“The Passage from Youth to Adulthood” by Pierluca Birindelli (ISI professor of Anthropology) explores a society unanchored from culturally endorsed rites of passage, in which young people and adults appear to build their identities within a culture of dependency. Pierluca Birindelli interviewed Italian young adults still living with their parents, focusing on their relations with the bedroom and the objects in it. He then analyzed self-narrations and longer autobiographies written by university students, measuring his impressions against sociological, psychological, and anthropological literature. Exploring the paradigm of what he calls “intergenerational collusion,” Birindelli finds fathers failing to act as adults with the tacit complicity of their sons: both are playing to the same script, heedless of the common good, the other, and the future. Finally, integrating the experience of young Americans abroad sparks transcultural reflections about the concept of play and the authenticity of social performance.