Everything you need to know about the world this morning, curated by VICE.

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US News

One-Third Say Debates Will Influence How They Vote
As Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump prepare for the first presidential debate, a new Wall Street Journal / NBC News poll found 34 percent of registered voters think the debates will be "extremely important" or "quite important" in deciding who to vote for. More Republicans than Democrats said the debates would be important to them, 37 percent to 31 percent. —The Wall Street Journal

Charlotte Lifts Curfew as Protests Continue
Demonstrators chanted and marched through Charlotte for a sixth consecutive night, as Mayor Jennifer Roberts lifted the citywide curfew Sunday evening. Protests were mostly peaceful and many joined to pray outside the Charrlotte-Mecklenburg police headquarters hours after police released footage of Keith Scott's death. —ABC News

Washington Mall Shooting Suspect Faces Murder Charges
The suspect held in the killing of five people at a Macy's store in a Washington State mall on Friday will be arraigned later today. Arcan Cetin, 20, will appear in district court Monday and faces five counts of first-degree murder after being arrested Saturday night. Police are still working to nail down a motive. —CNN

Seven Overdose Deaths in One Day in Cleveland
Authorities in Cleveland are running tests to determine the type of drugs were involved in a spate of fatal overdoses. Officials suspect either heroin or fentanyl is responsible for the seven deaths reported across the Cleveland area on Saturday. Cuyahoga County medical examiner Thomas Gilson called the cluster "deeply concerning." —CBS News

International News

Airstrikes Pound Aleppo Overnight
Dozens of airstrikes hit the city of Aleppo overnight, continuing an air campaign by the Syrian government and its allies. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said dozens of strikes had hit the city. The observatory said it had documented the deaths of 237 people since a ceasefire ended last Monday.—Reuters

Boko Haram Leader Mocks Nigerian Military Claims
A man claiming to be leader of Nigeria's Boko Haram group has appeared in a video rejecting statements by the country's military that he had been seriously wounded. "I will not get killed until my time comes," said the man claiming to be Abubakar Shekau in a 40-minute video posted on YouTube.—The Guardian

China Conducts Drills Near Japanese Islands
China's military said it had flown more than 40 bombers and other fighter planes through a strait between Japanese islands on their way to drills in the western Pacific. The patrols are designed to monitor "foreign military aircraft that enter the anti-aircraft defense zone."—Al Jazeera

Switzerland Votes for New Surveillance Powers
Swiss voters have given a strong approval for a law granting the intelligence agencies new surveillance powers. Just over 65 percent of voters agreed to accept the proposal, which would allow authorities to tap phones, snoop on email, and deploy hidden cameras and bugs. Opponents feared it will erode civil liberties. —BBC News

Everything Else

Arnold Palmer Dies at 87
Golf legend Arnold Palmer, a seven-time major champion, has died in Pittsburgh at the age of 87. President Obama said he was "as extraordinary on the links as he was generous to others. Thanks for the memories, Arnold." —USA Today

Drake Releases New Short Film
Drake has dropped his latest short film, Please Forgive Me, five days before its scheduled release. The film, based off of his fourth album VIEWS, is directed by Rihanna collaborator Anthony Mandler. —Noisey

Obama to Talk Climate Change with DiCaprio
The president will meet with Leonardo DiCaprio next month to discuss climate change, followed by a screening of the actor's documentary Before the Flood. The talk will be part of the "South by South Lawn" events at the White House. —TIME

Miami Marlins Pitcher Killed in Boating Accident
Marlins player José Fernández has been killed in a boating accident off the coast of Miami, the US Coast Guard has announced. "Sadly, the brightest lights are often the ones that extinguish the fastest," said Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria. —ESPN

First Presidential Votes Cast Before the First Debate
Some voters in Minnesota and South Dakota have already cast their votes in the presidential election, part of an expansion in early, in-person voting. Gwynn Rosen, a 66-year-old Minnesotan, said she was "excited to be one of the first women in the US voting for a woman." —VICE News

Turkish Company Builds Real Transformer
A Turkish company called Letvision has built a real-life transformer: a machine able to change itself from a 2013 BMW to an upright robot. Letvision has not yet set a price for its "Letrons." —Motherboard

Trevor Noah took the helm of The Daily Show after Jon Stewart, the beloved host for 16 years, decided to retire. As the South African stand-up comedian approaches his first anniversary on September 28 as the new face of the Comedy Central institution, we decided it was the perfect time to take a peek behind-the-scenes and see how he is settling into his new digs.

The Daily Show with Trevor Noah is a much bigger production than you'd think from just watching it on TV. Each episode is crafted in a studio in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen neighborhood over the course of ten intense hours. The days start with Noah and his team of collaborators in the writers' room, where they hammer out and workshop ideas. And it ends a few feet away on a sound stage with Noah behind a desk, telling jokes to a live audience of more than 200 fans and more than 7 million viewers across the internet and TV.

To capture all of that insanity, we sent along super talented New York–based photographer Meron Menghistab, who was able to capture some really intimate moments with Noah. Despite the harrowing job of turning our apocalyptic news cycle into something funny, the one thing that's clear when you scroll through Menghistab's photos is that Noah really loves what he does. And that's a great thing for us, because we want him to keep doing it forever.

—Words by Matthew James-Wilson

Where it begins. Photo via Flickr user Jessica Spengler

Ever since I started university, people have told me I sound funny when I drink. When I'm sober, I have a normal Toronto accent (it's Tuh-raw-no). But not long into a night of barhopping or sneakily drinking beers in late night classes, some of my friends claim to hear an Eastern European accent, though I was mostly told German (I'm German on my father's side). One person even interpreted it as sounding Spanish or Portuguese. All this made a little bit of sense to me, because I come from families who speak both German and a thick Guyanese Patois. I never really questioned it, since I couldn't hear it.

But I'm hardly the only one that gets asked about my accent when drinking.

This seems half-common among my friend group, with a lot of them being told about their "drunk accent" despite having just a boring ole Canadian accent during their times of sobriety. My one friend says that girls hit on him at the bar mostly because they think he's Irish. Which makes me think of the Aussie accent, which is apparently said to be the result of their ancestors being hammered all the time, sending their drunken slurs into the future of the Australian modern language. There has to be something to drinking and accents, right?

So I used my journalism skills and decided to put my anecdotal evidence to the test of science, and asked experts if it is actually possible to get an accent when you're drunk. I spoke with some speech scientists and linguistics experts, who all said basically the same thing: research so far shows that it would be nearly impossible to gain an accent from drinking, but you're more likely to be able to imitate accents better. So no, you don't "acquire" a true accent from being drunk. But it might explain why you start sounding like your grandmother from Newfoundland, your friend who says "appy" instead of appetizer from West Van, or some northern Ontario hockey bro who drops "give'r" into casual conversation. You might even start speaking with more features of your first language.

"When people change their speech it is not because they are doing it voluntarily, or because they're learning this, it is a natural consequence of the effects of alcohol on the motor system," says David Pisoni, from the Speech Research Laboratory in Indiana University. "I would say that's sort of imaginary or false attribution."

As for the stories about being able to talk like your family, or go back to your mother tongue—that makes a little more sense. Pisoni said your first language has more neural circuits and are more broadly distributed over multiple parts of your brain, this makes your first language strongly cemented in you.

On top of that, when you're drunk, you tend to go to a comfortable place in your mind, and relax. Which could mean that you use a more varied speech or even use vocabulary that you might not otherwise use in the real, sober world.

"It's the same thing in terms of cursing, people will start cursing in their first language. In fact after people have a stroke, they very often lose their second language but hold on to aspects of their first language, their native language," said Pisoni.

Research about "drunk accents" doesn't really exist out there—but research has been done on what humans sound like when they drink. Our volume changes, our pitch varies way more, and we can't help but slur our words. We tend to mess up our "s" and "sh" sounds as well as our Rs and Ls. These minor speech impediments are what could be mistaken for accents depending on the individual.

"I think David like foreign accented speech, but some of them don't, so it wasn't like all of a sudden they became Spanish accented speakers of English. It's just properties of their speech changed that were perceived as being foreign."

Anyway, to answer the question about getting an accent when you're drunk—you probably don't get a real accent. You're probably just talking like a drunk person.

