The ancient concept of acedia, a toxic blend of restlessness and boredom distinct from depression, gets a modern examination. Poet and author Kathleen Norris draws on monastic wisdom and her own memoir to show how acedia quietly drains connection to others, community, and meaning.
Therapy helps, but does it free us? Psychiatrist-turned-mindfulness-teacher Dieter Middleston-Scheidt and Batya Schwartz describe leaving biographical therapy behind to build a retreat practice rooted in silence, open sensory attention, and slow motion as a path to direct aliveness.
Depression may not be a malfunction but a feature. Armand DiMele draws on Darwin, Aristotle, and evolutionary psychologists to argue that rumination and low mood serve real purposes: protecting us from greater pain, spurring creative insight, and forcing honest self-examination. Callers share how accepting depression freed them.
What happens in the mind and body when people face catastrophic loss? Using the 2010 Haiti earthquake as a focal point, Armand DiMele examines the psychological and biological mechanisms that carry people through the unthinkable, from dissociation and stress chemistry to religious ritual and the drive to live for others.
What made humans human? Dr. Fred Previck, MD, cognitive neuroscientist and author, argues that a dramatic expansion of dopamine in the brain drove our species to language, abstract thought, strategic planning, and civilization itself. Armand DiMele traces the arc from early hominids to modern society, asking whether our dopaminergic drive is now outpacing our wisdom.
Is kindness wired into us? UC Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner draws on evolutionary science and Confucian philosophy to argue that compassion, laughter, and embarrassment are not soft virtues but core adaptive tools. His concept of the jen ratio offers a concrete way to measure how well we bring out the good in others.
Are you in control of your mind, or is your mind controlling you? Armand DiMele and Dr. Bernard Starr, PhD, Psychologist, trace how chemistry, conditioning, and automatic thought patterns quietly drive behavior, then explore whether meditation, introspection, and spiritual detachment can help us step back and truly observe our own thinking.
A departure from the usual format: Armand DiMele steps back and simply plays music he loves, including jazz from Ray Bryant and Dizzy Gillespie. The episode opens with a spoken-word meditation on music as a universal language that soothes, uplifts, and connects all people.
Can we truly escape the identity built from our experiences, or are we prisoners of our own ego? Armand DiMele reunites with Dr. Bernard Starr, PhD, Psychologist, to trace the arc from 1970s feeling therapies and primal work to spiritual psychology and the limits of both approaches when it comes to genuine transformation.
True happiness cannot be captured in a memory, a possession, or another person. Armand DiMele explores that argument with Nicholas Vreeland of the Tibet Center, previewing the Dalai Lama’s Radio City teachings on emptiness, and choreographer Alexandra Beller, whose new dance piece stages the futile human habit of chasing happiness outside ourselves.
