Mad Tea
Podcast Description
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!
Podcast Insights
Content Themes
The podcast explores diverse topics related to madness, including historical perspectives, cultural implications, and artistic expressions. Episodes specifically highlight the evolution of mental health advocacy, as seen in 'Dunning - Part 1', which discusses the roots of moral therapy, and 'Mad Tea Conversations - melissa grace kreider', focusing on the intersection of art and activism in addressing intimate partner violence.
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!
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 childhood losses and institutionalization, his solitary adult life, and the vast universe of the Vivian Girls, their endless rebellions, and the dreamlike collages drawn from mass culture. We also look at the debates around his reception: outsider art, madness, violence, and Queer readings that complicate how we understand his life.
Darger’s story asks us to think about who gets remembered, who is erased, and how madness can be a site of creativity as well as struggle.
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