Madness Radio: Voices And Visions from Outside Mental Health explores 'madness' from beyond conventional perspectives and mainstream treatments, featuring survivors, authors, advocates, professionals, and artists.
Hosted by Will Hall, Madness Radio launched in 2005 on Valley Free Radio and aired more than 200 shows since then. We've been broadcast on KBOO in Oregon, syndicated on other stations through Pacifica, and currenrly podcasting on Spotify, Stitcher, iTunes, Pandora, and Google Play. More info on our About page.
Check out the Madness Radio book! Outside Mental Health: Voices and Visions of Madness gathers edited show interviews and additional content, and is available in print and as a free download.
Madness Radio is an affiliate of Mad In America Radio!
Check out www.madinamerica.com. Theme music courtesy Bonfire Madigan. Thanks to past Madness Radio Producers Jenka Soderberg, Nina Packebush, Leah Harris and Jeremy Lanzman. And thanks to our 190+ Madness Radio Kickstarter donors for supporting the show!
Listen to recent shows below or find us in your favorite podcast app, subscribe to be notified of new episodes on the right, browse by topics, search by keyword, or see a list all 200+ shows by date and title, in the archive. (Shorter versions are also available.)
Madness Radio is creative commons copyright! Please copy, post, and share freely. And get involved: send topic ideas, leave comments, ask FM stations to air us, leave an iTunes review, or make a donation.
Bicycles and Madness! | Nedra Deadwyler | Madness Radio

Nedra Deadwyler of Atlanta Georgia’s Civil Bikes interviews Madness Radio’s Will Hall about bicycles, mental health, and human liberation, for the KBOO FM Bicycle Show.
https://www.nedradeadwylerconsulting.com/
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 47:07 — 43.1MB)
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Nothing About Us Without Us | Jay Mahler | Madness Radio

Jay Mahler was one of the originators of the psychiatric survivors movement in the 1960s, joining protests with the Free Speech Movement at the University of California Berkeley- the beginnings of protest against the US war in Vietnam – and then dedicating his life to ending forced treatment and protecting psychiatric patient rights. He was a much loved leader in the movement with extensive impact on the lives of everyone involved in survivor / peer / consumer mental health advocacy, in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. Jay passed away this May and will be dearly missed, he was a really genuine kindhearted man who touched everyone who knew him. Thanks to Dina Tyler for co-hosting this recent interview with Jay.
Pool of Consumer Champions https://www.pocc.org
Remembering Jay Mahler | Michael Cornwall
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:06:48 — 290.2MB)
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Medication Withdrawal | Adele Framer | Madness Radio

Survivingantidepressants.org is one of the leading and longest running communities of mutual and and peer self-help around psychiatric drug withdrawal. Adele Framer – alto strata – founded the site in 2011 and shares her experience and learning on supporting people coming off antidepressants, mood stabilizers, antipsychotics, benzodiazepines and other medications, including the emerging field of psychiatric medication withdrawal research. (Special thanks to Oddball Magazine for production assistance.) (Alternate 58 min version here.)
www.survivingantidepressants.org
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:15:28 — 172.7MB)
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- Show topics:
- Alternatives
- Coming Off Meds
- Community
- Drugs
Oddball Magazine w/ Will Hall | Jason Wright | Madness Radio

In this guest podcast, Jason Wright of Oddball Magazine sits down with Madness Radio host Will Hall, author of the Harm Reduction Guide to Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs, to discuss mental health abolition, harm reduction, democratic socialism, and more in a far ranging conversation. You may have noticed the world is falling apart, time to think big and outside! (And seriously consider vitamin D supplementation). Check out Jason’s work and the community at Oddball Magazine here:
https://oddballmagazine.com/
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:47:59 — 74.2MB)
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A Little Crazy – Show Me All Your Scars | Susie Meserve | Madness Radio

At the Madness Radio book launch a few years ago writer and poet Susie Meserve read her creative nonfiction essay “A Little Crazy,” included in the anthology Show Me All Your Scars: True Stories of Living With Mental Illness and featuring an intimate (and not entirely flattering) portrait of her boyfriend at the time in 2004 – “schizophrenic” Will Hall.
https://www.creativenonfiction.org/books/show-me-all-your-scars
Madness Radio book launch on YouTube
Outside Mental Health: Voices and Visions of Madness book site
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:13 — 48.6MB)
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- Show topics:
- Books
- Community
- Personal Stories
Pandemic Story Time | The Iceling | Madness Radio

