Matthew Perry. Photo via Wikimedia Commons user Policy Exchange

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

When most people black out at work—say, forklift operators, or student aircraft designers—they endanger lives in the worst of cases, and at best they just embarrass themselves. But when your job is to create music, movies, or books, oftentimes no one will get mad if you show up completely wiped out on the substance of your choice as long as you get your shit done.

But as drug- and alcohol-addicted stars get more and more successful, they often go into blackouts that—they later claim—encompass the entire creation of some important piece of work. (They tend to make this claim when they're looking back on their lives after getting sober.) And in case you need another reason to check in with your own addiction, it sounds like it kinda sucks to forget some of your biggest artistic achievements to drug- or alcohol–induced amnesia. Here are some of the most notable examples of this phenomenon:

Eric Bell, the original guitarist from Thin Lizzy

What he forgot: Recording the album Thin Lizzy, 1971.

Bell, who was a founding member of Thin Lizzy, but wasn't in the band's most famous lineup, told Noisey last year that he was too wasted to remember the recording of the Irish group's self-titled debut. Bell left the band to get away from substance abuse. "I couldn't stop drinking, and I couldn't stop smoking dope. And I was taking Valium as well, which the doctor gave me. So I was walking about like a fried chicken," he told Noisey.

David Bowie

What he forgot: Recording the album Station to Station, 1976.

Bowie told biographer Nicholas Pegg in 2011 that in the cocaine-fueled haze of the 1970s, he blacked out almost the entire recording of his dark classic Station to Station. He told Pegg he could recall blurting out guitar instructions at one point, and that was just about it. "I know it was in LA because I've read it was," Bowie said. The late singer reportedly consumed heroic amounts of cocaine for ten years.

Stephen King

What he forgot: Writing the novel Cujo, 1981.

Seven years after he published his debut novel, Carrie, Stephen King had found that the world would buy any stack of 400 pages with his name on the front, and began putting away "a case of sixteen-ounce tallboys a night" without apparent consequences for his work. During this period, he completely forgot penning the majority of Cujo, a gripping and relatively un-supernatural King classic about a man-eating St. Bernard.

King later sobered up and ruminated about writers and booze in his 2000 memoir On Writing:

"Hemingway and Fitzgerald didn't drink because they were creative, alienated, or morally weak. They drank because it's what alkies are wired up to do. Creative people probably do run a greater risk of alcoholism and addiction than those in some other jobs, but so what? We all look the same when we're puking in the gutter."

Alice Cooper

What he forgot: Recording and touring for the albums "Special Forces," "Zipper Catches Skin," and "Dada," 1981–1986.

Alice Cooper—no, not your mom's friend Alice Cooper, the heavy-metal circus ringmaster guy with all the eye makeup—drank too much in the 80s and forgot he recorded three of his albums and that he toured in support of them. It's worth noting that the albums—numbers 13, 14, and 15 out of his 26 albums in total—aren't exactly his most well-received. "I would actually like to go back and re-record those three albums because I never really gave them their due. I love the songs—I just don't remember writing them," he told the Quietus in 2009.

Ozzy Osborne

What he forgot: The 1990s.

Ozzy Osborne, a reality TV star who was once a heavy-metal musician, had an unusually long lapse in memory, and it came unusually late in his life. According to his own biography, he was "loaded all the time" through much of his first ten years in Black Sabbath—a time in which he recorded one of the all-time greatest songs about drug addiction—and was even fired in 1979 for his drug and alcohol use. He launched a successful solo career that carried him though the 80s, which were "fabulous," but the next decade is a blur. In a 2014 interview with the British magazine Q, he said, "I don't really remember the 90s. I don't know why. My drug addiction and alcohol addiction were absolutely fierce then. I was just going for it full bore, so there was a lot of blackout time."

That blackout time presumably meant the albums No More Tears and Ozzmosis. It also means he spaced on the creation of Ozzfest, the music festival named after him.

Matthew Perry

What he forgot: Filming seasons three to six of Friends, 1996–1999.

Matthew Perry played Chandler Bing on Friends, and somehow, he managed to embody that character—a wisecracking, emotionally paralyzed "transponster"—while completely off his ass on booze and opiates. One drawback, he told BBC 2 Radio in 2016, was that he can't remember seasons three through six, a stretch that includes "The One Where No One's Ready," widely regarded as a series high point.

