The Importance Of Good Relationships With Robert Waldinger, PhD (#09)

The Shannon Harvey Podcast

In this episode I’m taking you inside my research files. When I start to think about a new question or film project, I often don’t really know where it’s going to lead. Over the following weeks, months, or even years, I dive headfirst into the academic journals. The process often feels like a journey of discovery – sometimes it’s the evidence that amazes me and sometimes it’s the people I get to talk to that leave a lasting impression on how I view the world. One of those conversations happened late one night as I beamed into the Harvard Medical School to chat with Professor Robert Waldinger – the director of the longest ever study on life and happiness. As well as being a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard he’s also a psychoanalyst and Zen priest. At the time I had just published my first book, The Whole Health Life and was starting to contemplate what I would tackle next. His online TED talk has now been watched by more than 37 million people world wide. It was called “What makes a good life?” And I wanted to know more. The study he’s oversees has been tracking the lives of two groups of men for over 75 years. It now follows the Baby Boomer children of the original participants to understand how childhood experience reaches across decades to affect health and wellbeing. As you can imagine, the research data is an absolute treasure trove of knowledge about what matters most.