How We’ve ‘Drugified’ Our Entire Existence: Dopamine & Addiction In the Digital Age with Anna Lembke
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Release Date: 01/07/2026
The Things We Take for Granted | Frankly 118
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
In this week’s Frankly, Nate shares reflections on what we take for granted in life at multiple scales: from personal health to meaningful work to relative ecological stability. The things that keep our everyday lives functioning often go unnoticed until they’re needed or suddenly absent, suggesting that real wealth might come in the form of reliability rather than material gain. Nate also considers what has happened to our attention in an age of constantly-available stimulation, reflecting on how moving towards a quieter and slower lifestyle (whether by choice or by external...
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How We’ve ‘Drugified’ Our Entire Existence: Dopamine & Addiction In the Digital Age with Anna Lembke
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Dopamine: the most famous neurotransmitter that regulates pleasure, motivation, and (perhaps most importantly) addiction. When examining why our society is hooked on consuming more and more of everything – food, clothes, videos, news, vacations – it’s imperative to look at how our modern environments hijack our brain’s dopamine, sending it into overdrive at nearly every turn. Could taking a closer look at how our societal norms make us more vulnerable to addiction help us transition to more balanced and mindful lifestyles? In this episode, Nate is joined by New York Times...
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Behavioral Thermodynamics Part 1: Beyond the 4th Law?
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
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End of Year Reflections: Four Years of The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
In this week’s episode, Nate reflects on four years(!) of the podcast by answering listener-submitted questions, which cover a broad range of topics related to The Great Simplification. He invites subscribers to investigate how they navigate a complex and ever-changing world, while avoiding overly prescriptive solutions that brush aside personal agency and the inherent uncertainty that exists in our world. Whether it’s outlining his own evolving theory of change or emphasizing the importance of self-care and psychological grounding, Nate speaks to the epistemological resilience that we...
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Sunk Cost and the Superorganism | Frankly 116
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
In this week’s episode, Nate unpacks the pervasive behavioral pull of sunk cost as a force shaping our material reality, identities, and collective expectations about the future. Past investments – in careers, possessions, and cultural narratives – lock us into patterns of defending what might no longer actually serve us. This tendency becomes more and more relevant as the world shifts in ways that demand adaptability rather than stagnancy. Deep loyalty to former choices, even as we absorb new information about our lived environments, can limit our ability to make wiser, more...
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The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
While current conversations about global heating tend to center around a few well-established pieces of science, we don’t often hear about the scientists and leaders working at the frontier of what is still unknown about Earth’s systems. This includes unpredictable tipping points and cascading effects of our rapidly changing climate, as well as the unconventional adaptation strategies that might help us maintain a stable planet. What is the newest climate science being researched right now, and what areas are we still needing to explore as we fight for a livable future? In this...
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Inflation, Deflation, & Simplification: The 8 Things That Influence Prices | Frankly 115
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
In this week’s Frankly, Nate explores how the prices we encounter in our daily lives are influenced by not only how much money is in the system, but also by resource depletion, technology, affordability by 'the masses,' and trust within a complex global system. Prices are deeply intertwined with the biophysical reality that underpins our society, and are affected by major forces that often operate unseen to the average consumer. Other forces – like leverage, complexity, and currency reform – also have longer term repercussions within our monetary system. These have the ability to create...
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If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: How Artificial Superintelligence Might Wipe Out Our Entire Species with Nate Soares
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Technological development has always been a double-edged sword for humanity: the printing press increased the spread of misinformation, cars disrupted the fabric of our cities, and social media has made us increasingly polarized and lonely. But it has not been since the invention of the nuclear bomb that technology has presented such a severe existential risk to humanity – until now, with the possibility of Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) on the horizon. Were ASI to come to fruition, it would be so powerful that it would outcompete human beings in everything – from scientific discovery...
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Reimagining Ourselves at the End of Our World: Kinship, Interconnection, and Spirituality in the Metacrisis with Samantha Sweetwater
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Over the past decade, the world has become increasingly chaotic and uncertain – and so, too, has our cultural vision for the future. While the events we face now may feel unprecedented, they are rooted in much deeper patterns, which humanity has been playing out for millennia. If we take the time to understand past trends, we can also employ practices and philosophies that might counteract them – such as focusing on kinship, intimacy, and resilience – to help pave the way for a better future. How might we nurture the foundations of a different kind of society, even while the end of...
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Directional Advice for the (More Than) Human Predicament | Frankly 114
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Over the past decade, the world has become increasingly chaotic and uncertain – and so, too, has our cultural vision for the future. While the events we face now may feel unprecedented, they are rooted in much deeper patterns, which humanity has been playing out for millennia. If we take the time to understand past trends, we can also employ practices and philosophies that might counteract them – such as focusing on kinship, intimacy, and resilience – to help pave the way for a better future. How might we nurture the foundations of a different kind of society, even while the end of...
info_outlineDopamine: the most famous neurotransmitter that regulates pleasure, motivation, and (perhaps most importantly) addiction. When examining why our society is hooked on consuming more and more of everything – food, clothes, videos, news, vacations – it’s imperative to look at how our modern environments hijack our brain’s dopamine, sending it into overdrive at nearly every turn. Could taking a closer look at how our societal norms make us more vulnerable to addiction help us transition to more balanced and mindful lifestyles?
In this episode, Nate is joined by New York Times bestselling author and professor of psychiatry, Anna Lembke, to explore how modern society has "drugified" our lived experience through digital media, processed foods, and instant gratification, resulting in an environment that propagates addiction. She explains how dopamine works as our brain's reward signal and why our ancient wiring is mismatched for today's level of high-dopamine stimuli in everyday life – leading to tolerance, withdrawal, and even anhedonia. Ultimately, Anna emphasizes that addiction is not a personal failing but a predictable response to an environment designed to take advantage of our brain’s neurochemistry.
What are the key practices individuals can use to reduce their addictive tendencies, even as our culture continues to prioritize quick dopamine hits and consumption? How long does it take to see the positive effects after moving away from the stimulus related to our addictive behavior? Lastly, if we acknowledge that information alone isn't enough, what cultural shifts can we make to foster more connection, digital mindfulness, and authenticity, in order to return to a slower, lower throughput way of living?
(Conversation recorded on November 18th, 2025)
About Anna Lembke:
Anna Lembke is professor of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine and chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic. As a clinician scholar, she has published more than a hundred peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, and commentaries. She sits on the board of several state and national addiction-focused organizations, has testified before various committees in the United States House of Representatives and Senate, and maintains a thriving clinical practice.
In 2016, she published Drug Dealer, MD – How Doctors Were Duped, Patients Got Hooked, and Why It’s So Hard to Stop, which was highlighted in the New York Times as one of the top five books to read to understand the opioid epidemic. Dr. Lembke also appeared on the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma, an unvarnished look at the impact of social media on our lives.
Her most recent book, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence, explores how to moderate compulsive overconsumption in a dopamine-overloaded world and is a New York Times Bestseller.
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