VICE follows The Black Lips on a musical journey through Tijuana.
Acrassicauda is Iraq's first and greatest metal band.
The Black Lips make their musical way through Israel.
In Episode 1 of Marshall Headphones: On The Road Jesse goes to The Wiltern theatre in LA to meet legendary soundman Hutch as he works on a special performance by Queens of the Stone Age. He also talks to Josh Homme and Troy Van Leeuwen from the band about the band/roadie relationship and why Hutch is essentially a member of QOTSA.
In Episode 2 of Marshall Headphones: On The Road Jesse swings by the Golden Gods Awards as anyone who's anyone in metal arrives on the black carpet and asks them why there isn't an award for roadies. He then pays a visit to probably the most notorious metal roadie of all time, Jef Hickey who has worked with the likes of Motorhead and Megadeth.
An introduction to the Black Metal scene of Bergen, Norway.
Once pristine wilderness, Alberta is now a world of poisoned water, polluted air, and rare cancer. VICE travels to the oil sands of Canada to investigate the impact of digging for this previously unobtainable oil.
Sneaking into North Korea was one of the hardest and weirdest processes VICE has ever dealt with. In North Korea, if you get caught being a journalist when you're supposed to be a tourist, you go to jail, or worse. Our rare footage is some of the craziest ever captured, providing an honest look inside the hermit nation.
The Mexican party scene has fully embraced ridiculously long pointy boots and tribal music. In this episode of VICE Presents, we explore the pointiest boots on the planet and the culture to which they are tied.
Skateboarder Andrew Reynolds has come a long way since he started riding at age nine. He has eight pro shoes, has been named Thrasher's "Skater of the Year" and is part owner of Baker Skateboards. Andrew was able to accomplish all of this despite suffering from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, or as he calls it, "Madness".
A few years ago we went to Brazil to find the Watermelon Woman, who has arguably the largest and most impressive ass on the planet.
Heimo Korth is the last man standing in 19 million acres of Alaskan wilderness. His neighbors are polar bears and caribous. Say good bye to civilization and see how they do it in the arctic circle on the last frontier in America. In 1980, Jimmy Carter established the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in the Alaskan Interior, cutting off 19 million acres of prime boreal wilderness from the mitts of fur trappers, oil tycoons, and would-be lodge owners alike. Only six families of white settlers were grandfathered in and allowed to keep cabins in the refuge—of them, only one still stays there year-round living off the land. His name is Heimo Korth, and he is basically the Omega Man of Americas Final Frontier.
Cannibalism, murder and rape are just a part of everyday life in certain regions of Liberia. Despite the United Nation's eventual intervention, most of this country's young people continue to live in abject poverty, surrounded by filth, drug addiction, and teenage prostitution. In 2009, we went to Liberia to rummage through the messy remains of a country ravaged by 14 years of civil war.
Watch Ryan Duffy get shot in the chest as he tests the strength of a fashion forward bulletproof vest made by Steven Seagal's personal tailor.
In this episode of VICE Today, we stalk the paparazzi and give them a taste of their own terrible medicine. Then we learn why Rachel Rabbit White thinks sex is so great that she spends her time writing about it (and occasionally having it). Finally we get a few etiquette tips on how to be classy in the 21st century. Enjoy!
Anti-immigration militia leader Jason Todd Ready entered an Arizona home and killed four people, including a 15-month-old girl, before shooting himself on Wednesday. Not too long ago, we interviewed J.T. for our piece on border militias, and while we understood that J.T. had a lot of anger, we didn't realize how deep his hatred ran.
In this episode of VICE Today we learn about Drakes substance use and sex life, find out how one "Reply Girl" makes a living by showing a bit of cleavage and replying to every video on the internet, and lastly, see how space rovers are designed and why salmon isn't the best color inside a spaceship.
The Aokigahara Forest is the most popular site for suicides in Japan. After the novel Kuroi Jukai was published, in which a young lover commits suicide in the forest, people started taking their own lives there at a rate of 50 to 100 deaths a year. The site holds so many bodies that the Yakuza pays homeless people to sneak into the forest and rob the corpses. The authorities sweep for bodies only on an annual basis, as the forest sits at the base of Mt. Fuji and is too dense to patrol more frequently.
VICE went to Colombia to check out a strange and powerful drug called Scopolamine, also known as "The Devil's Breath." It's a substance so intense that it renders a person incapable of exercising free will. The first few days in the country were a harrowing montage of freaked-out dealers and unimaginable horror stories about Scopolamine. After meeting only a few people with firsthand experience, the story took a far darker turn than we ever could have imagined.
Deep in Siberia's Taiga forest is Vissarion, a cult leader who looks like Jesus and claims to be the voice of God. He's known as "the Teacher" to his 4,000 followers, who initially seem surprisingly normal. Over time, however, their unflinching belief in UFOs and the Earth's imminent demise made this group start to look more and more like some sort of strange cult.
A homemade drug called Krokodil is gaining popularity in Siberia and its effects on users are horrific. Krokodil is Russian for Crocodile, because of the way addicts' skin begins to get turn scaly, dry and eventually rot right off their bodies. Even most heroin users are frightened by Krokodil and want nothing to do with this terrifying drug.
Aside from literally sleeping in feces, these people are dodging rats, flash floods and drug addicts. What's worse, the sewer dwellers are constantly under attack by local "death squads," who fire open rounds and pour gasoline into their underground homes, then set them ablaze.
Nas tells us about a time when he almost got into a fight with Wesley Snipes over Grace Jones. Then we discuss Drake's lack of humility in What's Up with Drake. Finally we take a look at some classic YouTube clips with someone who definitely spends way too much time on the internet.
Warlords, soldiers, and child laborers all toil over a mineral you've never even heard of. Coltan is a conflict mineral in nearly every cell phone, laptop, and electronic device. It's also tied to the deaths of over 5 million people in Congo since 1990.
Daily Grace from My Damn Channel tells us why she decided to move to Brooklyn and make awesome videos for the internet. Then we learn proper airport etiquette from a guy who can barely sip a gin and tonic without spilling on himself.
Designing the interior of a spacecraft may be more difficult than you think. When dealing with long tearm confinement, everything from the shape of a chair to the color of the wall could have an effect on a crew members mental stability. This is truly a mix of design, engineering and straight forward problem solving. Since this video has been produced, Evan left NASA to pursue other entrepreneurial opportunities. He still believes that his designs will reach outer space and doesn't rule out returning to the space administration.
In May 2011, married environmental activists Zé Cláudio Ribeiro and Maria do Espirito Santo were shot to death outside their house in the Amazonian state of Para. A month later we traveled to Zé Cláudio's hometown of Marabá, which was once in the middle of the rainforest and is now surrounded by miles and miles of clearcut cattle land. As the investigation into Zé and Maria's murders went nowhere, we drove into the forest to the site of the killings, followed the heavily armed men of Brazil's environmental protection agency as they busted up illegal timber mills, visited the militant squatters of Brazil's Landless Movement, met modern day slaves, and marveled at the lawless, violent atmosphere that permeates the town locals call Marabála (that means Mara-bullets).
Every year, thousands of Mexicans illegally cross the US border. To find out exactly how it's done we went to El Alberto, Mexico to film the experience. El Alberto lies 800 miles south of the US border in the state of Hidalgo. It's pretty much like any other town of 3,000 people, except in El Alberto they offer tourists the chance to participate in a simulated illegal border crossing. It all happens at a standard recreational park with swimming pools, river trips, zip lines, and the other typical fare. We took a few cameras and headed for the EcoAlberto Park to spend some late-nights running through underground tunnels on the heels of our personal "Coyote" while being chased by border patrol. While we were there, we crashed a quinceñera party and saw El Alberto from the perspective of the locals.
The Pizza Connection was an actual FBI case that made the careers of Giuliani and others in both US and Italian law enforcement. The case involved a group of hardcore killers/drug dealers from Sicily who had cornered the world's heroin supply and were now planning to use pizza parlors in NYC and the rest of the US to distribute their product. For every four boxes of mozzarella, one was the babanya, the term they used for the uncut dope. The Sicilians were referred to as Zips, and were about as far from Gucci-wearing non-Italian-speaking American hoods as possible. As one of these characters, whose nickname was "The Strangler of Christians," once said about the American mob, "their problem is they don't understand about massacres, it takes them two weeks of discussion to kill one guy."
The Pizza Connection was an actual FBI case that made the careers of Giuliani and others in both US and Italian law enforcement. The case involved a group of hardcore killers/drug dealers from Sicily who had cornered the world's heroin supply and were now planning to use pizza parlors in NYC and the rest of the US to distribute their product. For every four boxes of mozzarella, one was the babanya, the term they used for the uncut dope. The Sicilians were referred to as Zips, and were about as far from Gucci-wearing non-Italian-speaking American hoods as possible. As one of these characters, whose nickname was "The Strangler of Christians," once said about the American mob, "their problem is they don't understand about massacres, it takes them two weeks of discussion to kill one guy."
The Pizza Connection was an actual FBI case that made the careers of Giuliani and others in both US and Italian law enforcement. The case involved a group of hardcore killers/drug dealers from Sicily who had cornered the world's heroin supply and were now planning to use pizza parlors in NYC and the rest of the US to distribute their product. For every four boxes of mozzarella, one was the babanya, the term they used for the uncut dope. The Sicilians were referred to as Zips, and were about as far from Gucci-wearing non-Italian-speaking American hoods as possible. As one of these characters, whose nickname was "The Strangler of Christians," once said about the American mob, "their problem is they don't understand about massacres, it takes them two weeks of discussion to kill one guy."
VICE travels to West Africa to rummage through the messy remains of a country ravaged by 14 years of civil war. Despite the United Nation's eventual intervention, most of Liberia's young people continue to live in abject poverty, surrounded by filth, drug addiction, and teenage prostitution. The former child soldiers who were forced into war have been left to fend for themselves, the murderous warlords who once led them in cannibalistic rampages have taken up as so-called community leaders, and new militias are lying in wait for the opportunity to reclaim their country from a government they rightly mistrust.
In 2010, Michael Hastings wrote a controversial piece for Rolling Stone that potentially ruined the reputation of US army general Stanley McChrystal, then commander of NATO's internal security assistance force in the war in Afghanistan. The article, which detailed McChrystal's disapproval of President Obama, caused McChrystal to resign his position. We got in touch with Hastings and he gave us the opportunity to discuss counter insurgency in Afghanistan, criticisms of President Obama and the ongoing tension between the Pentagon and the White House.
Hustler Magazine founder Larry Flynt talks to us about how he grew Hustler from a small club in Dayton to the mega porn empire it is today.
In rural Kyrgyzstan men still marry their women the old-fashioned way: by abducting them off the street and forcing them to be their wife. Bride kidnapping is a supposedly ancient custom that's made a major comeback since the fall of Communism and now accounts for nearly half of all marriages in some parts. We traveled to the Kyrgyz countryside to follow a young groom named Kubanti as he surprised his teenage girlfriend Nazgul with the gift of marriage/kidnapping.
Ever wonder how to sell $100,000 worth of drugs in a week? We learned the secrets of a drug dealer in NYC - a man who will deliver any substance you want, 24/7. He told us everything - from where he gets his drugs to how his crew operates. Come with us as we take a rare look into the dangerous life of a NYC drug delivery-man.
Meet Pakistan's most-principled patriarch, Abdul Sattar Edhi. He feeds the hungry, cares for the sick, and defies the Taliban, bringing a message of love and peace to Karachi. When we were filming The Vice Guide to Karachi, things kept taking one dark turn after another, but when we met Edhi, one of Pakistan's living legends, he managed to give us hope.
Harry was one of those kids who used to play by the dumpster at recess and ride the school bus by himself. Now that he's all grown up and a successful writer at VICE we thought we should give him the opportunity to redeem some of his cool on the soccer field. Unfortunately, it ended in vomit and failure. But hey, at least he tried.
Cannibalism may seem like an outdated notion, but Vice met up with a real-life cannibal. Issei Sagawa murdered an innocent woman and spent three days eating her flesh. Due to loopholes in the law, Issei is a free man to this day.
Massive corporations are blowing up mountains and creating environmental ruins in West Virginia. All this devastation, just to extract some coal. We went to West Virginia to investigate mountain-top removal -- which a way of extracting coal from deposits under mountains. Instead of drilling into the mountain and sending men underground to take out the coal in the traditional way, they just take the whole top of a mountain off.
The rivalry between football clubs Rangers and Celtic goes past typical name calling and dives into violence, racial slurs and pure hatred. The rivalry between Glasgow's "Old Firm" sides is the most famous in world football. It's the game's flagship loathing, proof of the power of the sport to inspire profound levels of tribal loyalty and a near-Pavlovian revulsion at anything to do with a rival. We examine the situation and try to get a handle on the political, religious, and national identity clashes that have shaped the rivalry, speak to fanzine editors on both sides of the divide and travel with the Bhoys' away support to a match at Tannadice.
We went to the Middle East to find the best Shawarma in Doha but ended up searching for robot camel jockeys (apparently this is a real thing) and drinking in very strange bars.
Ben Anderson shows us gripping video from the half decade he spent on the front line of battle in the war in Afghanistan. Television reporter Ben Anderson spent over five years embedded with British and American troops in Afghanistan, covering the war for GQ, HBO, and VICE. In this episode of VICE Meets, he unveils his latest book, No Worse Enemy, in a multimedia presentation alongside Rolling Stone contributing editor Michael Hastings.
What happens when you cross Kenny Powers with Robocop? You get Troy Hurtubise, a guy who set out to create a grizzly bear-proof outfit but ended up making full on Robocop suit.
José Galvan runs one of Mexico's only insane asylums. In dreadful conditions, it houses patients who have been forgotten by both society and, often, their own families.
We followed the story of the Westboro Baptist Church as families split and children were brainwashed into picketing funerals and bashing homosexuals. During that time, we interviewed more than a dozen members of the reviled group, including some of the only members not related by blood, the Drains. They welcomed us into their homes and gave us access to 17 years of home video footage. In return, we produced an unbiased look into the lives of one of America's most despised organizations.
Getting to know Robert and Jeffrey, the bears of Brooklyn behind women's clothing line Costello Tagliapietra.
We met with YouTube celeb Emma Clark - aka Nutty Madam - a Twilight obsessive whose confessional videos have had millions of views.
Terence Winter on his struggle to the top and why he likes playing with dolls so much.
Neil deGrasse Tyson and NEEMO (NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations) explore what it takes to stop an asteroid from colliding with earth.
Some parents in India practice the Devadasi tradition, selling their daughters into a life of prostitution, often around the age of 10.
We caught up with Craig Costello, graffiti artist and creator of KRINK, the notorious brand responsible for drip style markers, mops, and fire extinguishers. As a punk kid growing up in Queens, Craig would scavenge for supplies to paint the walls and buildings of New York. His desire to create larger pieces and invent unique graffiti tools led to the development of his internationally recognized ink and paint brand Krink Inc. Craig's signature style morphed out of his modifications and innovations with paint tools; using a fire extinguisher filled with paint and paint markers rather than spray paint, his style became an instant hit in many cities around the world.
