perfectly good, warm relationships will wither away and die of neglect. If we don't connect,

if we don't reach out, if we don't see each other, if we don't call each other, right? And so

suddenly people will turn around, you know, in their 30s or 40s and say, I don't have any friends,

I've fallen out of touch with my college friends, with my school friends, whatever. And so what we find

is that the people who are better at maintaining these connections and making new ones are the people

who really thrive. So what if the key to living a good life is actually closer than we all realize?

I mean, whether you're a long time listener of the podcast or this is your first time tuning in,

I bet some part of you is searching for the answers to living a good life, a meaningful life.

You probably wondered what the keys to happiness or good health or fortune are, and in our last

episode I shared a simple model for a really good life that I call the good life buckets. If you

haven't listened, by the way, be sure to tee that up right after this. Now, one of the three good

life buckets that I spoke about is what I call the connection bucket. It's all about the depth

and quality of our relationships and the effect they have on our ability to live good lives.

And today we're diving even deeper into the role that relationships and people play in our ability

to feel human, to feel alive and to flourish in all parts of life with a very special guest.

Someone who is passionate about uncovering and sharing the keys to living a good life, Dr. Robert

Waldinger. He is a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School co-founder of the Liceman

Research Foundation, a practicing psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and director of the

psychotherapy teaching program for Harvard psychiatry residents. And he's also a long time practitioner

and teacher of Zen teaches all over New England and in fact around the world. But he's also the

director of something called the Harvard study of adult development at Massachusetts General Hospital,

which is often shorthanded as the grand study. This is from my knowledge, but longest running

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