Art can unlock emotional breakthroughs that talk therapy alone cannot. Armand DiMele and Dr. Sherry Siegel, M.D. explore with psychiatrist Jeremy Spiegel his practice of using deep, sustained engagement with a single artwork to dislodge buried feelings, alongside reflections on mindfulness and the emotional toll of medical training.
Social psychologist Dr. Katherine Good joins Armand and co-hosts Ben Starr and Giullian Gioiello to unpack how stereotypes shape behavior in ways people rarely notice. The conversation moves from implicit bias and stereotype threat to Ferguson, policing, and the fear that drives prejudice.
Irritability is a lie, Armand argues: it always points back to unexpressed anger from the recent past, not the present annoyance. Callers processing Hurricane Irene illustrate how collective fear gets manufactured and internalized, and how presence and love are the only real antidotes.
Chronic negativity is not just a bad habit but a carry-forward from family history and depression. Armand DiMele contrasts “linking” thinking, tying happiness to future conditions, with Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of “flow,” arguing that anchoring to the present is what separates genuinely happy people from miserable ones.
What do Einstein and Picasso have in common? Historian of science Arthur I. Miller argues both geniuses solved the same problem of simultaneity, and that true creative focus demands emotional shutdown. Armand and Miller explore whether genius is built on admiration, isolation, or something deeper.
Father’s Day triggers deep, often denied wounds that shape careers, relationships, and self-worth. Armand DiMele maps the landscape of absent, frightening, and emotionally dead fathers, argues that most men’s self-hatred traces back to unacknowledged need for their fathers, and fields calls from listeners grappling with unavailable dads and its lasting fallout.
Some people turn every minor setback into a crisis; others dismiss everything as no big deal. Armand DiMele unpacks both tendencies, tracing catastrophizing to guilt, anxiety, and childhood bids for attention, and trivializing to emotional numbness, arguing that a healthy relationship needs both types in balance.
Mary Roach, author of Bonk, joins Armand and co-host Stephanie D’Ambra, LCSW to trace the surprisingly awkward history of sex science, from Leonardo’s coition figures to MRI studies of intercourse. They cover orgasm as a nervous system reflex, the upsuck theory, and how couples still struggle to talk about desire.
Your favorite animal reveals your true nature, while your favorite color is the mask you show the world. Armand DiMele builds a surprisingly revealing self-knowledge exercise from listener responses, then pivots to pity, arguing that pitying others distances us from them and that self-pity quietly sustains depression by substituting victimhood for honest self-examination.
What makes a desire toxic? Armand DiMele takes listener calls to explore how ordinary wants become compulsions, tracing the fears and suppressed anger underneath behaviors like compulsive exercise, procrastination, and the need to be desired. Co-host Deborah Hillman joins throughout.
