Episodes

Today's guest, psychologist Dr. Lorin Lindner, is the author of a new book - Birds of a Feather: A True Story of Hope and the Healing Power of Animals. She takes us on her life's journey, starting with her childhood love of a pet parrot who kept her company and healed her pain while her mother was dying. Later, as an adult, she was called upon to rescue a parrot named Sammy, which renewed her appreciation of these special birds. As the director of a program for homeless veterans in Los Angeles, ...

Do you have dreams that seem as impossible as becoming a rocket scientist? Well, today's guest, Olympia LePointe, latched onto such a dream when she was a little girl on a class field trip to a NASA lab. The only problem was that she was living in poverty with a single mom and three siblings, amidst gang violence and childhood sexual abuse. If she would've told anyone her dream, they would have laughed at her. Fortunately, after she was knifed by a classmate in 5th grade, her mother was able to ...

Do you feel lonely? If so, you're not alone. A new study reveals that there is a loneliness epidemic in America. And the younger you are, the more likely you are to feel this ache. Today, Dr. Carole explains why we're more lonely - from the gizmos we're attached to 24/7, to the increased number of divorces leaving scars on kids of divorce which make them afraid of intimacy, to the headlines that divide and isolate us from each other. Dr. Carole talks about today's headlines and how the media fla...

Today's show takes you behind closed doors, as two shrinks (psychiatrists) share the good, the bad and the ugly about mental health treatment today. Dr. Srini Pillay has been called a Renaissance man: author, coach, brain researcher, musician, provocateur, poet and psychiatrist. His latest book, entitled Tinker Dabble Doodle Try: Unlock the Power of the Unfocused Mind, presents a counterintuitive approach that helps people discover the benefits of techniques from dabbling to daydreaming. Current...

What determines when depression ends in suicide? The proper mental health treatment is always crucial. But, sometimes seemingly random events can push someone towards life or death. Today's guests present two stories of suicide -with many similarities- yet with different endings. Tired of struggling with family, work and depression, Kevin Berthia climbed on top of the Golden Gate Bridge to end his life. Fortuitously, he was talked down by someone who reminded him of his one reason to live. Om De...

Today's show - an analysis of OJ in light of the recent FOX Special: The Lost Confession - will hopefully be the last word on this lethal lover. We take you behind the scenes to hear all you need to know to finally put him to bed in our nation's consciousness. We owe our fly-on-the-wall look at OJ's Lost Confession to today's first guest, Judith Regan, CEO of Regan Arts, an award-winning publishing/media company. Judith's 2006 interview with OJ is nothing less than spectacular in the way that sh...

If people would only admit that the immigration crisis is not about having sympathy for immigrants-but really about certain politicians wanting more immigrants in this country-illegal or not-to sway the vote their way-we could arrive at a more rational solution! But, this doesn't seem to be happening any time soon. Today's guest, Maria Espinoza, National Director of The Remembrance Project, tells it like it is. After the recent spending bill, passed by Congress, failed to include enough money to...

Ever since state mental hospitals have been shut down, many mentally ill have ended up on our streets and then in jails and prisons. Indeed, approximately one-third of our nation's inmates are mentally ill, and getting little to no treatment while incarcerated. But today's guest, Judge Ginger Lerner-Wren, author of Court of Refuge: Stories from the Bench of America's First Mental Health Court, has begun to change this and make it a more compassionate system. Judge Lerner-Wren tells the story of ...

Dr. Carole worries about well-meaning students, called upon to Walkout and March for reasons that haven't been made sufficiently clear to them. Even less clear to the students is that, in their vulnerable psychological state, caused by the Parkland school shooting, they are being co-opted to fulfill others' agendas. Dr. Carole explains how Parkland students are suffering from PTSD and the stages of grief. Students nationwide are also suffering because of having watched countless hours of media c...

Ever since the financial meltdown, it's become more of a dog-eat-dog world than ever. There's a sense of scarcity and desperation that too often rears its ugly head. So, we've forgotten something we learned in kindergarten: how important it is to be kind. Today's guest, Jill Lublin, reminds us. She is the author of a new book, The Profit of Kindness: How to Influence Others, Establish Trust, and Build Lasting Relationships. She explains how, if you make kindness the cornerstone of your business,...

Each day, more news filters out about the Parkland high school shooting that horrifies us and makes our heart bleed for the victims and their families. An Emergency Medical Technician, for example, who wants to remain anonymous for fear of being fired, has just confided to a reporter that he was told to stand down and not run in to rescue victims and provide medical aid. A Sheriff Deputy, Scot Peterson, who was one of four deputies hiding in the bushes, instead of running in to confront the shoo...

Nikolas Cruz - the Valentine's Day school shooter - has struck an especially painful chord in our nation's heart. Perhaps it's because of: the carnage he caused, the unanswered cries for help he'd given us as warning signs for years, the broken life he led, the ease with which he brought guns, the bravery of the students and staff, and the irony of the massacre being on Valentine's Day. Today's guest, Kent Moyer, is CEO and Founder of The World Protection Group and high-end executive protection ...

