Name: How Dopamine Secretly Controls the World (with Andrew Huberman)
Uploaded: 2025-06-30T14:30:02.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'How Dopamine Secretly Controls the World (with Andrew Huberman)' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-06-30. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'How Dopamine Secretly Controls the World (with Andrew Huberman)' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-06-30. Transcript available.

Well, and the, I think that's the beauty of childhood, right?
You know, is, is everything's new.
Oh yeah.
You know, it's, and you know, this is actually a, an interesting segue to
dopamine because
you know, dopamine is triggered by a bunch of things, but mostly by
anticipation of something.
Okay.
Right.
So let me think about that.
So dopamine is, when people say dopamine, cause you hear it all the time, right?
Dopamine hits, dopamine hits.
Right.
You hear about dopamine or give it, you know, you're getting dopamine out of
that.
So what is it?
It's a, it's something that's in your body naturally.
Okay.
So, and where is it hidden in your body behind your ears?
Yeah, basically.
So real quick lesson in dopamine.
Dopamine is a neurochemical.
Some people call it neurotransmitter, neuromodulator.
Let's just say it's a chemical.
Okay.
It's a chemical.
So it's a liquid.
It's a, yeah, basically it's released from neurons, neurons are nerve cells,
and it's
going to bind to the next, it's going to park in a parking spot we call a
receptor on the
next nerve cell and trigger the activity of that nerve cell.
Nerve cells communicate through electricity and chemicals.
The chemicals stimulate electricity.
Okay.
And neurons can make the next neuron more active.
They can make the next neuron less active.
So this is important.
In fact, a good kind of mechanical example is if you flex your bicep, you are
inhibiting,
you are preventing the neurons that flex your tricep.
They are antagonistic muscles.
And as just kind of a parallel where we can get to, when you, for instance,
smell something
you like, it's what's called an appetitive response.
It's kind of appetite that inhibits the repulsion response.
When you smell vomit or something really putrid, you tend to retract and it
tends to shut down
at the same time, the circuits that would bring you closer to something.
So it's, you know, every circuit in the brain is like that.
There's a push and a pull, an accelerator and a brake.
And if you do one, it limits the other.
Yeah.
Think of it like a seesaw.
One goes up, the other goes down.
Got it.
You know, everything from, if you step on a pin, you move your foot up and
guess what?
What happens?
Your other leg automatically extends.
Yeah.
Okay.
This is called the monosynaptic stretch reflex.
If you touch a fish on the side, there's a big old neuron, giant neuron called
the mouth in their neuron.
And what does the fish do?
It heads in the opposite direction.
This is just a, you know, these circuits have been selected for because the
dumb fish that went toward the thing that touched it probably got eaten.
So all these responses are hardwired responses.
This chemical dopamine exists in a couple different places in your brain.
It has several roles.
The most important ones to know about are that it's involved in generating
movement.
People with Parkinson's lose the neurons that create dopamine.
In an area called the substantia nigra, if you were to cut open a human brain,
you'd see two dark areas at the bottom of the brain.
And in Latin, nigra, dark, black, is down at the bottom of the brain.
And those are the neurons that degenerate.
And there's a picture of it.
Maybe we can find, it's really impressive.
You can see, even without a microscope, if you just say, I don't know, if you
said like actual brain tissue or something.
There you go.
Look, so see that first, that first one, look at that.
That's probably without any staining.
You're just looking at the brain with no microscope.
In Parkinson's, those degenerate.
You can see it on the right.
And what happens is when there's, so dopamine is critical for movement.
And it's important to keep that in mind because the other thing that dopamine
does is it's involved in a set of brain circuits that are involved in
motivation.
So if you think about any animal, human, dog, rat, cat, monkey, bat, that
animal has three choices for movement.
You can move toward something, you can stay still, or you can move backward.
Right.
Dopamine is involved in motivation, not reward.
So when you, like, what's something that you really enjoy doing?
Making quesadillas?
