Your voice is doing what birdsong does: marking territory, attracting mates, and signaling whether you belong. Armand DiMele draws on animal behavior and voice science to show how pitch, pace, and resonance shape every relationship and interaction, then offers practical breathing and vocal exercises.
Color isn’t just aesthetic, it’s neurological. Armand DiMele traces how sharp shapes trigger the amygdala’s danger response, why color preferences vary by culture and temperament, and how personal history, like a caller who stopped wearing red after her grandmother’s death, shapes what we can and cannot stand to see.
Passive aggression is not just dropping the birthday cake. Armand DiMele unpacks it as a pervasive pattern of stubbornness, procrastination, and obstructionism rooted in fear of confrontation, then maps the full spectrum from passive resistance to predatory aggression, arguing that assertiveness is the healthy middle ground.
What do you discover about yourself when crisis strips everything away? Author Mark Matusik discusses his book drawing on interviews with Joan Didion, Ram Dass, and others who survived profound loss, illness, and trauma. The recurring insight: real strength only emerges when the fictional version collapses.
What makes a person abnormal? Armand DiMele walks through the criteria psychiatry uses to define abnormality, from maladaptivity to cultural norms, then turns to paraphilias, hidden secrets, and the shame that grows the harder we work to conceal them. Callers share their own experiences of feeling outside the norm.
Fantasy is not the enemy but a survival tool built into the human mind. Armand DiMele traces imagination from its evolutionary roots through daydreaming, sexual fantasy, fixed beliefs, and full-blown delusion, arguing that the real danger is losing the thread back to reality, not the fantasizing itself.
Body piercing is not about fashion but about reclaiming parts of yourself that were taken away in childhood. Armand DiMele and Stephanie Roth-Goldberg, LCSW, argue that each piercing site maps onto a specific loss: ears to being heard, lips to voice, eyes to perception, genitals to sexual autonomy, and the navel to maternal connection.
What exactly is a mood, and why do people sometimes cling to their worst ones? Armand DiMele breaks down the anatomy of mood, from Robert Thayer’s energy-tension model to the full spectrum of human emotional states, and explains why exercise, food, alcohol, and sex all serve as mood regulators. Caller stories about a bipolar spouse and a man who refused to give up his depression add vivid texture.
Why is Father’s Day so emotionally loaded? Armand DiMele walks through the many reasons people carry unresolved anger toward their fathers, from absenteeism and favoritism to criticism and triangulation, and how those feelings quietly shape adult relationships, work, and identity. Callers share fond memories alongside the pain.
Overprotective parenting is producing psychologically fragile young adults, argues Hara Estroff Marano, Author and Psychology Today Editor. Armand DiMele and Marano dig into college mental health data, the neuroscience of play, the danger of misplaced praise, and why letting kids fail early is the kindest thing a parent can do.
