Video Content: Module 6

"The hidden power of siblings"

Given by Jeffrey Kluger, a senior editor of science and technology reporting at TIME magazine, this lecture deals with the multi-faceted bond that exists between brothers and sisters and the impact that birth order, favoritism and sibling rivalry makes in family dynamics overall. In the course of his lecture, Kluger mulls over various facets of sibling relationships, exploring the characteristics and complexities that make them so significant. “There may be no relationship that affects us more profoundly,” he says, “that’s closer, finer, harder, sweeter, happier, sadder, more filled with joy or fraught with woe, than the relationship we have with our brothers and sisters.” From sibling relationships come “a sense of having a permanent traveling companion,” he says, somebody with whom we can “road-test life” before we ever branch out to travel it on our own.