Any of your better cheese experts will tell you there’s nothing that pairs better with a fist-sized hunk of Government Cheese than a couple of British ghost stories, one almost certainly made up, the other definitely made up. Warm up your false vocal chords for some fake ghost sounds, and learn more about the chain of government fuckery that ended …

My freshman year in college I (Brian) got like, Freshman Drunk at a house party where a home video was playing. My friend Jeff appeared in the video several times, and apparently every time he was onscreen I would slur, from the living room floor, "there's Jeff." The story of Gef (he's Welsh!) the Talking Mongoose seems not dissimilar, except the h…

We don't like to brag or anything, but the people behind Madness Madness have accomplished some pretty incredible feats of combat prowess, to the point where several hit movies have been based on our exploits: Avatar, Avengers: Endgame, Avatar: The Way of Water, Titanic, Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens, Avengers: Infinity War, Spider-Man…

Aine’s in town! In honor of friend of the pod/friend of us as actual people, today’s episode is all Australia, all the time! There’s Corn Thins! Mike invented them! There’s Tim Tams! Some saint or another invented them! And there’s research that yields phrases like “singer Paul Joseph, Donny McCormack (ex-Nutwood Rug Band), The Larrikins and Ian Fa…

Florida’s state government isn’t the only bunch to get a bug up its collective ass over Disney not being fundamentalist enough: Turns out there’s a storied history of Old Testament fanboys opening entire theme parks, except instead of a theme there’s the Bible, and instead of a park there’s the Bible. Today we learn more about this string of inexpl…

Like reasonable people everywhere, we here at Madness Madness, when considering the accurate and true representation of American Indians in film, television, and literature, immediately think of Germany. Thus none of you will be surprised to learn of Karl May, creator in the 1890s of the “Old Shatterhand” novels, the Wild West adventures of the tit…

We say it a lot here on the show, but the 1960s was an era unique for its sheer volume of uninformed drug-induced white guy fuckery. Emblematic of said fuckery was Dr. John C. Lilly, who was real into dolphins and LSD and giving dolphins LSD when he wasn't floating in an isolation tank trying to miraculously make it even further up his own ass. For…

If you’ve ever asked yourself, “Do I have what it takes to cross the equator? On a boat? For the first time?”, you’ll need to consider some follow-up questions: How good a swimmer are you? How do you feel about the biggest, hairiest dude on your ship being greased up and dressed like a baby? And is there a way you can take a car, plane, or train in…

SPRING BREEEEEAK!!!! Today we're taking a break from not talking about cults, so as to learn more about the Blackburn Cult, the proper name of which is the Divine Order of the Royal Arms of the Great Eleven, a name perhaps designed to remind people that while the Great Depression might be raging, you can still use as many words and letters as you w…

Have we all, every one of us, stared at a small humanlike doll and thought to ourselves, "What would it be like if this doll were like 35+ dudes and I starved them for six months in the University of Minnesota football stadium?" Of course we have; there's no need to even phrase it as a question. A notable fellow of science thought the same thing du…

A lot of people say dentistry lost its street cred when it started happening in "Offices" with "Sterile Instruments" and "Windows that close," and at one point the Street Dentist who legally changed his first name to Painless to avoid a lawsuit would have agreed with you. Today we learn about this ... guy ... in the history of dentistry. Plus, a lo…

Most days you get up, have a coffee, look at the same six gifs again, and then it's off to work. But what if you didn't have the daily grind to distract you, and you could focus on doing the things that really feed your soul? If the things that feed your soul include dressing in blackface and pranking the entire Imperial Navy, you've got some racis…

What better way to ring in the new year with a solid six months of deafening, damaging aural assaults that you're powerless to stop? Other than a bracing series of square dances, nothing I can think of! This week we learn about what would ultimately become one of the most important reasons we don't have cross-country supersonic passenger flights. W…

Are you now, or have you ever been, a Lady? If yes, were you a Lady in the United States during the 19th Century? You are doubtless familiar, then, with Godey's Lady's Book, a source of densely packed text, hand-colored fashion plates, piano sheet music, and the odd Edgar Allan Poe short story ("for the love of Godey, Montresor!"). All this, plus a…

You know what's awesome? VICTORIAN LADY THIEVES. You know what else is awesome? Science Fiction! Mostly! Partly. It's complicated. Today we hear tales of both things!By Erin Byrne & Amanda Clay

Two pivotal questions lie at the heart of this week's episode. One: To what extent have we been collectively missing out as a society since the practice of soap carving fell by the wayside? Two: What happens when Erin and Amanda don't call their dad?By Erin Byrne & Amanda Clay