Conspiracy theorist David Icke takes us to a local satanic execution site and discusses the plot of the secret lizard illuminati. We traveled to the Isle of Wight to meet the most iconic conspiracy theorist on Earth, David Icke. A former professional goalkeeper and television presenter, David Icke found international fame back in the 90s when he began uncovering a secret lizard illuminati plot. Icke discovered that a race of shape-shifting lizards has been masquerading as presidents and monarchs for centuries while planning to crush the planet.
The Westminster Dog Show is a hellscape packed to the gills with Midwesterners and dogs who receive more attention and have better lives than at least 40 percent of the world. The amount of misplaced love and resources funneled into these pooches on a daily basis is enough to make a stone-cold sober person uneasy. But recently I discovered that being thrust into the middle of the whole ordeal, while tripping acid, is a great way to kill an afternoon.
We spent some time with one of America's last great circus families. Lions and tigers and bears and breastfeeding chimps, oh my!
The two pinnacles of human technological achievement, lightsabers and Segways, together at last. When history looks back at our quaint little era, it will focus on two things, the two most outstanding technological achievements of mankind: Segways and lightsabers. Segways are the chariots of the modern age, and lightsabers are the sabers of the modern age. Why hasn't anyone thought to combine them? Well, we have. We have thought to combine them into a genius new sport called Sabersegging that we here at VICE magazine have invented. Copyright: us. Step 1 was inventing this genius game (done), and step 2 was sending VICE correspondent Jason Crombie off to become the first Sabersegger ever in existence. Take it away, Crombo.
Vice sails to the North Pacific Gyre, collecting point for all of the ocean's flotsam and home of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch: a mythical, Texas-sized island made entirely of our trash. Come aboard as we take a cruise to the Northern Gyre in the Pacific Ocean, a spot where currents spin and cycle, churning up tons of plastic into a giant pool of chemical soup, flecked with bits and whole chunks of refuse that cannot biodegrade.
We met up with comedian and VICE columnist Rob Delaney for a chat about hairiness, Twitter, and funny meat words. He's a wise man who knows a lot about these things, and a few other things, like vaginas and not drinking, so give this video a spin and learn some stuff.
We met up with Joe Crow Ryan, a well known NYC subway musician who has used his music to overcome struggles with homelessness and the law.
Getting in and out of the porn industry.
Cleo Le-Tan heads to the suburban ghetto (banlieue) outside of Paris to smoke some weed with French rapper, Byron, who's starred in videos by Romain Gavras. She then visits the rap group La Comera in their neighborhood and learns to drive, sort of.
Former undercover DEA agent, Celerino Castillo III, tells us about training death squads, blowing up cocaine labs, and how the cartels are controlling both sides of the border.
Spike Jonze (Director of Where the Wild Things Are) spends a Saturday with VICE founder, Shane Smith, and finds out how he transformed a low budget magazine into a fully fledged multimedia empire.
This week, Pretty Sweet Tuesdays is centered around a young man that has had skaters of all ages in awe for the past couple of years, Raven Tershy. Heir to skaters like Wade Speyer, John Cardiel, and Rick McCrank, Raven is known for assaulting the things he skates, taking on street and tranny spots with reckless abandon. This video highlights a casual afternoon at the Diamond Bowl, where a crew consisting of Vincent Alvarez, Robbie Russo, Eric Koston, and even a Bam Margera rampside appearance.
We went to Otherside farms, one of California's premier medical marijuana shops. They showed us how they use pot to help patients cope with serious illnesses the natural way, all while dodging the feds.
VICE's resident gadfly Nimrod Kamer went to London to mess with the Sartorialist, aka fashion blogger Scott Schuman. For some reason, Scott wasn't so psyched about the idea of Nimrod following him home after his book signing. Fashion people are the worst!
VICE accompanies photographer Donald Weber to the buffer zone at Fukushima, Japan, where the eerie silence mirrors that at Chernobyl, and follow him as he attempts to document the unfolding nuclear crisis.
Through Ziyah Gafic's lens, VICE was invited into a world rarely visited by outsiders to lift the abaya and niqab and meet the women underneath (who are newspaper writers, doctors, and members of the ministry of education).
We traveled by rail to the 112th National Hobo Convention in Britt, Iowa, to see what was left of hobo life.
The début release by Grolsch Film Works and VICE Films brings together an immersive trilogy by Harmony Korine, Alexsei Fedorchenko and Jan Kwiecinski. The three filmmakers have created three unique stories that offer up their vision of this higher plane of existence, the Fourth Dimension. Each filmmaker takes his character on a journey that changes the way they see the world and themselves. And each filmmaker will offer a different perspective on what the Fourth Dimension is.
VICE editor-in-chief Rocco Castoro heads out to Union Square to give strangers E-meter readings, determining their spiritual and moral fiber.
Come with us for a behind the scenes look at Harmony Korine's take on the Fourth Dimension with Val Kilmer.
Come with us for a behind the scenes look at Alexsei Fedorchenko's take on the Fourth Dimension.
Come with us for a behind the scenes look at Jan Kwiecinski's take on the Fourth Dimension.
VICE commissioned photographer and videographer Robert King to document the civil war that has been ravaging Syria for the past two years. Largely based on Aleppo, Robert's footage of the violent conflict that continues to unfold in the region is perhaps one of the most thorough and brutally honest documents of a war that is increasingly destabilizing the Middle East as it spills over into neighboring Turkey and Lebanon. This full-length version of Ground Zero: Syria combines all six parts of our series to offer a startling glimpse into a chaotic war with no clear end in sight.
Pretty Sweet has a pretty major video debut list of skaters first board company video parts. Even though guys like Malto, Mike Mo, Alex Olson, and Corey Kennedy have never been in a proper Girl/Chocolate video with SHT Sound and everything, the most unknown of the new guys has to be Stevie Perez. In this video we try pull back the veil on Chocolates' best kept secret, and give you a first hand look into this young hot shoes everyday life.
Doin' It Baja chronicles the 2200-mile motorcycle trip taken by Arto Saari, Heath Kirchart, Keegan Sauder, and Patrick O'Dell from San Diego to the tip of Baja California, Mexico. They were joined by friends Harvey Foster, Kynan Tait, and Hime Hu, and led by the indomitable Bill Bryant. The journey continues with fireworks and bonfires on the beaches of Cuatro Casas, boxing locals on Halloween, and skating whatever empty pools they can find. Then, things get trippy as alter egos and mariachi bands play, before they finally make their way to El Pescadero, only to find quite a surprise at the skate park. The Crew also bonds over sucking at surfing, and Keegan almost dies, no big whoop.
VICE correspondant Joshua Haddow attempts stand-up comedy for the first time... on acid.
We sipped a few beers and reminisced with legendary punk artist and creator of the Dead Kennedys logo, Winston Smith.
Dutch photographer Rob Hornstra is using a technique called "slow journalism" to document the years leading up to the Russian 2014 Winter Olympics.
Big dreams, big blunts, big rims, and big guns. It's time to get gangsta gangsta. Ninja and Yo-Landi are wheelchair-bound lovers and real gangsters. They live in the outskirts of civilization, they shoot guns for fun, smoke massive joints, and sleep in the woods. They don't have any bling to show for their gangsta cred, but the world deserves to know who they are. They're tramps, and their wheels are starting to fall off. Ninja becomes despondent over their vagabond existence, but Yo-Landi won't let him give up. What ensues is straight up gangsta mayhem, the realist of the real, true gangsta shit.
We went to Toronto to witness the gruesomely gluttonous World Poutine Eating Championship and talk to some of the contestants.
We visited photographer Christopher Anderson to talk about his work and his life-changing experience aboard a Haitian refugee boat that sank in the Caribbean. We then followed him as he hit the streets to photograph New York City.
In the penultimate installment of Pretty Sweet Tuesdays, we explore the phenomenon that is the "sponsor me" tape. Sam Smyth, Girl and Chocolate's team manager, leads us to the sponsor me tape graveyard at Crailtap HQ, names some pro skaters who once sent in their tapes, and shows us Sean Malto's first submission. Sean then breaks down what it took to get on Girl and talks about filming for Pretty Sweet. Enjoy.
We went to Monterrey, Mexico with portrait photographer Stefan Ruiz to document the "Cholombiano" street culture of sticky sideburns and stoner cumbia jams.
Ugandans are the hardest drinking Africans in the motherland, both in terms of per capita consumption and the hooch they choose to chug. Waregi, or "war gin," is what they call the local moonshine, and it makes the harshest Appalachian rotgut taste like freaking Bailey's.
Every time it rains in New York City, billions of gallons of raw sewage are piped directly into the Hudson River. Superstorms like Hurricane Sandy only magnify the issue by flooding New York's waterways with even more human feces. It's a direct effect of the way New York City's wastewater pipes were built, and it's the same basic infrastructure problem facing over 40 million people in 700 American cities.
In the inaugural episode of All Around Losing, Harry gets sprayed with moth poop, swallows glowing balls, and dresses in chainmail—all in a misguided effort to become a rock star. His dreams of becoming a guitar god are doomed from the start, as he doesn't know how to play an instrument, so he meets up with some old art school friends who offer him the chance to join their electronica band, US™. Soon, Harry is waving a wand around his body to create ambient white noise while the rest of the band wails away on pedals, guitars, and drum machines. He never quite seems to know what's going on, but that's fine, as neither does the audience.
After years of getting paid to scarf down tacos and pizza on "fat fetish" cam sites, Donna Simpson reached an astonishing 600 lbs. She's now desperately trying to lose weight in order to lead a normal life for the sake of herself and her children.
While filming "Crime & Punishment in the Gaza Strip" in November 2011, Suroosh Alvi spoke with a producer at the Hamas-affiliated Al Aqsa television network.
We rented an empty warehouse to review and test out some of the explosive recipes from The Anarchist Cookbook.
We met with Dutch fashion designer Koos van den Akker, designer of the iconic (and some might say "totally ugly") Billy Cosby sweater.
Teenagers from around the world gather to race motorcycles at extremely dangerous speeds in the Red Bull Rookies Cup. In part 1, we talk to Sturla Fagerhaug, Jacob Gagne, Hayden Gillim, and Benny Solis, some of the top competitors in the coveted Red Bull Rookies Cup. The series visits Spain to kick off the 2009 season and travels to Benny's home in California.
We met with Daredevil Thor Drake, the man responsible for some of the craziest mini-bike stunts in Jackass Two and much more. In part 1, we check out Thor's motorcycle collection and talk about some of his original stunt designs.
In the second episode of "All-Around Losing," Harry attempts to follow in the footsteps of Louis CK and other schmucks-turned-idols by trying to become a stand-up comic. He starts at the very, very bottom, subjecting himself to NYC's brutal open-mic night scene, and quickly discovers that 1) making people laugh is nightmarishly difficult and 2) he is no good at it. It's funny to watch him fail, but not ha-ha funny.
Phil "The Mangler" Kaufman has had sex with more murderers than anyone in show business. He's also worked with The Rolling Stones, Frank Zappa, and Charles Manson, but he's most famous for stealing Gram Parsons corpse, driving it to Joshua Tree, and setting it on fire.
We traveled to Indonesia to buy sandals made by former drug addicts. The shoes, called "junkies," are a part of a program started by the YAKITA Drug Treatment Center to help women suffering from addiction learn a marketable skill. Indonesia experienced a drug epidemic in the 1980s due to rapid economic growth and the increased availability of new drugs; YAKITA was started in 1999 as a response to this crisis. Hannah spends the day at the center getting to know the girls and chatting about shoes and drugs.
Meet the dudes who invented snowboarding videos.
Powder and Rails takes you to the Legends of Tahoe event at Donner Ski Ranch for a couple classic Shawn Farmer moments. Some may say he's crazy, but we're here to prove he may actually be a genius. At Shawn's apartment, we check out one of his inventions and engage the man in some snowboarding discourse. From his first video scenes to his preference for gigantic boards and rapping, no stone is left unturned. We even get a Farmer philosophy lesson just moments before he closes the convo by shotgunning a beer.
Jeff Brushie's the one who finally brought the much-needed skate influence to the East Coast snowboarding scene.
Founder of Burton Snowboards, Jake Burton, talks about creating some of the very first modern boards back in 1977.
We met up with Damian Sanders, one of the ballsiest shredders of all time.
Our photography show Picture Perfect visits Zeng Han as he documents the modernization of Guangzhou, the third-largest city in China.
We went to the single most polluted place on earth, the coal-mining town of Linfen in Shanxi Province, China, where kids play in dirty rivers and the sun sets early behind a thick curtain of smog.
Kendall Crolius makes gloves, hats, and sweaters with leftover hair from her very own Golden Retriever.
Over thanksgiving, Israel launched another attack on the Gaza Strip, killing Hamas' second-in-command Ahmed Jabari. In retaliation, Hamas began firing rockets that were some of the first missiles to hit parts of Israel in 20 years. VICE traveled to the Israeli-Gaza border to see what eternal tension had flared up this time.
The Tahoe Legends event at the Donner Ski Ranch gathers influential snowboarders from around the globe to ride like it's 1989. The snowboarders may be getting older, but their styles are timeless.
Noah Salasnek talks about how his early career as a pro skateboarder helped him to be an extremely successful professional snowboarder.
Chris Roach admits feeling like he's been paid more to party than to snowboard. That said, Roach's talents should not be underestimated. With an incomparable style, Chris is as talented on both a skateboard and motorcycle as he is on a snowboard.
We met with Professional Snowboarder Dave Seoane to talk about the good old days of the early Tahoe scene and his transition from snowboarder to filmmaker.
We caught up with pro snowboarding legend Bryan Iguchi in the backcountry of Jackson Hole, Wyoming (i.e. the middle of nowhere). We found him with his head stuck in a snow pit boning up on his knowledge of snow pack densities.
In celebration of 20 years of Standard Films, we head out to Red Rocks, Colorado to see the release of TB20 (Totally Board 20). The first of its kind to join together big mountain back country boarding with freestyle hi-jinks, Standard Films' Travis Robb and Mike and Dave Hatchett still love what they do. In this episode, they invite us to watch some of TB20 in the making at Alpine Meadows, Lake Tahoe with Gjermund Bråten, Gulli Gudmundsson, and Halldor Helgason. We then speak to the guys about Standard Films' inception, tracking its history with the likes of pro boarders Tom Burt, Jim Rippey, and Jeremy Jones.
