Human life maps onto just 36 dramatic situations, a framework screenwriter Jeff Kitchen shared with Armand DiMele. Using Georges Polti’s classic book as a lens, Armand and co-host Giullian Gioiello take live calls and show how real struggles, from tyrannical fathers to fear of love, fit ancient dramatic patterns.
What do we actually want people to see when they first meet us? Armand DiMele, co-hosts Giullian Gioiello and Ben Starr, and three studio guests probe the gap between the image we project and the neediness, sensuality, and childlike joy we keep hidden until we feel truly safe.
Armand DiMele argues that the most powerful thing you can do is stop rushing toward answers and learn to sit with your own questions. Drawing on Zen koans, caller conversations about aging relationships and childhood sexual abuse, and a clip from The Jerk, he shows how the right question opens you to genuine self-knowledge.
Self-hatred often masks a frightened inner child, not a moral failing. Armand DiMele traces self-loathing from passive-aggressive behavior and ethnic shame to physical self-criticism, arguing that the antidote is treating yourself with the same protective warmth you would offer a hurt child.
Armand DiMele challenges the conventional praise of courage, asking whether it is genuinely virtuous or a way of shaming people whose fear is entirely reasonable. He introduces counterphobia, the impulse to charge toward what frightens us most, and explores with callers how fear, avoidance, and self-nurturing shape daily life.
Getting what you want is impossible when you don’t know who you are. Dale Goldstein, author of “Heart Work,” joins Armand DiMele to walk through his nine-step process for locating buried feelings in the body, grieving unmet childhood needs, and uncovering the authentic self beneath years of numbness and distraction.
Stop attacking yourself and start listening. Armand DiMele walks listeners through a step-by-step practice for reaching the instinctual, feeling self he calls the “creature,” using guided relaxation, breath work, and a non-dominant hand writing exercise to open a dialogue between the rational mind and the emotional self.
