What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness

Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser

This week on TED.com January 2, 2016

Talk of the week Robert Waldinger: What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness 12:46 minutes · Filmed Nov 2015 · Posted Dec 2015 · TEDxBeaconStreet What keeps us happy and healthy as we go through life? If you think it's fame and money, you're not alone – but, according to psychiatrist Robert Waldinger, you're mistaken. As the director of a 75-year-long study on adult development, Waldinger has unprecedented access to data on true happiness and satisfaction. In this talk, he shares three important lessons learned from the study about how to build a fulfilling life. Watch now »

Playlist of the week The most popular talks of 2015 What a year! Here are the talks you watched the most from 2015. Watch » 15 TED Talks • Total run time 3:29:32

More TED Talks For sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor, the ocean is a muse -- and a museum. Taylor makes evocative, dreamlike sculptures and sinks them to the ocean floor, where they transform from lifeless stone into vibrant habitats for corals, crustaceans and other creatures. The result: Enigmatic, haunting and colorful commentaries about the sacredness of the ocean and its breathtaking power of life. Watch » The Internet has transformed the front lines of war -- and our governments aren't keeping up. As security analyst Rodrigo Bijou shows, modern conflict is being waged online between non-state groups, activists and private corporations, and the digital landscape is fertile ground for recruiting new terrorists. Meanwhile, government surveillance programs are ripe for exploitation. Bijou urges governments to end mass surveillance -- and makes a bold call for individuals to step up and protect the internet. Watch » Written language, the hallmark of human civilization, didn't just suddenly appear one day. Thousands of years before the first writing systems, our ancestors scrawled geometric signs across the walls of the caves they sheltered in. Paleoanthropologist and rock art researcher Genevieve von Petzinger has studied and codified these ancient markings in caves across Europe. The uniformity of her findings suggest that graphic communication, and the ability to preserve and transmit messages beyond a single moment in time, may be much older than we think. Watch » In her New Orleans neighborhood, artist Candy Chang turned an abandoned house into a giant chalkboard asking a fill-in-the-blank question: "Before I die I want to ___." Her neighbors' answers -- surprising, poignant, funny -- became an unexpected mirror for the community. (What's your answer?) Watch »

Read more on ideas.ted.com Psychology: How our bodies betray us when we lie » "Simply put, lying is hard work," says Amy Cuddy Gallery: "My voice feels short sometimes" » These drawings express the music of sign language Art & ocean: Explore the underwater art museum » Breathtaking sculpture from Jason deCaires Taylor

Quote of the Week “ Books have an extraordinary power to take you out of yourself and into someone else's mindset, so that, for a while at least, you look at the world through different eyes. That can be an uncomfortable experience. But it can also be really enlightening." Ann Morgan My year reading a book from every country in the world

what is beauty? Are we humans hardwired to crave and respond to beauty? (And if so ... why?) TED speakers explore the idea on the TED Radio Hour »

Join us on Facebook Follow us @TEDTalks

 

You are receiving this email because you've subscribed to our mailing list. We also send out daily emails, if you can't get enough of us. We love you too. Copyright © 2016 TED, All rights reserved. You're receiving the TED Talks weekly newsletter because you subscribed to it on TED.com. (Was this forwarded by a friend? You can sign up here: http://www.ted.com/newsletter ) Our mailing address is: TED 250 Hudson St., Room 1002 New York, NY 10013 Add us to your address book unsubscribe from this list   update subscription preferences   view email in browser