Follow Sierra Bein on Twitter.

Some happy millennial-looking people at a Glamour/Facebook event at the Democratic National Convention. Photo by Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images for Glamour

Young people should love Hillary Clinton. Really! Earlier this year, a USA Today/Rock the Vote poll of under-35s found that they wanted America to transition to clean energy; so does Clinton. In that poll, 82 percent of millennials wanted background checks for all gun sales; Clinton wants more background checks too. Clinton has promised to give tons of people debt-free college and let student debtors refinance their loans. And if all that isn't enough, she showed up on Broad City. What more could we want?

The answer from millennials is obviously "something else." Though she's winning the youth vote—41 percent of voters under 30 support her versus 23 percent for Donald Trump, according to the latest Reuters numbers—her numbers pale in comparison to Barack Obama, who secured over 60 percent of the under-30 vote in 2008. The issue isn't her opponent, as Trump is despised by young people across the political spectrum; they simply aren't ready for Hillary either, with substantial chunks supporting Libertarian Gary Johnson or Green Jill Stein.

That's why Clinton should take the advice of teen magazines everywhere: Be herself. That means keeping the policy but dropping the attempts to be cool. "Herself" is boring, nerdy, diligent, and kind of lame. She should embrace it.

This might seem contradictory, but Clinton has been trying to seem hip and cool for months, and it mostly hasn't worked. Her recent Between Two Ferns interview was stilted and weird, especially compared to Zach Galifianakis's interview with Obama, who clearly loves comedic chops-busting where Clinton merely tolerates it. The Broad City episode was funnier, but mostly because there was a pegging reference involved. At worst, Clinton's youth-outreach efforts have come off as naked pandering, like her op-ed for capital-M millennial outfit Mic, titled, no joke, "Here's What Millennials Have Taught Me."

More than being told how great they are, however, millennials love authenticity. Today's version of "authentic" may be carefully posed and filtered, but one's carefully curated version of themselves at least in theory projects out aspects of one's inner self. (You are the kind of person who is close to nature and enjoys the physical exertion of a hike; you are the kind of person who is indulgent and pleasure-focused and eats a different-colored ice cream cone every day; you are very sophisticated, which is why your entire Instagram feed is a single color palette.)

She should stop trying to appeal to the kids by being cool, and instead be exactly who she is: A thoroughly un-hip middle-aged woman who is probably smarter than you and definitely smarter than her opponent.

This Hillary Clinton can do. She has been in the public eye for so much of her life, and shape-shifted to meet ever-changing expectations for women in politics, that she may not even know who she really is anymore. It doesn't matter. There's one through-line of her life she can double down on: She's a nerd. She should stop trying to appeal to the kids by being cool, and instead be exactly who she is: A thoroughly un-hip middle-aged woman who is probably smarter than you and definitely smarter than her opponent. She will think seriously about every decision she makes, who will make sure her solutions are workable rather than just exciting, and who will dig in and get stuff done. She is, at heart, Lisa Simpson. You wouldn't necessarily put Lisa on a T-shirt, but you'd definitely put her in the Oval Office before you'd elect Bart.

Wonky Hillary, of course, runs the risk of playing into another pop-culture stereotype, that of Tracy Flick: the ambitious, cutthroat know-it-all who sits in the front row and raises her hand a little too often. But this isn't the same world in which Clinton grew up, where highly educated women routinely faced unequal treatment at school, the derision of their male peers, and even constrained marital prospects. It's still an uphill battle for the smart girl, but there's a wider path than ever: Women outnumber men on college campuses, girls outperform boys in high school, and college-educated women are now more likely to get married than women without a degree. Young people are used to seeing smart girls and women dominate in the classroom and remain well-liked by their peers. Intelligence, and outright nerdiness, is far less of a liability than it used to be.

Democrats have been running away from the egghead stereotype for decades, while meanwhile the Republican Party's anti-intellectualism has bizarrely been an electoral boon. The American right has convinced much of the country that wanting to have a beer with someone is just as important as that someone being able to make complex, rational decisions, that being a straight talker who doesn't bow to political correctness is just as desirable as having an actual plan to run the country. That is a fundamentally stupid position, and Clinton should say so. The president doesn't need to be cool. We'd all be better off if our leader was more excited by the minutiae of policy and the detailed work of being a politician than by the public spectacle of an election. This is Clinton: She is bad at running for office but very good at holding it.

Clinton isn't as exciting a candidate as Trump. Nor is she as pure as a third-party candidate running not to win but to make a neat ideological point—supporting her lacks the idealistic sheen of being able to say, "Actually, I'm voting for Jill Stein." But no candidate has her intellect or her dedication to the boring work of governance. It may not be the most exhilarating campaign strategy, but to rope in young voters, it could be a winning one. Clinton should take a page from Trump's straight-talk strategy and tell it like it is: When it comes to the person who holds the nuclear codes, a know-it-all is infinitely better than a know-nothing.

Jill Filipovic is a journalist and author of the forthcoming The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness.

Demonstrators rally for Homa Hoodfar's release in Montreal on Sept. 21, 2016. Ryan Remiorz/Canadian Press

Homa Hoodfar, a Canadian university professor who was imprisoned in Iran for over 100 days, charged with "collaboration with a hostile government" and accused of "dabbling in feminism," has been released on humanitarian grounds, according to an Iranian news report.

Monday night is, weirdly, a pivotal night in US history. For the first time in a campaign that has lasted for 16 long months, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton will take the stage at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, for 90 minutes of honest-to-God debate. After months of trading insults at rallies, in campaign ads, and on Twitter, we will get to see them go face-to-face. Who handles who could determine the election, and, if you want to get hyperbolic—it's undeniably in fashion—the future of American democracy.

During the Republican primary debates, Trump amplified the reality show tendencies these events naturally had, bullying the other candidates and making the race all about him. He gave America what we so viciously crave: entertainment. In the other corner, we have Clinton, the first female major party nominee for the White House, who proved her own skill in a series of primary debates against Bernie Sanders where she effectively scored points and convinced Democratic voters that she was what a president looked like.

The reason this will likely be the most-watched debate in history is that the two candidates have such contrasting styles. Can Trump's bravado and bluster hold up for an hour and a half? Will he be able to talk policy specifics, or, at least, convince voters he knows what he's talking about? Will Clinton allow any of Trump's insults to get under her skin? Can she finally do what no Republican has done before, and expose Trump for being a small-minded bigot and bully?

Here's a breakdown of what to expect from Clinton, Trump, and moderator Lester Holt.

Hillary Clinton

It's been maddening to watch Clinton's campaign lately. Her campaign bungled the release of a pneumonia diagnosis, which fed right into two of Trump's criticisms: the candidate's trustworthiness and allegations of her secretly poor health. She followed that up with her "basket of deplorables" comment that allowed Trump to paint her as effectively dismissing a quarter of Americans as "irredeemable" racists. Then polls showed that her support among millennials and Hispanics is short of where Barack Obama was in '08 and '12. As Trump began to gain serious ground both nationally and in key states, you could almost hear liberals everywhere bookmarking long-term Airbnbs in Alberta.

But as has been the case for months, the pendulum soon swung back the other way. The Obamas, Sanders, and liberal hero Elizabeth Warren stumped on her behalf, and the press became focused on Trump's whole birther thing, the dodginess of his foundation, and his failure to release his tax returns.

Clinton has plenty of experience debating in both crowds and one-on-one, stretching back to the 2008 Democratic primary. Back then (as she does now), she touted her experience and policy knowledge; Obama pursued the by-now-familiar tactic of painting her as a politician who changed her views as the winds shifted.

But sometimes, this wonkiness works—in debates against Sanders this year, Clinton made the Vermont senator come off tongue-tied on complex issues like gun control and foreign policy while she stayed confident and calm. Her greatest debate weakness remains her habit of seeming slippery. This election, one of Clinton's worst moments was her response to Sanders's claim that she was too cozy with Wall Street. In response, she offered a platitude about being a New York senator on 9/11 as the reason she was close to the banks.