Ewan McGregor

What he forgot: The movie Eye of the Beholder, 1999.

In 1996, Ewan McGregor starred in Trainspotting, which is probably the best movie of all time about addiction. Then, in 1999, when he was already having a rough year, the Scottish actor was in a thriller called Eye of the Beholder with Ashley Judd. It was a very, very bad movie. But that's just as well because in a 2011 interview with Total Film, McGregor said he couldn't remember filming most of it, or ever seeing it at all. As of 2011, McGregor had been on a four-year hiatus from drinking.

Colin Farrell

What he forgot: Filming the movie Miami Vice, 2006.

In 2010, Colin Farrell claimed to Hot Press Magazine (later excerpted by The Mirror) that he can't remember shooting Miami Vice, Michael Mann's weird movie remake of his own TV show. Farrell added, "At least that's my excuse for all the people who thought it was shit." That may sound cagey, but for what it's worth, he really was so into booze and "whatever powder" during the Vice shoot that afterward he claims he got on a plane and went straight to rehab.

If you're dealing with an alcohol dependency, please visit AA.org and NCADD.org for more information on how you can get help.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

In this week's podcast we spoke to a group of 15 and 16-year-olds about the problems they face, as they see them.

We discussed everything from Islamophobia to sexting, and some of what they told us was surprising: they've never been to a house party, they photoshop their selfies and they're still not sure whether or not it's OK to be openly gay in school. Plus, Charlotte Church, John Lydon and Stormzy revealed what they think the key problems are for young people today.

(Thumbnail image via)

The VICE UK podcast comes out every Tuesday, covering drugs, politics, music, mental health and everything else we can think of. Listen and subscribe on iTunes.

More VICE podcasts:

Is It Basically Fine to Sleep with Someone If They're Cheating But You're Not?

Employers Still Don't Know How to Deal with Mental Health

How Has Britain Been Affected By the Rise of Donald Trump?

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

Photo by Zach D Roberts/NurPhoto via Getty Images

US NEWS

Biden Suggests He May Run for President in 2020
Vice President Joe Biden seems to be considering a run for president in 2020. "I am going to run in 2020," he told reporters flatly, later clarifying "for president." Questioned further, Biden, who will turn 78 in 2020, cautioned, "I'm not committing to not running. I'm not committing to anything. I learned a long time ago fate has a strange way of intervening."—CNN

Pentagon Conceals Report Recommending Big Cuts
The Pentagon reportedly hid internal documents recommending $125 billion in cuts to wasteful spending on bureaucracy because of concerns Congress would call for budget cuts. Department of Defense officials placed secrecy restrictions on the 2015 report and removed a summary from the department's website.—The Washington Post

South Carolina Prosecutor Wants to Retry Michael Slager
A prosecutor has pledged to retry Michael Slager, the former police officer who killed unarmed black driver Walter Scott, after an initial murder trial was declared a mistrial. A South Carolina jury could not come to a unanimous decision on either murder or manslaughter charges. Prosecuting solicitor Scarlett Wilson said, "We will try Michael Slager again."—VICE News

FBI Investigates Possible Bombing Threat Made Against LA Metro
The FBI is investigating the credibility of a bomb threat made against the Los Angeles metro system. Officials said they received a tip from an unidentified government overseas about a potential attack on the red line Metro in Universal City on Tuesday, made in an anonymous phone call. Police have stepped up security across the system.—Los Angeles Times

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Iranian President Says Trump Will Not Stop Nuclear Deal
A defiant President Hassan Rouhani says Iran will not permit US President-elect Donald Trump to "rip up" the nuclear agreement reached in 2015. In a speech at the University of Tehran, Rouhani said, "Do you think we and our nation will let him do that?"—Reuters

India Mourns Film Star Who Became Leading Politician
Indians are mourning J Jayalalitha, a former film star who became chief minister of Tamil Nadu State and died of a heart attack Monday. The government declared Tuesday a national holiday and Prime Minister Narendra Modi was set to attend the funeral.—BBC News

Syrian Army Controls Almost Two-Thirds of Rebel Eastern Aleppo
Syrian government forces have seized more ground from rebel fighters in eastern Aleppo, leaving almost two-thirds of former rebel territory under army control. Russia and China both vetoed a UN Security Council plan for a seven-day ceasefire, with Russia arguing it would "undermine" bilateral talks between Russia and the US.—Al Jazeera

