what we stopped doing, when, and what's quietly replacing it The live ritual Bruce helps Jonathan design in real time, walking through every step from welcome to close Why rituals are not just for grief and weddings, and the new ceremonies people are creating for divorce, mastect…