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 happens when madness causes harm? What is penance without punishment? And how do we create communities that hold accountability without exile?

Through conversation, reflection, and critique, we look at what it means to lead from within madness, to translate mad experience without betrayal, and to honor the silences that cannot be filled. We invite you to consider what kind of spaces, relationships, and futures we might build when we refuse the scripts of guilt and begin to write our own terms of care.

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, and philosophical frameworks, this episode invites listeners into a deeper meditation on perception, beauty, coherence, and the illusions we call normalcy. Along the way, we consider the limits of reason, the violence of performance, the possibilities of peer care, and why madness might be closer to the truth than we’re often allowed to believe.

This episode is slower, more spacious. This episode is an offering for those who have stood at the edge and wondered what it means to keep going.

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, institutionalization, and artistic resistance, asking what it means to write from a dangerous place.

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 journey through experimental theater, his voyages to Ireland and Mexico, and the nine years he spent confined in asylums across France, subjected to electroshock and institutional control.

Rather than romanticize his suffering, we examine the material realities of Artaud’s madness: the brutal conditions of psychiatric internment, the erasure of his agency, and the desperate struggle to preserve language in the face of silencing. We listen closely to the voice that emerged from this crucible.

This is the story of a man who refused coherence, who demanded the impossible, and who insisted that art must be lived, not merely shown. This is Artaud, in all his contradiction and fire.

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 Center for Mad Culture UK! Our collaborations will find further ways to create international opportunities for Mad Culture!

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 in their work. We get into the way of the Canvas, Redman, and Respecting the Craft.

This conversation is about art, but also about the worlds we inhabit—and the ones we choose to make.

Instagram: @collins_cameron

Bluesky: @copperodyssey

website: camcollins.us

Games: cam999.itch.io

Store: camcollins.bigcartel.com

camshop.us

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 health system. In this episode, he shares the inside story of The Zyprexa Papers—a landmark case in which he released internal documents from Eli Lilly revealing the company’s efforts to conceal the dangers of its antipsychotic drug, Zyprexa. From legal resistance to pharmaceutical accountability, this conversation traces what it means to challenge psychiatric power from within the system.

https://psychrights.org

https://thezyprexapapers.com

https://jimgottstein.com

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 like Surrealism and Art Brut, while also reinforcing psychiatric narratives that erased the humanity and agency of its creators. Focusing on the ten artists Prinzhorn called “schizophrenic masters,” the episode gives voice to those who were institutionalized, silenced, and often killed—yet left behind vivid, astonishing works. The hosts question who gets to be called an artist, how madness is aestheticized, and what it means to reclaim these stories today.

In this episode we visit the works and lives of: August Natterer, Karl Genzel, August Klett, Clemens von Ortzen, Hermann Behle, Hyacinth Freiherr von Wieser, Peter Moog, Johann Knopf, Joseph Schneller, and Franz Pohl.

Written and hosted by Matt Bodett and Megan Sterling

Produced by Press Here and a a project of the Center for Mad Culture

Music produced and provided by Had Matter