What is madness? Who decides where sanity ends and disorder begins? And what does the history of mental illness reveal about civilization itself?

In A Brief History of Madness, Isaac Volpe takes listeners on a gripping journey through one of humanity’s oldest and most misunderstood mysteries. From ancient trepanation and demonic possession to asylums, lobotomies, Freud, psychiatric drugs, neuroscience, and the neurodiversity movement, this book explores the long, dramatic struggle to understand the troubled mind.

This is more than a history of psychiatry. It is a history of fear, compassion, stigma, power, science, and the shifting line between the normal and the abnormal. Along the way, listeners encounter the reformers who tried to humanize care, the institutions that turned healing into confinement, the thinkers who reshaped the field, and the patients whose lives reveal the human cost of getting madness wrong.

Clear, compelling, and deeply thought-provoking, A Brief History of Madness shows how every society defines mental illness in its own image—and why the debate over sanity, suffering, and treatment is far from over.

If you want to understand how mental illness has been feared, explained, punished, treated, and reimagined across history, this book is an essential listen.

What the future of mental health may look like in the age of psychedelics, neurodiversity, and global mental health reform.

Buy and listen to A Brief History of Madness today and discover the fascinating, disturbing, and deeply human story of how civilization has tried to understand the troubled mind.