Who better to teach us how to unmask what matters in our own lives than the Broadway star who played Christine Daae in The Phantom of the Opera? Sandra Joseph, the longest running Christine in the longest running Broadway play, has just released her book on Phantom's 30th birthday: Unmasking What Matters: 10 Life Lessons from 10 Years on Broadway. Her life unrolled like a fairytale: from too shy to sing in an elementary school performance to starring in a Broadway show and marrying the lead (a m...

Today's guest, Robert Gandt, is the author of the new book, Angels in the Sky: How a Band of Volunteer Airmen Saved the New State of Israel. And, as he tells the story, you will ask yourself why we have never heard this before, since it is an amazing true story of epic proportions. Fortunately, Gandt, who has combined a life of flying with a life of writing such epic aviation stories, has had the opportunity to interview these 'Angels' and bring us the otherwise unbelievable David and Goliath ta...

Accusers of Harvey Weinstein, #MeToo and #TimesUp have opened the floodgates of rage against sexual harassment, sexual assault, inequality... and men in general! The hatred of men by women is called misandry - and today's guest, Dr. Paul Nathanson, has defined misandry with his books, research and lectures (which always draw protests, by the way). Dr. Nathanson and Dr. Carole walk this minefield of the war between the sexes, in the context of current events and the Golden Globes, as a sociologic...

Ever wonder what your childhood would have been like if you were growing up with a schizophrenic mom in an era when they didn't have medication to treat the disorder? Today's guest, Joan Carol Lieberman (no relation), has lived to tell the tale and she's written about it in her new two-part autobiography, Optimal Distance: A Divided Life. As a little girl, every day was a struggle to find the optimal distance from her paranoid schizophrenic mother. Her dad traveled a lot for his work, so she was...

Guest, Jane Marla Robbins, is a modern day renaissance woman: actress, playwright, author, poet, coach and speaker. After a stunning career as an actress on Broadway, off-Broadway, in film and on TV, she decided to stop being other people (the roles she played) and start being herself. Since then she has delighted in helping people 'act' in their everyday life in order to look and feel self-confident in difficult real-life situations. This is when her book, Acting Techniques for Everyday Life, w...

What do terrorists have in store for us? Today's guest, Michael Vilardi, a 9/11 First Responder and member of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, had the grizzly task of piecing together human body parts for identification at the scene of the World Trade Center and saw up front and personal the devastation of Islamic terrorism. He has also had the opportunity to get the inside scoop from two terrorists - and he shares their plans for world domination with us. On The Mike Vilardi Show, he interviewed...

Port Authority subway terrorist, Akayed Ullah, may have been the first to attack NYC this holiday season, but he won't be the last. Indeed, ISIS has launched a propaganda campaign to encourage lone wolves to strike NYC - using a poster of Santa Claus standing next to a box of dynamite in the middle of Times Square as a call to action. The caption on the poster says, We meet at Christmas in New York... soon. On today's show, Dr. Carole puts Akayed Ullah on her couch and analyzes his twisted think...

Today's show will uplift and inspire you by proving how one person can make a huge difference. Jeffrey Epstein has just launched a new charity called Healing the Wounds. It uniquely responds to the needs of children whose parent lost their life while serving as a hero in the military or law enforcement. The vision of this program is to empower the kids left behind. Epstein, as President, has amassed a stellar Board, who have committed to this cause. The program includes an Alaskan experience wit...

Every day, new women come out of the woodwork to allege sexual harassment. Are all of these stories true or are women jumping on the bandwagon to claim their 15 minutes of fame? It's important to separate the wheat from the chaff. One of the accused, Harvey Weinstein, seems to be the most prolific of womanizers, if not rapists. (And yes, he is innocent until proven guilty.) Today's guest, leading attorney Aaron Filler, MD, PhD and JD, is very familiar with the key woman accusing Weinstein of rap...

Today's guest, Khaldoun Sweis, an Associate Professor of Philosophy, shares his personal story of the greatest suffering he has ever known - first, being a teen on the brink of suicide, and years later, his son's death. His riveting story goes on to explain how these events set him on his mission in life: helping people to find hope in suffering through discovering evidence of their faith - like he did. Regardless of your religious beliefs - you will be moved by Sweis' story. Do you call on your...

Today's show looks at two men with troubled beginnings who became polar opposites: one a mass murderer and one a scientific advisor to presidents. The murderer was Devin Patrick Kelley, who made headlines for shooting up a Texas church. The scientist is Mark Kingston Levin. Both came from dysfunctional homes and showed signs of trouble from an early age. But, Devin fell through the cracks and manifested psychopathology, including: cruelty to animals, domestic violence, a mental hospital escape a...

The opioid epidemic is staggering! Opioid overdose deaths soared to over 200 percent since 2000, and at least 91 Americans die each day from an opioid OD! No wonder President Trump just declared it a public health emergency. Today's guests, Dr. Alexis Carayannopoulos and Dr. Joseph Audette, are top addiction and pain medicine experts. We follow them into the complex world of painkillers, patients, physicians and prescriptions to understand how things began spinning out of control and became the ...