Jibbing is snowboard speak for doing skateboarding-inspired tricks like sliding on obstacles. The first mention of it came during a 1989 interview with pro snowboarder Nick Perata, and the Nixon Jibfest started in 2000 as an invite-only event. In this episode, we jump back to the early '90s and talk to some of the riders who pioneered jibbing on picnic tables and street rails. We talk to JP Walker and Jeremy Jones, who came up with the concept for the original Jibfests, and then also hear from Snow Park Technologies' Chris Gunnarson and Nixon co-founder Chad DiNenna about the so-called anti-competition's 8-year hiatus, and about making this latest one their biggest and best. This installment of The Nixon JibFest basically brings together three generations of snowboarders who have all influenced each other on the biggest custom courses that have ever been built. So, as Jeremy Jones says, "Dudes are just stoked."
Cui Jian, the biggest rockstar in China, talks about why he's banned from playing major shows and the problems with confucianism and communism.
On the second weekend in March 2012, snowboarding's longest running contest turns "Dirty 30." The Burton US Open is one of the most storied events in snowboarding and has been traditionally held at Stratton, VT for most of those 30 years. A lot of things have happened at the USO: old school downhill racing, the first machine-dug halfpipe, keg parties, snowball fights, mini-riots, people dangling from trees above the halfpipe, drunk people did a lot of dumb shit and some of the coolest stuff in snowboarding history--sometimes those last two are one in the same. Powder & Rails collects accounts from snowboarding legends like Terje Haaksonsen, Jake Burton, Jeff Brushie, Andy Coghlan, Tricia Byrnes, Seth Neary, and Jason Ford, many of which have had podium spots throughout the USO history. Speaking of podiums, US Open winners and Olympic medal holders like Danny Kass, Ross Powers, Kelly Clark, and Hannah Teter are in there too. Part 1 goes into one of the most controversial things to ever
James Frey, controversial author of A Million Little Pieces, sits down with us for an exclusive interview about his novel The Final Testament of the Holy Bible. The book focuses on modern-day Messiah who advocates sex with men and women, drugs, and doing whatever makes one happy. We also touch on the end of the world, the cowardly publishing industry and how Frey is bypassing it, art, and the last time he prayed.
Disguised as a journalist, master troll Nimrod Kamer heads to the Venice Film Festival and messes with celebrities like Willem Dafoe, Pierce Brosnan, Harvey Weinstein, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Nimrod Kamer is a social climber disguised as a journalist. He recently subscribed to a website called ForesightNews, which allows unlimited information and invites to the world's cheesiest PR events. In addition, he bought himself 19,000 bot twitter followers and created a fake TED talk lecture, to spark-up his CV. His pledge is this: spend the rest of his life living off PR gift-bags and journalist treats, while boasting about it.
We went to North Carolina where a group of war vets and history buffs realistically reenact the Vietnam War. Over the last 50 years war reenactment has gone from something guys at the Elks Club did on the weekend to get away from their wives to a full-blown obsession among history buffs with enough free time to make the experience as true to life as possible. Along with the increased intensity has come an increased demand for variety. The Vietnam War has typically been forbidden territory, but reenactment groups around the country have begun collecting their rice hats and period-appropriate M16s for pretend skirmishes with fake Viet Cong. Thomas embeds with the Virginia-Carolina Military History Association as they embark on their first tour through Vietnam...in North Carolina.
Our "All-Around Losing" host normally evades conflict by running away or nervously laughing, but now it's time to face his fears and be a man. First, a physically draining work out with a Krav Maga expert who teaches him how to punch dudes who have balls the size of beats, then he heads off to a gun range where an NRA certified Israeli teaches him all about shotguns.
We visited photographer Patrick Brown to talk about his forthcoming book, Trading to Extinction, which documents the illegal trade of endangered animals in Asia. We then travel with Brown to Guangzhou, China, where he finishes his decade-long project.
Wendy Sulca is the biggest YouTube sensation of the Spanish-speaking world. At 12 years old this Peruvian starlet took the internet by storm with her hit single "La Tetita" ("The Tittie") which exceeded 4 million online hits. Written by her widowed mother Lydia Quispe, the song is an ode to breastfeeding sung in the new Andean Huayno style. At 13, she followed up with a new hit single "Cerveza, Cerveza" (Beer, Beer) and the brutally honest track "Yo Soy Pobre" ("I Am Poor"). But despite being recognizable to all young Latin American internet users, Wendy still lives in the outskirts of Lima, in a shack on the side of a hill without running water.
We met up with Sonny Gerasimowicz, the designer and creative mind behind the costumes for the film Where the Wild Things Are.
We met up with fashion designer Francisco Herrera, who makes extravagant "blinged out" dresses for Peru's folk music superstars.
Steve Ludwin, a man who has been injecting himself with snake venom for 20 years, responds to comments on his documentary "Getting High Injecting Snake Venom."
Clothing designer Nudie Cohn lit a fire in the country music world with glittering suits and jackets with rhinestone-bejeweled pot leaves and gargantuan uppers and downers. His custom creations for Elvis, Gram Parsons, and Hank Williams are now legendary. In this episode of Behind the Seams, VICE's Adri Murguia visits the home of Jamie Nudie, the granddaughter of Nudie Cohn, who's keeping the family business alive.
We went to Anfield Stadium to meet with the singer-songwriter best known for Liverpool's football anthem "You'll Never Walk Alone." Every fan knows that football anthems are as important to the game as the fans and players. Gerry Marsden (of Gerry & the Pacemakers fame) knows better than anyone—hailing from Liverpool, he is responsible for popularizing the song that became the best football chant ever, "You'll Never Walk Alone." Although this song is close to many football clubs' hearts, its roots undeniably stem from Liverpool, so we decided to get to the core of it all by hearing it from the source; Gerry Marsden himself. On our visit with him to Anfield Stadium, the home of the Liverpool Football Club, we found out how it all began.
For a lot of fans, football is religion. To Hernan and Alejandro Veron, Argentine player Diego Maradona is the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. As founders of the Church of Maradona, Alejandro and Hernan have reinvented the idea of a fan club, creating instead a full-fledged religion around their idol. We pay a visit to their place of worship in the city of Rosario to see how Alejandro and Hernan pay homage to the player responsible for the greatest goal in the history of the sport.
In the city of Naples, Italy, the Mafia has controlled the waste-management industry for decades -- dumping and burning trash across its rolling hills and vineyards. In 1994, the European Union declared the situation an official environmental emergency, and things have only gotten worse since then. When we investigated the situation we found mutated sheep, poisoned mozzarella, alarming rates of cancer, and pissed off farmers ready to push back against the Camorra, Italy's most powerful and dangerous criminal organization (and the government that enables it).
Our host Harry becomes nervous and weird whenever he approaches anything that looks like a woman. To remedy this sad state of affairs, he went to a body language coach for some tips on how to appear more comfortable around females, and then threw himself into a speed-dating event, where he got to disappoint women at five times the rate he normally does.
Our first episode of Skate World: Sweden finds us in Malmo, where the ever motivated Pontus Alv and friends show the true meaning of DIY spirit. From their beginnings at the now defunct Savanna Side to the straight rawness of the Train Banks Spot the Malmo skaters take matters into there own hands when it comes to street spots.
Keyboard Cat Guy made cats famous online and changed the way you think about the internet and procrastinate at your boring job. These interviews were filmed during the making of VICE's new film, Lil Bub & Friendz, directed and produced by Andy Capper and Juliette Eisner, coming soon!
Danny Lozano and Borja Santiago show us the place where Madrid's tech legends applied their ledge skills: Plaza de Colon.
Legend has it that the last remaining dinosaur lives inside the Congolese jungle. Dave Choe and his team of pygmy guides go in search of the beast, slicing their way through the heart of darkness to visit a reclusive tribe who claims to have witnessed the dinosaur's existence. After making sure of his intentions, the tribe's leader offers Dave a ritualistic alcohol that he must drink before setting out to find the animal. Chaos ensues.
Besides the Milano Centrale train station and Giorgio Zattonni, there probably is not much the general skate public knows about Italian skateboarding. We first arrived in Rome and were promptly taken to their new skate park located across the street from Cinecitta Studios, just about every skater in Rome was there because who can resist a fresh concrete park. We had a chance to talk with Ale Martoriati and Alessandro Gargiulo about being a skater and sticking with it in football crazed Rome. On the way up to Milan we stopped in Savarna to meet up with Giorgio Zattonni, Italys first international pro, to talk a little bit about his personal history. Milan was the next destination, and we got a chance to skate with Max Bonassi, the recognized father of Italian skateboarding. Along with his long time friend, and important skater in his own right, Claudio Bernardini they run Bastard Clothing. The building that Bastard is housed in is old movie theatre outfitted with one of the most beautif
We sat with Roman Coppola to discuss inspiration, nostalgia, Charlie Sheen, and the intricacies of the male psyche in honor of his new film, "A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III".
VICE's resident porn reviewer Chris Nieratko went to Atlanta to ask the one-of-a-kind ATL Twins why they share the same bed, wear matching outfits, and sleep with the same girls. Chris also gets them to open up about their short-lived engagement to the same Penthouse Pet and their breakout acting role: playing James Franco's gangster sidekicks in Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers.
We went to Kabul in search of illicit gambling rings where men bet on quail fights, buzkashi (like polo, but with a headless goat), and dog fights.
Skate World traveled through France and visited some of the best skate spots with the countries top skaters including Samir Krim, Stephane Larance, Hugo Liarrd, and many more.
Head down to beautifully trashy Daytona Beach, Florida, where a stripper, a drug dealer, and a bar owner explain how spring break has changed through the years.
Director Harmony Korine describes how he made Spring Breakers and turned four college girls' quest to extend spring break forever (bitches!) into a hypercolored ecstasy trip through the teenage psyche.
A detailed history of skating in Copenhagen, Denmark straight from the original pros that brought popularity to the scene back in the early 90's.
VICE enlists four college school girls to venture into a series of spring break parties in order to separate the myths from the facts about this notable american tradition.
When traveling from Central America to the United States through Mexico, immigrants are forced to battle drug cartels, corrupt police officers, and human traffickers, all before they even come close to the US border.
VICE heads across the Bavarian Alps to meet some of the best skaters in Germany.
Discotecture follows five young designers from different disciplines as they come together to create their vision of the nightclub of the future.
In this episode of Picture Perfect we visit James Mollison at his studio in Venice, Italy where he discusses group and individual identity and how his thoughts on the subject has informed the perspectives of his projects.
Justin Lowe and Jonah Freeman create immersive environmental installations that play on ideas of drug culture, psychedelia, architecture, and film. Beginning with their first official collaborative piece, Hello Meth Lab in the Sun, the artists have created a web of reoccurring narratives that have sprawled into several connected works, most notably Black Acid Co-Op and Bright White Underground.
In 1936, a family of Russian Old Believers journeyed deep into Siberia's vast taiga to escape persecution and protect their way of life. The Lykovs eventually settled in the Sayan Mountains, 160 miles from any other sign of civilization. In 1944, Agafia Lykov was born into this wilderness. Today, she is the last surviving Lykov, remaining steadfast in her seclusion. In this episode of Far Out, the VICE crew travels to the taiga to learn about Agafia's lifestyle and the encroaching influence of the outside world.
Ground Zero: Mali was shot in Gao, Mali, on February 21, 2013. It's basically the first legitimate combat footage to come out of the war there. Normally the French ban journalists from the frontlines and film a sanitized version of the fighting themselves and then distribute it to the media.
First, Winston Whitter gives us a history of skateboarding in London. Later, some local amateurs take us around to England's best skate spots.
Go behind the scenes of coach Firas Zahabi's legendary Tristar Gym in Montreal, home to UFC champion George St. Pierre, blue-chip prospect Rory MacDonald, and MMA hopefuls like James Polodna and Kajan Johnson.
VICE visits Vincent Fournier at his studio in Paris, France where we talk about his unique process and distinct style that merges fantasy with reality in photographs of rockets, otherworldly landscapes, research facilities, and cosmonauts. We then travel with Fournier to the NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida prior to the last space shuttle launch.
Ghost of a Dream is the collaboration of sculptor Lauren Was and painter Adam Eckstrom. Focusing on installation, sculpture, and collage, the married couple have had numerous solo and group shows around the world, and they've been featured in Art Forum, Whitewall magazine, The Independent, and Time Out New York, to name a few. A few months ago we met up with them and got a chance to explore their works in progress, look at the variety of materials they use (like old lottery tickets), and hear how they came to develop the pieces that first formed their partnership.
In the wilds of Albuquerque, legendary trainers Greg Jackson and Mike Winkeljohn have built one of the best MMA fight camps in the world, home to UFC light-heavyweight champion Jon Jones, heavyweight contender Travis Browne, and countless other fighters. Fightland traveled to New Mexico to find out what their secret is.
Bert has been in and out of prison for his entire adult life for petty drug offenses. While trying to stay within the law, Bert finds that he might not be able to overcome his self-proclaimed disease....the disease of dumbness.
Fightland follows UFC featherweight Clay "The Carpenter" Guida as he prepares for his first featherweight fight against Hatsu Hioki in his hometown of Chicago, IL. From the weigh-ins inside the Chicago Theater to the emotional walk to the Octagon, we stick around to see what it's like after the most important fight of your career.
Fightland.com travels to the American Kickboxing Academy in San Jose, California, to meet the two-time Olympian as he prepares for his long-awaited UFC debut this weekend.
Bert has been in and out of prison for his entire adult life for petty drug offenses. While trying to stay within the law, Bert finds that he might not be able to overcome his self-proclaimed disease....the disease of dumbness. In this episode we watch as Bert tries to move on with his life after his latest incarceration.
VICE correspondent Jordan Redaelli travels to Freetown, Sierra Leone, to learn about an indigenous drink called poyo. Poyo is said to hold mystical properties, bestowing money, power and fierce erections to those who drink it. Later, he hits the beach to mix up a poyo-infused cocktail. Let's hope the locals aren't too offended.
VICE correspondent Jordan Redaelli heads to a tiny Romanian village in the foothills of the Carpathians to hang out with the Cazan family, master brewers of a fiery tequila-like drink called palinka. There he samples the 70-proof hooch, visits a Gypsy disco, and attempts to mix up a palinka based punch for an impromptu post-church party, Romanian-style
In this episode we join Jordan in La Paz, Bolivia, meeting a pair of female wrestlers (Cholitas) who like to beat each other up for the fun of it. He's also introduced to the world's strongest alcohol, the 96% Caiman liquor - or 'firewater' as it's known to the locals. After the big grudge match Jordan attempts to make a drinkable cocktail out of the potent brew, hoping it'll restore some peace between the fiery combatants in the process.
The state of Guerrero (which means "warrior") is one of the poorest in Mexico and the site of some of the worst violence in the battle between the drug cartels and Mexican authorities. As a result of the violence, hundreds of civillians have armed themselves with machetes, rifles, and shotguns, put masks on, and decided to police their own communities as vigilantes, effectively taking justice into their own hands.
A group of Mexico City DJs known as "Under Style" has come together to create a new sound based on reggaeton and cumbia that they call Cumbiaton. Ignored by the affluent crowd, and often criticized for the fashion and dance styles of their fans, the Cumbiaton DJs are super stars in their neighborhoods. We like their music, and we are fascinated by their their lifestyle and sweaty parties full of adoring teenage fans. So we tagged along with the Understyle crew as they partied Ciudad Neza.