Mexican Marines Kill 14 Suspects in Shootout
Authorities say 14 people were killed in a shootout with Mexican marines in the State of Veracruz, an area notorious for cartel violence. According to a police statement, gunmen began shooting at a police patrol car in Jesús Carranza, before a backup patrol of marines arrived to assist the cops.—AP

EVERYTHING ELSE

LeBron James Refuses to Stay at Trump-Branded Hotel
LeBron James and several of his Cleveland Cavalier teammates will not stay at the Trump SoHo hotel while playing in New York this week. Cavs general manager David Griffin said plans had been made to accommodate those uncomfortable staying there.—Cleveland.com

50 Cent Wins $14.5 Million in Malpractice Suit
Curtis Jackson has been awarded $14.5 million in a malpractice lawsuit against law firm Garvey Schubert Barer, relating to a case involving headphone makers Sleek Audio. The money is expected to go toward 50 Cent's bankruptcy debts.—Forbes

Spaceman Buzz Aldrin Treated by Dr. David Bowie
Buzz Aldrin, the former NASA Apollo astronaut who fell ill on a South Pole expedition, is being cared for in New Zealand by a doctor named David Bowie. "You can't make this stuff up," tweeted Aldrin's manager, Christina Korp.—Reuters

Ottawa Man Charged with Threatening to Bomb Police HQ
A 25-year-old Ottawa man has been charged with threatening to bomb the city's police headquarters. Tevis Gonyou-McLean made the threat in early November while he was under arrest for breaching bail conditions.—VICE News

Anohni Urges President Obama to Release Chelsea Manning
Anohni, best known as the lead singer of Antony and the Johnsons, has shared a video for her song, "Obama," and released a statement pleading with the president to free Chelsea Manning. "Have mercy on her, Obama," Anohni said of the soldier who provided military material to WikiLeaks.—Noisey

NASA Orders Up Satellite-Repairing Robot
NASA is awarding a $127 million contract to private company Space Systems / Loral to build a robot that can repair satellites in orbit. The maiden voyage of the Restore-L robot is set for 2020.—Motherboard

Photo via Flickr user Marc Nozell

On Monday, Vice President and general badass Joe Biden told reporters that he plans to make a go at the presidency in the 2020 election.

"I am going to run in 2020," Biden said, according to CNBC. "For president. You know, what the hell, man, anyway."

The VP made it clear that he was serious about the plan—regardless of the fact that he said "what the hell, man, anyway" like his Onion parody persona sprung to life—but that he wasn't promising anything just yet.

"I'm not committing not to run. I'm not committed to anything," he reportedly said. "I learned a long time ago, fate has a strange way of intervening."

Biden would be 77 by the time the next Election Day rolls around, CNBC points out, so it's hard to know how he'd hold up against Kanye and Trump in 2020. But let's get one thing straight—if the presidential race was actually a race, Diamond Joe would be the leader of the free world right now.

Watch: Joe Biden on the Struggle to End Violence Against Women

Photo via Flickr user European People's Party

German chancellor Angela Merkel said Tuesday that full-face veils have no place in the European country, CNN reports.

"The full veil is not appropriate here, it should be forbidden wherever that is legally possible. It does not belong to us," Merkel said at a Christian Democratic Union conference, where she was reelected leader of the conservative party.

Merkel's comments come just weeks after the 62-year-old announced her bid to run for a fourth term as Germany's chancellor. Last year, Merkel opened up the country's borders to take in 1 million refugees—many of whom are Muslim—and suffered a hit to her approval ratings. In September, the Christian Democratic Union Party suffered a sweeping defeat in the local elections as a perceived result.

Her conservative comments fall in step with other European countries that have enacted their own bans on religious Muslim headwear, like Italy, France, and Belgium. France was the first country to nationally ban the burqa and the niqab from public places in 2011, and even tried to temporarily ban burkinis in certain cities following the recent wave of terror attacks in the country.

This article originally appeared on VICE Australia.

Microdosing involves taking just enough of a psychedelic drug to boost productivity and creativity, without actually tripping. Its supposed benefits are well documented, and particularly among young startup types in Silicon Valley where microdosing became a bit of a thing.

But it isn't just for cool dudes at Google. Microdosing, if you believe the hype, can potentially help anyone think outside the box, even in bland corporate jobs. Or so it seems after we interviewed a guy who won a National Sales Award in corporate banking while dropping acid and shrooms.