Making quesadillas.
When you get the ingredients and you put them out.
Yeah.
Your dopamine is starting to rise.
Yeah, I'm feeling it.
Okay.
If you're, if you're somebody who likes gambling, it's on the way to Vegas.
You're walking in, you're getting your chips.
It's the feel of the chips.
The dopamine's going up.
Okay.
This is a hardwired set of circuits that were designed to have us do things
that were adaptive.
So dopamine starts to rise in anticipation of food when we're hungry, cold when
we're hot, heat when we're cold, sex when we're horny.
Right.
Right.
And it's going to be involved in anything that we think is going to bring a
feeling or a resource.
So a lot of dopamine is based on perception?
Absolutely.
You nailed it.
Wow.
In fact, in fact, whether or not we're talking about Bitcoin, U.S. dollars,
likes on Instagram or X, followers, views, or any of that, the currency is
dopamine.
Got it.
There's one currency of motivation.
So dopamine is about wanting and craving, not about having.
Then something happens.
You make the case.
Okay.
Hold on.
Let me slow it down.
Just real quick.
Cause sometimes it's hard for me.
So I know it might be hard for some of our listeners, but so the dopamine is,
is based on the motivation.
So it's not about like the fact that when I'm sitting there and I'm making my
quesadilla, like that's the, that's the dopamine is like knowing that I'm going
to get the quesadilla soon.
That's dopamine.
But then when I actually get the quesadilla, what?
Okay.
So it depends on the quesadilla.
Let's, let's go with three different scenarios.
Okay.
And we could change out quesadilla here for jackpot at the casino.
You know, sex, winning a UFC fight or winning the bet on the UFC fight, being
nervous about asking a girl out and then actually doing it.
Doing it.
Comedy when you move to crowd work and you're like, this feels like I'm out on
a tightrope.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
So any of those things, anything where there's a potential payoff, then
something happens.
Let's, let's use the quesadilla example.
Cause it's, it's straightforward.
You have the quesadilla and it's pretty good.
Tastes like the quesadilla you usually make.
Okay.
What happens?
Your dopamine starts dropping.
Yeah.
Not a lot, but you're okay.
Yeah.
It starts dropping.
Let's say just by way of example, you eat four quesadillas each time.
It's going to be a little bit less dopamine from the actual eating of the quesadilla.
Yeah.
The second quesadilla, you can barely even taste it sometimes.
Let's say you bite into the quesadilla and it's like, oh, this tastes weird.
Like there's something off here.
Dopamine plummets.
So how much dopamine you get depends on the anticipation minus what you
actually get.
Something called reward prediction error.
But the language doesn't really matter.
That's a bunch of nerd speak for when an experience is worse than you expected,
your dopamine drops
below where it started.
Wow.
When an experience is better than you expected, surprise, it's way above where
you started.
And it stays up there for a while.
So the dopamine system loves surprise.
Now, all of this is related to learning.
This is an ancient system designed for you to learn where are the payoffs.
Where's the water?
Where's the food?
Where are the mates?
Where's the money?
Where's the resources?
These are ancient circuits that we are doing non-ancient things with.
And so, for instance, if you do comedy tours, right?
When you do your comedy tours and like you really nail it one night, like
really nail it,
it does two things.
It raises your baseline level of dopamine.
So the next time you go out, you have confidence, right?
You're still feeling that.
But it also raises the threshold for dopamine, right?
Now it's harder to get dopamine.
You can't have the same experiences that you had prior to that really killer
night and get
the same amount of dopamine that you used to.
Can you distill dopamine?
Like is there, is it manufacturable dopamine?
There are things.
Yes.
So there are things that are precursors to dopamine and things that stimulate
the release
of dopamine.
So things that stimulate the release of dopamine, the amino acid L-tyrosine.
It's found in hard cheeses, like Parmesan cheese, believe it or not.
Some people think they're a little bit addicted to cheese in some ways.
Oh, they do?
Some people think that.