Monster-truck racing is traditionally the domain of men from rural pockets of the United States who have a bunch of free time on their hands and no qualms with spending upwards of $150,000 on wildly impractical vehicles. Despite the fact that there are roughly a gazillion officially sanctioned Monster Jam events around the country in any given year, many people who live in cities know nothing about the sport and the culture surrounding it. We were some of those frail urbanites who didn't know the difference between a carburetor and a crankshaft, so when we heard a Monster Jam was happening about two hours outside New York, we grabbed our buddy Dan, shoved two hits of acid down his throat, and headed up to Hartford, Connecticut, to find out what kind of damage a gigantic truck with 2,000 ponies under the hood can do.
We recently had the opportunity to collaborate with Brooklyn-based artists FAILE on their permanent installation, The 104 North 7th Project. The piece consists of thousands of handmade tiles designed by the artists, each individually pressed and painted, and then fired in a wood-burning kiln and shipped to the installation site. The tiles were then applied to the surface of the building by the artists and a team of helpers over several days. Well known for their explorations of duality through a fragmented style of appropriation and collage, as well as their use of unique materials, FAILE have created a beautiful tapestry of color, giving life and personality to a very plain structure.
Johnny Ryan has been filling the back page of VICE magazine with twisted comics for the past ten years. Not to toot our own horn here, but it's fair to say that his strips are some of the funniest and grossest being published anywhere right now. We sat down with Johnny at his house in LA to discuss how he got started, his feelings towards R. Crumb, and how he used to barely give a shit about the work he submitted to us.
Ottavia Bourdain--writer, MMA lover, and dedicated Brazilian jiu-jitsu student--and her husband, Anthony, show us what life is like when you've got a fighter in the family.
We went to Westchester, NY, to learn about the Amega Wand and people who believe a wave of this stainless-steel tube full of "granulated minerals" has the power to cure aches and pains, make cheap wine taste better, and generally increase the quality of just about every aspect of their lives. Is it a miracle invention or a giant scam? We'll let you decide.
Matthew Heimbach insists he's not a racist. This comes as a surprise to his fellow students at Towson University, in the suburbs of Baltimore, where Matthew has formed a group called the White Student Union that advocates for "persons of European heritage"—what most of us call "white people." It also comes as a surprise to the African American students who feel targeted by the night patrols the senior history major began conducting in March. The patrols target supposed "black predators," Matthew wrote on the WSU's website, citing (among others) a case in which an African American man pulled out a knife and his penis, and wagged both at a co-ed couple who were copulating in a parking garage. "White Southern men," he wrote, "have long been called to defend their communities when law enforcement and the State seem unwilling to protect our people."
About 40 percent of Mexican immigrants deported from the US are sent back through Tijuana. Many of the deported border crossers have established a makeshift shantytown inside a dry, concrete riverbed where the Tijuana River once flowed—called El Bordo.
Chad Marshall and Scott Anderson have been working together since surfboards were neon. In the past year Scott's been working on some weird new designs and Chad gets to play test pilot.
While most "nouveau riche" happily spend their new money on shit the old money has already deemed acceptable, China's spoiled young princelings aren't content with horses, sports cars, and insanely tacky watches alone. In tribute to the intrepid bootleggers who've propped up their country's market economy, China's rich have taken arguably the worst bird of all time, the pigeon, and slapped a Louis Vuitton logo on it. Racing pigeons are the new thoroughbreds here, with birds auctioned for hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece and races netting millions for the championship flock. Which sucks for the old timers, whose balcony-bred birds don't stand a chance against these million-dollar superflocks. And which just sucks in general because, well, pigeons. Fucking pigeons.
Over the last six months the FSA and the battle for Aleppo has transitioned from a full-on frontline assault into a slow-paced but still deadly sniper war. Photographer and videographer Robert King recently returned to the conflict-ravaged city to meet the snipers of the FSA, interviewing them about the new challenges they face on the ground as they steadfastly peer through their scopes and pick off the enemy, one by one, day by day.
We went to Ciudad Juarez to meet the journalists who cover politics and crime for the Diario de Juarez. All of them are women and they have covered more crimes than anyone we can think of. They are also some of the bravest women we've ever met. We followed them around the city as they covered political rallies of the ruling party, PAN, and to crime scenes, to try to understand what happened there over the past few years and why the candidates were not fully addressing the most glaring issue in Mexican politics right now.
Tom Varney is a former psychotic criminal who later found God and devoted himself to serving his fellow man. In a strange twist of morality, this led to his life's work: shooting wild dogs. The Australian wild dog is a hybrid of the native dingo and larger domestic breeds. The resulting "super dog" is bigger, smarter, and much more vicious. Roaming in packs, they've been known to massacre entire flocks of sheep and bring down animals as large as horses, causing millions of dollars in damage each year. While animal control agencies favor trapping and baiting them, farmers argue that nothing is as effective as a bullet to the head. That's where Tom comes in. He's pretty much retired now, but his methods (including his ability to call dogs up to him by mimicking their howls) have formed the blueprint for a new generation of dog hunters.
Eighty-year-old Werner Freund would rather be a wolf than a man. He's been raising and living with wild wolves in Germany for the last 30 years and considers them his family. Last January, Gersin Paya from VICE Germany and a small crew drove to the town of Merzig to meet Werner and help him feed raw deer meat to his furry brethren.
On October 13, 2012, Aleppo's Umayyad Mosque, a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the oldest mosques in the world, suffered extensive fire damage amid fierce fighting between President Bashar al-Assad's forces and the Free Syrian Army. Since then it has been alternately occupied by the FSA and the Syrian military. Photographer and videographer Robert King recently visited the mosque in an attempt to clarify who was responsible for its destruction. The occupiers who he met alleged that Assad's armies raped innocent women inside the structure, and that the courtyard of the mosque contains a mass grave of the victims' remains.
Every two years since 1895, Venice has hosted the most important contemporary art exhibition in the world. Over a period of six months, the Biennale welcomes over 375,000 visitors and raises millions of Euros in sponsorships. In 2013, 88 nations were represented. But while everyone was talking about the art at the Biennale, we went to Venice few months before the official opening to meet artists, curators, and producers, and to understand how such a massive art event is made, as well as its impact on the city and its citizens.
Pakistani MMA got its start in an apartment above a real estate office. Fightland travels to Lahore to meet Bashir Ahmad, professional fighter and founder of the country's first-ever mixed martial arts team, PAK MMA.
To get more insight on Joshua Oppenheimer's frightening and otherworldly documentary "The Act of Killing," we spoke to executive producers Werner Herzog and Errol Morris about the making of the film and how important it could be for the future of documentary cinema.
Every November a celebration known as the Vigil of the Authentic Intrepid Searchers of Danger takes place in the city of Juchitán, Oaxaca, in Mexico. In this community of Zapotec indigenous people, it's generally understood that there are men, there are women, and there are muxes (pronounced "mooshez"). Muxes are born men, raised as women, and live as women all their lives. The Vigil—or Vela—is the most important event of the year for the muxes of Juchitán, as one of them is crowned queen during the festival. In this documentary we travel to Juchitán to meet members of the "third gender" of Zapotec culture, and to hang out at the Vigil, which was honestly one of the best parties we've ever been to.
Clive Stafford Smith spent years working as a death row lawyer in the southern states of the US before becoming the legal director of the UK branch of Reprieve. Reprieve is a not-for-profit organization that has long campaigned for the rights of death row prisoners. However, since 2002 it has helped liberate prisoners from Guantanamo Bay -- a campaign led by Stafford Smith himself. Not only has Stafford Smith seen first hand the inside of the prison, he's also maintained relationships with former detainees and built relationships with those currently on hunger strike. The hunger strike in Guantanamo began on February 11th, 2013 and it's got to a stage where some prisoners are being force fed, arguably in violation of their human rights. VICE Meets discusses Guantanamo and the future of drone warfare -- which Reprieve condemns as "the death penalty without trial".
It's Saturday morning in a Mexico City subway station, and the members of the Panamiur gang are headed to a party. Their leader, Cidel, is wearing huge sunglasses, a fauxhawk slathered in hair gel, cargo pants, and a T-shirt with a giant 2 and 6 airbrushed across it—a reference to November 26, 2010, the date the Panamiurs were founded.
We visit Asger Carlsen in his studio in Chinatown and talk to him about his life, his work, and why he is a lazy artist who is obsessed with making art. To get a closer look at his creative process, we follow him as he photographs a model in his studio, and we chat about his recent collaboration with Roger Ballen for the 2013 VICE Photo Issue.
Sick of taking responsibility for the shitty things that have happened to you in your life? Help is on the way, in the virginal and strangely vacant form of three Bible-thumping teenage exorcists from Phoenix, Arizona. Eighteen-year-old Brynne Larson and her friends Tess and Savannah Sherkenback (18 and 21, respectively) claim to be able to confront the demons lurking inside traumatized people and draw them out using nothing more than a crucifix and a few choice words. But are these teenage exorcists really empowered by the Almighty, or merely by Brynne's father, a failed televangelist named Reverend Bob? In our new film, the girls and Reverend Bob give us exclusive access to their tour of Ukraine, during which they attempt to save the souls of recovering drug addicts and exorcise people's "sexually transmitted demons."
The first thing you notice about Sarnia, Ontario, is the smell: a potent mix of gasoline, melting asphalt, and the occasional trace of rotten egg. Shortly after my arrival I already felt unpleasantly high and dizzy, like I wasn't getting enough air. Maybe this had something to do with the bouquet of smokestacks in the southern part of town that, all day every day, belch fumes and orange flares like something out of a Blade Runner-esque dystopia.
As Assad's troops and the Free Syrian Army continue to battle in the middle of Aleppo and Syrian doctors try to flee the country, Dar al-Shifa'a hospital serves as the only option for birthing mothers. VICE photographer and videographer Robert King recently visited the hospital, where he met and interviewed a 14-year-old boy nurse who helps deliver babies in the war zone. The teenager explained to Robert the challenges he faces from depleting medical supplies to attending to newborns with no electricity.
We followed the multi-talented Action Bronson from the kitchen to the stage during this year's Bushwick Block Party. Action headlined the party and also ran his very own food truck, supplying the masses with gourmet goodness. Action's vision of having his own food truck was made possible by Ray-Ban's Envision Series
In Japan, it's not uncommon for successful women to pay attractive young men huge sums of money for a few cocktails and an hour of platonic companionship. VICE in conjunction with Schweppes sends correspondent Joel Cornell to Shibuya to explore this strange world and to find out if he can cut it as a professional boyfriend for hire.
Fightland traveled to Calvary Chapel in Deerfield Beach, Florida, to hang out with Rian Gittman--pastor, part-time trainer, and true believer in the fighting spirit of Jesus--and learn about the intersection of MMA and Christianity.
In Northern Kenya the illegal act of killing elephants for their tusks is on the rise because of big demand for ivory products in Asia. VICE goes to Kenya's world famous Samburu National Reserve and meets some elephant poachers and a special group of rangers, who protect the elephants from hunters.
We travelled to Nevada to meet Miki Sudo and Juan "More Bite" Rodriguez, two rising stars of America's Major League Eating scene. The pair took us through our paces, polishing off enormous plates of food like they were finger sandwiches while we nearly passed out from having all the blood in our bodies rush to the aid of our stomachs. Later, we watched Miki and Juan compete in the annual Best in the West Nugget Rib Eating World Champion, against none other than Joey Chestnut, the LeBron James of cramming food down your throat.
If the severity of a conflict can, at least in part, be measured by the number of refugees it creates, the Za'atari camp in Jordan is a disturbing reflection of just how bad the civil war in Syria has gotten. When it opened, Za'atari had just 100 families. Today, it has about 120,000 residents. Located 18 miles south of the Syrian border, it's the fourth largest city in Jordan and the second largest refugee camp in the world. Since July 2012, when the camp was opened by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the Jordanian government, Za'atari has become home for the huge numbers of Syrians who've fled the violence and trauma of their country's civil war since it began in March 2011. Robert King visited the Za'atari refugee camp just 72 hours after the sarin gas attack in Damascus forced even more Syrians out of their homes.
'Escape from Tomorrow' is the amalgamation of every nightmare you could ever have about Disney. A dark fantasy shot in secret at Disneyworld and Disneyland, the film explores the corporatization of domestic bliss as one man's family vacation to Disneyworld goes... well, "awry" would be an understatement. Since it premiered at Sundance in January 2013, the film has polarized viewers and incited controversy over not only intellectual-property issues but also the subversion and reappropriation of one of the most ubiquitous cultural staples in the US. Wanting to know more about the making of Escape from Tomorrow, VICE sat down with the filmmaker, Randy Moore, the star of the film, Roy Abramsohn, and a few of the sharpest artists and critics we know.
We travel to Ljubljana, Slovenia, to meet superstar Communist philosopher and cultural theorist Slavoj Zizek. The "most dangerous philosopher in the West" talks about his new film, The Pervert's Guide to Ideology, and lectures us on the importance of being on time. If you're curious about that poster of Stalin on his wall, it's "purely to annoy idiots" when they visit.
Former chef and martial arts trainer Peter Fitzek has founded his own micronation called the Kingdom of Germany. It consists of several properties around the city of Wittenberg, south of Berlin. It has 25 citizens, its own currency, an official state limousine, and passports. VICE Germany visited Peter back in June to find out how serious he is about this whole starting-a-new-nation thing.
Fightland travels to Kabul, Afghanistan, to meet Rohullah Mohammadi, a five-time kickboxing gold medalist who's devoted his life to teaching the kids of his war-torn country the art of MMA.
Japan is a country that is dying—literally. Japan has more people over the age of 65 and the smallest number of people under the age of 15 in the world. It has the fastest negative population growth in the world, and that's because hardly anyone is having babies. In these difficult times, the Japanese are putting marriage and families on the back burner and seeking recreational love and affection as a form of cheap escape with no strings attached. We sent Ryan Duffy to investigate this phenomenon, which led him to Tokyo's cuddle cafes and Yakuza-sponsored prostitution rings.
Journalists go deep. Sometimes they go so deep into a story they lose track of where the story ends and their private life begins. Correspondent Confidential is a series of illustrated documentary shorts narrated by award-winning journalists. Newspaper reporters, documentary filmmakers, radio producers, and journalists tell personal stories about the harrowing—and hilarious—experiences they've had on the job while reporting on some of the world's most high-profile issues and events. In the first episode, photojournalist Mimi Chakarova talks about her journey deep into the underworld of international sex trafficking. For her film, The Price of Sex, Chakarova posed as a prostitute while working undercover in brothels in Turkey and Dubai.