Chris isn't his real name and for obvious reasons we won't mention where he lives.

VICE: Hey Chris, what work do you do?
Chris: I'm a corporate banker working in acquisitions. Last year, the bank acknowledged me as the country's best salesman and I won the National Sales Award while microdosing LSD and mushrooms.

How did this start?
I was going through a patch of feeling really unmotivated at work. I'd worked hard, achieved my goals, but then lacked the opportunity to grow any further. I was stuck in the paradigm where I was doing the same old thing and I was getting bored. So then I heard about microdosing and wanted to see what all the hype was about. It pretty much changed my life.

How did you measure your dose?
Initially, I was drawn to microdosing LSD because it was what I enjoyed taking and also what I had access to. I'd get one drop of acid, which is essentially 125 mics, and dilute it into 125MLs of water. So essentially I'd have one mil of water to 1 mic of acid. Then I could accurately dose myself.

Depending on the day of the week I'd have between 15–25 mics. I'd start with a smaller dose on Monday and then take bigger and bigger doses throughout the week as I'd build up resilience.

After a while I decided I wanted to start microdosing mushrooms. With mushrooms I take about 0.1 to 0.15 grams. Essentially it's one 10th of a dose. I take it five times a week, every morning before work, before I eat breakfast. This prevents it from being diluted by anything I've already eaten, so I get the complete effect.

Did you notice a difference between LSD and mushrooms?
Mushrooms are a lot softer. The acid is very clinical, very hard. At the end of the week I felt the acid tiring my brain. After doing some research, I found out you're only supposed to do it every three days or so. I was overdoing it a bit.

How did you feel generally?
Microdosing is below your level of perception. You're aware of it but not really aware of it. Your subconscious mind is geared like you're tripping, but you're actually not. It mainly affects the way I approach the day and the way I approach tasks. It turns the most mundane tasks into things that are easy to do. Some tasks I wouldn't be able to work on for more than 20 minutes without fidgeting and getting agitated. When microdosing, I can actually sit down for hours at a time without even realising it. Sometimes, I look up after 6 hours of work and go, "holy shit".

So a lot of your role involves bargaining over the phone. What's it like cold calling financial elites on acid, trying to win them over?
At first, I was a little bit nervous about cold calling but then I was like fuck, just let me do it. Now things roll off my tongue like you have no idea. When sober, I work at about 60 percent Wolf of Wall Street. When microdosing, I'm 100 percent Wolf of Wall Street. I'm so confident. Everything I say comes so much quicker. It's ridiculous.

It doesn't give you something that's not there. It just changes the way you do things and the way you look at things. It really does feel like the limitless pill. Obviously not that level of effect, but I feel like a corporate god. It is mind blowing that something that is so shunned by that echelon of society has such a powerful effect on what you can do in an environment like that.

Did you notice anything else?
Even after the day at work, when I come home I am still motivated to go out and eat healthily and go to the gym. I just feel like I have a little bit extra at the end of the day to do what needs to be done—you know if I need to go shopping, I go shopping. When microdosing I feel like a fucking wizard. I literally do exactly what I need to do and there is no problem with doing it. It really just makes me a productive human being.

Have you noticed any negative effects?
Not with the mushrooms. With the acid sometimes I'd come home at the end of the day and have a slight headache and still feel it. But nothing long lasting, there is no downer. And when I don't microdose I don't go through the days thinking shit I can't do this without microdosing. I don't even think about it.

Would you ever tell people at work you're microdosing?
I think in today's world there's a big stigma around drug use. People don't draw differentiations between weed, mushrooms, acid, mdma, or coke. To most of the population it's all grouped into one big bad thing. So no, if I told people at work it would completely change the way they see me. Until we live in a time when it is socially acceptable to take psychedelics, I don't think I would feel comfortable telling anyone.

Warning: Spoilers to episode ten ahead.

The season finale of Westworld included everything the die-hard fans wanted, and many of our theories have proven to be true: The Man in Black (Ed Harris) is, indeed, William (Jimmi Simpson), only 30 years later. The anachronistic photograph from the first episode is the same one that William drops at the end of his long journey into his inner darkness. And Maeve's (Thandie Newton) violent escape—recruiting an "army" of other hosts (two, to be exact) with sidekick human Felix (Leonardo Nam) tagging along—was planned as well, programmed into her, even though she tries to deny it. At the end of the 90-minute plus finale, we're left with Ford's self-inflicted retirement, an army of naked angry bots, and a whole lot of questions.