Yeah.
It's a L-tyrosine is a supplement as well.
Ooh, L-tyrosine, he sounds like he's from Rome, huh?
There's a, there's a very interesting, um, hairy little bean, no joke.
This is a hairy little bean called macuna purines.
He's going to say something else.
Macuna purines.
Macuna purines?
Macuna purines.
This is a velvety bean.
If you just put velvet bean L-dopa, it is 99% L-dopa, which is the precursor.
Ooh.
It gets converted to dopamine.
I'll take L-8 ball of it.
Remember that movie, Awakenings, where people were frozen?
Yes.
With Robert De Niro.
That's right.
And Robin Williams.
Yes, Robin Williams.
And they gave those patients, it was a true story.
It's based on a story by the neurologist writer, Oliver Sacks.
And they gave those people L-dopa.
That velvety little bean is L-dopa.
So you say, can you manufacture it?
You can take the thing that is the precursor.
Now, if you do that, you'll feel dopaminergic, as neuroscientists say.
You'll be like buzz.
You'll be energized.
That's Shakira.
That's Shakira.
Yeah, absolutely.
And then-
But yeah, vibed up.
And then you'll feel the drop.
And then methamphetamine stimulates the release, as we saw.
Cocaine stimulates the release behaviors.
Listen, I don't want to demonize dopamine.
No, not at all.
Dopamine is, you know, I'm sure I had a surge of dopamine walking in here today.
I'm a fan of your show.
I had a surge of dopamine when I saw you.
I was excited, nervous about it, and then it happened.
And hopefully I will, the reward prediction error won't be less than you
anticipated.
That's my goal.
It's already fascinating.
So I think that, you know, can you manufacture it?
Well, there are things that can stimulate its release.
Now, what's beautiful, what's really beautiful is when I usually, I think
usually it happens
when you're a teen, for me, it was 19 when I discovered biology, you know, wasn't
good
at skateboarding, wasn't bad, but you know, I liked running and working out,
but I never
thought about becoming a professional athlete.
And then I discovered learning and biology.
And I thought, wow, this is something that I'm highly motivated to do.
I didn't really understand dopamine then.
We didn't know that much about it, but I'm motivated to do it.
So there's dopamine from doing it.
It brings me resources at first degrees and knowledge later, you know, the
ability to
buy a house, right?
So much of my life is built around the work that I did like a maniac really
between the
age of 19 and I'm 49 now just working nonstop.
And so there's functional dopamine and pretty soon you start weaving it in like,
oh, I can
also rest and have some recreation and that's giving me dopamine.
So our lives are built around this molecule we call dopamine.
And so the ways that you can manage it, almost orchestrate dopamine to use it
to your advantage.
It's very usable.
No big deal with caffeine to get work done.
Remember effort that precedes dopamine in constructive areas of life, writing,
comedy, podcasting,
school, sports, socializing in healthy ways.
Like this is good.
Can you get just as much dopamine from doing those positive things as you can
from doing
things that we would consider, you know, that sometimes add a level of
disappointment or
shame?
And maybe shame is not the word I want to use.
Yes, you can.
It just, you need to be more determined and focused on it.
Remember, it's how quickly the dopamine comes in with porn and methamphetamine,
cocaine and
all of that.
It's how quickly gambling raises dopamine.
You know, the stuff we're talking about, work, focus, learning, all that, it's
work.
I mean, it's hard work, but the effort that precedes dopamine is a completely
different beast
because you're in control and it doesn't put you in the trough.
But I did see a, you know, I guess we don't call them tweets now.
What do we call them?
On X, some guy made a billion dollars.
And a couple of weeks later, he said, I don't know what's going on, but I feel
like I'm
idly depressed.
And I just said, that's dopamine.
He got the reward.
And what he misses is the hunt.
You have to stay in the hunt.
This is like the will to live is the hunt for new things.
Ah, the will to live.
31-year-old guy who sells his startup for 100 million shares, why he is
depressed and how
to think about your career and life.
