PODCAST · arts
Mad Tea
by The Center for Mad Culture
For too long, mad voices have been silenced, dismissed, or medicalized—it's time to change that. Mad Tea explores the histories, stories, and creative expressions of madness, amplifying its insights, resilience, and brilliance. We challenge stereotypes and reframe madness as a way of understanding culture, art, and activism.This podcast is an extension of The Center for Mad Culture, a space dedicated to mad voices. Subscribe, share, and join the conversation.You can support this podcast by finding us on Patreon, where you'll have access to exclusive content!
Episodes
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Ishaa Vinod Chopra Interview
In this episode of Mad Tea, we sit down with Ishaa Vinod Chopra, author of Finding Order in Disorder and founder of the collective by the same name. Ishaa speaks candidly about living with diagnosis, surviving abuse, and navigating the systems that attempt to define her. She reflects on how those...
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Matthew Jackman Interview
In this first episode of Season Two Matt Bodett sits down with Matthew Jackman for a conversation that moves across art, identity, and the lived experience of madness without reducing any of it to diagnosis. We talk about how culture shapes what gets called disordered, how language can both…
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Nze Okoronta Interview
In this conversation you will hear Nze Okoronta speak from years of building peer-run crisis alternatives. The focus stays on peer respites, warmlines, and community responses that move away from policing and coercion. You learn how these models function day to day, not as ideals but as working...
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Interview with Matt Perry
I sat down with Matt Perry to talk about his book A Revolution of the Mind. The book asks you to rethink what the mental health system considers normal. It asks you to look at crisis response, policy, peer work, and community power through the lens of lived experience. Matt has moved through…
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When the work must wait
This week’s Mad Tea offers a pause. Matt reflects on the practice of self-permission within mad and disabled life, sharing gratitude for the community that makes this work possible. It is an episode about rest, imperfection, and the quiet courage it takes to keep creating through uncertainty.
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Interview with Dylan Sturdy
This week I sat down with Dylan Sturdy, the creator of Chicago’s first MadMade Print and Zine Fair, happening November 15th from 12 to 4:30 pm. The fair will gather mad and disabled artists working in print and zine for a day of conversation, creativity, and connection. Our talk moves through...
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The Book of Margery Kempe
In this episode, Matt and Megan journey into the life and words of Margery Kempe, a 15th-century English mystic whose uncontrollable weeping, visions, and pilgrimages made her both revered and reviled. Told through a mad perspective, the conversation explores how her tears became testimony, how…
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The Madness Card
This episode explores how political leaders weaponize the language of madness, calling critics “lunatics,” “hysterical,” or “insane," to dismiss dissent and justify control. Drawing on Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, we examine how these labels silence dialogue, criminalize difference,...
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Everyone is a little crazy... right?
“Everyone is a little crazy” is a phrase we may hear often, it is meant to soften the edges of difference. In this episode, Matt Bodett unpacks the grain of truth in that claim while pushing back on the ways it flattens lived experience. From the spectrum of human disorientation to the histories…
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Hildegard of Bingen
In this episode of Mad Tea, Matt and Megan explore the extraordinary life of Hildegard of Bingen. From her beginnings in the cloister to her bold preaching tours across Germany, Hildegard emerges as a visionary abbess, composer, healer, and writer who challenged the boundaries of her time. We...
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Polvo Eres Interview
We sit down with Colombian artist Polvo Eres, whose exhibition Our Existence is Protest is currently on view at the Center for Mad Culture. Born out of fear of government crackdowns on mad, disabled, houseless, and immigrant communities, the project transformed the Center into a space of…
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Henry Darger
In this episode of Mad Tea, we dive into the extraordinary hidden world of Henry Joseph Darger Jr. (1892–1973). A reclusive hospital custodian in Chicago, Darger spent decades creating a 15,000-page epic and hundreds of massive watercolors that no one saw until after his death. We trace his...
