In the interest of ensuring our readers live longer, happier lives, I bring you perhaps my favorite TED talk (of which I have many). In this talk, Dan Beuttner gives us 9 factors that he and his research team argue will extend and improve our lives.  The Presentation Zen blog give us a nice summary of his key points.  I’m not up on my happiness research, so I’m not certain how empirically valid all these findings are or whether “happiness scholars” view this work as an advance, but it certainly did give me things to think about. As a political scientist and public policy scholar, I’m particularly interested in how these findings are converted into narratives that can yield better policy outcomes.