Recorded on: Jul 28, 2025
Description
In this week’s Frankly, Nate reflects on a moment of unexpected insight during a morning bike ride, which catalyzed a larger meditation on the modern human predicament. This episode explores the neuroscience of dopamine, and offers a reflection on the ways it plays into distraction, technology, and how we interact with the hyperstimulating world around us.
What is the “ghost of dopamine past,” and how does it shape not only our individual lives, but our collective economic and ecological behavior? Why does the urge to scroll on our phones override the deep calm of watching wildlife? And how might tactics like dopamine fasting or socialization help us rebalance our nervous systems in a culture engineered to constantly produce more?
Show Notes & Links to Learn More
02:40 – dopamine, neurotransmitters
03:05 – Peter Whybrow, Peter Whybrow TGS episode, American Mania: When More is Not Enough
03:15 – Wolfram Schultz, research about rewards + dopamine neurons in monkeys
06:20 – Parkinson’s disease
07:00 – Personality, Addiction, Dopamine: Insights from Parkinson’s Disease
12:30 – TGS with Audrey Tang, greyscale and digital wellbeing
13:22 – Dungeons and Dragons, Magic the Gathering
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I love the photo of the fawn photo-bombing your dog picture.
How can we help nature photo-bomb our technological hyperconsumptive society?
I'm reminded of a weekly newspaper in Wisconsin reporting in December the top 10 most read articles of the year. Three were about nature. Yet this paper rarely offers articles about nature and far less than 30% of their articles are nature related. Yet this glaring finding was never commented upon and they continue a miserly offering of nature related articles. It was like the doe and fawn in front of you, but they remain blind to seeing their readers longing for nature.
Similarly, while attending a Wisconsin university dozens of students were hurrying along a sidewalk with tall, fruiting shrubs on either side. In those shrubs were flocks of Cedar Waxwings gulping the bright red berries. I stopped to watch the birds. I disrupted the flow enough for a student to pause to see why I stopped. She then saw the birds. Before continuing on she thanked me for helping her see those beautiful birds.
Maybe if we model nature appreciating behaviors and slow down the hyperconsumeristic onslaught we can start distracting those glazed, dopamine addled eyes from the screens and Amazon parcels to the nature that remains around us.