Last week, Democrats shared some advice for Clinton with Politico, the sum of which was let Trump lose all by himself. The best example of Clinton capitalizing on her opponent's mistakes is her famous exchange with Republican Rick Lazio in the 2000 New York Senate debate. Lazio, a sort of proto-Trump, OD'ed on macho-ism when he walked over to Clinton's podium and aggressively demanded she sign a pledge against soft money in politics. All Clinton had to do was stand there and smirk to herself as Lazio's campaign self-immolated.

For all their heft and hype, debates are generally remembered for one or two moments like that—if Clinton keeps her composure and lets Trump take the low road, she might emerge on the other side with a viral clip that's remembered until November. If Clinton's vulnerabilities are obvious, so is her mission in the debate: Don't fuck up.

Donald Trump

It's easy to reduce Trump to caricature: a blabbermouth who is his own worst enemy and says whatever insult comes into his head. But in the Republican debates he had a few incredibly savvy turns. In the first one, he bragged about buying politicians, in the process offering one of the most effective, easy-to-digest distillations of corporate control in Washington. Tellingly, no one onstage could rebut him. Later in the campaign, he easily gutted Ted Cruz when the latter used "New York values" as an insult.

But this isn't the primaries anymore. Trump has never faced off against a single opponent for 90 minutes, and in those early debates, he was speaking to, and about, Republicans. On Monday, Trump will have tens of millions of eyeballs on him—most of whom do not agree with some of his staple policies. So, Trump will need to make sense of those positions, draw stark lines between himself and Clinton, and introduce himself to Americans who may not really know what he's all about.

Expect him to lean hard on his "America First" message and repeat his claim that Clinton is "the chief emissary for globalism." Trump's whole message is that he can keep the US safe: safe from immigrants, safe from terrorism, safe from the unpredictable shifts of the global economy. According to him, Clinton doesn't actually care about ordinary people and is more concerned with helping foreigners, the DC elite, and corporations. But for this to be effective, he'll have to seem like the sort of man who really could keep Americans safe—not a nutjob, in other words, and not a name-caller.

"If she treats me with respect," Trump told Bill O'Reilly recently, "I'll treat her with respect." But it's hard to believe that will happen, especially given the fact that the former reality TV star created a mini controversy by joking (?) about inviting Bill Clinton's former mistress Gennifer Flowers to the debate. Not to mention, Roger Ailes, the former CEO of FOX news, has been prepping Trump for the big showdown. Ailes's old network made Clinton conspiracies a cottage industry, obsessing over everything from Whitewater to Benghazi. If he's whispering into Trump's ear, mud-slinging should be expected.

Lester Holt

The third character in this two-person play is the media, which by and large has struggled to cover Trump. Initially, the press portrayed him as a curiosity. And now that he's for real, there remain a host of questions about how to deal with him. Does the focus on his many, many controversies drive a cycle of mutual dependency? Is it appropriate to cover him the same way you do Clinton? How much should interviewers challenge Trump when he says something that isn't true?

On Monday, the media will be represented by Lester Holt, NBC News's soft-spoken, modest anchor. It didn't take long for Trump to question Holt's legitimacy as a moderator, calling him a Democrat—even though it was later revealed that Holt, in fact, is a registered Republican, a rather tidy summary of Trump's habits of finger-pointing and inaccuracy.

Even when moderators fade into the background, they have enormous power to shape the content of debates. All eyes are on Holt now: How deep will he dig into issues like Trump's tax returns and charitable spending, or Clinton's never-ending email scandal? Challenging Trump on this stuff would earn plenty of accolades from the left, but voters also need to know where the candidates differ on topics from ISIS to immigration to infrastructure. Left to their own devices, Clinton and Trump could snipe at each other's failings all night—which is why they can't be left to their own devices. So if this freak show needs anything, it's a ringmaster.

Follow John Surico on Twitter.

'We just upgraded,' Sarah Blyth says of the new-and-improved tent.

Clean needles, chairs, naloxone, a couple people trained in CPR, and shelter from the rain. These are the basic elements of a do-it-yourself supervised injection site, so says the operator of a back alley "harm reduction tent" recently opened in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

One of the tent's founders, Sarah Blyth, told VICE the site is a response to the neighbourhood's opiate overdose epidemic. Blyth, who also helps run the weekly Downtown Eastside street vendor markets, said she and other frontline workers wanted to set up something more consistent and street-level after hearing calls for help in the streets.

"You're in the middle of it, you're seeing people ODing, and you just can't believe that there isn't more help," she told VICE.

"At our market, you would hear people screaming from the alley," Blyth said, recalling a race to track down the opiate-blocking drug naloxone, which the province recently deregulated, and get it to the ODing person. "We would scramble to get everything together, we didn't want to be late for this kind of thing."

The tent is covering gaps left by Vancouver's safe injection site Insite, which Blyth says is "packed" and unable to respond to street-level emergencies. "It's not Insite, it's not supposed to function as Insite," she said.

Vancouver Coastal Health has pledged to open two new safe injection sites by next year, but Blyth isn't waiting for the government to step in. "When you're dealing with emergencies like this, there's no time to wait for the government bureaucracy to do its job."

Blyth set up the tent with Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU) founder Ann Livingston last Wednesday, and so far city and health authorities haven't given them any trouble. Even as the royal circus passed down Hastings Street a half-block away, with a heightened security presence at the street market, Blyth continued her harm reduction project uninterrupted.

Blyth and Livingston have been supervising injections and handing out harm reduction supplies from 10 AM to 4 PM every day since, with between 25 and 40 people stopping by each day—some shooting up, others taking rigs for the road. On the day social assistance cheques went out, they stayed open until 9 PM.

The same day it opened, British Columbia's coroner released new stats that showed fentanyl is showing up in recreational drugs, as well as street-level opiates. The super-potent synthetic opioid has caused over 60 percent of overdose deaths across the province in 2016. So far this year, overdoses have killed nearly 500 people.

Read More: Cocaine Is Detected in Almost Half of BC Fentanyl Overdose Deaths

Blyth says fentanyl has made overdoses more deadly, requiring frontline workers to respond quicker. When a batch of bad drugs is in circulation, she says the back alleys around Hastings can turn into a "warzone" where many people in a row go under, sometimes within minutes of each other.

"They go down a lot harder, and it's harder to get them out of that. You need more Narcan , a lot more," she told VICE. "A few minutes can mean everything—they could end up in intensive care or in a way worse situation."

"With heroin you would get them Narcan and some air and they're fine, but this is two, three Narcans later and they're still down."

With the opiate crisis across the country showing no signs of slowing down, Blyth suggested the pop-up response tent could be replicated in other hard-hit communities.

Follow Sarah Berman on Twitter.

Photo by author.

Health professionals are calling for government action after a new study found a majority of Ontario university students feel debilitating levels of anxiety and depression, with some contemplating suicide.

The first of three presidential debates will take place Monday night, and if you're broke and don't have cable, fear not—there are all sorts of easy and free ways to stream it if you want to revel in the sad existential nightmare that this election has become.

YouTube will be livestreaming the debate simultaneously on three different channels—Bloomberg News, Washington Post, and NBC. Twitter and Facebook will also have streams.

Trump and Clinton will duke it out at Hofstra University in New York starting at 9 PM EST. It's just the two of them up onstage this time around, since none of the third-party candidates could wrangle the necessary polling numbers to qualify for a podium.

That's not to say there won't be any exciting special guests, though. After Hillary Clinton invited Mark Cuban, the billionaire who has publicly railed against Trump in the past, to take a front-row seat for the debate, Trump said he'd give a seat to Gennifer Flowers in response. (Flowers had an affair with Bill Clinton while he was the governor of Arkansas.)

Trump's campaign has since stated that Flowers won't be in the audience, but this whole thing is already gearing up to be a nauseating shitshow. At least we have plenty of ways to livestream the total unraveling of our current political system, free of charge. What a world!

Watch the debate via YouTube above or check it out on Facebook and Twitter.

Read: Fuck This Election

A lot has changed on The Daily Show since Trevor Noah took over for Jon Stewart last year. For starters, Noah put a black barber on the Comedy Central payroll and had a small makeup room converted into a "barber shop," since no one on staff knew what to do with his hair. Changes like this are part of a bigger process of Noah redefining the seminal program with a nature and sensibility that is all his own.

