The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity―and Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race

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Kaitlin Luna: So, it's really been integral in what has helped us evolve from early humans to where we are today? You listen to the song that was number one before “Good Vibrations” and then listen to “Good Vibrations.” The one before was a song called “Winchester Cathedral,” which was the epitome of grocery store music.

The Molecule of More by Daniel Z. Lieberman - Waterstones

Kaitlin Luna: Yeah, and this is what we're seeing with this emphasis on mindfulness and people wanting to be here now. I think, because we are living in a world that's very dopamine-centric, with constant, you know, instant gratification all the time. So, that's where I imagine some of this is me, just editorializing. But, where we're seeing this boom and mindfulness. Kaitlin Luna: Absolutely. That’s what it seems like. It does push the tide more. And I mean, something like opioids is affecting so many people and friends, family, that sort of thing. Kaitlin Luna: But, you, you could do elaborate things that are you seeing this presentation, though, it really captures your attention. It can be boring and could be interesting, right? The answer is found in a single chemical in your brain: dopamine. Dopamine ensured the survival of early man. Thousands of years later, it is the source of our most basic behaviors and cultural ideas―and progress itself.

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Kaitlin Luna: Wow, that’s amazing. Thank you so much for joining us. This has been an absolutely fascinating conversation. Analogies represent a very dopaminergic way of thinking about the world. Here’s an example: light can sometimes act like individual bullets being fired from a gun, and at other times like ripples traveling across a pond. An analogy pulls out the abstract, unseen essence of a concept, and matches it with a similar essence of an apparently unrelated concept. Daniel Lieberman: Dopamine is a chemical in the brain. I like to think of it like the conductor of an orchestra. It turns on, turns off, turns up the volume — turns down the volume on a lot of different areas in the brain, and as a result, it has an outside, an outsized influence on our behavior. Daniel Lieberman: That's why there's a fine line between art and insanity. Sometimes we don't know. Sometimes initially we say, this is crazy. This is not art. And then maybe a few decades later we take a second look and we say “wait a minute. That is art.” The surge of dopamine feels good, but it’s different from a surge of H&N pleasure, which is a surge of satisfaction. And that difference is key: the dopamine surge triggered by winning leaves us wanting more.

molecule of more—dopamine, with Daniel Lieberman, MD, and The molecule of more—dopamine, with Daniel Lieberman, MD, and

Mike Long: Just to be technical for a minute, it doesn't actually increase the volume of dopamine. It increases the dopaminergic activity in across the cells, right? Daniel Lieberman: It's true, and most animals do have it. It's a very ancient chemical, but humans seem to have more of it than any other organism, and we are much more sophisticated than other organisms and so in human beings, it does a lot more, then just reward us when we engage in pro survival activities. It's responsible for a whole host of activities that people would never guess, such as love, creativity, even political affiliation. That happy error is what launches dopamine into action. It’s not the extra time or the extra money themselves. It’s the thrill of the unexpected good news. And when you said that a moment ago, Dan, I think that's if you're listening to this, you wondering, well, what do you mean by creativity? This is one good way to begin to understand it. Creativity is associating things that have not been commonly associated before. Violence is sometimes the result of dysfunction or pathology. But most of the time, violence is a choice—a coercive and calculated way to get the thing you want.

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And we can look at genetics, and we can actually predict a person's political ideology by looking at their dopamine genes. Control dopamine takes the excitement and motivation provided by desire dopamine, evaluates options, selects tools, and plots a strategy to get what it wants. From dopamine’s point of view, it’s not the having that matters. It’s getting something - anything - that’s new. From this understanding - the difference between possessing something versus anticipating it - we can understand in a revolutionary new way why we behave as we do in love, business, addiction, politics, religion - and we can even predict those behaviors in ourselves and others. Familiarity – But it wasn’t the coffee and the croissant that changed; it was your expectation. Passion rises when we dream of a world of possibility, and fades when we are confronted by reality.