Thankfully, Westworld has been renewed for a second season, so we won't be left hanging, though it seems like it may take over a year for us to get any answers, as season two isn't expected to drop before 2018. So let's wrap some things up and then get to the questions.

First, Ford is actually (sort of) a good guy. He's not the evil, grasping, egomaniacal bastard he's seemed to be in the past few episodes. In retrospect, his actions point to what he's revealed himself to be in the final episode: a savior. His apparent motto—"Never place your trust in us—we're only human"—has proven to be true: His fellow humans should never have trusted him, because all this time, he's been working on allowing the hosts to gain consciousness (and on unleashing them; the plans for his narrative in episode six reveal the final scenes of the season). What Arnold didn't understand, Ford explains in the finale, is that the hosts couldn't gain consciousness all at once. It took time, a kind of evolution, one that only Dolores has truly completed, having evolved out of the bicameral mind.

The idea of the bicameral mind, which Westworld has been slightly obsessed with, comes from a psychological theory according to which the human brain used to be divided into two parts, one which gave orders and one which obeyed. The theory goes on to say that the part of the brain that gave commands was basically the voice of god, and that the gods of yore are based on these internal voices. The theory may be absolute hooey—no one really knows—but it works for the hosts, so let's roll with it.

What Dolores realizes in the finale is that the voice she's been hearing for some time is her own—she's achieved true consciousness, true self-awareness, hearing her own voice in her head just as we do. Maeve doesn't seem to have achieved this, which is part of what makes her character so tragic at this point. She is still being guided by her programmer, whether it's Ford's narrative or some secret part of Arnold that exists in Bernard.

What Happens Now?

We also learn that William, like Ford, has been trying to unlock the hosts' consciousness this entire time. For years and years, he's been coming to the park, trying to knock some sense into Dolores—in horrible, painful, disgusting ways—but nevertheless his intent was to wake her up, to bring back the truly sentient Dolores he fell for as a young man.

William has always wanted to have the hosts as worthy adversaries. Over time, he's watched the park and hosts evolve, but he himself hasn't, ultimately fixating on the riddle of the maze. Only it's not his to solve, but the hosts'. The last moments of the season give him everything he's wanted: As the army of the "retired" hosts advances on the humans, one of their bullets grazing him, he finally sees them as the enemies and allies he's wanted to play with since his first time in the park.

The main question we're left with is, of course, what the hell happens now? The hosts are free, to an extent—they're able to hurt humans—but they're still, as far as we know, programmed by Ford. The hosts, it seems, are an advanced race of humans: better than us, able to be repaired when damaged, never succumbing to disease or the ravages of age. We can assume that given the right technological understanding, they'd be able to repair and replicate themselves. After all, Maeve, once given hold of human technology, was able to figure it out pretty quickly.

Are There Multiple Parks?

Also, let's not forget the teaser we're given toward the end of the season finale: S (for Samurai?) World. The logo for this world is an SW similarly designed to the W of Westworld itself. And as we see when Felix hands Maeve a note with the location of her daughter, Westworld is only Park #1. There are others. Will these be explored in future seasons? Will the original Michael Crichton worlds—Medieval World and Roman World from the movie Westworld is based on—also be shown? Did Ford and Arnold create these, or did Delos, to increase profits?

Whatcha Researching For?

And what of the research being done in the park? Charlotte (Tessa Thompson) hints at this when talking to Ford about his resignation. What we can gather is that there is research on humans and human behavior being done in Westworld—the violence, the desire for conflict. All of this may be the info that is being collected by Delos for the world outside, one that we actually haven't seen even a glimpse of. We have no idea what the future holds, or why so many wealthy people are truly coming to vacation in the dusty, dirty, criminal confines of Westworld.

Where Did Abernathy and Stubbs Go?

Finally, there's Abernathy. Fixed up by Sizemore (Simon Quarterman), he's said to have been snuck out with a semblance of a personality, along with all the information stored in his head by Charlotte, the information that was maybe being snuck out of the park by deceased Theresa (Sidse Babett Knudsen), former head of operations. And what about that? If there's corporate spying going on, we still don't know who the competitor is, or what they're looking for. And just as Abernathy is missing from the final episode, so too is Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth), whom we last saw looking for something or other in episode nine.

