Ask HN: Best practices for synchronous meetings in distributed/remote teams?

I'm a software engineer working in a team distributed across North American and European time zones. Recently we've grown somewhat from a small team (effectively doubling in the past year), and it just seems like we sit in meetings all day now. The best overlap time between time zones seem to coincide with when my brain works best for deep technical work, so I probably haven't gotten any deep technical work done in weeks now.

Are there any good synchronous meeting strategies for such distributed/remote teams that allow for:

1. Maximizing meeting relevance

2. Maintaining social cohesion/team spirit?

In companies I'd worked for in the past, often our best technical and social discussions would happen over coffee or lunch. Now, coffee and lunch happen at very different times for different team members, and we need to be far more deliberate about context sharing and socializing.