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Writing and Poetry of the Insane
In this episode of Mad Tea, we explore how 19th- and early 20th-century psychiatry turned the poetry of the mad into medical evidence. From Dr. G. Mackenzie Bacon’s Writing of the Insane to Ales Hrdlička’s Art and Literature in the Mentally Abnormal, we look at how doctors treated poems and…
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Toward Mad Liberation
This episode explores mad liberation as both personal truth and collective resistance. We revisit themes from earlier conversations, not out of redundancy, but as an act of solidarity in the face of ongoing political hostility toward mad lives. Through reflection, metaphor, and lived experience…
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Crip Culture, Mad Voices
In this episode, recorded live at Access Living on August 7th, 2025, Matt Bodett explores the relationship between madness and culture, examining how it has shaped our histories and creative expressions, and how it has been systematically erased from them. Part of Cripping the Galleries, a...
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Donald Trump's Executive Order
🚨 In this episode of Mad Tea, we break down Trump’s new Executive Order on homelessness and mental health line by line. What looks like care is actually surveillance, coercion, and criminalization. We name the harm, expose the language, and offer solidarity. Housing is a right. Madness is not a...
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Mad Ghosts
In this episode of Mad Tea, Matt and Megan explore the idea of ghosts—not the spectral kind, but those that haunt our memories, bodies, and inner landscapes. Through the stories of Milarepa, the Tibetan “mad yogi,” and Vincent van Gogh, they reflect on how madness can be met not with fear or...
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Madness and Responsibility
What does it mean to be responsible as a mad person in a world that refuses to recognize your reality? In this episode, Matt Bodett and Megan Sterling explore the difficult, necessary, and expansive terrain of mad responsibility. Drawing from the myth of Herakles and his labors, we ask: What...
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Madness as a Sacred Space
In this special reflection episode, we step away from biographies and histories to explore madness itself—not as a diagnosis, but as a philosophy. What happens when madness is seen not as error, but as insight? Not as disorder, but as sacred rupture? Drawing on lived experience, poetic language,...
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Unica Zürn - Mad Saint
In this episode, we trace the haunting life and visionary work of Unica Zürn. She was a German/French surrealist, poet, and artist. Through drawings, anagram poetry, and hallucinatory writing, Zürn reimagined madness not as pathology, but as a form of expression. We explore her relationships,...
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Antonin Artaud - Mad Prophet
This episode traces the life of Antonin Artaud—a poet, actor, director, and relentless disruptor of theatrical and psychiatric order. From his early struggles with mental distress and dependency to his expulsion from the Surrealist movement, Artaud's life defied categorization. We follow his...
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Julia Macintosh Presentation
On April 24th, Julia Macintosh visited the Center for Mad Culture all the way from Edinburgh, Scotland. Julia presented some of her history and advocacy work with friends who came to hear her speak. This visit to the Center was accompanied by the wonderful news that Julia would be opening a…
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Cam Collins Interview
In this episode, we sit down with artist Cam Collins, whose current exhibition at the Center for Mad Culture "Copper Odyssey 2: Museum of Miracles," explores the layered relationship between lived experiences and built worlds. Cam talks about their process and the role of printmaking and museums…
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Interview with Jim Gottstein
Attorney and psychiatric survivor Jim Gottstein joins us to discuss his decades-long fight against forced treatment and psychiatric abuse. As the founder of the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (PsychRights), Jim has worked to expose the legal and ethical violations at the heart of the mental...
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The Schizophrenic Masters
This episode of Mad Tea explores the deeply complicated 1922 book Artistry of the Mentally Ill by Hans Prinzhorn—a psychiatrist who gathered over 5,000 works of art made by institutionalized psychiatric patients. In this episode, Matt and Megan examine how the book influenced modern art movements...
