In 1896, Franz Boas declared that “the most difficult problem of anthropology” was to explain cultural traditions “that develop with iron necessity wherever man lives”. In this talk, I will present a research program that aims to return to Boas’s problem using tools and insights from modern sociocultural, cognitive, and evolutionary approaches. Addressing shamanism, music, and prosocial religion, I will draw on cross-cultural and long-term ethnographic research suggesting that complex, ubiquitous cultural traditions reliably emerge as humans create and preferentially retain traditions that appear to satisfy regular proximate goals, reconciling diverse approaches within cultural evolution. Our profound cultural similarities reflect our capacity to craft culture that compellingly satisfies widespread motivations.