This is hidden brain.
I'm Shankar Vedantam.
On the surface, people around the world lead very different lives.
Some live in bustling cities, others in tiny villages.
Some are part of vast intergenerational households.
Others live on their own.
People in different countries follow a bewildering range of religious traditions.
But atheism is also on the rise in many places.
When anthropologists look beneath the surface, however.
They often find that humans around the.
World are very similar.
They invoke supernatural forces when it looks like their sports teams might lose.
They take part in annual festivals that demand time, effort and money.
They mark important moments such as marriages, births and deaths with intricately choreographed scripts.
These festivals, rites and scripts are so much a part of all our lives that few of us stop to ask why we perform them.
This week on hidden the deep history and powerful psychology of rituals.
Anthropologist Demetrius Zigalatas works at the University of Connecticut.
His research has taken him across the planet.
In his travels, Demetrius has found common cultural practices among people living in far flung places.
Many of these practices involve dangerous difficulties or expensive rituals.