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

De: Daniel Z. Lieberman MD, Michael E. Long

Narrado por: Tom Parks

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.

Reseñas de la Crítica

"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

Thought provoking

Great book, narration, and interesting information. Good enough to buy the paper book also, to reread certain parts.

Explains Liberals vs Conservatives

The authors explain the MAJOR difference between dopamine and serotonin (and other H & N brain chemicals). Dopamine regulates future desires, and H&N regulate current pleasures. And it seems to be wired in with our DNA. This explains a lot of society's problems and how beliefs get passed down the generations - it's more than nurture. So what do we do with this knowledge? The listener will just ponder throughout the book.

Of course, like all such books, the authors eventually try squeezing all sorts of behavioral and sociological data into this theory. Very weak correlational data between conservatives and liberals is attributed to supply or lack of dopamine (with the standard "partly" qualifier). At some point when you get 51% vs 49% you wonder if the tides, zodiac, or who won the Superbowl might have more influence than a brain chemical. But for the first 90% of this book I am mostly a believer. I do think that the researchers who look for a positive outcome have designed experiments where only a positive outcome can be measured, more or less. But I don't have the time to go through this book again to find where these experiments were mentioned.

Amazing book!

If you want to understand why liberals think one way and conservatives another, listen to this book! It will help you in all your relationships! Excellent narration!

Dryly fascinating

If you've ever wondered why we do where things that don't seen logical, this book had the answers. Technical enough to not insult us science heads, but written at a level that anyone should understand. Brain chemistry is fascinating.

Must read !!

This book will quickly give you clarity on lots of things, especially things we experience in our hours of darkness... 10/10