Hell is a quaint little village in Norway that's the resting place of 1,600 souls. There are red-roofed houses, a post office, a grocery store, even a church. It literally freezes over during the winter, which is yet another example of why its pun-friendly name draws tourists throughout the year. Weirdly enough, hell means "luck" in Norwegian, but the locals play up their association with the netherworld. When you pull into the train station, there's a sign that reads HELL GODS -- EXPEDITION, and the town's most famous native, Mona Grudt, who won the 1990 Miss Universe beauty pageant, proudly called herself "the beauty queen from Hell."
We sent a crew to hang out with Johnny Knoxville and co. to see how they went about bamboozeling the general public while filming Bad Grandpa. They came back with some great footage and bruised scrotums—that little kid actor is a real firecracker.
Explore New Orleans with video producer Ben Reece while he adventures Off the Map.
Head to the wild California coastline with motorcycle enthusiast Greg Weissel and his girl Katherine Ambellan as they go Off the Map.
Escape New York City and feel an incredible sense of freedom with furniture designer Greg Buntain and his good friend James Moore as they travel Off the Map.
In this debut episode, Action is joined by friend and cousin by association, Big Body Bes, a self-proclaimed performer from Brooklyn. The duo pays a visit to NYC's two-Michelin-star seafood restaurant, Marea, where chef Michael White cooks up an elaborate six-course meal involving a decadent series of seafood dishes; everything from four styles of crudo to fusilli with red wine-braised octopus and bone marrow, hand-made lamb agnolotti, and five types of desserts. At the end of the meal, not a crumb was left in sight.
In this episode of Fringes, Victor goes to the Loire Valley to meet the Wine Magician, aka Nicolas Joly, the soft guru of biodynamic agriculture in France. This winemaker produces a mythical Anjou wine enjoyed by French Kings for almost a century. He'll teach Victor how to make some wine using obscure druidic potions and following convoluted cosmic rules.
The Pacific currents dragged us all the way to Punta Zicatela's waves, in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, the Mexican surf capital. We went there to meet Carlos Coco Nogales, one of the best pro surfers in Mexico. At 10, Coco was living on the streets of Mexico City, when he decided to move to Puerto Escondido with one thing on his mind: search for the planet's biggest waves and surf them as if there was no tomorrow. At 17, he started to appear on international magazines to become one of the best-known surfers in Mexico, specializing in big waves. Coco is a legend in Puerto Escondido, where he has become a mentor for the new generations and an activist in the struggle for the preservation of the beaches in Oaxaca.
Every other Friday is Hi-NRG night at the Patrick Miller club in Colonia Roma, Mexico City. The night celebrates a type of disco with an electronic sound and a high-speed beat that was popular worldwide in the 80's. Although the form's worldwide popularity has ebbed, in Mexico City it is still alive, and its fans continue dancing to it in an almost religious way. In 1983 Robeto Devesa, a Mexican DJ better known as Patrick Miller, started organizing parties in downtown Mexico City's Journalists Club. He imported the latest hits before anyone else, and the parties became mythical. Patrick turned into a character and a legend, adored by fans who danced weekly to the Hi-NRG rhythms; and his name became synonymous with epic raves. This is why Patrick Miller's followers, who call each other Patricios, have managed to keep this style of music alive, despite its being consider old fashioned in the countries in which it originated.
Since the 60's, Monterrey has listened and danced to cumbia, a style of music originally imported from Colombia. Although it once played through the sound systems of Mexico City, nowhere else was cumbia received with as much passion as in Monterrey. There are several theories about how this city in the north of Mexico, thousands of kilometers away form Valledupar, became a stronghold of Colombian cumbia. The most accepted is that local sound systems, known as sonideros, started bringing records from Mexico City and Houston for their parties, particularly in the working-class neighborhoods of Campana and Independencia.
Andres Serrano has come a long way since submerging a crucifix in his own urine. We followed the controversial artist around Cuba as he created a new body of work, photographing the country's influential figures, political leaders, the poor, the rich, and the dead.
Reporter T. Christian Miller was based in Colombia during the height of the US government's war on drugs. As the US began to pour money into fighting the cocaine trade in Colombia, it inevitably spilled over into fighting the rebel groups that controlled—and "taxed"—the areas where coca plants were grown. When Miller went into the jungle to report on a government helicopter that was shot down during a mission to spray coca plants, he and his assistant were kidnapped by the FARC, a left-wing guerrilla army.
Prison fights--the last thing you'd think about when you hear someone got a shorter sentence behind bars. Not in In Klong Prem. In this high-security prison in Bangkok, inmates box outsiders for money, shorter sentences, and the greater glory of Thailand.
On this episode of VICE Eats, chef Besh heads out to Lake Pontchartrain just outside New Orleans city limits to catch some seafood with local fishing legend, "Deadly" Dudley Vandeborre, the fish whisperer of Louisiana, and Brian Landry, co-owner and chef at Borgne. After we hung up our fishing poles, we headed back to La Provence to cook up our catch, where we learned about the former Marine's favorite childhood dish, trout amandine, a signature Southern recipe that gives off a perfumed scent of fresh almonds. During his time in the Marines, he learned that this same scent is the first sign that you're under chemical attack.
Follow Nicola Formichetti and his team of artists as they create an alternative holiday experience and space for New York's most interesting and holiday-dubious residents to party, play, and fuck shit up.
Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, has become known as the "murder capital of the world" thanks to the seemingly endless string of drug-cartel-related killings and the law-abiding portion of the population is ready to try almost anything to stop the violence. For the past three years, a group of teenagers calling themselves the Messenger Angels have been taking to the streets covered in silver paint and glitter, wearing thick white robes and huge feathered wings and holding hand-painted signs that address the cops, the cartels, and the worst of the capos. "Zetas, ask forgiveness," one sign read. "Cop killers. Enough! Sincerely, Jesus Christ," read another.
Shawn Valentino is the Showstopper: a self-styled international playboy who believes he can unleash the ladykilling superhero inside all of us. VICE's Clive Martin travels to Amsterdam to meet the self-confessed womaniser, who laid out his mantra in the seminal romantic text, The Showstopper Lifestyle: The Man's guide to Ultra-Hot Women, Unlimited Power, and Ultimate Freedom... That Women Should Read Too! On a night out with Shawn in the city's Red Light District, Clive attempts to learn the secrets of picking up women. Turns out all you really need are some massive sunglasses, a deep V, and an unswerving faith in weird advice.
When Russian President Vladimir Putin banned gay "propaganda" in June last year, Russia's LGBT community went from being a stigmatized fringe group to full-blown enemies of the state. Homophobia becoming legislation means it's now not only accepted in Russia but actively encouraged, which has led to a depressing rise in homophobic attacks and murders. The main aim of the law, which essentially bans any public display of homosexuality, is to prevent minors from getting the impression that being gay is normal. Which means that, if you're young and gay in Putin's Russia, you're ostracized and cut off from any kind of legal support network.
We traveled to Rio de Janeiro to meet the man who broke the biggest news story of 2013. Glenn Greenwald is an American journalist and author who's best known for reporting on the leaks of classified National Security Agency documents by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Before he was a journalist, Greenwald was a constitutional law and civil rights litigator, and until 2012 he was a contributing writer at Salon. He has authored four books: How Would a Patriot Act, Tragic Legacy, Great American Hypocrites, and With Liberty and Justice for Some. For 14 months Greenwald was a columnist at the Guardian, where he broke the first NSA story in June of 2013. He has since left the newspaper to team up with filmmaker Laura Poitras and journalist Jeremy Scahill to start a new media venture, First Look Media, backed by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.
Despite the spooky overtones, modern Satanism actually has a lot in common with self-help, the green movement, and spunky American individualism. We traveled to Cleveland with Thomas Morton to meet Eric Freeman, authority on the duality of evil, to learn about altering reality through the power of the mind.
Being possessed, it turns out, is exhausting work. Just ask Mambo Edeline St. Armand. While popular culture portrays Vodou as full of curses and sticking pins into little dolls, the religion has in fact played a central role in Haitian cultural identity since the country's birth, a result of the New World's first and only successful slave rebellion. Since Brooklyn is home to the largest Haitian population outside of Haiti, we sent Thomas Morton into our own backyard to witness the realities of being possessed by Vodou's multitude of rowdy, rum-thirsty spirits.
The horror that befell Oscarina Busse's backside began in July 2009. The 35-year-old Floridian felt a dull but persistent itch deep in the meat of her buttocks, one that was impossible to scratch.
Deir ez-Zor, Syria's sixth-largest city, is also the country's oil capital. For four decades, the al-Assad regime (first run by Hafez, and now by his son Bashar) struck deals with Western oil companies like Shell and Total that resulted in the extraction of as much as 27,000 barrels of black gold from the sand every day. A pittance compared with other Middle Eastern countries' production, but it made Syria a bona fide oil-exporting nation. At least this was the case until international sanctions were imposed in 2011 in response to the regime's crackdown on the antigovernment protests, which quickly morphed into a civil war.
Hey, how's your baby doin'? What kind of music is it listening to? Kidz Bop? The Wiggles? Fuckin' Raffi and shit? Well, that might be fine for some people's kids—if they want them to crawl through life without taste or musical development. If you really loved your baby, you'd be dropping $200 to send it to Baby DJ School.
veryone knows what charming places strip clubs can be, but perhaps there is no club so charming as one in Moriarty, New Mexico—a truck stop with taxidermy and the bras of former employees on the walls, a few poles, a shitload of black light, and plenty of titties. Never mind that The Ultimate Strip Club List website describes it as the place "where strippers go to die." Natalia Leite and Alexandra Roxo go Gonzo as they pose as strippers and experience something that can be best described as a Marina Abramovic performance crossed with a bizarro episode of Wife Swap directed by David Lynch's daughters, set in the type of place where a one eyed guy who shot himself in the head dispenses meditation advice to two naked women.
A global scene of 20,000 doll makers and collectors has developed around life-like replicas of newborns called Reborn Babies. The price of these dolls is usually anywhere from $250 to $800, depending on their complexity and level of detail. The most expensive doll, made by artist Romie Strydom, was sold to a collector for 22,000 euros—or around $30,000. We spoke to Reborn Baby artists and collectors to get to the bottom of the Reborn Baby phenomenon.
After Ebone blew Mike in his loft bed, they finished each other off in the shower because Ebone was on her thing and didn't want to make a mess. Mike's a big fan of butt play, and, little by little, he's getting Ebone primed for the day they try anal. She says this will need to go down at her place in the Bronx because there will be fewer people around to hear her screaming. Go easy on her, Mike. You've got a good one.
Jinks likes big women. Good thing he's with Money, a lovely BBW who's really only been with one dude—Jinks. We waited outside the bedroom while they enjoyed each other for a while, and then interviewed them afterwards for a sex-session recap.
May Liu, the indomitable owner of M Shanghai Bistro & Garden in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, has been hosting a Chinese New Year's Eve party for 13 years now. The party—which we visited for the first time last year—can be best described as a no-holds-barred approach to a Chinese banquet. Madame Liu takes no shortcuts in providing her guests and employees with anything they could possibly want to eat or drink for the night.
In July, Nueva Jerusalén, a small town of about 3,000 in the western Mexican state of Michoacán, was all over the news. A group of what the media dubbed "religious fanatics" had destroyed a public elementary school with sledgehammers, apparently on the orders of the Virgin of the Rosary (an avocation of the Virgin Mary). Photos circulating all over the internet featured angry men, women wearing colorful headscarves and long dresses singing prayers, and a town that looked like a medieval theme park. According to the articles we read, Nueva Jerusalén's inhabitants believed the apocalypse was fast approaching and that they would be the only ones to survive it, and therefore they had adopted some fairly odd rules for living. For instance, sex was banned since it should be strictly for procreation, and if the apocalypse was around the corner, why bother having babies? The public school-hating Catholics also apparently had visions of the Virgin Mary a lot. The more we read about this place,
For as long as they’ve existed, conspiracy theories have been laughed off by the mainstream for being too ‘far-fetched’. But actually, many of them haven’t been fetched from very far away at all. In fact, lots of the biggest ones have been lifted straight from pop culture. Bupe Bhima looks at the books, films, shows and songs that have been giving conspiracy theorists sleepless nights for decades.
BDSM (short for bondage, dominance, submission, and masochism) is being used by some in the kink community as a tool for healing trauma. VICE meets Rebecca and Steph, a couple who uses BDSM to process their individual traumatic experiences and heal from their painful past.
Orlando, FL Pastor Rich Vera has become famous in the Chrisitan community for healing the incurable with just his hands. But 4 years ago he became famous for his political vision. While sleeping, God sent him a vision of Donald Trump running through a field wearing a sweater with an R on it, and the next morning Pastor Vera told his congregation, and the world, Donald J Trump would become the next President of the United States. Years later when COVID19 hit, he again answered God’s call and set up a tent revival in the parking lot healing people from all over the world, working miracles, and curing blindness, cancer, covid19, paralysis, etc. We visit Pastor Vera time where the country is at it’s most divided - the day before the election- to see if this miracle worker is capable of bringing healing to a nation that seems set on tearing itself apart.
On September 9th 2020 a video began circulating on social media of police in Bogota hitting and tazing Javier Ordóñez, a father of two, who was abused to death in police custody. The event triggered a wave of protests around Colombia that ended with the killings of 13 protestors by the police.
The once-feared Japanese mob is on the verge of extinction. Targeted by new laws, rapidly ageing, and unable to find fresh blood, the yakuza has dropped from a height of 180,000 members to less than 30,000. But for some, a life of crime isn't something you can just leave behind.
The internet has been accused of wrecking many things over the years – print media, Blockbuster and privacy, for instance. One thing it definitely hasn’t killed, though, is the antisemitic conspiracy theory. In fact, the internet is breathing new life into ideas that have been doing the rounds – sometimes causing mass murder – for centuries. In this episode of Truth Hurts, we look at how today’s biggest conspiracy movements are just recycling the same old, evil lies.
If you live in Houston, you probably know Jim McIngvale as his alter-ego "Mattress Mack." For almost four decades, Mack has been selling furniture in the greater Houston area through his business Gallery Furniture. Known for his energetic local TV commercials where the natural born huckster unleashed his famous tagline that Gallery Furniture would "Save you money," Mack grew his business from being a series of tents along a highway into multiple, massive locations employing hundreds of people.
For many university students, paying £9,000-a-year tuition fees doesn’t seem fair when you’re stuck inside halls and can’t attend any lectures. Using self-filmed footage from people studying at the University of Manchester, we follow the lives of several students as they embark on their first term of university since COVID-19. From parties to protests and even an occupation, we discover what it's like for students during this challenging time.
VICE follows the story of Trimarco, a 17-year-old currently serving time at a Washington State youth jail, and who is about to be released on house arrest (along with the majority of the youth in that facility) in light of the dangers of COVID-19. Community activists who have long argued for juvenile criminal justice reform believe that if Trimarco and the other youth can demonstrate positive changes while out on house arrest, there is hope they will be able to convince the judge to keep these kids out of detention when they go back for their hearing in June.
