Madness Madness!

We’ve only come to this conclusion 70 to 90 times on the show, but did you know that a lot of cults are basically just outlets for white Boomer men to plaster over their obvious insecurities? You did, huh? Yeah.  Well, you’re already here, so why not learn about two more of them? Today’s white guys are Gabriel of Urantia, who has a “University” in “Arizona,” which may not even be a real state, and...

Cults! Cargo! Colonialism! John Frum is a mythical and beloved figure to many native people of the island of Tanna in Vanuatu, and could, maybe, MAYBE, be part of a vanishingly rare time when the arrival of white people from the United States was an improvement on the squatting of white people from Europe. MAYBE. Our alternative to John Frum is Love Has Won, a cult whose name makes sense if you re...

Sometimes you run into cults that remind you why people start cults to begin with: An abiding love of cultural appropriation; a penchant for exploiting others for sex; and the run-of-the-mill belief among white men that we should somehow be getting even more free passes than we're already getting.* Such is definitely the case this week, when Adidam , a cult started by some schmuck from Queens...

Much like the rest of you here in the rapidly crumbling United States, we took some time off this week to give thanks for the people and things we still somehow have. Thus, in place of an episode, please enjoy Erin's reading of the very long poem "Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana," by Aesthetic Realism founder Eli Siegel.

Happy Cultsgiving! We're celebrating today with Aesthetic Realism, a cult based on the belief that Eli Siegel, a white guy who in 1925 wrote a very long poem that includes a lot of talk about Indians and I guess solved literally everything by doing so; and Happy Science!, which doesn't actually have an exclamation point on the end of it but I refuse to stop typing it that way, and whose...

This week's episode is not that depressing at all! Relatively speaking! Taylor Camp was camp started by movie star Elizabeth Taylor('s brother)! He didn't really live there; it was less a traditional camp and more of a swath of undeveloped shoreline he gave to some hippies to piss off local Hawaiian authorities. It's that or a sojourn with Father Divine, a guy who was just stra...

Erin and Amanda are back, and cults have not improved while they were away! Today we examine MOVE, a '70s-era group that some might describe as The Cult Philadelphia Deserved. It was certainly better than former mayor and lifelong shithead Frank Rizzo deserved, but that's not saying a lot. You'd think literally anyone going toe to toe with Rizzo would come out looking better, but cu...

We’re putting the final touches on our bummer cults and headed back to the studio. We can’t wait to talk shit with you. 

Hello Lifestylers,  Please accept this meager apology. We here at Madness Madness want y'all to know that we're eager to get back into the studio (living room) and delve deep into some fucked up mind control shit.  Thank you for sticking with us. We've got some good stuff planned and can't wait to share it with you.  Lylas*,  Erin *Love You Like A Sis

The eternal dilemma: Get groped by a creepy Australian, or get terrorist-tastic with a creepy Japanese guy? Today we're rocketing to the bottom with Universal Medicine ("UniMed"), a cult literally dreamed up by a guy on the toilet to get to second base with the ladies, and Aum Shinrikyo, a cult dreamed up by a weird bully with a thing for constant terrorist attacks . Spoilers: There...

This week's matchup gives you a choice of cultures to appropriate: You can hang out with the Rainbow Family and immerse yourself in some muddled, deeply unsurprising theft of Native American ideas, or you can tie a string on with the Kabbalah and take a moment to consider if it's possible to improperly appropriate your own culture! Seems like a yes to me. 

Sometimes talkin' real fast is the same as enlightenment, especially when you're extremely sleep-deprived and possibly living in a fallout shelter because the cult you're in is definitely sure there's gonna be a nuclear war any day now. This was certainly the case with the Church Universal and Triumphant, a bunch of weirdos in Montana. Today they go up against J.Z. Knight and R...

