LinkedIn presents.

I'm Rufus Kraskam and this is the next big idea.

Today, how to live a good life, according to the world's longest study of happiness. In 1938, researchers at Harvard decided they wanted an answer, finally, to one of life's

enduring mysteries.

What makes us happy? They certainly weren't the first to ask this question.

In the 6th century B.C.

Hindu sages spoke about Anantha, inner joy, a state that for most people was always just out of reach.

A few centuries later and a few thousand miles away, Aristotle chimed in, coining the term eudemonia, by which he meant

fulfillment, living well, flourishing. He saw this as the panicle of human achievement, sought

by many, reached by few.

So this question, what makes us happy is not an easy one to answer philosophically, let

alone scientifically, which meant that those researchers at Harvard in 1938

had to come up with a unique way to study it.

In the end, they did this by looking in their own backyard.

They recruited 268 Harvard sophomores, all men, all white, who agreed to let the researchers

follow them for the rest of their lives.

After the Harvard boys left Cambridge,

the researchers gave them physicals

and sent them questionnaires.

When they went off to fight in World War II,

the researchers interviewed them about it.

When some achieved great things, for example, one of the studies participants, a sickly

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