The VICE Guide to Right Now

Over the next month, we’ll be featuring stories from VICE Magazine’s April publication: The Dystopia and Utopia Issue. Today, we’ll hear from journalist Jimmie Briggs on the trauma of everyday gun violence in New Orleans, a feature story which was done in collaboration with The Investigative Fund. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

11 Apr 201814min

The setting is La Porte, Indiana, and the year 1908. On the night of April 28, a farmhouse belonging to a widow named Belle Gunness burned to the ground. And when the embers cooled enough for investigators to dig through the rubble, they discovered the headless body of a woman clutching the charred remains of three children. They believed this to be Belle. But that wasn't all they discovered. They also found a number of decomposed, dismembered bodies buried on the same property, which pointed to Belle herself as the female serial killer known as Lady Bluebeard. But the truth still remains obscured, at least in part. Not only is it unclear if Gunness really died in the fire, but the six-foot-tall Norwegian widow may have staged the whole thing—and got away with it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

9 Apr 20189min

With Facebook suffering controversy after controversy, calls for tighter regulations on the social media industry have never been louder. To get the conversation started, Motherboard considered what would happen if Facebook were fully nationalized; that is, if the US government seized Facebook today and attempted to operate it in the best interests of its users, under existing US law. The piece is speculative fiction, and is intended to imagine what an extreme version of regulation would look like. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

6 Apr 201810min

President Trump has announced that the White House will host a temporary memorial to people who have died from prescription opioid overdoses, called “Prescribed to Death.” The memorial was created by an organization called the National Safety Council, and it consists of a wall depicting 22,000 faces engraved on white pills. But this design has been widely condemned as demeaning and offensive. Critics say it dehumanizes drug users and ignores those who’ve died from street drugs like heroin. Nonetheless, the exhibit will sit in President’s Park in April. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

4 Apr 201814min

On Monday night, Donald Trump's Commerce Department announced that, in response to a request from the Justice Department, planned to restore a question about citizenship to the census questionnaire for the first time since 1950. This last-minute, seemingly simple move sent shockwaves throughout the country, as it has the potential to reshape American politics for a decade or more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

2 Apr 20189min

On March 23rd, the White House announced that transgender people are disqualified from military service, except under certain limited circumstances. This new policy serves to rollback and replace President Trump's original blanket ban on trans service members, which multiple courts found to be unconstitutional. Many argue that this new ban is unconstitutional as well. Chase Strangio, a lawyer at the ACLU, called it a “painful attack.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

30 Mar 201815min

In light of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, NOISEY has taken a close look at sexual harassment and misconduct in the music industry. Music journalist Andrea Domanick spoke to more than two dozen women about their experiences in the industry. They are artists and publicists, assistants and executives, spanning both the major-label and independent music worlds, and across multiple genres. Some have publicly come forward with accusations, while many spoke anonymously. But together, their collective accounts indicate how deeply embedded sexual harassment is in the music industry, and how culture and labor conditions create a perfect storm for abuse. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

28 Mar 201812min

SideOneDummy Records has been one of indie rock’s most promising labels for 22 years. And in the temperamental world of independent music, it’s been a bastion of hope. But this January, the founders of SideOneDummy laid off the label’s entire staff save for one employee. Now, the indie scene wants to know what the future holds for this long-running label. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

26 Mar 20189min