We should party more

Today, Explained

This episode explores the decline of social gatherings in the midst of a modern loneliness epidemic and offers practical advice for revitali

Key takeaways

• In medieval England, wooden pews may have been introduced in cathedrals specifically to discourage rowdy dancing during religious feasts.
• Sociologist Emile Durkheim's concept of 'collective effervescence' describes the surge of euphoria experienced during peak communal events like concerts or parties.

Main topics

• The loneliness epidemic
• History of nightlife and religious rituals

Notable quotes

The role of the host is always the same... it's a transmission of care.

Conclusion

The episode highlights that intentional, thoughtful gathering is a pow

Transcript preview

Speaker 8 (0:00) Picture it. Summer. You and your girls at your favorite patio bar. The sun's out, the breeze is perfect, and you're looking stunning in that new sundress. And what are we drinking? A Campari Spritz. It's just Campari, Prosecco, and soda water. Bold, iconic, and perfectly bitter, just like you. Check out official cocktail recipes Speaker 5 (0:20) at Campari.com. Campari Spritz. Stay bitter. Campari liqueur, 24 % Speaker 8 (0:25) alcohol by volume, 48 proof. 2026 Campari America, New York, New York. Please enjoy responsibly. Hey, Speaker 5 (0:37) everybody. Cassidy Hubberth here. This week on And Mom, we spoke with Grammy award-winning musician Corinne Bailey Ray about taking her kids on tour, becoming a widow at 29, and how she felt about having a home birth. Check out the latest episode of And Mom wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 8 (0:58) I love to party. I have for a long time, although I've toned that down quite a bit. I don't mean to brag, but my wife and I throw the greatest parties. Speaker 5 (1:07) It's so hard to get people out of their houses these days. So another rule I have is I just invite, like, literally everyone. Speaker 1 (1:16) You have been invited to a fabulous secret party. Speaker 6 (1:23) You arrive to the apartment. I buzz you up. A friend of mine that you don't know greets you at the door. Speaker 6 (1:31) And then they immediately put a blindfold on you. They take you by your hands and then they walk you through the apartment and they sit you down. They take your hand and they put it on someone's knee and they say, Hi, JQ. This is Brandon. Brandon, this is JQ. I'll leave you at it. If you need anything, just raise your hand. We're happy to bring you a drink. And then you start talking to a stranger. You have to be very thoughtful in the curation of the 25 people that I was doing this. You can't be people who know each other. and people start talking to each other. When you take a sense away like this, it markedly changes the way you engage with someone. You really kind of skip the basic questions and you kind of start going into your feelings. We do about 10 minute cycles and then a little bell rings. And then my friend who's helping me will help me rotate the pairs. So you're meeting a different person and we go through this cycle maybe three times. And then finally you can take your blindfold off and you obviously can see the person that you most recently had a conversation with. And then a lot of the evening you kind of spend it trying to figure out who the first two people you were speaking with, you know, during the beginning of the party. Speaker 1 (2:49) This is Victor Jeffries. He's based in New York. And as you can probably tell, he's very serious about creating an experience that is both magical and memorable. Speaker 6 (3:01) I love pushing up to the line to make people feel uncomfortable in the safest of ways, just to kind of switch it up a little bit. Speaker 1 (3:13) Many of us haven't switched it up in a while. Speaker 1 (3:18) We're in the midst of a loneliness epidemic. More than half of Americans say they feel isolated, and there are lots of reasons why. One is that the art of the social gathering is in serious decline. In 2023, only about 4 % of adults said they went to a party on a weekend or holiday. It's like we forgot how to host a dinner party or a blindfolded meet-a-stranger soiree. I'm John Glenn Hill. This is Explain It To Me from Vox. And this week, we're going to teach you how to throw the perfect party. Speaker 1 (3:55) Humans have been turning up for thousands of years. Imogen Willitsch traces the evolution of the party in her book Up All Night, A History of Going Out. And she says there was a time where the rowdiest parties were religious. So for most of human history, Speaker 3 (4:12) the experiences that we associate with nightlife, so drinking, dancing, music, you know, hedonism, for most of human history, those experiences were simply... part of religion because religion was so all-encompassing. It contained people's hedonistic instinct. There was nothing really outside of it. And so there's even evidence, which I love thinking about this, that the churchgoing experience in medieval England was actually quite rowdy and quite raucous. And there's one theory, like on feast days, there would be drinking, there would be dancing. And there's one theory that pews, like the wooden pews were introduced in Wells Cathedral here in England to subdue the dancing because it was so raucous. Speaker 1 (4:55) You know, I can see that. I think of when I go to church on Sunday and hear the music. I do get the same feeling I get when I'm on the dance floor and I hear Kaytranada. I can imagine how these religious experiences allowed people to kind of access that feeling of release through music and through dance. An Speaker 3 (5:14) expression that I came across when researching the book that I think really wonderfully kind of captures the essence of nightlife and partying is this term coined by the sociologist Emile Durkheim in 1912, which is collective effervescence. That's the feeling that we experience during peak communal experiences. So, you know, whether it's at a sports match or a concert stadium and even, you know, within religion, you're talking about your church going experience. You know, that is collective effervescence and that is the same sensation, that surge of euphoria that people feel in dance floors. And so I do think parties and nightlife are such an important way to access this very important human feeling, particularly in societies that are increasingly atheist or increasingly secular. You know, we need nightlife to have these communal, euphoric experiences and feel part of something bigger than ourselves. Speaker 1 (6:18) You know, you've written about how, yes, parties are fun, but they're also at the epicenter of some pretty important cultural and societal shifts. Can you tell me about that a little bit? I think nightlife Speaker 3 (6:32) is very uniquely poised to allow for experimentation and innovation and transgression. And also in a very practical way, if you're... part of, you know, the abstract expressionist scene of mid-century New York or something. You need somewhere to meet and talk to people and figure out how you're going to... sell your crazy work that's like nothing people have ever seen before. So these social spaces, I think, play a really, really important role in culture. So yeah, the abstract expressionist artists were hanging out in the Cedar Tavern. And then you have things like the Viennese succession movement and cabaret. Fledermaus was part of that meeting space. But then similarly, you get things like dance and music that's very much created for dance floors for clubbing, for nightlife. You know, the can-can, and then disco, and then techno. Nightlife has had this, you know, really, really crucial, propulsive, you know, yeah, it's been so crucial to the propulsion of culture. Speaker 1 (7:54) A lot of this is happening in the club, but I also wonder, what about parties happening in private homes? Speaker 3 (8:03) One of the great examples of people opening up their homes and actually, in a sense, sort of turning the home into a club was turn of the century New Orleans. So this is like the advent of jazz, the beginning of this, you know, seismic shift within music. Speaker 3 (8:19) On Saturday nights, people would host fish fries, which is basically when you would open up your home to the public. You would charge entry on the door. And once inside, people were treated to this amazing spread of food, drink, and there would be bands that would perform at them. And it was often a way for households who were struggling with rent payments to just earn some extra cash. Like, you know, great, great function. And it really, they had a huge impact in the development of jazz culture. It meant that there was always work for musicians