By the time July 4, 1976 had rolled around, a lot of people had put a lot of effort into crushing the whole thing into a bureaucratic logjam. A lot more people had made sure not one single American had the option of forgetting, even for a moment, that it was the BICENTENNIAL AND EVERYBODY BETTER AMERICA REAL REAL HARD STARTING RIGHT NOW, GOT IT?!? …

Today, a lighthearted look at England's long and storied history of, as an official act, killing men for being gay. It goes back a while! It's awful and pointless, but ... uh. Well. No actual "but" there, as it turns out. We'll also examine a group of racist vigilantes of the pedigree that's only possible in central Missouri. Also they called thems…

George Pullman, it should be universally agreed, was a huge piece of shit. Nobody who isn't a huge piece of shit has himself buried in hundreds of cubic feet of concrete and railroad ties to keep his employees from besmirching his corpse. Today we'll be talking about the Pullman Porters, black men and women who migrated north for a better life afte…

It's easy to forget the days before fertility treatments that yielded between four and thirty babies per pregnancy. It's even easier to forget 1934, since most of us weren't born yet. You know who WAS born in 1934? The Dionne Quintuplets! As was the case for a great many Depression-era babies, things didn't go as well as they could have. Speaking o…

Boomeur Sooneur!! Today Erin takes a look at the practically unheard-of* football team at the University of Oklahoma, and Amanda introduces us to Julie d'Aubigny, a vastly overexposed** 17th-Century fencing master, opera singer, and lover of the ladies, who managed to do a frankly astonishing amount of L-I-V-I-N inside 33 years. Join us, won't you?…

If you've listened to the podcast for a while, you've almost certainly been waiting literally months to hear us spend an hour and a half talking about cats. WAIT NO LONGER, MY FRIENDS! Today Amanda tells us about ship's cats, in between the times when we interrupt ourselves and each other talking about other cats. Then Erin takes us on a trip in th…

The thing about the '80s is that there was a lot of money and a lot of drugs, and they were both gonna last forever! Until they didn't. This week Erin tells us about the collapse of the Penn Square Bank, which knocked the oil business on its ass far beyond the greater Oklahoma City area, and was toooootally different than the financial collapse of …

Regretfully we must inform you, our avid listeners, that there is no new episode this week because Adobe is being a dick about things. We are working on these technical difficulties and will be back as soon as humanly possible.By Erin Byrne & Amanda Clay

Today's show is a real study in contrasts. England's Pearly Kings and Queens (you've probably seen them even if you don't know the name) are working-class Britons who've been collecting money for charity by way of some truly jaw-dropping suits for more than a century. The person in charge of the "Irish Crown Jewels," by contrast, is ... actually ex…

Sometimes a stark tragedy takes the form of an imperfect history. In this case the tragedy is that the Beast of Gévaudan, a creature or creatures who spent a chunk of the 1760s taking fatal chunks out of terrified villagers of the French countryside, did not show up 200 years later in the bus containing Ken Kesey and his "Merry Pranksters" and spen…

Vacations! You love 'em! Unless they keep your favorite podcast from having a new episode. Then you resent them, which is understandable. We'll be back next week! It's still hot.By Erin Byrne & Amanda Clay

Is it hyperbolic to call it a Clown Riot when they were rioting against the Toronto Fire Department? Maybe. When clowns kick the ass of a city's fire department, and the fire department are Orangemen to a man and collectively symbolic both of municipal graft and Ulster Unionist fuckery, are the clowns immediately granted IRA membership? Friends, I'…

Your call is very important to us. Please leave a message and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.By Erin Byrne & Amanda Clay

Well fuck, it's wartime again on Madness Madness. Today we learn about legitimate national hero Chris Noel, who started her work actually supporting the actual troops in a way more useful than car window stickers in Vietnam and never looked back. We also learn about The Hunley!, a Civil War-era submarine that worked about as well as the submarine y…

Look, the IRA did some unforgivable things in response to some equally unforgivable things done by the Ulster Unionists and centuries of even worse things done by the fucking English. But when you kidnap a horse hailed as a national hero by the people of Ireland itself, you have officially gone too far. Today we hear the tale of Shergar, a horse wh…

Hello! Madness Madness is currently out of the office. You've pressed six to learn more about Tom Petty! Brian reads an excerpt from a remembrance by Warren Zanes, Petty's biographer, published a year after the absolute legend's death. You can read the full article here.By Erin Byrne & Amanda Clay

Hello! You've reached Madness Madness. We are currently out of the office. Please listen to your choices carefully, as our menu has changed.By Erin Byrne & Amanda Clay

How 'bout we just list some key items this episode has in it: Border Blasters, goat testicle implantation, rootin' tootin' child neglect, Brother Al ("A-L"), one hundred baby chicks by mail, Big Tex continuing to slowly and mechanically wave as he is engulfed in flames*, the ionosphere. Get to it! *this is quite possibly the funniest thing that had…

