Loneliness sharpens around the holidays, and Armand DiMele examines why. With co-hosts Giullian Gioiello and Ben Starr, he explores solitary versus pair-bonding animals as a lens on human connection, the rise of single-person households, and callers navigating the real ache of being alone.
Armand DiMele and his studio guests probe the difference between painful isolation and liberating solitude, drawing on Buddhist sunyata, Freudian theory, Beckett, and callers’ real lives including veterans struggling to reconnect after combat and a caller who rebuilt himself after losing everything in 2008.
Loneliness is not a feeling but a perception, Armand DiMele argues, shaped by how many connections we hold and whether we feel truly heard. With Linda Vanella, LCSW-R, he maps the spectrum from highly connected people to those who isolate as self-protection, and examines how shopping, affairs, and caretaking often mask the ache of disconnection.
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.
Some people don’t just value privacy, they use it as armor. Armand DiMele traces the roots of extreme emotional withdrawal from overbearing parents to adult relationships where closeness feels like invasion, and explains why guilt is the worst tool for reaching someone who has built their world from the inside out.
