I listen to podcasts and videos at 2x speed or faster, I can still understand everything and it brings listening time about equal to what my reading time would be if I were reading an article or transcript. Average reading speed is generally about twice as fast as average speaking speed, and in produced media people tend to speak even slower. I realize it sounds insane to hear 2x speed audio if you aren't used to it, but I promise if you were to ramp up the speed over a couple weeks or so, you would have absolutely no trouble with it. There's no need to if you don't want to, I'm just saying that your first impression is not giving you an accurate experience of what it's actually like.

For audiobooks I usually want to have time to hear and process every word, so I still speed it up but usually more like 1.5x, it depends on the narrator and the book. For podcasts I'm not there to appreciate the prose, so I go as fast as I can while still understanding them. I don't think it's about dopamine, I just find I don't gain anything by getting the same amount of information slower.