There are three billion opportunities a year that we are leaving on the table to not connect.

I went and participated and joined in rituals in 16 countries on six continent.

I went to group baptism at the Vatican, a traditional bride price negotiation in South Africa,

an adolescent tooth filing in Bali, six weddings in a day in Las Vegas,

ten funerals in a week in Ireland. I went cold plunging in Copenhagen and forest bathing in the Andes.

If each of us said we're going to plan this year, this week, this month, a small gathering

to mark a period of transition, we can reverse the loneliness epidemic in a generation.

From LinkedIn News, I'm Jesse Hempel, and this is Hello Monday. So I have this friend, and if you've

been listening to the show for a while, he probably feels like a friend to you too. And anytime I get

stuck in my writing, I call

him. Like if I've got an idea, I just can't untangle. Well, I call Bruce. And Bruce always says to me,

hey, come on over. Because lucky me, he lives in Brooklyn. Come on over for lunch and we'll get to the

bottom of it. So I always get excited when Bruce,

that's Bruce Filer, writes a new book because I have reason to have them into the studio.

Now you may remember the 2023 conversation we had about what makes a good job, or you might be

thinking way back to 2020 when we explored life transitions.

This time, Bruce is joining me in the studio to talk about ritual. You know, rituals were once

thought of as necessary to forge meaning and connections between people, but a lot of the

ones that our grandparents depended on have largely gotten lost through time and history.

So Bruce traveled the world to find out how we can build new ones.

And of course, he wrote a book about it because that's what Bruce does.

It's called A Time to Gather, how ritual created the world and how it can save us.

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