I sold my company, MVMT.
I know that company, they made watches, right?
A few years ago for a lot of money and thought all my problems would be solved.
I made my life really cushy and comfortable.
I optimize for being as stress-free as possible.
I play video games when I want.
I wake up when I want and really have no reason to get out of bed if I don't
want to.
I always thought this was a dream and I'd be happy forever.
I realize I'm in an incredibly unique situation and wanted to share some things
I've learned
and I'm still working through.
I mean, for you, you know, and forgive me, I've been monologuing a bit because
I just
want to make sure I blast through some of this info that hopefully people can
make to use.
We can always talk about it again.
But I, you know, for you, right, you've got the podcast, you do your comedy
tours, you
know, I'm not a comedian, but I love going to see live comedy.
Oh yeah, it's fun.
And I just have to imagine that staying busy in pursuit has got to be super
important to
your overall well-being.
Thank you.

How Dopamine Secretly Controls the World (with Andrew Huberman)

Well, and the, I think that's the beauty of childhood, right?
You know, is, is everything's new.
Oh yeah.
You know, it's, and you know, this is actually a, an interesting segue to
dopamine because
you know, dopamine is triggered by a bunch of things, but mostly by
anticipation of something.
Okay.
Right.
So let me think about that.
So dopamine is, when people say dopamine, cause you hear it all the time, right?
Dopamine hits, dopamine hits.
Right.
You hear about dopamine or give it, you know, you're getting dopamine out of
that.
So what is it?
It's a, it's something that's in your body naturally.
Okay.
So, and where is it hidden in your body behind your ears?
Yeah, basically.
So real quick lesson in dopamine.
Dopamine is a neurochemical.
Some people call it neurotransmitter, neuromodulator.
Let's just say it's a chemical.
Okay.
It's a chemical.
So it's a liquid.
It's a, yeah, basically it's released from neurons, neurons are nerve cells,
and it's
going to bind to the next, it's going to park in a parking spot we call a
receptor on the
next nerve cell and trigger the activity of that nerve cell.
Nerve cells communicate through electricity and chemicals.
The chemicals stimulate electricity.
Okay.
And neurons can make the next neuron more active.
They can make the next neuron less active.
So this is important.
In fact, a good kind of mechanical example is if you flex your bicep, you are
inhibiting,
you are preventing the neurons that flex your tricep.
They are antagonistic muscles.
And as just kind of a parallel where we can get to, when you, for instance,
smell something
you like, it's what's called an appetitive response.
It's kind of appetite that inhibits the repulsion response.
When you smell vomit or something really putrid, you tend to retract and it
tends to shut down
at the same time, the circuits that would bring you closer to something.
So it's, you know, every circuit in the brain is like that.
There's a push and a pull, an accelerator and a brake.
And if you do one, it limits the other.
Yeah.
Think of it like a seesaw.
One goes up, the other goes down.
Got it.
You know, everything from, if you step on a pin, you move your foot up and
guess what?
What happens?
Your other leg automatically extends.
Yeah.
Okay.
This is called the monosynaptic stretch reflex.
If you touch a fish on the side, there's a big old neuron, giant neuron called
the mouth in their neuron.
And what does the fish do?
It heads in the opposite direction.
This is just a, you know, these circuits have been selected for because the
dumb fish that went toward the thing that touched it probably got eaten.
So all these responses are hardwired responses.
This chemical dopamine exists in a couple different places in your brain.
It has several roles.
The most important ones to know about are that it's involved in generating
movement.
People with Parkinson's lose the neurons that create dopamine.
In an area called the substantia nigra, if you were to cut open a human brain,
you'd see two dark areas at the bottom of the brain.
And in Latin, nigra, dark, black, is down at the bottom of the brain.
And those are the neurons that degenerate.
And there's a picture of it.
Maybe we can find, it's really impressive.
You can see, even without a microscope, if you just say, I don't know, if you
said like actual brain tissue or something.