Replacing Stewart, who spent 16 years at the helm of The Daily Show, would be a tough task for any comedian. As Noah explains, before he could make The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, he had to first learn how to make The Daily Show with Jon Stewart . Now that he's got the hang of things, the 32-year-old Johannesburg-native is looking to use his platform as a way to reshape what a talk-show host should look and sound like.

This week, the comedian will be celebrating his first anniversary as the host of The Daily Show and covering his first presidential debate. Given the landmark occasions, it seemed like the perfect time to sit down with Noah in his "barber shop"—while he got a line up and a BET special on Tupac played in the background—and talk about The Daily Show's evolution.

VICE: What were you working on in South Africa before you were picked to host The Daily Show ?
Trevor Noah: I had a late-night show back in South Africa. I did that for a bit, but it was a weekly show. But I mostly just focused on stand-up. I started touring internationally, so I was going around the world and trying to build up audiences in different countries and different continents. Everything else was on the back burner. I focused 100 percent on stand-up.

How did what you were doing prepare you for The Daily Show, and what were you still unprepared for?
I think stand-up prepares you for all of it. Stand-up prepares you for an audience; stand-up prepares you for conversations you need to have; stand-up even prepares you for backlash or criticism because that's what stand-up is. Everything I did before was the road to getting here, but this is just on a higher scale. I always say, "It's like I was playing in high school or college sports, and this is major league." You can prepare all you want, but you're now in a completely different league with different criticisms, different competition, and different objectives. It changes everything.

"I actually find it easier when it's difficult. When it's difficult that means it's layered. And when it's layered, it means there's stuff to work with."

What things were you already aware of, that you knew you wanted to change about the show to make it your own?
I think it's just different ways of telling stories. I love playing with sketches. I love doing segments that go beyond just parody of news. I like exploring more pre-shot segments. So it's literally just about finding ideas that go with what I'm thinking and trying to coalesce my ideas with something that is happening out there and what I can actually do.

It's weird, because it's so gradual, and it's such an evolution. When you look at the day-to-day, you don't see much of a difference. But then if you were to go back a year or even six months, you're just like, "Wow! That's a big jump. We've changed how we've done that and we've changed how we've done that and we do that in a completely different way." I just try to change a small thing every week.

What are some of those things you've changed?
It's everything. How the show is presented, the way the information is worked through, the way I construct an argument, the way I engage in a news story, the way I make a joke. I've come into a space where people expect a joke to be told a certain way. I have a completely different style! People expect you to take the angle that they would expect you to take. Working through that and teaching people in the building as well—having writers who have to learn my way of doing things is very difficult. I haven't taken that for granted. I'm different in every way. Think about it: You have a young, mixed-race, South African guy coming in. How do you even begin to write for that?

What was it like having to assert that?
I think time has been my biggest friend. It's about connecting with the people. One thing I've always been really lucky that it's a building filled with really, really nice people. Enjoying the people who you're with and enjoying creating the show is—I feel—as important to working hard on the show. That enjoyment comes through to the audience. They're like, "Oh, you guys had fun while you were making this."

"We can all make a joke about Trump. But can you use comedy to process information in and around social injustice?"

Earlier this summer, you guys had an episode covering the fatal shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. What do you guys do when you start off the day in the writers' room, and you realize you have to write around something that is difficult to talk about?
I actually find it easier when it's difficult. When it's difficult that means it's layered. And when it's layered, it means there's stuff to work with. I find it harder when it's simple. When Trump comes out and just says a thing—Trump oftentimes seems like he's parodying himself. How do you now go about tackling that? If you were to go, "OK, what would Trump do after hearing that planes have flown into the Twin Towers. What would Trump do?" Then you would joke and say, "He would probably brag and say now he's got the second tallest building in New York." You're like, "That's funny." But then the clip comes out of him actually doing that! Now what do you say? How do you take that to the next level?

We can all make a joke about Trump. But can you use comedy to process information in and around social injustice? Can you use comedy to process information in and around racial discourse? That's where it gets interesting for me.

On VICELAND: Eric Andre Joins Action Bronson to Watch 'Ancient Aliens':

Are there things that you knew you wanted to focus on more with the show that affected the way the writers started writing?
I think the biggest thing was just trying to bring in a level of multiculturalism. The one thing I acknowledged when I got here was that the show was very white. And not in a negative way. It just was what it was. It was also understanding that white is, by and large, the default in America. It's not even called white—it's just, "That's America!" I remember the first time someone said, "Oh, that episode had a lot of black jokes in it." And I said, "What are black jokes? What does that mean? Was I doing white jokes in the other episode? Cause no one ever came to me and said that." Then I realized that I'm living in this world where there is this default, and that default has a face and that default has a sound. There are even people who go, "Oh, I'm open-minded, I don't mind." But then when they watch you, they go, "This is weird. This is wrong. This face, this accent, this is wrong. This is not how this should be."

So the biggest thing I had to and learn is that I should say, "Don't be afraid to ask me questions. Explore my world. Enjoy my blackness. Enjoy the fact that you are working with someone who can tell you about a different world." I tell these people stories about being African or growing up in a black family all of the time, to give them perspective and to share ideas. I feel like this is my space—the workplace—and if it doesn't happen here, where is it going to happen? If my writers have a greater understanding of the world, and it's diversity, they'll be better equipped to make jokes about it.

Totally. The fact that your show exists in the mainstream way that it does, it forces everyone to reconsider what that default is. But, for a lot of people, they can finally relate to what you're saying more easily than most things on television.
Yes. You don't have to try to put yourself in a person's shoes. You're just like, "Oh, those are my shoes."

That's why I get happy when you have like a Samantha Bee; that's why I get happy when you have our show. You need that! I see people go on these weird tangents where they compare us, and I'm just like, "Why do you guys try to make us enemies?" The whole point is supposed to be that people have voices. Why do you only want one voice to represent everyone? I want Sam Bee to be more into women's issues because she's going to be stronger on them. She's not trying to understand them—she is them.

Do you ever face pushback from the network around stuff you want to include on the show?
Never. If anything, the network will push me even further. They go, "More! We want more of you!" Sometimes, for me, I get afraid. I remember we did three episodes—not even back-to-back—three episodes in the space of a few months about Black Lives Matter and police protests and so on. You should have seen how many messages we got from people saying, "Oh, is this all that this show is about now? Is it just black-this and black-that?" But then you go like, "Wait, if I do a piece about the Keystone pipeline for five episodes, you guys... Nothing?" It's because that is seen as a fringe issue.

Someone literally said, "All you guys talk about on the show is Trump and police brutality." And I said, "Trump I will give to you, because this guy has been the centerpiece of the campaign and there's no media that's been able to avoid him. But for you to say Trump and police brutality in the same sentence means you're implying that 100-plus episodes that have maybe contained Trump is the same as six or seven maybe that have contained any reference to police brutality. That is the level that you have in your mind? Hearing about Trump 100 times is as irritating to you as hearing about police brutality six times?" Wow. That's a problem.

I also realize what happens is—and this is something I'll work at changing in my world—people want you to move on as if the story has ended. People want you to move on as if "All right, we gave it the attention that it deserves. Now we're done. Did we express outrage? Yeah. Did we attempt to eviscerate it? Yeah. Well, let's move on now." But the thing's not fixed. Is Flint fixed? We're still having a water crisis there.

Are there things that you feel responsibility to talk about or make your show about, since you have this platform?
When I started the show, I was just like, "Oh, it's just a show where you get to make jokes about what's happening in the world and on the news." I then came to realize that the show comes with a responsibility and that responsibility is to speak to what is happening around you. Now I've evolved to the place where I've realized it's not a responsibility; it's an opportunity. Which, for me, is even more humbling. You sit and you realize: How many people have an opportunity to help people? How many people have an opportunity to provide solace? How many people have an opportunity to try and build something with people? Whether it's a bridge or discourse or a movement or whatever it is.

Follow Matthew James-Wilson on Instagram.

