Professor Bob Waldinger

Well, the biggest finding is that the people who stayed healthiest and happiest the longest were the people who were... Come on, I'm not going to give it away that easily.

How do we live a good life?

That's really it.

And what are the conditions that predict who's going to thrive as they go through their life and who isn't?

That's what we were asking.

Well, they were two separate studies that didn't actually know about each other.

One was a study of Harvard College undergraduate students, 19-year-olds, who were thought by their deans to be fine, upstanding specimens.

And so they were chosen to study normal development from adolescence to young adulthood.

And of course, now we

You know, we realize how ridiculous that is.

If you want to study normal development, you study all white guys from Harvard?

No.

But the other group was also a study of normal development, but it was a study of boys from Boston's poorest neighborhoods and their most troubled families.

So families known for domestic violence, parental illness, mental illness, known to social service agencies for so much trouble.

And the question that these researchers had was, what allows some children born into such difficult circumstances to thrive, to stay out of trouble, to do well?

There were 724 original participants.

Fewer than 10 are still living, and they're all over age 100.

He was.

He was.

Yeah.