Elizabeth Svoboda is an award-winning science writer who has contributed to the Washington Post, Discover magazine, Psychology Today, and many other publications. Her first book is What Makes a Hero: The Surprising Science of Selflessness, and her most recent book, for children, is The Life Heroic: How to Unleash Your Most Amazing Self. She lives in San Jose, California with her husband and two young sons.
Episode links
- Elizabeth's Twitte r Visit
- Elizabeth's LinkedIn Visit
- What makes a hero? Visit
- The life Heroic book Visit
Info
Episode outline
- 01:44 — 83% of people suffer mental disorders - New Zealand study - 4 in 5 people
- 04:45 — Awareness and mental disorders
- 05:48 — Who are the 17% lucky ones? Personality traits
- 07:17 — The role of genetics and the process of training our emotional resilience
- 08:34 — Tweaking our mental state and emotional responses through medicine - next steps
- 09:58 — Lifestyle changes vs pills
- 12:18 — Becoming aware and planning towards improvement
- 14:22 — Never alone
- 15:20 — What makes a hero - Is true altruism possible?
- 17:35 — The roots of altruism
- 18:58 — Dave Hartsock - Skydiving and inspiring heroism - life or death situations
- 22:10 — Life or death Split second decisions - subconscious vs conscious
- 24:06 — Daniel Kahneman - Thinking, Fast and Slow - System 1 and System 2 thinking - Behaviours that transition from conscious to subconscious
- 26:16 — "The helper's high" - Benefits of Altruism and training to be more altruist
- 28:15 — Evolutionary roots of altruism/Heroism and what it tells us about pure altruism
- 30:42 — Altruism as a coping mechanism to deal with mental darkness - Pathological altruism - Intrinsic motivations behind altruism
- 32:21 — How to detect if our motivations to be altruistic are coming from the right place
- 34:44 — Graceanne Rumer - life saving heroism at a young age - 17 years old
- 38:25 — What would we do as adults in a life or death situation?
- 39:52 — Feedback and community as a driver and manager of good altruism
- 41:04 — Power/Money vs Poorness: correlations with degrees of altruism
- 43:35 — Dinosaurs & Detective work - Following the tracks
- 45:28 — What a track holds - a statement by an entire being
- 47:10 — Human tracks - what they tell us about our health and lives
- 48:29 — Intelligence and IQ tests - cultural weighting - Lewis Terman - Stanford-Binet Test
- 50:32 — Do we need IQ tests? Current trends
- 52:00 — What is intelligence? Is being very intelligent an advantage or a disadvantage? Impact of expectations raised by IQ tests
- 54:02 — "Failures" vs "Intelligence" - Consequences
- 55:05 — High IQ metrics impact on motivation and unconventional ground breaking behaviour - Intelligence vs risk
- 55:49 — The role of suffering vs empathy and altruism
- 59:08 — What makes a life fulfilling
- 01:57:06 - Conclusion
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