There you go.
Look, so see that first, that first one, look at that.
That's probably without any staining.
You're just looking at the brain with no microscope.
In Parkinson's, those degenerate.
You can see it on the right.
And what happens is when there's, so dopamine is critical for movement.
And it's important to keep that in mind because the other thing that dopamine
does is it's involved in a set of brain circuits that are involved in
motivation.
So if you think about any animal, human, dog, rat, cat, monkey, bat, that
animal has three choices for movement.
You can move toward something, you can stay still, or you can move backward.
Right.
Dopamine is involved in motivation, not reward.
So when you, like, what's something that you really enjoy doing?
Making quesadillas?
Making quesadillas.
When you get the ingredients and you put them out.
Yeah.
Your dopamine is starting to rise.
Yeah, I'm feeling it.
Okay.
If you're, if you're somebody who likes gambling, it's on the way to Vegas.
You're walking in, you're getting your chips.
It's the feel of the chips.
The dopamine's going up.
Okay.
This is a hardwired set of circuits that were designed to have us do things
that were adaptive.
So dopamine starts to rise in anticipation of food when we're hungry, cold when
we're hot, heat when we're cold, sex when we're horny.
Right.
Right.
And it's going to be involved in anything that we think is going to bring a
feeling or a resource.
So a lot of dopamine is based on perception?
Absolutely.
You nailed it.
Wow.
In fact, in fact, whether or not we're talking about Bitcoin, U.S. dollars,
likes on Instagram or X, followers, views, or any of that, the currency is
dopamine.
Got it.
There's one currency of motivation.
So dopamine is about wanting and craving, not about having.
Then something happens.
You make the case.
Okay.
Hold on.
Let me slow it down.
Just real quick.
Cause sometimes it's hard for me.
So I know it might be hard for some of our listeners, but so the dopamine is,
is based on the motivation.
So it's not about like the fact that when I'm sitting there and I'm making my
quesadilla, like that's the, that's the dopamine is like knowing that I'm going
to get the quesadilla soon.
That's dopamine.
But then when I actually get the quesadilla, what?
Okay.
So it depends on the quesadilla.
Let's, let's go with three different scenarios.
Okay.
And we could change out quesadilla here for jackpot at the casino.
You know, sex, winning a UFC fight or winning the bet on the UFC fight, being
nervous about asking a girl out and then actually doing it.
Doing it.
Comedy when you move to crowd work and you're like, this feels like I'm out on
a tightrope.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
So any of those things, anything where there's a potential payoff, then
something happens.
Let's, let's use the quesadilla example.
Cause it's, it's straightforward.
You have the quesadilla and it's pretty good.
Tastes like the quesadilla you usually make.
Okay.
What happens?
Your dopamine starts dropping.
Yeah.
Not a lot, but you're okay.
Yeah.
It starts dropping.
Let's say just by way of example, you eat four quesadillas each time.
It's going to be a little bit less dopamine from the actual eating of the quesadilla.
Yeah.
The second quesadilla, you can barely even taste it sometimes.
Let's say you bite into the quesadilla and it's like, oh, this tastes weird.
Like there's something off here.
Dopamine plummets.
So how much dopamine you get depends on the anticipation minus what you
actually get.
Something called reward prediction error.
But the language doesn't really matter.
That's a bunch of nerd speak for when an experience is worse than you expected,
your dopamine drops
below where it started.
Wow.
When an experience is better than you expected, surprise, it's way above where
you started.
And it stays up there for a while.
So the dopamine system loves surprise.
Now, all of this is related to learning.
This is an ancient system designed for you to learn where are the payoffs.
Where's the water?
Where's the food?
Where are the mates?
Where's the money?
Where's the resources?
These are ancient circuits that we are doing non-ancient things with.
And so, for instance, if you do comedy tours, right?
When you do your comedy tours and like you really nail it one night, like
really nail it,
it does two things.
It raises your baseline level of dopamine.
