Sociobiology is one of my favorite sciences, so I listen to the Hidden Brain podcast often. I’ve mentioned it in a Dragonfly newsletter when I first began here. This podcast and it’s host, Shankar Vedantam, are always informative and entertaining, and I want to recommend it again because of this particular episode, “The Paradox of Pleasure.”
Addiction has become so far reaching that nearly everyone has been affected by it either directly or through a friend or family member. When we think of addiction, we usually think of drugs or alcohol, but this episode illustrates how the smartphone and its technology can put anyone at risk for a host of other addictions.
Psychiatrist Anna Lembke describes four different addictions all related to the internet and its power to control our attention. She describes the pleasure/pain balance and what may be going on in a person’s brain to cause these behaviors.
Check it out and then listen to the subsequent podcast, “Part Two: The Path to Enough.”