Some stories are spread for their strangeness. Take, for example, the story of famed actress Choi Eun-hee and filmmaker Shin Sang-ok, who were kidnapped in 1978 by North Korean agents of notorious dictator Kim Jong-il. It's a well-known story in Korea and serves as the subject of a 2015 book, A Kim Jong-il Production, along with coverage by NPR's This American Life and other media outlets worldwide. At the time they were abducted, Choi and Shin were divorced, and Shin had a relationship with a younger actress. Choi was kidnapped while on what she believed was a business trip to Hong Kong. Her disappearance became major news, and when Shin followed to look for her, a colleague who turned out to be a North Korean agent betrayed him. In Pyongyang, Kim Jong-il kept Choi in (relative) comfort, at his side, parading her around cocktail parties. But Shin, who tried to escape, was sent to a prison camp, tortured, and "reeducated" for four years. Once the couple were finally reunited, Kim revealed his plan: He wanted the couple to make North Korea famous for film, and he gave them a blank check to make the films they'd always wanted.

The new documentary The Lovers and the Despot, made by filmmakers Robert Cannan and Ross Adam, centers on interviews with Choi and secret tapes the couple recorded of Kim Jong-il, in which Kim implies that they were kidnapped on his orders and asks questions like why North Korean films always show someone crying. The tapes also include Shin debating escape. Dramatization of the story is provided both by grainy Super-8 reconstructions and by scenes from the couple's actual films: lush, groundbreaking works, such as the first North Korean film ever about romantic love. Cannan and Adam describe The Lovers and the Despot as a film about filmmaking and the dilemma of getting everything you ever wanted—except freedom. After nearly a decade in captivity, the couple finally made their break in 1986, during a trip to Vienna, where they managed to obtain political asylum from the US. They eventually resettled in Los Angeles, where Shin worked in Hollywood under a pseudonym before dying in 2004.

Stories like The Lovers and the Despot will always be interesting cocktail party fodder. The facts about the Kim regime only ever seem to add up to more mystery. The film presents the spectacle of both the lovers and the despot, though it falters in its exploration of the consequences of their collision. It doesn't fully turn the strangeness of what happened into the drama of how it affected Choi and Shin's lives, art, and love.

I recently spoke over the phone with Cannan and Adam to talk about their film, the power of storytelling, and the unlikely scenario of a dictator playing cupid.

Image via Magnolia Pictures

VICE: What drew you personally to this story?
Robert Cannan: It's a story about a director. Of course there are some wild tales from Hollywood, but we'd never come across anything quite this outlandish set in the world of cinema. But it was also just this Faustian story of temptation and knowing just how hard it is to make films and in particular how hard it is to finance films. It was an interesting moral question for us to ponder, like how far would you go to make films. And particularly if you buy the idea that Shin went willingly, which we were open to in the beginning.

The story I heard in Korea seemed to be about Kim Jong-il's obsession with the actress, Choi—the film seems much more focused on Shin?
Cannan: I wonder maybe if that's in particular because Choi, being an actress, is even more famous than Shin. Shin was very famous, but because she is an actress, that's the story everyone knows. It's like saying, Marilyn Monroe or Elizabeth Taylor, that time that they were kidnapped and taken to another country. So maybe that's why? We really saw it as a story about three characters. The initial hook for us was about this actress and this director, but quite quickly we realized that had died and Choi was alive and she would be telling this story. For us it was really a triangle about these three people getting tangled up together.

How did you get the tapes?
Ross Adam: We had known that there was a taped confession, but we only knew of one initially. It was only late on in the production that we managed to get full translations of the rest of these tapes and only then did we realize that quite a lot of material between Kim and Choi was sometimes trivial business, production and minutiae, and sometimes very interesting aspects of Kim Jong-il's character and the game playing between Shin and Kim. But even more important, during that time we found a recording of Shin whispering in Japanese—covertly, while he's captured in North Korea—where he tells the whole story from beginning to end, including this moment where he's weighing up whether he should stay or go, whether he should betray Kim Jong-il, and that became a crucial part of the story.

It sounds like you're saying that part of what you were interested in was whether or not he had a willing and active part to play here?
Cannan: There are certainly times when you hear Shin on the tape where he sounds like he's a bit brainwashed, he sounds like he's becoming brainwashed, but also he was a very clever, calculating guy himself. Going back to the idea of the game, he would later claim that this was always his plan, to get close to Kim to escape. Of course that's a convenient excuse and exactly what he would say, but with Shin you could also believe that. So it's very hard for us to gauge exactly to what extent Shin was a willing participant beyond just wanting to make films there.

In the film he looked more clearly unwilling?
Adam: We always wanted to engage with the idea of these perhaps untrustworthy sources. Choi is an actress—should we trust her, is what we're seeing a performance? Kim Jong-il is of course a dictator, chief propagandist of North Korea—he cannot be trusted at all. And Shin is the master storyteller, his whole career is built around that. Through the tape recordings, our position did evolve. We present the material as objectively as we can. must decide, but the recording of Kim Jong-il apparently confessing or at least implying that he had brought them over for these reasons and kept them prisoner is pretty clear.

Directors Robert Cannan and Ross Adam. Photos courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

At the beginning of the film, there's this very interesting love triangle set-up, which obviously can't be continued when Choi and Shin are captured. But once they're reunited, the love story seems to give way to Kim Jong-il. Was this a decision to switch the focus, or was it a decision based more on what information you had from the interviews?
Cannan: Again, it was a tricky balance to tell a story that is sort of multi-genre, in the sense that we wanted to tell a thriller, but we also wanted the romance thread in there as well. For us, it was too amazing not to have this romance element, the fact that their relationship ended in a very melodramatic way and they were reunited in a most unusual way, by a dictator playing cupid. If it wasn't for Kim Jong-il, they may never have gotten back together, and if it wasn't for Shin having gone through all of these horrific experiences in a prison camp in his attempts to find Choi, she may never have forgiven him for his past infidelities. We wanted this romantic moment where they're reunited, and then from that point they're back to where they were, perhaps in a stronger way, as this great filmmaking team. We felt that we wanted the build-up to the finale in the film to play out more like a thriller, because it is an escape sequence and it becomes an escape story from that point.

Has there been any Korean reaction to the film?
Cannan: Do you mean both North and South?

I'm assuming nobody in North Korea is going to get to watch this movie, so just the South.
Cannan: In South Korea, it's actually coming out a day before the US and the UK, so we'll find out then. Certainly it's causing quite a stir there since it's quite a controversial story. Many people still doubt Shin's story. I think it's been making primetime news on all of the major TV stations. It's gone a bit crazy out there.

What are your hopes for people to take away from the film?
Adam: It's a film about storytellers. It's a film that shows there's really a power to storytelling. Why would Kim Jong-il wish to kidnap a director in the first place? Yes, he's perhaps a very strange, peculiar individual. how film can shape hearts and minds, which is what Korea and Kim Jong-il are all about. In that way, it shows a very strange example of the importance of film. But also we want to show an aspect of the terrible beauty of North Korea. It's not just a wacky place. The film ends with people crying, and it's a very strange tone. Why are they crying? Partly because they are upset, a kind of transference. Partly because they're being forced to. There's a potency to these images that I think sometimes is robbed in Western media, which is all too ready just to caricature North Korea. These are real people, even if they are performing.
Cannan: It's also very important for us to put these images at the end of the film. The very last thing you see is Kim Jong-un. We want people to realize, they may hopefully have enjoyed being told a crazy intriguing story that's happened in the past, but the story of North Korea is certainly not over. People are still enduring the same kind of horrors right now as they were back then, when our story took place.

And as Ross said, the power of storytelling. I think this is a useful way of trying to understand why North Korea has been so successful and how they've managed to control their populace for so long, for so many decades, for three dynastic successions of father to son. And that ability to get people to believe in stories can be a wonderful thing in cinema and art and text, but can also be a terrifyingly dangerous thing, and we're not necessarily so far from that with modern-day politics in the West. There are things to think about and relevancies to today.

As Western filmmakers making a film about Korea, how do you think of a film differently if it's a story you're less familiar with or are less at stake in culturally? Is there a difference in how you were thinking about it or creating it?
Cannan: Maybe. Some South Koreans may watch the film, and they may say we didn't go into enough detail about the South Korean politics in the 70s that Shin got tangled up in. To them that's really important because it's part of their history. But, for us, we did think about going into more detail with that part of the story, but really it would have just been for those people. For anyone outside of South Korea, that would seem like incidental detail. To go into much more detail would be a disservice to the rest of the story, which we are trying to keep moving and keep people engaged with. I guess you have to just decide what is the most important part of the story you want to tell. And inevitably that is always going to leave out all kinds of things and details to the different parts of the story, and you're never going to be able to satisfy everyone.