Y'ever meet a college roommate's dad and think, "Now THERE'S a guy I want to move into the common area of our dorm room!" Man, have we got the Dad for you. In today's episode we meet Larry Ray, an insane creep who took advantage of his daughter's suitemates at Sarah Lawrence College and conned them into nearly a decade of deeply bizarre servitude and exploitation...

We've had a good time with clubs and organizations, but there's also a limit to how much right-wing white guy bullshit a person can study before they have to switch back to studying not-necessarily right-wing bullshit. That's right folks, cults are back! The season 3 premiere pits a couple of obscure dipshits against each other, which is clearly shocking: Educo, a health cult from t...

There's a point in every person's life when they must ask themselves whether 'tis nobler to indulge in forensic sniffing and tasting of milk, or to join a group of dead and dying white male comedians founded on an obsession with Milton Berle's dingus. For us, that day has come. The FFA (Future Farmers of America) was founded to promote pride and develop skills in farming, durin...

At a glance, one could be forgiven for assuming there's no way we'd join a group where the world's richest and most powerful men (only men) go to piss everywhere in a way that wild animals find unwise.  One could also be correct in assuming this, but that'd make for a short and boring episode. Fortunately we've got the Shriners in the opposite corner, and let me tell you,...

Hop on, loser! We're going to postwar England! Join us for one of the mildest gang fights since the episode of "Newhart" where the Hooligals rumbled with the Puffians. As thoughtfully chronicled in The Who's rock-opera-cumentary "Quadrophenia," this week we'll have a look at the Rockers, a group heavily inspired by U.S. biker culture of the 1950s, and the Mods, w...

This week we take a look at two groups of people utterly fucked over — by England and by the people so awful they got kicked out of England, respectively — and the groups they formed to express their well-thought-out grievances. Props to the American Indian Movement (AIM) for making their point while killing a whole whole whole lot fewer people; slight demerits for Marlon Brando's involvement...

There's something for everyone in this match: Grave robbery, astonishing-yet-unsurprising disrespect for Native Americans, Paul Walker, Pacey, baffling tests designed to screw marginalized people into dying in Vietnam, "wars" consisting of bombing unoccupied buildings, decades of hiding, and a whole lot of Bad Ideas From White Guys in Their Early 20s. And when the dust settles, we g...

WOOP WOOP Y'ALL! This week it's a thoughtful examination of getting soaked in cheap soda and occasionally meth vs. endless guitar solos from a band whose most compelling members have been (gratefully, presumably) dead for decades, and whose fans are twirling, TWIRLING, ALWAYS TWIRLING!!! If you think about it, Juggalos are like Deadheads, but tailored to the ruined economy and world left...

We're back from vacation, and we miss it severely. But we wrote a song about it, because that's what we do around here. Enjoy!

We're Americans, after all, which means we can't deal with even the tiniest soupçon of nuance. What better mindset could there be when approaching a showdown between the well-intentioned but ultimately semi-disastrous teetotaling Women's Christian Temperance Union and the gathering of unredeemable 18th-Centuray Upper-Class British Shits that christened itself The Hellfire Club? It&a...

On this auspicious week following the United States' 245th birthday, we look back to a week ago, the auspicious week before the United States' 245th birthday, and the not-quite-an-episode we recorded then. I mean, look, it's an episode, it's just not specifically about clubs and organizations—unless you count the mildly exclusive club of people who tried to assassinate our 38th...

Folks, it's summer. It's a time of vacation. And last weekend, when we normally would have recorded this week's show, was Brian's vacation. So there's no new entire show this week. However, please enjoy/listen grudgingly to/mercilessly roast this week's offering, a new song about not having a podcast episode for this week.

Look, just because it's a creepily secretive cabal of the ultra-rich and politically connected doesn't mean the Bilderberg Group is creepy as hell, does it? It does? Oh, excellent! I'm relieved to hear you say that; I also find it incredibly creepy. In today's episode they will definitely not show up to their showdown with the Black Panthers, a crucial social justice group from...