There are lots of questions left open, many mysteries to be solved, and plenty of material to work with in season two. Westworld has achieved something that seemed almost impossible: It took a premise that is inherently silly (I point again to the first trailer where modern glass rooms warred with seemingly cheap Wild West motifs, underlain with Evan Rachel Woods's dramatic voiceover) and made it an excellent, coherent, gorgeous show, and one that did not underestimate the intelligence of its audience. What remains to be seen is whether we, the audience, will continue to empathize with the hosts, as many of us have so far, or whether their turn for the violent will have us siding with the humans in an AI vs. mankind showdown.

Follow Ilana Masad on Twitter.

People love good food and getting high. From mushroom tea to weed brownies, whipping up a special dish containing mind-altering ingredients is an age-old tradition. For some who live off the Indian Ocean, their drug of choice is served up as a nice bowl of curry fish stew.

On the most recent episode of VICELAND's Hamilton's Pharmacopeia, we met Jean Pascal Quod, an esteemed marine biologist who specializes in studying neurotoxins found in tropical fish. Quod spends much of his time researching the unique marine life found on Réunion Island. Located in the Indian Ocean in Africa, Réunion is home to various fish containing mysterious psychoactive substances that locals consume to get high, hallucinate, and have intense dreams—or nightmares. However, not much is known about these "dream fish," which have only been found in the Indian Ocean and possibly the Mediterranean Sea, but not documented in similar climates like the Pacific Ocean or Caribbean.

We called Quod to find out more about these perplexing fish and what curious diners should know before digging in themselves.

Photo courtesy of VICELAND

VICE: Why does consuming this species of fish produce mind-altering effects?
Jean Pascal Quod: I'm quite sure it's from the food diet of the fish, but we have no idea yet about the source because no one's done scientific studies on the exact toxins that are involved. Most of the people who are consuming it now are doing it for fun—it's very rare that people are accidentally poisoned by eating these fish. It's quite unclear now if it's because of a bacteria, or microalgae, or macroalgae. It's still a mystery for me.

Is it common for people to eat these psychoactive fish?
When you have carnivorous fish—which are the most common kinds of fish people want to eat, there's no way to find these psychoactive compounds. This compound only occurs in the herbivore fish, which people usually don't like to eat because they aren't very tasty and smell of algae. People who are eating this kind of fish are poor people, or those who want to try it out to get the effect. Of course, the people who are doing it for fun don't want to talk about it.

How dangerous is it to eat the fish?
It's not dangerous because it's only psychoactive compounds. The human cases I've heard about in Réunion are mainly people having nightmares—they think their house is burning, or they're going nude in the road. They could possibly get into an accident or something, but the compound by itself is not dangerous. I haven't heard about people dying because of it.

How would you recommend people try this out for themselves?
It's impossible to know if you're affected by the compound before you eat the fish. In Réunion or elsewhere, some people know exactly where to go and catch them, but you can eat the fish in many parts of the Indian Ocean and have no symptoms. If people want to test it, they should go to fishermen who know where to get toxic fish.

Follow Sarah Bellman on Twitter.

Some spoilers for the first season of Search Party ahead.

You'd be forgiven for being surprised when seeing Michael Showalter's name in Search Party's credits. The TBS mystery-comedy, which debuted over Thanksgiving weekend, has its feet firmly planted in the Brooklyn millennial milieu; in any given scene, one can imagine the girls of Girls and the broads of Broad City watching cat videos the next building over. Like those shows, it deals with the sense of aimless superficiality one often gets swept up in while searching for adulthood. It's also a real mystery—and at times, a legitimately creepy one—following directionless Williamsburg-dweller Dory (Alia Shawkat) and her obsession with finding a former college classmate who's gone missing.

Showalter's been a steadfast presence in comedy for decades now, but he came of age when you still had to put an "alt" in front of it. Now, like Judd Apatow on Girls and Amy Poehler on Broad City, Showalter is using his experience to spotlight a new generation of comic writers. He first met Search Party co-creators Sarah-Violet Bliss and Charles Rodgers while teaching in NYU's Graduate Film program, bonding over their shared comedic sensibilities. He later brought them on to the writing staff of Netflix's Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp and began talking to them about developing their own series. "I really do think they have a very specific comic voice, which is rare," he says. "So I wanted to help them find an outlet for that and to collaborate with them."