You’re shut inside and it’s time for a children’s book! For this episode we’ve selected 1999’s The Iceling by Will Hall.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:16 — 69.3MB)
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- Show topics:
- Books
- Poetry
- Story Time
- Youth
Awakening as a Medium | Jyl Ion | Madness Radio

Jyl Ion hears voices, but she refuses to view these non-ordinary experiences as a sign of mental illness. Instead Jyl came off 16 years of multiple toxic medications, talks to her ancestor spirits and has reclaimed access to unsanctioned knowledge. She struggled through the aftermath of sexual violence and was bedridden for two years of illness withdrawing from psychiatric meds – and now emerges as a strong survivor. Today Jyl has turned her voice hearing and her traumatic past into gifts, and works professionally as a forensic medium helping law enforcement solve missing persons cases. Her new book of poetry is called Soft Out Spoken.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:18:49 — 180.4MB)
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Breathwork for Bipolar and Psychosis | Sean Blackwell | Madness Radio

Do bipolar and psychosis have a healing potential blocked by suppression, medications, and avoidance? What if we could help people safely and intentionally explore, express, and understand these frightening states? Can breathwork ceremonies open the doors of perception like psychedelics — but without the drugs or risks? Are journeys into altered states too dangerous for people with madness – or just need to be tailored to individual needs?
Sean Blackwell had an overwhelming emotional crisis diagnosed as bipolar that emerged into a spiritual awakening that enriched his life. Today he facilitates and researches breathwork groups: intense focused breathing with blindfolds and music to discover the healing potential at the root of psychiatric crisis. His book and YouTube channel is Bipolar or Waking up. You can also listen to part two of the interview here.
https://www.bipolarawakenings.com
https://www.youtube.com/user/bipolarorwakingup https://internationalintegrators.org/nita-gage
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:02:44 — 143.6MB)
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Decolonizing Early Psychosis | Rachel Jane Liebert | Madness Radio

Do early psychosis programs serve healing – or function as surveillance and control? Are treatments for paranoia actually themselves forms of paranoia, based on scientific racism and white supremacy? By defining and enforcing “normal” does psychiatry wage a war on the imagination?
Rachel Jane Liebert is a multi-media artist and Critical Psychology senior lecturer at the University of East London, using feminist research to decolonize modern psychiatry. Her new book Psycurity: Colonialism, Paranoia, and the War on Imagination brings her background as a Pakeha (white/settler) New Zealander to free madness from whiteness and express the imaginative potential of states labeled paranoia.
https://bit.ly/2ohWcQI
https://racheljaneliebert.com/
https://uel.academia.edu/racheljaneliebert
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:01:22 — 140.5MB)
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Ayahuasca Psychosis & Spirit Awakening | Martha Elisabeth | Madness Radio

After taking the psychedelic drug ayahuasca Martha Elisabeth went into an extended altered state diagnosed as psychotic. Her terrifying ordeal ignited a spiritual initiation that eventually brought gifts of awakening, insight, and compassion. How did Martha emerge from her ecstatic journey through a mythic, archetypal world to become an advocate and teacher? What lessons can we learn about the dangers — and potentials — of psychedelics and of altered states of consciousness labeled “madness”? Today she is a mental health case worker in the UK National Health Service, co-director of an interdisciplinary research team, and voice for more humane and spiritual treatments for madness.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:02:27 — 78.6MB)
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Dignity and Humiliation | Evelin Lindner | Madness Radio

What is at the root of world violence? How does psychiatry re-create dynamics of humiliation and shame that drive people crazy? Is there a just and equitable way out of the spirals of attack and counterattack tearing humanity apart? Evelin Lindner was nominated 3 times for the Nobel Peace Prize for her work internationally to overcome the roots of violence and war. Her Dignity and Humiliation Studies initiative is showing a new way to treat each other — from our most intimate relations to our international foreign policies — and also in our response to mental health crisis.
www.humiliationstudies.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelin_Lindner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQZMxS7UI_k
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 51:40 — 118.3MB)
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R.D. Laing The Politics of Experience Audiobook | Madness Radio

