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Can A 75-Year-Old Study Deliver Wisdom For All Of Us?

by NPR/TED STAFF

"We get carried away from the really important things, but we can remind each other what really matters. That's wisdom." — Robert Waldinger
"We get carried away from the really important things, but we can remind each other what really matters. That's wisdom." — Robert Waldinger John Werner / Courtesy of TED

Part 5 of the TED Radio Hour episode Becoming Wise

About Robert Waldinger's TED Talk

Psychiatrist Robert Waldinger is the director of a 75-year-old study on happiness and satisfaction. He shares what he has learned, as well as his wisdom on how to find fulfillment.

About Robert Waldinger

Psychiatrist Robert Waldinger is the Director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development. The study has tracked the lives of two groups of men for over 75 years.

Dr. Waldinger is now expanding the study to the baby-boomer children of these men to understand how childhood experience reaches across decades to affect health and wellbeing in middle age.

Dr. Waldinger received his A.B. from Harvard College and his M.D. from Harvard Medical School. He is the author of numerous scientific papers as well as two books.

He is a practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, he teaches Harvard medical students and psychiatry residents, and he is on the faculty of the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute. He is also a Zen priest.

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit NPR.

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