Smell is the sense most deeply wired to long-term memory, and Armand DiMele builds a rich hour around that fact. Callers share scents tied to powerlessness, lost mothers, freedom, and home, revealing how a single whiff can collapse decades in an instant.
New Year’s Eve 2013 becomes an occasion for taking stock. Linda Vanella, LCSW-R, shares her year working with combat veterans and their families on PTSD, and Armand reads an open letter from Christina McDowell confronting her father’s fraud. Callers reflect on loss, loneliness, and the quiet sustaining power of memory.
Radio as a surrogate parent, a comfort, and a formative presence. Armand reads listener memories of golden-age programs, transistor radios under pillows, and male voices that filled the absence of distant or missing fathers, revealing a common emotional thread running through decades of devoted listening.
Why do some people live in the past while others don’t? Armand DiMele argues that nostalgia and adult homesickness are really about longing for a lost version of yourself, not just a lost place or time. Callers explore music, family, and the cost of uprootedness.
