Bruce Feiler

speaker

802 appearances 2 recordings 2 series first heard May 2026 last heard 8 Jun

Bruce Feiler’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.

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Something You Should Know · Why Humans Crave Rituals & How Music Transports Your Mind · 25 May 2026 podcast

In 1970, 5% of Americans were cremated.

Today, it's 65% and going to 80%.

and four of those is buried, and only one in five has a ceremony or celebration of life of any kind.

And so this is an example of how our customs change.

Just yesterday, as we taped this conversation,

just yesterday i attended a celebration of life for my 62 year old sister-in-law who died of leukemia she died a few weeks back all of us rushed to atlanta to say goodbye unfortunately most of us who are traveling from afar were unable to say goodbye and so we found ourselves in the home that she shared with my brother and my brother said oh why don't we sit around and share memories of laura

And I said, that's a wonderful idea.

Let's go a step further and make it a ritual, right?

So let's open the circle.

We then lit a candle that was the first piece of art that they bought together.

We shared stories.

At the end, I said, let's close the circle.

And then he brought out a book, an old version of The Owl and the Pussycat that she had given my brother on the occasion of

Their wedding and we read it together.

And so just those simple steps of let's be intentional about this Let's form a kind of sacred space and then let's hold space and show empathy for my brother bringing in the sort of blueprint of ritual that I discovered in my in my travels to 16 countries on six continents made the occasion more special so

Three weeks later, we had a celebration of life because like many people today, she was cremated.

And so I think that there's an example of the impulse is the same in almost every way, shape and form.

It felt like a ritual.

And yet at the same time, it was not what you and I grew up with.

which was a top-down, pre-scripted, institutionally mandated, hierarchical, enforced ritual.

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