Female homicide is a national crisis in South Africa. According to the government, a woman is killed every 3 hours, and South Africa has a femicide rate which is five times the global average. The murder of two friends, Popi Qwabe (24) and Bongeka Phungula (28) is representative of the country’s gender based violence issue. On the 12 May 2017, the two young women got into a taxi in Soweto, heading for a night out. Three days later, their bodies were found on the side of a road. Two men were arrested in connection with the murders but were released due to a lack of evidence. In this film, we hear from the families of Popi and Bongeka, who believe that the police investigation was full of mistakes because of corruption and lack of will. We also hear from representatives of Amnesty International, who are campaigning to bring an end to gender based violence in South Africa, and to get justice in the case of Popi and Bongeka.
Thirty years ago, Bryce Cleary donated sperm to OHSU's fertility clinic with the understanding that the donation would result in 5 children born on the opposite coast. DNA testing has since revealed that promise was not kept and Bryce has at least 14 children in the Oregon area and even more out of state. Bryce might have never known this if it weren't for the detective work of his donor children, several of whom have formed a close bond. VICE met with these donor siblings to hear their story and the shocking lack of regulation in the fertility industry that resulted in their births.
What’s the difference between someone who’s into conspiracy theories and someone who’s so influenced by them they become a mass shooter? From white supremacist Anders Breivik to jihadist Tamerlan Tsarneav, some of the perpetrators of the worst acts of mass killing around the world have been enthralled by certain conspiracy theories. In this episode of Truth Hurts, we look at the tipping point in the conspiracist mindset that can turn people violent.
In 2017, three terrorists driving a van ploughed into people in central London before taking to the streets to randomly attack anyone they came across. At the same time, Ignacio Echeverría was having a typical Saturday Night out skateboarding with his friends. We hear how those two separate events came together with horrifying consequences.
It’s been well established that belief in conspiracy theories is related to a disbelief in actual science. The whole toxic frustration of conspiracy theorists is that they can never be proven wrong – all evidence against their ideas just becomes part of the conspiracy. This is largely why, even though they seem obsessed with science, they always get actual science so wrong. From the moon landing to flat earth to 5G, there has been a constant battle in modern times between science and conspiracy. In this episode of Truth Hurts, we look at how science denial has been fueling conspiracy theorists for decades.
Forgery is one of the greatest challenges the art world faces today, with fakes and misattributions estimated to be as high as 50% of all works in the market. Before his arrest, Billy “The Brush” Mumford forged over 1000 pieces that made their way across the globe. His best friend David Henty had equally thrived selling his fakes on eBay, with one of his Picasso copies recently going up for auction at £1 million. Sydney Lima meets the two convicted forgers as they work to create a knock-off piece of art that could be accepted as real. Then she takes the piece to a forensic lab to see whether they can tell it’s a fake.
Shinichi Morohoshi is Tokyo's self-made Lamborghini king, a man who built an empire on the back of repeated tragedies. His heavily customized supercars capture the over-the-top style of Kabukichō, winning him fans and detractors worldwide. But a prison sentence, a horrible accident, and bankruptcy nearly cost him everything. VICE visits Morohoshi’s Fighting Star garage to see how he rose to fame by consistently going against the grain.
Black musical artists, cosplayers, and designers sat down with Caity (@morbidtheclown) to reflect on their experiences in the Anime, Cosplay & Nerd scene.
What happens when a Quaker and a Methodist Reverend break into a secure weapons factory to cause billions of pounds worth of criminal damage? Anti-arms and peace activists Sam Walton and Samuel ‘Woody’ Woodhouse attempted to disarm state-of-the-art eurofighter typhoon jets that were being sold to Saudi Arabia to be used in the Yemen Civil War. After being caught in the act, arrested and charged with criminal damage, the pair expected to go to jail for up to 10 years. But, extraordinarily, the judge found them both not guilty. This is their story. Using intimate interviews, documents and objects, ‘Investigators’ relives shocking and fearless crime stories through the eyes of those involved.
“She only lets us sleep four hours, we have to wake up at 5AM.” Amy Carlson leads a group called Love Has Won. The web-savvy New Age outfit uses daily livestreams to recruit followers from around the world to join their house in Colorado. While her followers believe she is a divine being, the group is facing accusations that it is a cult. Former members are alleging stories of abuse, fraud and brainwashing. We hear from members and former members of the group to try and get to the bottom of it.
After the long postponements couples in India are downsizing their weddings, or choosing online ceremonies, shaking up the estimated 50 billion dollar industry out of its COVID limbo. Restrictions and regulations mean that everyone - from vendors to vow-takers- had to learn how to adapt. We meet couples who have walked down the aisle in the middle of the pandemic, to know how they managed their socially distanced weddings. We also meet wedding planners, venue owners and other industry experts to see how the Indian wedding has gotten a makeover.
Lebanon, a country that has been illegally exporting cannabis for decades, has become the first Arab country to legalize the plant for medicinal export. Despite a collapsing economy, COVID-19 and an explosion that devastated Beirut in 2020, investors are flocking to Lebanon to capitalize upon the new laws. VICE’s Rony Karkar explores the nuanced relationships between investors and drug lords in an unprecedented time for the country.
From Margaret Thatcher seances to promising to eliminate North Korea, Happy Science is a controversial new religious movement with over 12 million members in 90 countries. Led by its charismatic leader, Ryuho Okawa, the group’s followers believe he is a divine being, but others have accused him of leading a cult. We hear from journalists who have been investigating the group to try and get to the bottom of it.
Faced with soaring real estate prices and an increasingly desperate housing crisis in Paris, a squatting collective has been formed to find spaces of residence in buildings that have remained unoccupied for years. We followed them as they searched for a new place, occupied it, and used their knowledge of French law to negotiate with the owner and the city's local administration.
From teaching that children living with disabilities (or who’ve been sexually abused) are being punished for their errors in a previous life to carrots being as dangerous as heroin, Serge Benhayon's teachings may seem incredible, outlandish and dangerous. But to his followers, he is a god-like figure with healing powers. Despite an Australian Court finding that it was true to say his organisation, Universal Medicine, was “a socially harmful cult”, it has continued to attract followers around the world and tear families apart. We hear from Esther Rockett who was taken to court by Universal Medicine and Robin Clifford whose family was destroyed by his ex-wife joining the group.
Thailand’s pro-democracy protests are a uniquely iconic sight and there is a deeper meaning to the symbols the protestors use. Cultural anthropologist, Edoardo Siani, explains a little known world of symbolism and divine astrology that runs beneath the surface of Bangkok’s protest movement.
Almost 200 people, mostly women, have been murdered in the northeastern Indian state of Assam, accused of witchcraft and sorcery. Witch-hunting is a prevalent practice in Assam and neighbouring states among many indigenous communities. To try and decode the complex reasons behind why some people become scapegoats in land disputes, crop failures or even ostracised for their own religious practices, we meet women who were branded as witches and local activists who are trying to rehabilitate them.
In this episode of Speed Daemons, we explore how Miami's natural environment and complex history led to its love affair with speedboats. We met with the racers, manufactures, and stuntmen who are the center of Miami's speedboat obsession. Our host manages to get to the heart of the story but loses his shirt in the process.
Experts estimate there are 2 million South Koreans who are followers of fringe churches, but the exact figures are unknown. Shincheonji has allegedly become one of the most dominant fringe christian groups in recent years. Currently, it is estimated that there are over 250,000 Shincheonji Church followers within South Korea and internationally.
Residents of the protected Leuser National Park in Aceh struggle to keep Sumatran tigers away from their livestock and homes. Once a rarity, these kinds of attacks are now on the rise in North Sumatra. Between 2019 and 2020, Sumatran tigers killed at least 20 cattle in this region alone. The attacks are also an economic strain on the region’s farmers, costing around $10,000 in lost cattle. But there’s another, more concerning outcome of the rise in attacks—an environment of fear amongst those who call the forest borderlands their home.
After several episodes exploring the underground car scenes across the U.S., VICE finally heads to the birthplace of sideshow culture -- the Bay Area (specifically Oakland & Vallejo) -- to meet the new generation of sideshow enthusiasts keeping the roots of the movement alive in Bay Area streets.
NOT MY SHAME is a documentary exploring the truthful reality of housing inequality and young people using the transformational power of creativity and activism to take their power back.
Between eight and 14 percent of people hear voices, often linked to a personal trauma. Conventional psychiatry treatment regularly resorts to hospitalization or too strong medication that often prohibits sufferers from living a normal life. In France, for the past ten years, the Voice Hearer Network (REV), chaired by Vincent Demassiet, has been organizing discussion groups to help people learn to live with the voices in their heads and share their best coping techniques. The goal is to reduce the use of medication and even, in the long run, completely stop using it.
Have you ever wondered whether it is ever safe to take nude selfies? Or how much you risk when you leave your Insta profile open? We chat to ethical hacker Zoe Rose to find out how vulnerable we really are online.
Yogi Adityanath is a high priest and extreme Hindu nationalist. He believes that India is a Hindu country for Hindu people, and his anti-Muslim hate speeches have divided the country. Critics have called him everything from a “fire-breathing monk” to a “warrior priest”, but Adityanath is still being tipped as the next Prime Minister of India. Adityanath is a prominent member of the BJP, India’s ruling party, and the Chief Minister of the state of Uttar Pradesh. It is the biggest state in India, and is seen as the golden goose of Indian politics.
In August 2020, Thai university students called for reform of the monarchy, breaking a longstanding taboo in a country where the King has a God-like status. A year later, despite the arrests of key leaders and hundreds of detainments, the social movement continues to burn as protesters and police clash over a war of ideas. It all started following a 2014 coup that saw general Prayut Chan-ocha take control of the country. He then rose to Prime Minister after a disputed election in 2018. The military re-wrote the nation's constitution while the king moved to further entrench his influence and power. Today, this youth-led movement hopes to reduce those powers while demanding the resignation of Prayut for allegedly failing the country from all directions. Their demands have resurfaced even stronger as the pandemic deteriorates.
For most, ATV’s are recreational vehicles, used in touristic four-wheeler tours and backyard shenanigans in rural parts of the country. But for others, they are a means to pay the bills or, if lucky enough, hit it big and live a life of excess. In this episode of ‘High Octane’, we’ll embed with an underground crew of ATV riders who set up illegal races on the highways that run near the Florida Everglades. Participants and spectators gamble gobs of money on who they think is going to win, leading to tense competition between rival crews hoping to get a piece of the prize.
In some North Indian towns and villages, it’s an age-old tradition for unmarried boys to live in a room outside of the home called the "baithak", separated particularly from the women of the family. The boys, aged between 6 and 20 years old, enter their own houses only for meals and hang out in these "baithaks" during the day. VICE World News travels to Rajasthan and Haryana in India, to see why some villages follow this system of separating families on the basis of sex and understand the rarely documented "Baithak" System.
Panna, a district in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh is known for its dynamic dry forests, its grasslands, deep gorges with waterfalls and the Ken river, which cuts through the forest and is its lifeline. Nestled in these forests is Panna Tiger Reserve, an eco-paradise and safe haven for animals, especially tigers. It is a tourist attraction, and a great place to learn about conservation efforts. But Panna Tiger Reserve also hides a secret that tourists often don’t notice — illegal diamond mining.
Every Wednesday, Dr. Turner marches for reparations through Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was here, a century ago on May 31, 1921, that an affluent Black community was violently destroyed in the Tulsa Race Massacre. The historic Vernon American Methodist Episcopal Church, where he preaches, is the only edifice that survived the massacres in his Greenwood District neighborhood. Dr. Turner marches rain or shine weekly for reparations intended to help heal the community that has been hurting for generations.
Demystifying the housing crisis in the UK in partnership with Shelter, we take it back to basics to help you understand the complex and systemic nature of the housing emergency.
The sex industry in Singapore exists in a legal grey area. While legal brothels in red light districts are permitted to operate, many other aspects of the industry - such as street and online soliciting and pimping are illegal.
In May 2019, the skateboarding industry was left devastated by the news that British pro skater Ben Raemers had died by suicide at the age of 28. Ben’s approach to skateboarding – with his unique blend of transition and street skating – meant that he was one of a small number of British skaters to gain an international reputation over the past decade. In this film, friends and family reflect on Ben’s rise to US sponsorship, and the struggles that came later as his mental health deteriorated. His tragic death sparked a mental health reckoning within the skate community, with other pro-skaters now questioning their assumptions about mental health and sharing stories of their own. The Ben Raemers Foundation was founded in an attempt to end the stigma that prevents skaters from discussing mental health issues and to provide much-needed education about suicide prevention.
In the Philippines, we see that HIV infections equate to sin and immorality, making sex education highly challenging. The result: an HIV infection rate that is the fastest in the world. But Dr Vinn Pagtakahan is on a mission to eradicate fear and guilt surrounding the issue, even if the problem is too big for one man to solve. VICE World News finds out how Dr Vinn helps patients rise above the stigma and uncovers what it takes to fight a neglected epidemic.
"Why am I in jail? For denouncing what they are doing to the rivers, defending what little is left?” Bernardo Caal Xol, a Q'eqchi' Maya Indigenous Leader and Guatemalan human rights defender, has been unjustly imprisoned for alleged acts of violence against contractors of a hydroelectric plant in Guatemala. A crime he didn’t commit. Bernardo’s incarceration is representative of the wider problem of human rights abuses against Indigenous people across the Americas. They safeguard 80 percent of the world’s remaining biodiversity, but their safety is often at risk from big corporations looking to exploit natural resources. As of November 2021, Bernardo has been imprisoned for a total of three years and nine months.
Polish skater and artist Gonzi has been vocal about his fight against depression and borderline schizophrenia. Gonzi picked up a skateboard at the age of five and started hanging out with older skaters in his hometown of Łódź, exposing him to a life of parties and drug use at a young age. He smoked his first joint at 13, and was 17 when he experienced a psychotic break due to drug use and was diagnosed with borderline paranoid schizophrenia. He thanks skateboarding, his friends, and art for still being here today.
Okinawa is known to many as a postcard perfect paradise. In 2019, before the pandemic stopped travel, the island welcomed 10 million tourists. But despite mass tourism, Okinawa is also the poorest prefecture in Japan.
Tassie tigers, otherwise known as thylacines, were thought to have become extinct after the last known specimen “Benjamin” died in a Hobart zoo in 1936. But new evidence and a growing civilian movement are challenging that belief, with the Thylacine Awareness Group of Australia (TAGOA) boasting 10,000 members Australia-wide. In this episode of Australiana, we embed with its president, Neil Waters, a retired gardener who commits his life savings to an epic two year search for the ancient marsupial. As Neil edges closer to a tantalising ‘re-discovery’, the search brings him hope and meaning, but we also learn the price of this obsession.
In August 2019, Thailand became one of the first countries in Asia to legalize medical cannabis. But some patients in need of cannabis medication still turn away from this legal channel, and go underground for stronger doses to treat their condition.