Friends, do you like stunning stone structures perched on piney hilltops? Do you like the ghosts of mistreated sanitarium patients, dead from neglect? OK what about the ghost of a cute little orange tabby cat? OK! Me too! Let's go to the Crescent Hotel then, and learn about Eureka Springs' most haunted place! (Also one of the prettiest.) Oh, and be…

This week we have a look at the actual events that led to a legendary song, the most famous version of which contained the line "I've got three little children and a very sickly wife." Stagger Lee! Real shit! That there is a song that contains absolutely no hidden backward lyrics, which means it wasn't a part of the moral majority scare about rock …

Today we learn about automatons from hundreds of years ago, the most famous of which may have been The Mechanical Turk, which played chess with actual people in the room and got pissy with you if you tried to cheat. Then it's a personal story of a deeply unsettling babysitting gig, the 1989 Olympic Festival in Norman, Oklahoma, and the bleak shitsc…

OK WELL ANYWAY now that the tornado has passed, Erin can continue talking about Kit Williams' book "Masquerade" and the real-life treasure hunt it spawned (on purpose). And Amanda can tell us a little something about some obvious straight-up horse shit that the British scientific community uncritically gobbled right up because it wanted to believe …

This week we spend some time with Koreshan Unity, which has nothing to do with Waco, the ATF, or TV movies starring the guy from "Wings" or, later, Tim Riggins. Although it might be worth debating whether the standoff in Waco would have ended differently if the Earth were hollow, as today's cult insisted it was. We also learn more about "Masquerade…

Gather 'round, listeners, and hear the story of what happens when dictatorships—sorry, I'm being told the proper name is monarchies—get so far up their own asses they get syphilis and start wars and basically murder literally millions of their own citizens. The Mayerling Incident was a low-key extremely important* example of this brand of royal fuc…

Today we squint quizzically at James Bernard Schafer, a teleporting doctor who founded the Royal Fraternity of Master Metaphysicians and set out to raise an immortal baby! Until the baby's mother showed up and wanted her back. Still totally immortal, possibly.* We keep going, though, and end up with a look at “the most famous con man you’ve never h…

This week we examine a real insane person and fake books! Lyndon LaRouche ran for president 8 times and was less coherent with each successive run. Though he started out as a semi-Marxist pro-labor kinda guy, he quickly moved squarely into right-wing pro-insane bullshit territory. No matter what, there was always room in his heart for all sorts of …

This week on Madness Madness we're out here lookin' for starters, but all we can see is a bunch of jackoffs. First off we take a surprisingly thought-provoking journey to the '80s and '90s for a look at the Church of the Subgenius, a cult that wasn't actually a cult from the heady days of heavy 'zine-ing! Straight out of Dallas, very close to our h…

we're back / from a brief hiatus / time off is a predatory bird, and it ate us // This week we step away from cults for a bit, and look instead at an ongoing mystery and a straight-up conspiracy theory! Oak Island is, as the name suggests, an island! In Canada! With a hole in it! Several holes now, in fact, since about once per generation, some dud…

Today we learn how to live forever, but for real this time, from People Unlimited Incorporated! (We also take a moment to mourn the death of its founder, Charles Paul Brown, who died in 2014 NO YOU SHUT UP!) Are we ready to spend our immortal lives eating the worst food imaginable? Before we decide, we'll take a look at The Waldorf School, founded …

We don’t have a new episode this week, so please accept Brian’s alternate rendition of the Terasem … anthem? from last week's show. The song might be called “Earth Seed” because every line in it has the words “Earth Seed” in it but also seriously who gives a shit. Content Warning: Some really bad white person “rhythm” comes into play and honestly t…

One of this week's cults is a rare example of a cult not primarily being a financial grift. Terasem's founders are already super fucking rich, and so they're really more interested in your unquestioning allegiance, their own desperate desire to cheat death, and your interest in hanging out with a deeply disturbing AI automaton named BINA48. It's pi…

This week we're throwin' a party! A POLITICAL party! Under the smug, starfucking veneer of leader Daisaku Ikeida, a Japanese Buddhism rip-offshoot called Soka Gakkai that is also a political party? With like 20% of the vote?!? I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation (there isn't). We're also partying down in an abandoned secretarial school, in Pa…

I think we can all agree that what we really need in these troubled times are more diploma mills. How else are we gonna get more unlicensed group psychotherapists? THERE IS NO OTHER WAY. The founders of Ganas, which as it happens began as an unaccredited school for group therapy, are entirely with me on this one, and would like to interest you in a…

There are cults where you skulk around the racist fringes of Southeastern Oklahoma planning terrorist attacks, and cults where the Daughter of God tells you to go out and do crimes so you can all keep staying in luxury hotel suites. Obviously the second kind of cult is way better for everyone, but whatever, we're examining both on today's show! Elo…