So the next time you go out, you have confidence, right?
You're still feeling that.
But it also raises the threshold for dopamine, right?
Now it's harder to get dopamine.
You can't have the same experiences that you had prior to that really killer
night and get
the same amount of dopamine that you used to.
Can you distill dopamine?
Like is there, is it manufacturable dopamine?
There are things.
Yes.
So there are things that are precursors to dopamine and things that stimulate
the release
of dopamine.
So things that stimulate the release of dopamine, the amino acid L-tyrosine.
It's found in hard cheeses, like Parmesan cheese, believe it or not.
Some people think they're a little bit addicted to cheese in some ways.
Oh, they do?
Some people think that.
Yeah.
It's a L-tyrosine is a supplement as well.
Ooh, L-tyrosine, he sounds like he's from Rome, huh?
There's a, there's a very interesting, um, hairy little bean, no joke.
This is a hairy little bean called macuna purines.
He's going to say something else.
Macuna purines.
Macuna purines?
Macuna purines.
This is a velvety bean.
If you just put velvet bean L-dopa, it is 99% L-dopa, which is the precursor.
Ooh.
It gets converted to dopamine.
I'll take L-8 ball of it.
Remember that movie, Awakenings, where people were frozen?
Yes.
With Robert De Niro.
That's right.
And Robin Williams.
Yes, Robin Williams.
And they gave those patients, it was a true story.
It's based on a story by the neurologist writer, Oliver Sacks.
And they gave those people L-dopa.
That velvety little bean is L-dopa.
So you say, can you manufacture it?
You can take the thing that is the precursor.
Now, if you do that, you'll feel dopaminergic, as neuroscientists say.
You'll be like buzz.
You'll be energized.
That's Shakira.
That's Shakira.
Yeah, absolutely.
And then-
But yeah, vibed up.
And then you'll feel the drop.
And then methamphetamine stimulates the release, as we saw.
Cocaine stimulates the release behaviors.
Listen, I don't want to demonize dopamine.
No, not at all.
Dopamine is, you know, I'm sure I had a surge of dopamine walking in here today.
I'm a fan of your show.
I had a surge of dopamine when I saw you.
I was excited, nervous about it, and then it happened.
And hopefully I will, the reward prediction error won't be less than you
anticipated.
That's my goal.
It's already fascinating.
So I think that, you know, can you manufacture it?
Well, there are things that can stimulate its release.
Now, what's beautiful, what's really beautiful is when I usually, I think
usually it happens
when you're a teen, for me, it was 19 when I discovered biology, you know, wasn't
good
at skateboarding, wasn't bad, but you know, I liked running and working out,
but I never
thought about becoming a professional athlete.
And then I discovered learning and biology.
And I thought, wow, this is something that I'm highly motivated to do.
I didn't really understand dopamine then.
We didn't know that much about it, but I'm motivated to do it.
So there's dopamine from doing it.
It brings me resources at first degrees and knowledge later, you know, the
ability to
buy a house, right?
So much of my life is built around the work that I did like a maniac really
between the
age of 19 and I'm 49 now just working nonstop.
And so there's functional dopamine and pretty soon you start weaving it in like,
oh, I can
also rest and have some recreation and that's giving me dopamine.
So our lives are built around this molecule we call dopamine.
And so the ways that you can manage it, almost orchestrate dopamine to use it
to your advantage.
It's very usable.
No big deal with caffeine to get work done.
Remember effort that precedes dopamine in constructive areas of life, writing,
comedy, podcasting,
school, sports, socializing in healthy ways.
Like this is good.
Can you get just as much dopamine from doing those positive things as you can
from doing
things that we would consider, you know, that sometimes add a level of
disappointment or
shame?
And maybe shame is not the word I want to use.
Yes, you can.
It just, you need to be more determined and focused on it.
Remember, it's how quickly the dopamine comes in with porn and methamphetamine,
cocaine and
all of that.
It's how quickly gambling raises dopamine