Seung-Woo Yang entered the universe of the Korean Yakuza in his teens. The death by suicide of his friend drove him to start capturing the world, to cement his memories with his friends, some of whom are still active members of organized crime in South Korea.
Buddhiswar Boro was in his early teens when he started poaching elephants and rhinoceros to sell their trunks and horns to make a living. Back in the 80s he joined a political revolution, got a gun, and started smuggling countless tusks and horns from India to Bhutan.
Jenny Schauerte was a world-ranking downhill skateboarder before her father's death sent her into a downward spiral of depression that left her homeless.
In early 2020, Thailand was in shock when a clip of a school Director molesting a 12-year-old student appeared on social media. A month later, it emerged that two teenage female students were gang raped by five teachers and two former students for a year. Legal proceedings are ongoing. Nalinrat was a former sex abuse survivor. Currently a model, she speaks to VICE World News about her own experience in Thailand’s school system.
Rahul Jadhav is a rising star in India’s marathon community. He has competed in many events and he also runs for charity. Rahul is also a vocal advocate of sobriety and is a counsellor by profession. However, this isn’t what his life looked like a decade back. Rahul was introduced to the infamous Mumbai underworld in his teens and he quickly rose up the ranks of crime. From laundering vast sums of money, to criminal intimidation, and arms’ dealing, he did it all. His name was associated with some of India’s most dreaded gangsters. How did this man, who was also an addict, change his life? This is the story of this episode of Bad Blood, VICE Asia’s ongoing series looking at crime and criminals via a unique lens.
Women in Beed, an impoverished, drought-hit district in the western Indian state of Maharashtra are resorting to getting their uterus removed. Married off at an early age, these women have become a part of the unorganised labour economy, earning as little as 3 dollars after working for 18 hours in sugarcane fields every day, seven days in a week. The fields lack access to basic amenities and this often leads to infections that go untreated for years. When these women seek medical assistance, they are told that a hysterectomy is their only way out. In order to pay for these surgeries they take loans and then end up spending years paying off their debt. In this episode of Politics of Sex, VICE meets some of these women along with social activist Manisha Tokle to figure out how this cycle is trapping them and how medical malpractice is a factor in it as well.
At first glance, Aliia Roza is a millionaire L.A. fashion PR mogul and actress. But before this, she says she was a Russian spy handpicked for an elite espionage academy in Moscow where she was trained to seduce enemies of the state for secrets. After falling in love with one of her targets, she was forced to flee the country. But when VICE’s Sydney Lima visits her in L.A. she discovers that things might not be all that they seem.
Energy companies have secretly begun to infiltrate governments, courts and banks to ensure that society will always be powerless to stop the oil. A highly paid network of politicians, lobbyists and investors are conspiring from the shadows to block climate action, sacrificing humanity itself for short term profit. These people are the biggest threat to our planet right now and they’re winning. Under the cover of anonymity, four whistleblowers have agreed to reveal to us how these dark arts work, and how they’ve changed the fabric of reality itself in order to keep selling us fossil fuels.
India’s northernmost state Himachal Pradesh is in the grips of a heroin crisis, with double the number of illegal opioid users per capita as compared to the rest of India. VICE World News’ Esha Paul meets drug peddlers, recovering addicts, and the police on Himachal’s borders to see how a rural state known for being a tourist paradise spiralled into an opioid epidemic.
Yasuda Hidetoshi’s tryst with Rajinikanth’s movies also began with Muthu, released in Japan as Muthu-The Dancing Maharaja. Yasuda is one of Rajinikanth's biggest fans; running a Japanese fan site dedicated to the superstar, travelling to Chennai for the release of every new Rajinikanth movie, organising events that celebrate the superstar’s birthday and new movie release in Japan with other fans. He can often be seen zipping around in an autorickshaw that he imported from India to Japan, in honour of one of Rajinikanth’s characters from Baasha who was an autorickshaw driver. VICE met Yasuda in Osaka, Japan to understand how he became a Rajinikanth fan, stories and experiences from his travels to India, what it was like to meet Rajinikanth in person and what it means to be a fan of the superstar.
As a Japanese of North Korean descent, Magomi Hashimoto or Honchi Kim was initiated into the world of the Yakuza as a child. His mother married six times, out of which five of them were Yakuza. Magomi has been in and out of prison as a Yakuza but has now decided to take a different path to run for office and fight for the rights of ethnic Koreans like him. He takes VICE World News inside his world of business, politics and online YouTube fame.
Isabella Barrett is fifteen and a self-made millionaire. Actually, she’s been one since she was six after achieving international fame through the pageant world, featuring on the popular show “Toddlers and Tiaras.” She did, however, leave the show after saying that her rival’s mother dressed her daughter up “as a hooker.” Now, at the tender age of fifteen, she owns three fashion brands, with plans to become the next billionaire. VICE’s Sydney Lima spends a couple of days with her in Rhode Island and New York to discover how she has dealt with fame and money at such a young age.
On January 17th 1968, 31 North Korean special force members crossed into South Korea to kill the President. Kim Shin Jo is one of two survivors who lived to share their story.
South Korea’s 550,000-member military is considered one of its most hierarchical and male-dominant institutions. In a survey conducted by the Defense Ministry in 2019, fewer than 1/3rd of those who said they had experienced sexual assault reported it to the authorities, as most of them felt “nothing would happen.” In 2021, a 22-year-old female Korean soldier, Lee Yaeram, committed suicide after being repeatedly sexually assaulted by her male colleague. Her death incited national outrage, prompting an amendment of the Military Court Act. The proposal calls for limiting military court to first trials and transferring appeals to civilian courts. VICE World News speaks to Bang Hyelin, a survivor of sexual violence and former Captain at the ROK Marines about her experiences in South Korea’s military. VICE World News reached out to South Korea’s Ministry of Defence for comments. We did not receive a response at the time of publication.
The National University of Singapore, one of Singapore’s oldest universities known for its academic reputation, has come under fire for its handling of sexual abuse cases on campus. According to an official report published by the National University of Singapore, complaints against sexual misconduct peaked in 2019 at 25 cases, almost doubling the number in 2018. While the university has repeatedly reassured its students that the school will adopt a tougher stance against sexual misconduct, many students and survivors find these measures inadequate.
As Japan’s centuries-old national sport, Sumo has long been a part of the national identity. Yet over the years, the sport has been rocked by numerous cases of abuse, even murders, which have been too prominent for the public to ignore. Hanako Montgomery for VICE World News speaks with former and current wrestlers to find out why this persists in the sport.
Sexual assault cases have been dominating Indonesian headlines, including incidents at Islamic boarding schools, otherwise known as pesantren. In 2021, 19% of reported sexual assault cases took place in Islamic boarding schools, making it the second most common location for sexual violence, after universities. The persistence of sexual abuse within schools has prompted massive public outcry and calls for better oversight. In April 2022, Indonesia’s parliament finally passed an anti-sexual violence bill, a long-awaited legal framework aimed at providing sexual abuse victims justice and protection. The final draft of the law includes prison terms of up to 12 years for crimes of physical sexual abuse, 15 years for sexual exploitation, 9 years for forced marriage, which includes child marriage, and 4 years for circulating non-consensual sexual content.
Photographs of over 100 Muslim women were put up on sale on an Indian app called ‘Sulli Deals’. The target included Muslim women across age groups - including prominent journalists, activists and lawyers. The app is a clone of 'Sulli Deals', which had triggered a row last year by offering users a 'sulli' - an insulting term used by right-wing trolls for Muslim women.
Against the backdrop of a brutal war, thousands of young Ukrainian hippies gathered in the mountains for a giant party: the annual Shypit Festival. Nudity, psychedelics, and dancing around the fire chanting “**** Putin” ensued. For many, this was their last chance to party before being conscripted to the front lines. But then the Ukrainian military showed up and began drafting the young revelers. While it may have ruined the party for some, these hippies are mostly keen to fight. In fact, they may be the first hippies in history who WANT to go to war…
In Japan, Catholics make up less than 1% of the population. Despite the small numbers, allegations of sexual abuse have surfaced against Catholic clergymen in recent years. Mrs Harumi Suzuki is one of the first few in Japan to speak out against the sexual abuse she experienced when consulting with a priest at the church back in 1977. In September 2020, she filed an official lawsuit against the Sendai’s Catholic Church, seeking around $77,000 in damages, along with an official apology. She speaks to VICE World News about her experience and the impact the incident has had on her mental health.
Is that a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s the Filipino Superman! Fashion designer-turned-superhero Herbert Chavez has a unique claim to fame—he has the largest Superman memorabilia collection in the world, certified by Guinness World Records. He has even had over 20 facial surgeries to look more like his idol, Superman. Guess you could say he’s a… super fan? For the past few years, Chavez has been standing as Superman in Manila Ocean Park. His superpower? Making people happy. He spends his day entertaining adults and children alike and donating to charity, all in the spirit of truth, justice, and a better tomorrow.
On his way to a big date, an affable 30-year-old man's digestive system turns on him as he races to find an ever-elusive bathroom on the streets of New York City.
Micchi is only 9 but she has already had double eyelid surgery. Japan is ranked 4th in the world for having the most number of plastic surgery procedures. Hostess Nonoka has had more than one hundred surgeries, and plans to have more.
Danny Lambo claims he is the UK’s flashiest playboy. As a multimillionaire hotelier so obsessed with his supercar collection that he has officially changed his surname to “Lambo,” he may just be in the running.
42 years old Mukesh from India is going to break his legs to grow taller. He will be operated on using the Ilizarov method which had been used in the past to correct limb deformity. Now, it is popular among those who want a cosmetic height increase. 6 weeks later, he is having second thoughts.
Conspiracy theories take many forms but belief in reptilian conspiracy theories—that the world is controlled by extraterrestrial lizards—has played a role in a series of bizarre and tragic crimes over the last 20 years. Since 2017, at least six murders have been tied to lizard-people theories. In this episode of ‘Alternate Reality’, we break down the connection between alleged outer-space lizards and these crimes.
In Thailand, an unregulated cosmetic enhancement industry is thriving. Botched procedures undertaken by unlicensed practitioners are leaving patients disfigured and forced to spend thousands on reconstructive surgery.
Is there a conspiracy to shrink men’s penises, destroy their sperm, and feminize America’s macho dudes? Well, a range of right-wing conspiracists claim “traditional men” are under attack, poisoned, and brainwashed in a plan to weaken them. According to them, the vehicles of this alleged mass emasculation vary widely, from soy products to COVID vaccines.
VICE World News goes on a journey to uncover why so many young Indian men are going for hair transplants, and how some end up with botched jobs.
The dry and arid Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region – home to the mighty black scorpion – has emerged as the epicentre of a rare drug culture. People in Pakistan’s borderlands are no strangers to narcotics; the Soviet-Afghan war in the ‘80s made sure of that. But scorpion venom is a wildcard drug ripping through communities that no one knows what to do with. People who have smoked it say the high is powerful and can last for days. Its side effects, however, seem too heavy a cost to bear. VICE travelled across Peshawar, Mattani and Dir to speak to users, researchers, a former narcotics-control officer and a journalist to understand why people smoke scorpion venom and how it’s changed their lives.
Teen gangs have been targeting members of the public at random in what’s known locally as Klitith. Now, local residents are organising watch groups mobilising over a thousand volunteers and police have ramped up night patrols to curb the deadly wave of violence.
Although a fringe figure, Romana Didulo, a woman who has declared herself the Queen of Canada, has amassed tens of thousands of followers on Telegram. Preaching a mixture of QAnon and sovereign citizen beliefs, she claims she’s fighting a secret, all-powerful cabal of pedophiles that controls both the US and Canadian governments. She also subscribes to a number of bogus, arcane legal theories that say her followers have immunity from existing laws, and that all current governments are secretly illegitimate. Members of her following have described abuse inside the group, including their leader threatening to execute them.
If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. There’s a long history of people selling random pills, lotions, and gadgets that claim to cure all known diseases. One of the latest examples is mythical healing devices called “Med Beds.” In online conspiracy circles, videos discussing these devices weave together tales of aliens and secret government cover ups. But beyond the conspiracy theories are vulnerable people falling for unproven treatments or bogus medical devices.
Dubbed ‘the world’s oldest Japanese adult video star,’ 86-year-old Yuko Ogasawara has no plans to slow down. Over the past six years, she’s ventured on a path of self-discovery – a housewife turned bar owner turned international sex symbol, pushing the boundaries of what people think a grandma can do.
Using the cutting-edge exploration and research vessel, the OceanXplorer as a base, top marine scientists from around the world converge upon the Red Sea, searching for clues to address the escalating climate crisis. Employing subs, divers, and remotely operated vehicles, researchers visit depths approaching 10,000 feet to extract secrets from one of the most unspoiled marine ecosystems on Earth.
We follow the inspiring journey of 18-year-old Zosya Rosenfeld, a refugee from Kharkiv, Ukraine, who is rebuilding her life as an art student in Düsseldorf. The film is in collaboration with Varvara Mozhaieva, the winner of VICE News' film competition Education In Motion, who also fled from Ukraine herself.
While Autumn Fry wasn't born with two glocks in her hands, she might as well have been - she learned to shoot shortly after she learned to walk! Now, at 10 years old, she's a social media sensation with over 200k subscribers on her gun YouTube channel, "Autumn's Armory." In this episode of Child's Play, we learn about Autumn, her home life, and her extraordinary abilities with one of America's most controversial items - guns.
VICE travels to Nebraska to meet the 6-year-old boy behind Lulu LovelyTwirls, the world’s youngest drag queen, to understand how his parents, community, and politicians are reacting to his controversial passion for drag.
The Bialecki brothers began boxing as young as 8 years old, their gloves barely bigger than their tiny bodies. Recently retired from MMA, their father, Tyler, has built his own gym to coach his kids like professional adults. However, children's boxing is highly controversial — the American Academy of Pediatrics discourages any child from boxing due to concussions and bodily harm. Despite the risks, the Bialecki family believes it's worth it, as the best way to avoid getting hurt is to become the best. In this episode of Child's Play, we follow the family as they prepare for a big fight in their new town.
The UK prison system is broken. Far from working to deter or rehabilitate, 80% of criminals who receive cautions or convictions are reoffenders. Many prisoners are caught in an endless cycle of brutal sentences, facing a lack of housing or job opportunities once they get out.
The UK prison system has a rich and thriving black market, with its own micro-economy based on tinned fish. Drugs, food, iPhones, and games consoles are everywhere – if you know where to look (and who to ask). VICE speaks to former prisoner and filmmaker Chris Atkins, author of ‘Time After Time’ and ‘A Bit of a Stretch’, about how prisoners get contraband and chicken stew inside their cells.
Meet Atlanta’s most unlikely heroes, the Boot Girls. Masked vigilantes by day, sugar babies by night, the Boot Girls zip around town armed with plastic ghost keys, taking parking boots off your car for a small fee. A welcome service for a parking enforcement industry that’s been described as “predatory” by residents, city officials, and even state senators.