Follow Matthew Salesses on Twitter.

The Lovers and the Despot is now playing in select theaters. Visit the film's website for more information.

Bob Schieffer between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney during the final 2012 debate Photo by Michael Reynolds-Pool/Getty Images

Journalists like to think of ourselves as central to the political process, but in truth not many of us ever have much of a chance at influencing the course of a campaign. Investigative reporting is vital and can uncover important truths about candidates, and interviews with the candidates sometimes serve as windows into their personalities, but few of these stories break through and actually change voters' minds. Arguably, the only time a member of the press has real power during an election cycle is when he or she is sitting literally between the candidates moderating one of the debates.

Bob Schieffer knows this role well. The veteran and venerated CBS newsman has been a journalist for most of his 79 years and interviewed every president since Richard Nixon; in 2008, he was literally named a "Living Legend" by the Library of Congress. Along the way, he moderated presidential debates in 2004, 2008, and 2012. Even for him, it was a pretty heavy burden to shoulder.

The nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates chooses the moderators at these events, but in order to stay above the political fray, it lets the moderators choose all the questions. This is a lot of responsibility—before the first debate he moderated, in 2004, Schieffer told me he had a nightmare where he ran out of things to ask George W. Bush and John Kerry even though there were 20 long minutes left in the debate. So like any good journalist he over-prepared, calling on think tank after think tank to briefed him on all the relevant subjects. For the last debate he moderated, between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, Schieffer had more than 300 questions ready to go—but once you're in the debate, he said, most of the questions are follow-ups anyway.

A moderator's follow-up questions—what they should be, and how aggressive they should be—have been at the center of a fairly heated debate in the media lately. Donald Trump's unique habit of making statements that are tossed-off jokes, half-cooked pieces of nonsense, or outright lies puts journalists interviewing him in a tricky spot: How much do you fact-check him and call him out when he says something verifiably untrue? During a debate, with practically the entire country watching, this responsibility is amped up—Hillary Clinton's campaign has already made it known it wants moderator Lester Holt to point out Trump's "lies."

Schieffer is of the opinion that in the best-case scenario, it's the other candidate who serves as the fact-checker. He's often compared the moderator's role to that of an "umpire," meaning it's not his place to insert himself into a debate. (Other former moderators agree.) He told me that you do have to be ready to fact-check if it's needed, but stressed that a moderator is all alone out there. A director may be speaking into the moderator's earpiece, but only to note how much time has elapsed and how many minutes each candidate has spoken for—there's no producer to feed you accurate information, as might happen during a regular interview. Saying a candidate is wrong about something—as moderator Candy Crowley did, controversially, to Romney in 2012—means going out on a limb.

Schieffer's umpire analogy is about more than just fact-checking. He compared the grousing about unfair questions that some candidates engage in (and was especially prevalent during last year's crowded GOP primary debates) to coaches "working the refs" in hopes of getting favorable calls later. When that happens, he said, you have to "laugh it off" and remind the angry candidate that the audience is there to watch them and that you, the moderator, aren't running for anything. "There's a lot of things you can say," Schieffer said.

As for what voters are watching for, Schieffer thinks that they "more or less know where each stands at this point"—the key thing is often the character of the candidates, which he says is more important in a presidential election, where voters want to know how a potential commander-in-chief reacts under pressure. That's part of the reason why the best questions from a moderator are "how" questions—how will Trump get those undocumented immigrants on the buses to deport them? How will Clinton pay for her ambitious tuition-free college plan? If a candidate can't handle those questions, that's a pretty big red flag.

Schieffer's one wish for this series of three debates is to get at least one where Trump and Clinton sit down at a table with the moderator, as Obama and John McCain did with Schieffer in 2008. That setting is more intimate and can serve as a check on the angriest rhetorical impulses. The 2008 campaign was very contentious, with plenty of negative ads, and as a result, "you could cut the tension with a knife," Schieffer said. There was a contrast between the two men up close too, with an "over-caffeinated" McCain facing off against Obama, who stared his opponent down, without taking notes, as the other man spoke. When he asked the candidates if they would repeat the claims their commercials had made about the other, both demurred, instead falling back on lines about it being a "tough campaign."

This campaign is even tougher, and Schieffer wonders if Trump and Clinton, who will be behind podiums, will even shake hands.

In the back-and-forth before the debate, Trump suggested that he'd prefer a format where there was no moderator. So I asked Schieffer why we need a moderator in the first place, and the reply was that without someone guiding the discussion, the two candidates would be too free to descend into a vindictive back-and-forth. "Can you imagine the Republican primary debates without a moderator?" Schieffer said. I could not.

So maybe the best analogy isn't a baseball umpire, who just stands around and occasionally calls balls and strikes, but a boxing referee, who is there to make sure all the blows are above the belt. I put that to Schieffer, and he paused.

"Hopefully it won't come to actual fisticuffs," he said.

Follow Harry Cheadle on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE Germany.

It's World Contraception Day, and of all the many appropriate ways to celebrate, using a few condoms is probably best. Condoms do not only offer safe sex; they can also be blown up as balloons, so they're clearly the most festive form of contraception. And if you think about it—really think about it—what is more festive than flavored condoms?

There's a retro feel/taste to flavored condoms: They're the kind you bought in the very early days of your sexual awakening, when you figured choosing flavored condoms over normal ones meant you were a fully formed, experienced, and adventurous sexual being. And you were hoping that that strawberry flavor would drown out the taste of cock you were a bit nervous and awkward about. But once you were 17 or 18 and sex started being actually fun, you soon forgot about them.

That might be a waste, though. Could smelling and tasting those flavored condoms again reawaken that wild and unbridled excitement you felt at 15 at just the idea of "sex"? To find out if it could work for us now, we decided to taste-test a few flavored condoms—blindfolded, with some relaxing tunes in the background. Though condoms are usually served at penis temperature, we tasted them at room temperature on phallic fruits and vegetables—which likely distorted our findings somewhat but was more appropriate in an office setting.

The Product: Green Mint (Fun Factory)

Taste Test: The dominant flavor is synthetic, not unlike licking a plastic picnic table. It leaves a very subtle minty aftertaste. As subtle as if we'd licked over the part of the picnic table, where someone stuck a chewing gum many months ago.

The Verdict: The condom may be a disappointment in terms of taste, but it makes up for it with plenty of fragrance. It reminded us of mojitos. If you add boiling water to the condom, the resulting brew actually tastes like peppermint tea. We would highly recommend that you bring the condom to a boil before use—or to get steamy in the sauna. 8/10

The Product: Marshmallow (ESP Enjoyable Safe Pleasure)

Taste Test: Strong, fruity sweetness relentless enough to resemble candy floss.

The Verdict: The pronounced floral, fragrant sweetness of this condom takes you by surprise. However, it lacks spice and character, which makes the flavor quite homogenous. It could be best likened to that of children's lip gloss. 7/10

The Product: Banana (Fun Factory)

Taste Test: It tastes like banana, for sure.

The Verdict: We'd prefer a little more sophistication; the perfume of this condom is about as subtle as toilet spray. Flavor-wise, it mimics a banana quite convincingly, but it's more banana-flavored jellybean, less fresh produce. A sexual adventure involving this condom would probably be like going down on a penis-size marshmallow in an over-perfumed toilet. 7/10

The Product: Raspberry (Secura Condoms)

Taste Test: Weak, nondescript flavor. It can be best likened to a piece of gum that has been chewed for a few days straight.

The Verdict: The flavor is a blend of rubber tires and kids' chewing gum. The test object's color is pale, which matches its weak taste. And it leaves a mineral aftertaste. 3/10

The Product: Peach/Orange (Secura Condoms)

Taste Test: This condom smells like the inside of a hookah lounge, and it tastes like those fizzy vitamin C tablets your grandma used to force on you.

The Verdict: At last, a condom to satisfy the gourmet palate! This flavor would be excellent for gummy bears too. Or cough sweets. Sadly, it vanished within half a minute. Ninety seconds in, we could no longer detect any flavor at all. The brevity of the gustatory experience lends credibility to our theory that these products are mainly aimed at teenagers, who are known to ejaculate within that timeframe. 8/10

The Product: Dark Chocolate (Fun Factory)

Taste Test: The flavor evokes vanilla air freshener in some teenage stoner's Vauxhall. The taste is rather unrefined, but it's the intensity of the aroma that made us feel like we are chewing an air freshener.

