This episode is a foundational and fundamental episode for many future and even some past episodes that mention dopamine as being involved in the mechanisms that underly different behaviors or protocols that are suggested. This is a great spot for anyone ranging from a non scientist to someone who studies dopamine to get a crash course on the neuronal mechanisms for dopamine and how it works (done well in the first half or so), and then applications to real life for how/why this is important. The porn and phone discussion really hit me personally, and the mechanism was interesting even after the 3rd time I’ve listened to it. Relearning about the baseline (tonic) vs. the spiking levels of dopamine is such a fundamental and important part of neuroscience and is such an elegant idea that underlies so much of our pain, pleasure, excitement, motivation, drive, which together represent so much of our behaviors and decisions. Still, even when I already know this after learning this in classes and in papers, and listening to this information in handfulls of other podcast, this episode still hits hard and hits home in the perfect place in my brai (liekly the Nucleus Accumbans-VTA circuit lol) that really emphasizes the importance of this information and power of this episode, in my opinion.