Elizabeth Svoboda
Author, California
Elizabeth Svoboda writes on topics from creationist biology classes in Galápagos schools to the connections between suffering and selflessness. She is the author of What Makes a Hero? (2013) and, for children, The Life Heroic: How to Unleash Your Most Amazing Self (2019). She lives in San Jose, California.
Written by Elizabeth Svoboda
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Life stages
Family passages
Each new generation learns from its elders. But familial voices now compete for influence with a chorus of urgent others
Elizabeth Svoboda
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Mood and emotion
The bittersweet madeleine
It is a guilty pleasure and undergirds nationalist bombast, yet nostalgia for the past can help propel us into the future
Elizabeth Svoboda
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Mental health
The red thread of obsession
Evolved human capacities for vigilance and worry are both exacerbated and rewarded by the intense pressure of modern life
Elizabeth Svoboda
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Cognition and intelligence
The broad, ragged cut
Aptitude and IQ tests are used to distinguish those young people who deserve a chance from those who do not. Do they work?
Elizabeth Svoboda
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Mental health
Temperamentally blessed
Just one in five people will be lucky enough to avoid mental health problems throughout their life. How do they do it?
Elizabeth Svoboda
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Neuroscience
The kindled brain
If each bout of depression, bipolar disorder or PTSD makes another more likely, should sufferers stay on medication for life?
Elizabeth Svoboda
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Mood and emotion
Saved by the book
Self-help books might have a reputation for nonsense but the best of them are more effective than medication or therapy
Elizabeth Svoboda
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Cognition and intelligence
The power of story
Across time and culture, stories have been agents of personal transformation – in part because they change our brains
Elizabeth Svoboda