Audiobook mp3 of Introduction and Chapter 1 “Persons and Experience”, from The Politics of Experience and the Bird of Paradise, by R.D. Laing, read by Will Hall.
Full book .mp3 (cntrl/rtclck save as to download):
http://www.madnessradio.net/audio-extra/RDLaingPoliticsOfExperienceLaingAudiobookFULL.mp3
Additional chapters on this YouTube playlist (full audiobook as a single .mp3 forthcoming)
www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMya78GAdrpxtOjEayvMp1lC88ce21kUb
Individual chapters:
http://www.madnessradio.net/audio-extra/RDLaingPoliticsOfExperienceLaingAudiobookCh1.mp3
http://www.madnessradio.net/audio-extra/RDLaingPoliticsOfExperienceLaingAudiobookCh2.mp3
http://www.madnessradio.net/audio-extra/RDLaingPoliticsOfExperienceLaingAudiobookCh3.mp3
http://www.madnessradio.net/audio-extra/RDLaingPoliticsOfExperienceLaingAudiobookCh4.mp3
http://www.madnessradio.net/audio-extra/RDLaingPoliticsOfExperienceLaingAudiobookCh5.mp3
http://www.madnessradio.net/audio-extra/RDLaingPoliticsOfExperienceLaingAudiobookCh6.mp3
http://www.madnessradio.net/audio-extra/RDLaingPoliticsOfExperienceLaingAudiobookCh7.mp3
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._D. Laing
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 51:07 — 55.1MB)
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- Show topics:
- Books
- History
- Philosophy
- Spirituality
Outside Mental Health Preface Audiobook | Will Hall | Madness Radio

What does it mean to be called “crazy” in a crazy world? Listen to the free audiobook of the Preface to Outside Mental Health: Voices and Visions of Madness, written and read by Will Hall.
Outside Mental Health: Voices and Visions of Madness reveals the human side of mental illness. Based on ten years of Madness Radio interviews, more than 60 voices of psychiatric patients, scientists, journalists, doctors, activists, and artists create a vital new conversation about empowering the human spirit. Outside Mental Health invites us to rethink what we know about bipolar, psychosis, schizophrenia, depression, medications, and mental illness in society.
More info about the book here: www.outsidementalhealth.com
Download the chapter here: http://bit.ly/bookpreface
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:49 — 68.6MB)
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- Show topics:
- Audiobook
- Books
- Personal Stories
Judaism Madness and Spirit | Caroline Mazel-Carlton | Madness Radio

Voice hearers, mystics, visionaries, and mad people are found throughout the scriptures of Judaism. What does Jewish theology have to teach us about madness and psychiatric diagnosis? How can modern Judaism show the way to new responses to extreme and altered states, in our communities and ourselves? Caroline Mazel-Carlton is a survivor of psychiatric crisis diagnosed as psychosis, Director of Training at the Wildflower Alliance – Western Massachusetts Recovery Learning Community, Hearing Voiced and Alternatives to Suicide support group facilitator/trainer, and part of the Jewish Renewal movement studying to be a rabbi.www.westernmassrlc.org/ https://aleph.org/
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 56:53 — 104.2MB)
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Soteria Alaska | Connor Tindall | Madness Radio

What are the key ingredients of alternative mental health programs – and what makes them different and successful? Connor Tindall followed his calling to become a a therapist after confronting mistreatment by a psychotherapist as a teen. He went on to work at the innovative Soteria House Alaska, a hospital alternative where compassionate respect for residents — and much less use of medications — meant a chance to explore the meaning in madness and find real paths to healing. Connor discusses how awareness of power imbalances, the inspiration of the women’s movement, and his difficult psychdedelic drug trips all shaped his vision of a new kind of psychotherapy.
www.moshersoteria.com/articles/soteria-and-other-alternatives-to-acute-psychiatric-hospitalization/
www.madinamerica.com/2015/06/lessons-from-soteria-alaska/
www.madinamerica.com/2012/09/some-observations-of-soteria-alaska/
www.madinamerica.com/2013/08/this-place-is-full-of-life-on-deliverance-at-soteria-alaska/
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:01:58 — 92.9MB)
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