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.
Is greed a moral failing or simply the human condition? Armand DiMele and Dr. Bernard Starr, PhD, Psychologist, examine greed as a near-narcotic drive rooted in survival, comparing Wall Street excess and the Madoff scandal to universal human hunger for more health, love, and meaning.
Why do we want to be lied to? Armand DiMele uses the Bernie Madoff scandal as a jumping-off point to argue that humans are wired for deception, both giving and receiving it. Drawing on primate research and brain science, he explores the fine line between healthy trust and paranoid suspicion.
When a whole society swings from irrational exuberance to despair, a collective numbness sets in. Armand DiMele maps the symptoms of this shared depression and explores how people seek relief through crisis, romance, aggression, music, and nature, drawing on caller stories to illustrate what genuinely lifts the spirit.
What if the post-boom economic collapse is a form of societal manic depression? Armand DiMele tests this hypothesis with Dr. Bernard Starr, PhD and psychiatrist and author Dr. Ronald Fieve, examining cortisol, testosterone, double depression, and why telling a depressed person to “buck up” never works.
Rigid, perfectionistic people crack hardest when life goes wrong, and Armand DiMele explains why. He distinguishes OCD from obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, showing how the desperate need to be right drives indecision, relationship conflict, explosive anger, and hoarding, and how admitting fallibility is the way out.
The morning after Barack Obama’s 2008 election, Armand DiMele and Dr. Bernard Starr, PhD, Psychologist, unpack the jubilation in the streets and what it means when politically disengaged people suddenly wake up. Callers share tears, renewed patriotism, and one listener’s struggle as a single-issue voter who lost.
Our brains are wired for efficiency, but those same shortcuts can get us killed. Lawrence Gonzalez, Author of “Everyday Survival,” joins Armand DiMele to examine how mental models, automated behavior, and cultural complacency lead smart people into serious danger, from plane crashes to financial collapse.
Growing old is feared more than death itself, and that fear may be largely a cultural illusion. Armand DiMele and Dr. Bernard Starr examine how longevity has reshaped society, why research shows older people are often more satisfied than expected, and how a shift in ego and time-consciousness can make aging a genuine liberation.
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.
