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.
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.
We spent some time with the Rosaires, a tenth-generation circus family. Their animal sanctuary in Sarasota, Florida is an impressive collection of lions and tigers and bears and breastfeeding chimps, oh my!
We met up with Joe Crow Ryan, a well known NYC subway musician who uses music to overcome struggles with homelessness and the law. He's unemployed, and not looking, because he's "done with jobs."
We traveled by freight train to the 112th National Hobo Convention in Britt, Iowa, to see what was left of hobo life. We felt as if we were a pair of early Americans—pioneers far from home on a great adventure.
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.
After meeting Divya at a party in Brooklyn, we assumed she was into artisinal pickles and free-range tempeh. Turns out, killing animals and stuffing them is more her thing. We decided to go to the woods with her and have some fun with a woodchuck.
On my first day embedded with the UN stabilization force in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, I visited a camp in the city of Goma set up to house rebel combatants who had recently surrendered.
For the past 20 years Steve Ludwin has been sticking deadly snake venom in a syringe and mainlining it. He claims that snake juice is the ultimate pick-me-up, making him stronger, faster, and more resilient.
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."
Weeks before the almost unfathomable mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, VICE editor-in-chief Rocco Castoro visited Florida to dive headfirst into its byzantine firearms laws and discover why his home state was the first in the nation to issue over one million concealed weapons permits. Through interviews and time on the range with veterans, law enforcement officials, and gun-store owners, VICE digs deep into the gun debate and uncovers many troubling revelations along the way. Oh, we also use a Craigslist-like site to arrange for the purchase of a handgun at 10 PM in the parking lot of a big-box hardware store. And it's all 100-percent legal. Welcome to Florida.
Meet 73-year-old Arthur Boyt, notorious resident of remote Bodmin Moor in Cornwall, and connoisseur of cooking and eating roadkill - nothing is too far fetched or fanciful to end up on his plate. Take a trip into Arthur's universe and learn how to cook a cracking badger casserole, as well as find out how best to prepare polecat meat before cooking.
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.
On January 5 in El Potrero, a small town in the Mexican state of Guerrero, a man named Eusebio García Alvarado was kidnapped by a local criminal syndicate. 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, effectively taking justice into their own hands.
Each year, more than 30 million people flow between the US and Mexico through the San Ysidro Port of Entry, the busiest land-border crossing in the world. Situated between San Diego and Tijuana, at one time the area around San Ysidro was a prime spot to cross illegally into the US.
For maverick entrepreneur Ian Cox, Africa is the last frontier of free enterprise. The former small-time hustler has been busting his ass on the continent for years, selling and moving merchandise. In 2012 he nabbed a lucrative United Nations contract to transport equipment from South Africa to South Sudan, a country on many countries' embargo list. The other problem: the journey north entails passing through countless checkpoints and dealing with bribe-happy officials and their nonsensical paperwork and regulations.
To see how the .00001% lives, we met up with infamous Russian oligarch Sergey Veremeenko and spent quality time hog-hunting and helicopter-joyriding at his private estate outside Moscow.
Sick of taking responsibility for the shitty things that have happened to you in your life? Help is on the way, in the form of three Bible-thumping teenage exorcists who claim to be able to exorcise people's "sexually transmitted demons."
Jody Pendarvis is a kooky southern gentleman who has built a ramshackle UFO welcome center in his backyard in rural Bowman, South Carolina. If aliens happen to land around Bowman, they'll be greeted by Jody, who claims he'll be able to talk to them, and h…
Václav Hálek is the world's most prolific composer of mushroom songs. As in the songs they sing to him. The mushrooms. Because God asked them to.
Every August, while Europe's desk jockeys shut off their phones and head to the beach, the junkies of Prague set up camp in the poppy fields outside the city for a vacation of their own. For one glorious month, there are no cops to run from, no dealers to…
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, and has 25 citizens, its own currency, an official state lim…
Once a year the traffic in South Carolina comes to a standstill as the streets fill with brightly customized sports bikes, with their riders taking advantage of the state's "no helmet" law to perform burnouts and stunts up and down the main strip along th…
Hell is a quaint little village in Norway. There are red-roofed houses, a post office, a grocery store, even a church. It literally freezes over during the winter. There's also the Blues in Hell Festival, which this year brought a host of legendary blues
The ladies of Asgarda are self-proclaimed descendants of the legendary Amazon warrior women who, according to myth, once roamed parts of what is now Ukraine. We traveled to the Carpathian Mountains in Western Ukraine to attend one of Asgarda's recruitment…
When AMC's Breaking Bad premiered in 2008, one of Alabama's most successful meth cooks was already knee deep in building a massive meth empire. His name? Walter White. In this documentary, Walter tells us the secret behind his product, how he stacked up thousands of dollars per day, and why his partner is now serving two life sentences.