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Mad Pride
Ever heard of Mad Pride? If not, this is your invitation. Before the hashtags, before the awareness ribbons, there was a bed pushed through the streets of Toronto. Survivors in hospital gowns. It wasn’t a plea for better treatment—it was a celebration. A refusal. A revolution. In this episode of...
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The Curse of Cassandra
She warned them. No one listened. Then everything burned. In this episode of Mad Tea, Matt and Megan take on the myth of Cassandra—the Trojan prophetess cursed to know the truth but never be believed. But this isn’t just ancient history. The curse lives on in today’s world, especially for those...
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Dunning - Part 5
Mad Tea remains ad free, to help us in this effort please consider becoming a supporter for as little as $1 on Patreon, your support helps us continue what we do and will expand our vision. SUPPORT US HERE A man walks into a hospital seeking care. Days later, he’s dead—his body broken, his ribs...
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Dunning - Part 4
Politicians had a saying: "To the victor go the spoils." But what happens when the spoils are the lives of asylum inmates? In this episode, Matt and Megan unravel the Boodlers’ Scandal—a web of corruption so deep it bled Cook County dry while inmates at Dunning starved, shivered, and suffered.…
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Dunning - Part 3
Chicago’s politicians had a saying: "To the victor go the spoils." But what happens when the spoils are the lives of asylum inmates? In this episode, Matt and Megan unravel the Boodlers’ Scandal—a web of corruption so deep it bled Cook County dry while inmates at Dunning starved, shivered, and...
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URGENT!! Mad/Disability Activism Today
This episode breaks down the alarming resurgence of asylum-like policies targeting disabled people, tracing the echoes of past abuses into today’s political landscape. As politicians propose work farms for the mentally ill and police detain people for appearing unstable, it’s clear that the...
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Dunning - Part 2
As Illinois grew, so did its need for asylums—but the path to so-called “care” was paved with legal loopholes, power struggles, and devastating personal costs. In this episode, Matt Bodett and Megan Sterling dive into the forgotten histories of madness in Illinois, tracing the forces that shaped...
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Mad Tea Conversations - melissa grace kreider
This is going to seem out of place... But.... we wanted to get this episode out to everyone before the exhitbion came down. So, listen to the episode and stop by the Center for Mad Culture March 28th or 29th to see the work before it comes down! Photographer melissa kreider joins Megan Sterling…
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Dunning - Part 1
Before asylums stretched across the American landscape, madness was met with chains, neglect, and fear. Then came moral therapy—a vision of kindness, calm, and care. It promised that mad people could be guided back to reason, not through force, but through routine, tranquility, and gentle hands....
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Welcome to Mad Tea: Madness, Power, and Reclamation
Welcome to Mad Tea, a podcast where madness is reclaimed as a cultural identity—bold, vibrant, and unapologetic. In this inaugural episode, Matt Bodett introduces the podcast’s purpose: to challenge dominant narratives, explore the histories and aesthetics of madness, and create space for mad...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
For too long, mad voices have been silenced, dismissed, or medicalized—it's time to change that. Mad Tea explores the histories, stories, and creative expressions of madness, amplifying its insights, resilience, and brilliance. We challenge stereotypes and reframe madness as a way of understanding culture, art, and activism.This podcast is an extension of The Center for Mad Culture, a space dedicated to mad voices. Subscribe, share, and join the conversation.You can support this podcast by finding us on Patreon, where you'll have access to exclusive content!
HOSTED BY
The Center for Mad Culture
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Mad Tea have?
Mad Tea currently has 35 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Mad Tea about?
For too long, mad voices have been silenced, dismissed, or medicalized—it's time to change that. Mad Tea explores the histories, stories, and creative expressions of madness, amplifying its insights, resilience, and brilliance. We challenge stereotypes and reframe madness as a way of understanding...
How often does Mad Tea release new episodes?
Mad Tea has 35 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Mad Tea?
You can listen to Mad Tea on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Mad Tea?
Mad Tea is created and hosted by The Center for Mad Culture.
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