There's a race to save a dozen small cetaceans, the last in the world of their species. They're caught as bycatch in nets set to trap a fish with a huge demand in China. Can anything be done?
Meet Jeremy Fragrance, the number one fragrance icon that follows the teachings of Jesus, as he lands in New York City to smell strangers, share his wisdom, and make it big. Will Jeremy Fragrance break America or will America break him?
In this episode of Fresh Powder, we embed with local drug traffickers to see the cocaine refinement process firsthand, visit with an autodefensa militia group, and meet a local Amazonian community currently under attack.
Rouketopolemos "ROCKET WAR" is a Greek tradition held annually during Orthodox Easter in the town of Vrontados on the island of Chios. While most places celebrate with fireworks during church services at midnight before Easter Sunday, Vrontados takes it to another level. Two rival church congregations engage in a "rocket war," launching tens of thousands of homemade rockets at each other's bell towers. These rockets, crafted from wooden sticks and packed with gunpowder are fired from specially designed grooved platforms by drunken "Rocketeers." The event draws tourists from around the world despite being completely illegal.
VICE’s longtime creative partner, Jake Burghart has helped to craft over 100 documentaries in more than 70 countries. Over 15 years, he worked on many of the films that came to define the sort of hard-hitting, courageous, and mind-boggling stories that VICE traded in, including “The VICE Guide to Iran,” Dennis Rodman’s visit to North Korea, and on-the-ground coverage of the 2011 Arab Spring. On these expeditions, he always shot photos for keepsakes, using whatever camera he had with him at the time: a 35mm, medium format, DSLR, or a cheap point-and-shoot. We asked Burghart to sift through his hard drives and share the stories behind some of these monumental moments.
Back in 2016, VICE visited a Hillary Clinton dominatrix who punished remorseful Trump voters. Following the 2016 Presidential election of Donald Trump, professional dominatrix Mistress Couple started posting Backpage ads as “Madame Hillary” as a joke. After receiving an onslaught of responses, many from remorseful individuals who had voted for Trump, she decided to take the role more seriously, and began offering politically-charged dom sessions intent on humiliating and punishing Trump voters.
In the aftermath of the US presidential elections, a cast of influencers, streamers, comedians, and podcasters claimed they’d helped Donald Trump and the Republican Party return to the White House by securing the votes of a crucial cohort: Gen Z males.
Let’s break down how the rich live above the law, set up systems to do it, and **** over the rest of us. Welcome to Offshore.
In this episode of ‘The Set Up’, directed by Lee Adams, we hang out with Eagle to learn about the process behind his stand and see all of the work , sacrifice, and failures that go into making a room full of strangers laugh for 15 minutes.
They say we’ve never been lonelier. That society is divided and circling the drain of toxic individualism. We are told nothing can bring us together, but some events are still worth coming together for. In our series GATHERINGS, we explore the communities and events that make people feel like they belong.
In the North of England, an underground fight club is pushing violence to new extremes. Spartan Bare Knuckle Fight Club is the UK’s only licensed 8x8ft bare-knuckle pit fighting promotion. Its fights are short and brutal, and often end in knockouts.
In part two of our series SPARTAN BARE KNUCKLE, we follow several fighters in the build up to the main summer event, Fight Fest. Billed as a ‘real-life Fight Club,’ Spartan has become a lifeline in difficult times, turning into a form of community for men battling addiction and poor mental health.
In the final part of our series about the UK’s only licensed bare knuckle pit fighting syndicate, Spartan Bare Knuckle, we follow the combatants into battle at Fight Fest—the biggest event of the year.
On December 9, 2018, Gerald Cotten, CEO of QuadrigaCX, died suddenly in India. With him, $215 million vanished in an instant. Gerry was a man of many secrets - one of them being the sole access to the currency’s wallets. But what if he never died at all? What if his death was just the beginning of an elaborate, globe-spanning con?
Since the 1990’s Mexico’s Narco Pilots have risked life and limb transporting drugs for the Cartels. It’s a risky game but many are attracted to it by the upwards of $12,000 they can earn with every flight. In this new VICE documentary, we speak with these daredevils about the risks and rewards for a modern day drug smuggler.
VICE host Zach Shucklin goes in search of Route 36, the world’s only known ‘cocaine bar.’ Located in the mountains outside of the Bolivian capital La Paz, the notorious lounge bar promises high purity coke by the gram—served up on a silver platter, along with a delicious cocktail of the patron’s choice.
In this episode of Gatherings, VICE host Jackson Garrett explores the sudden rise of online clown culture, and how the new generation of clowns are trying to change the perception from scary and creepy to sexy and accepting.
For over 40 years, New York's most creative characters have been gathering in Coney Island to participate in the Mermaid Parade. There's no ethnic, religious, or political connection between participants, but locals call it the official opening of summer in the city.
For years, New Zealand’s suburbs have been terrorized by the power ballads of Céline Dion and Mariah Carey. Since 2010, self-proclaimed Siren Kings have been strapping sirens ordinarily used for tsunami warnings onto their bikes and cars to play music as loud as they can. While they say their love of sounds is a form of creative self-expression and community building, their neighbors say it’s 3am and they can’t sleep.
VICE and Popeyes linked up with Femi Koleoso - drummer, bandleader, and the beating heart of Ezra Collective - back where it all began: Enfield, North London. From local youth clubs to global stages, Femi takes us through the spots that shaped him and the band’s rise to Mercury Prize glory, their first BRIT Award, and the ultimate milestone - taking to the stage at Glastonbury. But this isn’t just a nostalgia trip. At Jubilee Youth Club, Femi shows us how he’s paying it forward, championing the same community spaces that sparked his journey. With help from Popeyes - who are committed to empowering young people and supporting talent across the UK - it’s a love letter to youth clubs and a rallying cry to keep them alive.
In this new documentary on VICE, host Danny Sewell and filmmaker Jake Dowsett travel to Norway to meet the fearless athletes behind one of the world’s most extreme sports — and uncover what drives them to risk it all.
Mathilda “Mayhem” Wilson is the first professional women’s bare knuckle boxer in the whole of Scandinavia. She’s from Sweden, where the sport is still illegal. To compete, she has to travel across Europe to follow a hard-fought career as a @BKFC fighter.
In the first episode of Naked Truths, we meet Bunni, a 21-year-old streamer who made her name in the world of financial domination. Growing up behind a screen, she spent her teens gaming and streaming before stepping into “spicy content” on her eighteenth birthday. We spend an evening in her company as she opens up about the hidden rules of her trade, the psychology of her clients, and the reality of living a life that’s equal parts performance, hustle and control.
For 137 years, Italian Catholics in Brooklyn have carried on a powerful tradition: lifting a 4-ton statue of Saint Paulinus and parading it through the neighborhood. Through heatwaves, rainstorms, wars, and pandemics, this community has kept the Giglio Feast alive across generations.
In the second episode of Naked Truths, we meet Shannon Huxley and Oscar Thickk, a couple who walked away from stable careers in finance to follow their shared passion for creating adult content. Both identify as doms, building their world around fetishes and kinks. We join them inside an S&M house, where they reflect on their personal histories, how their work helps people explore hidden desires, and the realities of balancing intimacy, business, and love under one roof — including the number of subscribers it takes to keep their mortgage paid.
After his messy OnlyFans experiment, Taji Ameen heads to the Caribbean in search of redemption. In this first episode of Island Classified, he sets out to find a Godfather and embraces the wild, emotional path that leads to his baptism. A mix of faith, controversy, and new beginnings as Island Classified x VICEWORLD returns!
On this episode, Taji Ameen steps into the goth scene as part of his ongoing journey of self-discovery after going independent. He visits Necromancy Cosmetics in San Juan for a full transformation by the incredibly talented Luanne Rós, who gives him a dramatic new look. Later, Taji heads to a goth party in Caguas, where the vibe is raw, theatrical, and deeply expressive. It's a glimpse into a subculture that values individuality over everything—and for Taji, it's another unexpected but meaningful stop on the path to figuring out who he’s becoming.
Taji Ameen sets out to better understand the island - its culture, its people, and its most unforgettable stories. In this episode, @TajCam dives into Puerto Rico’s UFO capital of Lajas and explores El Yunque National Forest with UFO investigators who believe extraterrestrials live beneath the rainforest. From strange lights in the skies to tales of alien encounters, he gets an inside look at Puerto Rico’s fascination with the unexplained.
VICE takes you inside one of the most surreal and extreme traditions on earth, El Salvador's Fireball Festival, to witness the battle of the fireballs firsthand. So just why does this one town in El Salvador gather each year to hurls balls of flame at each other, and what inspired this fiery and frightening tradition? Find out as VICE takes you inside the fire and the flames of the latest Fireball Festival to see the incredible action up close and personal.
When he was six, Shawney Cohen’s father bought “The Manor,” a small-town strip-club. Hoping to understand what happened to his nice Jewish family, Shawney spends years filming this intimate tragi-comic family portrait that lays bare the nature of dependence and love.
Childhood poverty in Pakistan can be nearly impossible to escape...but some local gyms are giving the street kids of Pakistan a potential chance to climb their way out into a better life in the world of MMA. So just what goes on inside Pakistan's new teenage MMA circuit...and just what is life like for the street kids turned MMA fighters? Find out as we follow them through life inside and out of the cage in episode 1 of Kids Fight!
Childhood poverty in Pakistan can be nearly impossible to escape...but some local gyms are giving the street kids of Pakistan a potential chance to climb their way out into a better life in the world of MMA. So just what goes on inside Pakistan's new teenage MMA circuit...and just what is life like for the street kids turned MMA fighters? Find out as we follow them through life inside and out of the cage in episode 2 of Kids Fight!
Childhood poverty in Pakistan can be nearly impossible to escape...but some local gyms are giving the street kids of Pakistan a potential chance to climb their way out into a better life in the world of MMA. So just what goes on inside Pakistan's new teenage MMA circuit...and just what is life like for the street kids turned MMA fighters? Find out as we follow them through life inside and out of the cage in episode 3 of Kid Fight!
Childhood poverty in Pakistan can be nearly impossible to escape...but some local gyms are giving the street kids of Pakistan a potential chance to climb their way out into a better life in the world of MMA. So just what goes on inside Pakistan's new teenage MMA circuit...and just what is life like for the street kids turned MMA fighters? Find out as we follow them through life inside and out of the cage in episode 4 of Kid Fight!
VICE is taking you inside the brutal world of Deathmatch wrestling as we follow a father son duo that has been putting their bodies and careers on the line to try and make a name for themselves in one of the most violent and intense sports on the planet.
This documentary goes inside Venezuela’s most dangerous neighborhoods and reveals what life is like for those caught in the crossfire. Through a rare, direct conversation with the man at the center of it all, the true shape of Venezuela’s hidden war comes into focus. So who controls the Urban Guerrillas who control so much of these hotly contested country? We talk to the leader behind them all to find out. (Shot in 2019 by The Underground Documentary Group. Original Title: Tupamaro: Urban Guerrillas)
Taji Ameen explores the tradition of vaqueros, Puerto Rican cowboys, to see if he has what it takes to become one of the best to ever saddle up on the island. Will he be able to master the skill of horse-riding and the island cowboy lifestyle in time to ride with his fellow Vaqueros on their monthly Cavalcade through the Island? Find out in the latest Stories from Puerto Rico with @TajCam
VICE is taking you inside the world biggest Carnival festival in Rio Brazil, walking alongside the millions and millions who turn out every year to let celebrate and let their inhibitions fall away. So just what is the Carnival celebration all about in Rio...and just how wild can things get at one of the largest festivals in the entire world? Find out as VICE takes you inside the incredible world of Rio Carnival!
We followed along as New York’s secret subway wrestling scene attempts to pull off another show without getting caught by the MTA. The group’s leader, Tim Rivera, talks us through the history of subway wrestling, what it takes to pull off the shows, and how to avoid detection. As the subway moves through the city taking commuters to work and school, Subwaymania is happening one car over. Choke slams, punches, and people being thrown through tables. You never know what you can see on a New York Commute.
Polly and Sophie are My Bad Sister, the UK rave scene’s most infamous twin sisters. When a new chapter of sobriety threatens the hedonism of their music and relationship, Joe Magowan’s intimate documentary finds out if their sisterly bond can survive getting clean.
At the height of the fentanyl overdose crisis, drug users in Vancouver started taking it upon themselves to try to save lives. Colin Askey’s intimate documentary follows volunteers at the city’s Overdose Prevention Society, where a group of misfits, artists, and drug users operates a renegade safe-injection site. Executive-produced by Oscar-winning director Sean Baker (Anora, The Florida Project), Love in the Time of Fentanyl reaches beyond the stigma of drug use, revealing the courage and compassion of those trying to keep their community alive. (Love in the Time of Fentanyl is a 2022 documentary film by Colin Askey)
VICE explores the unusual practices and strange worship of Saint Death, the girm reaper like figure of central and south America known as San La Muerte. So what leads people to the worship of this avatar of death...what mircales is San La Muerte supposed to have performed...and what is required to pay your respects to death incarnate? We'll take you inside the worship of Saint Death to find out.
VICE and Timberland met three craftspeople across a variety of disciplines, each with traditions they either embrace or make entirely their own: a trained bladesmith, a self-made woodworker and a family-inspired chef, all with big shoes to fill.
In 1980s South Africa during Apartheid, racist “influx control” laws made it almost impossible for black taxi drivers to earn a living. They upgraded their sedans to minibuses and worked illegally, providing vital transport for their communities. The end of Apartheid created a new problem, as the underground taxi network was replaced by a cutthroat system where corruption thrived and competition over routes turned brutally violent. Intimidation and targeted killings became commonplace.
Director and Writer Dominic Streeter brings you a stunning new look at the Fentanyl crisis that is ruining lives and leaving bodies in one of Canada's biggest and wealthiest cities. So just how bad has this street drug crisis gotten in Vancouver...and can anything be done to turn the tides, or is this new drug just going to keep claiming lives and shattering families up north? We're going inside the epidemic to see just how bad things have truly gotten, and how much hope their is for recovery, as we walk the streets of Vancouver to see if the war against this brutal new street drug can actually be won. (Shot in 2020. Original Title: Ten Dollar Death Trip)
Taji heads into the shadows of Puerto Rico with a private detective hunting a suspected romance scammer accused of catfishing a victim and stealing thousands of dollars. What starts as a search for answers quickly turns into a tense stakeout, as Taji gets pulled into the strange, risky world of surveillance, deception, and a fraudster who doesn’t want to be found.
For the premiere episode of Locals, VICE’s Ben McQueen—creator of our acclaimed series Let It Kill You—heads to Copenhagen with skateboarding legend Rune Glifberg, aka “The Danish Destroyer.” From vert skating and local food to Danish architecture, galleries, and museums, Rune takes us through the city that shaped him. This is Copenhagen through the eyes of one of skateboarding’s most iconic figures.