The Verdict: The cocoa flavor just did not meet our standards. Even with the visual aid of the condom's color, which is obviously meant to evoke chocolate, the brain refuses to imagine one is sucking on a chocolate bar. Perhaps this is a prudent safety measure against overly enthusiastic chocolate lovers with a pronounced bite reflex. The unfortunate result, however, was a taste akin to licking vanilla concentrate from a rubber hose. 4/10

The Product: Green Apple (Secura Condoms)

Taste Test: Neutral flavor, aroma reminiscent of fish and Hubba Bubba gum

The Verdict: The supposedly fruity flavor remained undetectable despite repeated sucking attempts. The rubber-like base flavor dominates and overwhelms not only the apple flavor, but everything else. The aromatic blend of fish and Hubba Bubba is unconvincing. We will not be recommending the manufacturer of this test object for a Michelin star. 2/10

Photo by Mia Kirby

This is The VICE Interview. Each week, we ask a different famous and/or interesting person the same set of questions in a bid to peek deep into his or her psyche.

Warpaint recently released its third album, Heads Up, which is both really good and a bit of a surprise, given that the band has been subject to a few split rumors recently. When I call the group's multicolored-haired, enigmatic bassist Jenny Lee Lindberg, she is brushing her teeth. "Hello?" she murmurs, toothbrush in mouth. She's at home in LA, getting ready to walk her dog, a Labradoodle called Pluto.

How many people have been in love with you?
I don't know. I mean, shit, I'd like to think that all of the boyfriends that I've had have been in love with me. At least at a certain point in time. I'm going to go with six. Is that a lot? I don't know. I've been in love with all the boyfriends I've had. I don't stay in love with them, but I've been in love with them.

What was your worst phase?
In retrospect, I would say when I was a senior in high school. I never went to school, but I got away with it. I didn't really want to be living in Reno anymore, which is where I'm from. I was onto the next... I wasn't very in the moment. I didn't really enjoy myself, and I wish I would have.

What conspiracy theory do you believe?
There was an interesting thing that I heard about David Bowie not actually dying when they said that he died. So that he could sort of see what would happen when he died and see how people were affected, and he was in fact going to die like two or three days later.

Jenny Lee, second from left, with the rest of Warpaint. Photo by Robin Lannenen

What would be your last meal?
Steak and some veggies and biscuits and gravy. And wait, hold on, I gotta throw in something sweet there. And a slice of ice cream cake. And a really nice glass of red wine.

If you won the lottery tomorrow, would you carry on doing what you're doing, or change jobs, or stop working?
I would still carry on what I was doing, but I probably wouldn't do it as much. I'd spend more time making music than I would traveling and touring. I'd be more stationary, wherever it was. I would leave Los Angeles, buy a few houses. I love Nashville, I love Austin, I love Utah, I love Tahoe where I grew up—places that are beautiful, filled with nature, not metropolitan, the antithesis of LA, New York, San Francisco.

If you were a wrestler, what song would you come into the ring to?
Some disco tune. Something a little soft but that gets you in the mood. I'm going to have to go with one of my favorite songs, which is "Promises" by Barbara Streisand and Barry Gibbs.

When in your life have you been truly overcome with fear?
When I was in high school, I had to do a play—I was terrified to get up and do it. I didn't even do it. I failed the class because that's how terrified I was to go up and perform in front of people. I had really crazy performance anxiety. I still kind of do. It's more the anticipation that sucks. The, Oh shit, what if I fuck up? That hasn't happened yet, so I've tricked myself into being like, Just be in the moment now when you get up there, relax and enjoy yourself and have fun, and I have to mantra that out to myself all the time.

Would you have sex with a robot?
Sure. Why not? I mean if it was capable, sure. Wow, I mean, if you were really itching for something and nothing else was possible and you were in a kinky mood, sure, why not?

In the past month, what is the latest you've slept in?
1 PM maybe. Even if I party the next night I just will not get very much sleep and then go to bed early that night. Waking up later is kind of sad, sort of depressing. I love waking up in the morning pretty early, starting my day. I feel inspired in the day, getting shit done. I don't like sleeping the day away because when you wake up and it's like 4 PM, there's something really depressing about that.

Photo by Mia Kirby

What film or TV show makes you cry?
One of my favorite movies, since I was seven, is Ghost. I always cry, every single time.

What's the grossest injury or illness you've ever had?
I got a concussion when I was ten. I got knocked off a horse; he threw me off. I still don't remember. I just came to, and I was in wires and on a fence and shit. I had a huge bump and was totally concussed.

If you had to give up sex or kissing, which would it be?
Well, you can do other things, so I would give up sex because kissing is just such a big part of foreplay.

Complete this sentence: The problem with young people today is...
This goes both ways, but I think they just have access to too many things. Going to the library or reading a book and not just going online and skimming things, and there's something to be said about that.

What memory from school stands out to you stronger than any other?
My first time falling in love. Or at least, thinking I was. At least being majorly infatuated. I just felt like he was so out of my league. The thing that's most memorable is the day that he recognized me and started flirting with me—it just made my whole life up to that point.

Follow Natalie Hughes on Twitter.

After talking with Hillary Clinton about pantsuits and Melania Trump's stolen wedding vows on Between Two Ferns last week, host Zach Galifianakis told theLos Angeles Times that he really has no interest inviting GOP candidate Donald Trump between his fake plants.

"He's the kind of guy who likes attention—bad attention or good attention. So you're dealing with a psychosis there that's a little weird," the comedian told the Times. "I wouldn't have somebody on that's so mentally challenged. I feel like I'd be taking advantage of him."

"You can print that," he said.

Clinton's interview with Galifianakis racked up 30 million views on the day that it dropped, getting it more first-day views than any other Funny or Die video, including President's Obama's appearance back in 2014.

"I walked away from that whole interview going, she's cool. I thought she was cool, and I don't know if that was my impression of her before that," Galifianakis told the Times. "I don't think you can get as far as she has in American politics without a sense of humor."

While you may never be able to see Trump slinging jokes on Galifianakis's satirical talk show, you can always just tune in for the debates, since our whole political system is basically a joke at this point.

Read: Hillary Clinton Went on 'Between Two Ferns' So Young People Will Like Her

Photo via Flickr user Gage Skidmore

US taxpayers have paid about $1.6 million for the Secret Service to fly with Trump on his private plane to and from campaign events, according to FEC documents—which is pretty normal, except for the fact that the Republican candidate owns the company operating the plane.

Politico reports that while it's customary for the government to reimburse candidates to fly Secret Service agents around the country, usually third-party companies operate those planes, such as Executive Fliteways, the independent company that flies Hillary Clinton's plane. But because TAG Air, Inc., Trump's own company, runs his jet, the government money is effectively plopping right back into Trump's bank account.

"It's just another example of how the Trump campaign has taken an unprecedentedly large amount of its money and spent it at Trump-owned facilities," Brett Kappel, a campaign finance lawyer, told Politico.

Because the candidate's businesses and properties have played an integral role in his campaign—serving as staff headquarters, flying his jet, playing host to campaign events—he's already managed to funnel $8.2 million of campaign funds back into the Trump franchise. This week the Washington Post also published revelations that Trump has even used funds from his own charity to pay for his legal fees.

The blurred line between his business ventures and his political operation have some under the impression that the Republican candidate is running an elaborate "scampaign" and making a killing doing it.

"It's very possible that I could be the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it," Trump told Fortune magazine in 2000. Now in 2016, it's very possible that's he's right.

Read: Donald Trump Bought a Bunch of His Own Books with $55,000 of Campaign Money

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In an attempt to address the country's growing racial tensions following the recent spate of officer-involved shootings, a reverend in Sunnyvale, California, decided to get a bunch of self-identifying racists together in one room to talk openly about their views, KQED reports.

Reverend Ron Buford chose to start holding weekly "Racists Anonymous" meetings at his church in order to treat racism like an addiction. Every week, a small number of people meets up at the Congregational Community Church of Sunnyvale and follows Buford's 12-step program.

