Thursday, April 2, 2026 | 7:00pm PT
What Do We Lose When Traditions Disappear?
Eliot Stein
Registration Now Open
Attendance is Complimentary. Registration is Required.
Around the world, small communities are preserving extraordinary skills and forms of knowledge that have endured for centuries, from rare crafts to rituals that require years of apprenticeship to master. These traditions are not simply artifacts of the past. They are living bodies of knowledge, sustained through discipline, memory, and care.
In this Spark Salon, BBC journalist and author Eliot Stein shares stories from his search for the last keepers of remarkable traditions. Through immersive reporting and personal encounters, he explores what it takes to carry specialized knowledge across generations and what is lost when those skills disappear.
As modern life accelerates and expertise becomes increasingly digital and disposable, Stein invites us to reflect on the value of embodied knowledge, apprenticeship, and continuity. What does it mean to inherit a skill? What responsibility comes with preserving it? And how do forms of knowledge shape the communities that sustain them?
6:00 p.m.: Doors open, reception
7:00 p.m.: Program begins promptly
8:00 p.m.: Book signing and reception
In-person attendees will receive a complimentary book.
Bio
Eliot Stein is a senior journalist and editor at the BBC. He has traveled the globe profiling remarkable people maintaining extraordinary cultural rites against all odds. From the last Incan bridge master who dangles precariously over a rushing river in Peru to weave a suspension bridge out of grass to an extended family of alchemists in India who have guarded a centuries-old formula for a mysterious metal mirror believed to reveal your truest self, Eliot’s work examines what it means when the unique rites that have shaped us and the places we come from fade away. These are just some of the last custodians preserving age-old rites on the brink of disappearance against all odds. Let Eliot Stein introduce you to all of them.
Eliot Stein frequently speaks about the homogenization of culture, ancient knowledge, and the wisdom we can all learn from these once-upon-a-time rites. He has given talks at universities, on TV and radio segments, and to corporations, and he frequently appears on podcasts, including Travel with Rick Steves, The Atlas Obscura Podcast, The Frommer’s Travel Show, and more. He has also spoken at libraries, packed convention floor auditoriums in New York and London, bookstores, bars, and even senior citizen communities.
In addition to the BBC, Eliot’s work has appeared on CNN and in The New York Times, WIRED, The Washington Post, National Geographic, The Guardian, Condé Nast Traveler, The Independent, and elsewhere.
Custodians of Wonder: Ancient Customs, Profound Traditions, and the Last People Keeping Them Alive
Now available at: