Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy

This book by Barbara Ehrenreich came up once on Tim Ferriss in the episodes we index. That mention was a genuine on-air recommendation, not just a passing reference. The people who brought it up: Jonathan Haidt. Every occurrence below links to the episode page and to the exact second it was said on YouTube.

"Cultural historian Ehrenreich explores a human impulse that has been so effectively suppressed that we lack even a term for it: the desire for collective joy, historically expressed in ecstatic revels of feasting, costuming, and dancing. She uncovers the origins of communal celebration in human biology and culture. Although 16th-century Europeans viewed mass festivities as foreign and "savage," Ehrenreich shows that they were indigenous to the West, from the ancient Greeks to medieval Christianity.