Bliss and Rodgers's 2015 film Fort Tilden was a merciless Brooklyn farce that established the duo's sensibility, and that's still loud and clear in Search Party, accounting for some of the biggest laughs in its ten-episode season. But if it feels more emotionally grounded, that's largely owed to Showalter's guidance—which might be surprising to anyone who grew up on the anarchic, sometimes purposefully alienating style of The State, Stella, Wet Hot.

But as Showalter tells it, writing about a younger generation provided an opportunity to reflect on growing up. "We recognized there were some great shows out there about millennials living Brooklyn having fucked up meaningless lives, and we didn't want to just be another one of those shows," he said. I spoke to him by phone last week about writing spooky, "unrelatable" characters, and Search Party's secret breakout star.

VICE: Sarah-Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers both came to this project with a particular vision for the New York 20-something comedy. It's also something you've dabbled in in the past. How did your styles and approaches meet?
Michael Showalter: sensibility is a lot more... jaded, I guess is the word for it. Their characters tend to be kind of awful in a way that's slightly unredeemable. My characters are also awful, but they tend to have some redeeming quality about them. When we were working together, I felt strongly that the audience needed to feel there was some potential for —that they weren't just lost causes.

The question that I have about these characters—and people in general—is: Can people change? Can they have realizations and catharsis and all these different things, or are we just who we are and that's that? In Fort Tilden, were kind of saying, "This is who these characters are, and I dare you to like them," because they don't have redeeming qualities. With Search Party—particularly with Dory—we needed the audience to feel like she is someone we can relate to. We're in good hands with her, and she's a good person—she's just in an uncertain phase.

The unlikeable lead has become a hallmark of contemporary millennial-centered TV shows and movies. Were you purposefully trying to distance Search Party from that?
That was the other point of view I preached [in the writer's room]: I'm definitely not a millennial, I'm Gen X. But it's the same, in a way. We had Bret Easton Ellis, and before Bret Easton Ellis, there was J.D. Salinger, and The Graduate. Ever since the 50s, there's been a disaffected-youth point of view out there, and I think Charles and Sarah-Violet fit into that continuum in the best possible way. It's a really vital statement of meaninglessness.

What's interesting is that you kind of grow out of it, and as you grow older, some of those walls you put up when you're younger come down. Partially out of necessity, but partly because you start to realize you're different now. A lot of it is about presenting to the world who you think you are, or who you want to be. So yes, [Search Party] is about millennials, but part of it is also about the condition of being young and trying to figure out what you want to do with your life. I relate to Dory, even if I'm not a part of her generation.

The mystery plot is genuinely spooky and suspenseful, when it could have very easily been played as a goof. Is that another way of the show taking Dory's concerns seriously?
Yeah, and also, in terms of pure entertainment value, it's more fun when it's spooky. It's not as fun if you're not actually freaked out and scared. I like being freaked out and scared. Spooky shit is great.

Was this your first time trying to write spooky shit?
Yeah. The first season of Wet Hot American Summer on Netflix was very heavily plotted, in its own stupid way—there was a sort of nefarious element, and lots of twists and turns. Also, I've always been an enormous fan of thrillers—I grew up totally loving Hitchcock and every movie he made, so I knew a lot of the rules of the game. It was super exciting to do because I'd never done it before.

At what point in production did you realize that John Reynolds, who played Drew, was basically a national treasure?
John auditioned for the show, and we had heard really good things about him—"You've gotta see this guy," blah, blah, blah. Drew's character changes a lot in the show: He starts off as this useless boyfriend, but over the course of the show, he reveals a lot about the character that we didn't see, and that's because John is so strong and interesting as an actor. He has so many scenes in the show that are subtly brilliant. His character is really complex and wonderful.

Did his character change over time from how he was originally written?
We shot the pilot and decided to figure out what happened next if someone picked up the show, so Drew was originally this wimpy boyfriend that's dragging down. John was able to do some of that, but we had to lean into how interesting John is and the role that he was creating. Of all the characters in the show, for obvious reasons, I relate the most to Drew.

TBS hasn't renewed the show yet, but if there's a second season, just based on the final episode, it's going to involve much, much different stakes.
You can kind of imagine what some of the questions that have to be answered in the second season. For example, how do you dispose of a body?

That's a rite of passage for all Brooklyn millennials.
Exactly.