God is descending on Minneapolis in the form of invisible spliffs and imaginary lines of coke. The Drunken Glory movement—spawned by events like the Florida Outpouring and Toronto Blessing in the 90s, at which people appeared to be inebriated and high pur…
A global scene of around 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 the complexity and level of detail.
With unique access to three of the city's most notorious strip clubs, their best-known dancers, management, and loyal customers, Atlanta: Strip City explores what it's really like to get naked and dance for money in the strip club capital of the wo…
Despite its tiny population, Iceland has a reputation in the World's Strongest Man competition that stands higher than perhaps any other country's. This small, black rock in the middle of the ocean has produced a lineage of strongmen dating back to…
Voguing is an urban dance inspired by model poses in the pages of Vogue, where dancers gather to compete in Voguing "battles." Following its creation in 1980s New York, the movement has spread to France, thanks to the success of singers like Madonn…
Peruvian artist LU.CU.MA spent 27 years in jail for the murder of his brother, among other crimes. After his release, LU.CU.MA swore to turn himself around. He traded the machine guns, hand grenades, and knives that he once used to ambush buses for art su…
Faced with the impending closure of their popular pub, the punks of the alternative Berlin scene must dive into the dubious world of offshore companies to find out the names of the mysterious real estate billionaires who want to kick them out.
Derek 'Diablo' Alvarez wants to transplant British hooligan football violence into America. After being enraptured by grainy 80s videos of football gangs beating the shit out of each other in pubs and movies like Green Street and The Football Factory, Diablo has launched his own squad "The Miami Casuals," defending a soccer team, Inter Miami CF, that doesn't exist yet.
Romania has a thriving witch community that goes back centuries. It’s also one of the most corrupt countries in Europe. Public outrage against the Romanian government has led to the biggest protests since the fall of communism, with up to half a million people taking to the streets.
Over a single weekend in the Summer of 2021, the local population of Edmonson County, Kentucky was doubled by droves of "rednecks" descending on the area to celebrate five days of mud, music, & mayhem. They came for an event called "The Redneck Rave" - a music festival put on by country rapper, Justin Time, who bills it as the "biggest country party you'll ever go to." What festival goers didn't sign up for, however, was the absolute chaos that would ensue.
'A-Fest' is an annual super-elite, invite-only festival that promises to radically change your life. Run by MindValley, this is distilled, silicon valley alt-wellness marketed to millionaires and aspirational millionaires across the globe. The man behind the whole business is Vishen Lakhiani. He progressed from selling meditation CDs online to owning a $40 million company with thousands of loyal followers around the world.
Damanhur is a microsociety and Italian ecovillage in the hills of Northern Italy, founded in 1977, boasting its own language, religion, and currency, with over 600 citizens. They believe their leader, Oberto Airaudi Falco, traveled in time to the lost city of Atlantis and learned ancient healing practices, which they still practice today. Each year, they host their annual birthday celebration, where Damanhurians from all over the world return to Damanhur, decked in white robes, and perform ceremonial rituals.
Cassadaga is a small town in Florida that’s just like any other bedroom community—except that it’s filled with psychics. Stroll down its streets and you’ll bump into clairvoyants, mediums, and past-life shamans. But it’s not all crystal balls and tarot cards — in fact, many of the psychics here don’t use those materials at all.
Off the coast of Thailand is an island Tantric community who claim to have found sexual enlightenment. Travelers from across the globe have come here to discover whether they can heal their trauma, experiment sexually and ultimately find bliss. VICE’s Tir Dhondy spends a week going through a rigorous schedule of Tantric workshops to see whether she can work on her own sexual trauma and achieve a level of spiritual enlightenment. Through her journey, she discovers that alongside the profound healing on the island, there is also an undercurrent of sexual abuse. Should we all quit our jobs and move to paradise? And how easy is it to remain safe in these communities?
Last July, thousands of hippies convened in a remote Colorado forest for the 50th annual Rainbow Family Gathering. It started as a counterculture movement whose mission was to establish a utopian society that would last thousands of years. But 50 years later…things have deviated from that plan. In recent times, the Rainbow Family has been plagued with crime, sexual assault allegations, and even suspicious deaths. So which is it—a prayer for peace, or a refuge for vagrants with no oversight? VICE’s Erica Matson trekked out to Routt County National Forest to attend the week-long gathering to see if peace is real, or if it's just an acid trip.
In this episode of Fringes, VICE journalist Erica Matson enters the wild world of MAGA Rap, an underground hip-hop scene that raps about election denialism, anti-vax messaging, and is super pro-Trump. We met the biggest rappers in the scene, and learn what the future of MAGA rap is in 2023.
We learned the secrets of a big-time NYC drug dealer—from how his crew operates to where he gets his dope.
We spent some time with the Rosaires, a tenth-generation circus family. Their animal sanctuary in Sarasota, Florida is an impressive collection of lions and tigers and bears and breastfeeding chimps.
