Armand DiMele and Dr. Kent Robertshaw, MD, Psychiatrist, examine why people lock away unbearable pain rather than face it, how children assign themselves blame for disasters and abuse, and why denial of death costs us empathy for suffering near and far.
Toxic shame drives addiction, numbness, and violence, and Hurricane Katrina made that truth impossible to ignore. Armand DiMele and co-host Roberta Maria Atti trace how collective shame over race, poverty, and government failure sent millions into emotional deadness and substance use, and urge listeners to feel the pain rather than go numb.
Explosive anger affects far more people than assumed, with some studies finding it in over 10 percent of the population. Armand DiMele and colleagues Christine Ulrich and Kent Robinshaw examine the biology of rage, the passive-aggressive partners who enable it, why victims stay, and how therapy and medication can help.
Why do 30% of adults regularly daydream about being famous? Armand DiMele traces the fame motive to childhood homes where recognition was scarce, arguing that the hunger to be seen by strangers is distinct from wanting wealth or power and intensifies across the lifespan, even into old age.
Every man carries a feminine side and every woman a masculine one, and denying that hidden half drives attraction, obsession, and heartbreak. Armand DiMele draws on Jung’s concept of the anima and animus to explain why we fall hard for people who embody what we repress in ourselves, and how reclaiming that lost half is the real work of intimacy.
Every addiction is really a mood management strategy. Armand and Dr. Kent Robertshaw, MD, Psychiatrist, walk through the core components of addiction, salience, mood modification, tolerance, and withdrawal, using gambling, shopping, cigarettes, alcohol, and internet use to show why substances and screens feel easier than people, and what actually helps someone stop.
Why do certain people, places, and memories haunt us long after they’re gone? Armand DiMele argues that ghosts serve a function: they keep us from sinking into depression by giving us a focus outside ourselves. Callers share their own ghost stories, revealing how anger, longing, and comparison all sustain these invisible presences.
Grandparents are everywhere in family life yet almost nowhere in psychology literature. Armand DiMele builds a case for why grandparenting deserves serious study, examining how grandparents transmit love, jealousy, and dysfunction across generations, illustrated by callers sharing their own grandparent stories.
Fathers are the least understood figures in child development, and Armand DiMele and Dr. Kent Robertshaw, MD, Psychiatrist, dig into why. They trace how absent or emotionally unavailable dads shape children’s self-esteem, how puberty fractures father-daughter bonds, and why men are socialized to convert sadness into anger rather than seek help.
Fathers exert enormous psychological force even through absence, argues Dr. Scott Baum, PhD, Psychologist, who calls them the dark matter of the psychic universe. Armand DiMele and Baum dig into male shame, competitive rage, and the hidden damage fathers inflict without ever raising a hand, drawing on Baum’s own story and calls from listeners navigating estranged sons.