"Racism in the world is real. We should stop being in denial about it, the way an alcoholic is in denial about alcoholism," Buford told KQED. "We should say instead—yup, we are racist, and we are working on it."

People from all different backgrounds have attended Buford's meetings, and discussions range from African American names to the stereotype that Asian people are poor drivers. Members are encouraged to listen and offer helpful suggestions on how to challenge hurtful tropes and hopefully alter racist behavior.

"It was very difficult to say, 'Hi, my name is Casey, and I'm a racist,'" Casey Ream told KQED. "It made me feel humility. It made me feel embarrassed. But it also made me feel like—OK, if these other people are not going to lash out at me right now after saying that, and if they are going to say it, too, then maybe this is a good starting place."

Buford's unconventional approach seems to be catching on in other parts of the country, too. According to KQED, churches in North Carolina and Florida have started hosting their own Racists Anonymous meetings as well.

Read: How Many Racists Are There in America?

In this photo illustration, capsules of the herbal supplement Kratom are seen on May 10, 2016 in Miami, Florida. Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

As opioid overdoses continue to skyrocket across America, many chronic pain patients and people with addiction are seeking safer ways to cope. Too bad the feds—with a broken system for scheduling drugs of all kinds—are standing in the way.

In August, the Drug Enforcement Administration refused to move marijuana out of its most restricted category of drugs, Schedule I. And at the tail-end of that month, the agency announced plans to add Kratom—a South Asian herbal remedy that is frequently used to treat both chronic pain and addiction—to the same list. The ban could start as early as September 30, and is expected to last at least two years.

Substances included in Schedule I are said to have both a high potential for abuse and "no currently accepted medical use," and sales and possession are illegal. While some medical research can still be conducted, the bureaucratic process involved is both expensive and time-consuming, creating a catch-22 that makes "no currently accepted medical use" a self-fulfilling prophecy.

"I don't know of any instance of them reversing themselves, "Jag Davies, director of communications strategy for the Drug Policy Alliance, told me of the government and scheduling decisions. Forty-five members of Congress have written the DEA and federal officials asking them to delay the move.

Meanwhile, data favoring both marijuana and Kratom as pain-relieving alternatives to drugs like Oxycontin and heroin continues to build. First, weed: The most recent study, published this month in the American Journal of Public Health, found a 50 percent reduction in the number of drivers aged 21 through 40 involved in fatal car accidents who tested positive for opioids in medical marijuana states. A 2014 study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, found a 25 percent reduction in the opioid overdose death rate in states that legalized medical marijuana between 1999 and 2010, a reduction that grew over the years after the state legalized. A Rand Corporation study bolstered the apparent link between greater marijuana access and reduced opioid-related deaths, while a study of Medicare claims found that spending on pain medication fell by $165.2 million in medical marijuana states.

There is much less data on Kratom, but its centuries-long history of use as a replacement for opium in South Asia is reassuring. In fact, it was banned by Thailand in 1943 because the government found that its use was cutting into opium tax revenues. A 2015 study of 293 Malaysian Kratom users found that their reliance on the drug did not interfere with their ability to function at work or at home. And while studies suggest the active ingredients in Kratom do act on the same opioid receptors associated with euphoria and pain relief affected by typical opioids and can cause physical withdrawal symptoms in chronic users, they seem to do so in a milder way.

Critically, Kratom doesn't seem to have the effect that is most likely to prove fatal in overdose: slowing respiration until it eventually stops entirely. When I spoke to Oliver Grundmann, clinical associate professor of medicinal chemistry at the University of Florida and the author of a 2016 review of the toxicology of Kratom earlier this year, he said, "Direct Kratom overdoses from the life-threatening respiratory depression that usually occurs with opioid overdoses have not been reported." This strongly suggests that the drug does not pose anywhere near the danger associated with typical opioids.

While the DEA says there have been 15 deaths associated with Kratom in the past two years— and this in the context of millions of doses floating around the US—at least 14 of them occurred when the drug was taken in combination with other substances.

So why ban it now? Part of the blame, I think, falls on media coverage like that in the New York Times, which reported in January that some in Florida's rehab community felt legal Kratom was a threat to their recovery. The paper portrayed Kratom relapsers as innocent victims of sellers who, as one woman in recovery put it, are "preying on the weak and the broken." But this is disingenuous at best: Every abstinence program and 12-step group spells out clearly that non-prescribed (and sometimes, even prescribed!) mind and mood altering substances are forbidden.

The irony here is that a relapse that occurs with Kratom is far less likely to be deadly than one with street or prescription opioids, because of its reduced effect on breathing. Ingesting large amounts of Kratom is difficult itself: It causes nausea and vomiting so that if high doses were to be dangerous in other ways, it's hard to achieve them without throwing it all back up.

Kratom is also being used by some addicted people as a form of opioid maintenance, and unlike the two proven medications for that purpose—Suboxone and Methadone—it doesn't carry a well-established risk of overdose death if it gets into the wrong hands. Obviously, much more data is needed on long-term effects, but placing it into Schedule I will impede such efforts, not energize them.

Meanwhile, the CDC has also weighed in a less-than helpful manner, reporting that calls to poison centers related to Kratom increased from 26 in 2010 to 263 in 2015 and labeling it "an emerging public health threat." In contrast, however, there were nearly 29,000 deaths involving legal and illegal opioids in 2014 (the latest data available)— and poison centers received more than 40,000 calls related to opioids between January and the end of August 2016 alone. In that context, does it really make sense to ban the less dangerous stuff first?

Fundamentally, America's regulators seem incapable of placing risks in context. They see a "new" drug "threat" and determine that it should be banned—regardless of whether it might substitute for a far more dangerous substance. They don't understand that the tools we have for dealing with psychoactive substances are not fit for that purpose.

Take the scheduling system itself: It makes no sense to declare that a drug has no accepted medical use when it hasn't first been systematically studied. By law, the DEA's hands are tied in defining an "accepted medical use." The only medications that qualify are those that have passed through the FDA's approval process, according to spokesperson Rusty Payne.

"Until the FDA tells us that it's a medicine, it meets statutory criteria for Schedule I controlled substances," he told me of Kratom. This means herbal medicines like Kratom and marijuana, which are not patentable, will probably never be federally OK for pain relief because no one seems likely to spend the billions needed to try to get FDA approval. And there's also no legal regulatory pathway for introducing a new recreational drug, if sellers wanted to go that route.

Another problem is the fact that the DEA, the agency that's supposed to enforce drug prohibition, is also in charge of deciding which drugs should be banned. "The DEA somehow retained the right to make these determinations, even though what they are is a law enforcement body and not scientific researchers or physicians," says Caroline Acker, professor emeritus of history at Carnegie Mellon University, who has studied the history of drug laws.

"Bureaucracies, once created, want to survive," Acker adds, noting that this means that they will tend to try to expand their mission, no matter what. "The do have a conflict of interest in wanting that mission to live on even if it's shown to be counterproductive or harmful."

If we want to change that and actually reduce the death toll from the opioid crisis, we need to rethink our drug scheduling system entirely. For starters, the DEA's conflict of interest means it shouldn't be tasked with determining which drugs are banned—that job belongs to scientists, not cops. Second, science (and not historical racism) should be used to develop a more sensible way to determine which recreational drugs are allowed and which drugs are safe for medical use.

Human beings are going to continue to search for and experiment with chemical ways of getting high. We can either recognize this and come up with ways to regulate it based on a rational assessment of risk, or else continue with failed policies that can't even adapt to minimize harm.

Follow Maia Szalavitz on Twitter.

Photo via Wikimedia

A Toronto playground was scattered with Valium over the weekend—including several at the top of a slide—causing a 15-month-old to be taken to the hospital on Sunday. Though the child is reportedly fine, according to CBC, police are still investigating the incident, which happened in Bellevue Square Park in Kensington Market.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge greet elders in Bella Bella, BC. Photo by CP/Jonathan Hayward

During their visit to British Columbia, Will and Kate have paid their respects to Canadian veterans, visited a centre for mothers suffering from addiction on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, and met with Syrian refugees—but the next leg of their trip brings the duke and duchess face-to-face with Britain's colonial past.