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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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The Molecule of More

Written by: Daniel Z. Lieberman MD, Michael E. Long
Narrated by: Tom Parks
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About this listen

Why are we obsessed with the things we want and bored when we get them?

Why is addiction “perfectly logical” to an addict?

Why does love change so quickly from passion to disinterest?

Why are some people diehard liberals and others hardcore conservatives?

Why are we always hopeful for solutions even in the darkest times - and so good at figuring them out?

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.

Dopamine is the chemical of desire that always asks for more - more stuff, more stimulation, and more surprises. In pursuit of these things, it is undeterred by emotion, fear, or morality. Dopamine is the source of our every urge, that little bit of biology that makes an ambitious business professional sacrifice everything in pursuit of success, or that drives a satisfied spouse to risk it all for the thrill of someone new. Simply put, it is why we seek and succeed; it is why we discover and prosper. Yet, at the same time, it’s why we gamble and squander.

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.

In 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, George Washington University professor and psychiatrist Daniel Z. Lieberman, MD, and Georgetown University lecturer Michael E. Long present a potentially life-changing proposal: Much of human life has an unconsidered component that explains an array of behaviors previously thought to be unrelated, including why winners cheat, why geniuses often suffer with mental illness, why nearly all diets fail, and why the brains of liberals and conservatives really are different.

©2018 Daniel Z. Lieberman, MD, and Michael E. Long. (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. Publishing by arrangement with BenBella Books.
Biological Sciences Neuroscience & Neuropsychology Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Science

Critic Reviews

"One might consider it Freakonomics for the mind."— Greg Roth, "The Idea Enthusiast"

"Daniel Lieberman and Michael Long have pulled off an amazing feat. They have made a biography of a neurotransmitter a riveting read. Once you understand the power and peril of dopamine, you’ll better understand the human condition itself.” —Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive and When

"Meet a molecule whose fingerprint rests upon every aspect of human nature—from desire and drugs to politics and progress. Lieberman and Long tell the epic saga of dopamine as a page-turner that you simply can't put down."—David Eagleman, PhD, neuroscientist at Stanford and New York Times bestselling author

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The book has been nicely presented over varied topics scaling from individual level to a level of our entire species. But it does take the liberty to oversimplify the rewarding and mood regulating circuits of our brain. It might leave you baffled and confused in the end and may give you a sense of helplessness and a feeling of not being in control of your life.

I felt that the author did not have any agenda except to put forth the research in a form which we might digest and in doing so they might have over-estimated the ability of an average person to understand it or use the nuggets from this book to their disposal.

I believe a reader should just use this reading as a motivation to be mindful of the present (the HNN) and give it more priority in life instead of chasing milestones one after the other. But not to mention a periodic dose of dopaminergic reward by grinding only for a reasonable time frame and putting an effort which does not interfere with the “Here and Now”. But for now, balancing this act might just be possible to manifest in the fictions but despite that as human beings, all we can do is thrive to reach there.

I believe we are just beginning to understand this

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Absolute masterpiece. The research and the presentation are deeply insightful. The performance of the narrator is sublime and keeps the attention on the subject that is in itself deeply scientific and philosophical at the same time.
Do listen to this one for sure…

Mind Blown

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it was wonderful listening to how chemicals work and make us work in real life

chemical driving us

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It really challenges your perception of reality and how things are controlled on a chemical and psychological level. Interesting read.

Perspective builder

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It is one of the must read books .
This book explains :
- Every emotion or feeling is reduced to bio chemistry.
- Meditation and marijuana can have similar effects on your brain
- Insanity and genius are almost the same medically

Even though the book explains the majority of the emotions through dopamine , it is clearly evident that many more molecules like dopamine are present in our body that make us a concoction of bio chemical experimentation by nature .

#behumble

I am a concoction of biochemistry

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