History of our body’s atoms, Dopamine and the brain

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Children playing over a model of human body
Children play around a toy body at the Crad’Expo, in Paris Tuesday Nov.30, 2004. The exhibition employs the vocabulary of children to teach youngsters about the human respitory and digestive systems. The exhition runs until May 8, 2005. Crad is French slang for dirty or “crude”. Remy de la Mauviniere/AP Photo

A documentarian takes us through the history behind the atoms that ended up forming our human bodies. Then, a psychiatrist joins us to look at our relationship with dopamine in the brain.

Featured in this Show

  • Where did what we're made of… come from?

    We take a journey learning about the history of our body’s atoms — and how they combine to make us who we are as humans.

    Content note: In a response to a question about the creation of elements, Dan said “Once the Big Bang happened, there was a huge amount of oxygen.” He meant to say “hydrogen.” Oxygen was created later in stars.

  • Book explores our collective addiction to dopamine

    Humans evolved to survive scarcity. So what happens when we live in a world of abundance? A psychiatrist argues that the contemporary world’s excesses don’t interact well with the human proclivity for dopamine and make us all more vulnerable to addiction.

Episode Credits

  • Rob Ferrett Host
  • Sarah Hopefl Technical Director
  • Trina La Susa Technical Director
  • Tim Peterson Producer
  • Colleen Leahy Producer
  • Dan Levitt Guest
  • Anna Lembke Guest

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