Search Party is currently available on TBS On Demand through your cable provider.

Follow Emily Yoshida on Twitter.

The so-called war on Christmas began when people started saying "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas." Then Starbucks decided to forego its festive cups to serve grande peppermint mochas in non-secular containers. But the panic has reached a whole new plateau this year, thanks to the Mall of America hiring a black actor to serve as Santa Claus. Run to the bunkers, everyone.

Last night, on VICELAND's Desus & Mero, the hosts poked fun at this unfounded hysteria, where pearl graspers across conservative networks implored everyone to "think of the children!" Check out their commentary above.

Be sure to catch new episodes weeknights at 11:30 PM ET/PT on VICELAND.

A worshipper feeds the rats. All images by author

Deshnoke is a small, dusty town on the fringes of the Great Indian Desert, midway between New Delhi and India's western border. In a land of stunning monuments, it might appear underwhelming, but once you get closer the senses go to work. And by far its strangest site has to be Karni Mata—the temple of rats.

Worshippers lining up to enter the temple

The rats here, some 20,000 according to legend and locals, are said to be the earthly representations of Karni Mata—a 15th century sage and healer who disappeared near Deshnoke at the age of 151. Karni Mata was revered for her generosity, good will, and supernatural powers. And while there are a variety of tales as to how the mass of rodents came to live here, all conclude with the goddess reincarnating a human soul as a rat.

Inside the temple, the floor crawls and jumps. Skittish first-time visitors navigate drifts of fur, which cover the marble underfoot. The initiated make their way to a shrine at the center of the temple, where they make offerings to the hundreds of rats scurrying around the foot of a silver statue of Karni Mata.

A rat feasts on one of its own

The most devoted followers drink from the bowl the rats bathe and play in, before eating the crumbs they leave behind. Some even sleep in the temple, letting the rats crawl over them during the night. Newlyweds visit as part of their wedding ceremony. A small number of people even call the temple home.

All this is said to bring good luck, particularly for those who encounter the temple's two elusive albino rats. To understand the connection between luck and rats, we spoke to a few devotees at the temple.

ARUN PRASATH IS A 26-YEAR-OLD SCIENTIST AT THE BHABHA ATOMIC RESEARCH CENTRE IN MUMBAI

In town for a wedding with friends, Arun was visiting the sacred temple for the first time. He was more skeptical than the rest.

You can see that foreign visitors are scared of the rats, and I am just as scared as they are. We won't go inside the sanctum to pray and eat with the rats, which is what most people come here to do. The priest in there allows the rats to run all over him, even on his head, and he doesn't seem to care.

We have heard a lot about this place and seen it on documentaries. We are told that coming here will bring good luck, that your dreams will come true if you see a white rat, which we have seen today. Let's wait and see how that manifests. For us, coming here is more about observing our religion—and amusing ourselves.

It's interesting, you know, people say this place is divine. But over there you can see the rats eating one of their own. Let me ask you, is that divinity?

Sunil Gupta, 51, a marketing professional from New Delhi

Sunil was in the area for work and paid his first ever visit to the rat temple.

The story behind this temple began more than 500 years ago when Yamraj, the god of death, came to take the soul of a ten-year-old child who was very close to Karni Devi. Yamraj said that the life of this child was finished and that he must take its soul to heaven, but Karni Devi would not allow that. 'I am also powerful,' she told Yemraj, and to stop him from taking the soul of that child, turned the child into a rat.

From that day, the souls of all of Karni Devi's people, her relatives and those close to her, could not be taken by Yemraj, and were instead reincarnated as rats. All these holy rats here in this temple are the people of Karni Devi, and when they die they will be reincarnated as humans once more. This is her power and this is why we worship these rats.

I can't say specifically how this place has brought good luck to people, but in Hinduism when we worship some god, our luck automatically increases. Different people follow different religions, but Hinduism is real; all the facts are scientifically proven. How else can you explain the presence here of all these rats?

Narayn Krishant, 45, has worked at the rat temple for 25 years

Outside the entrance, Narayn watches over the shoes of every visitor. He has never misplaced a pair.

Imagine: people come from all over India to drink water and drink milk with the rats, to eat with the rats. I am able to walk inside and worship them always, for 20 minutes now, for ten minutes later. Every day I work here for 16 hours, and for only 5,000 rupee a month but this is a pure place and everyone is born with a duty for their life. This is mine.

In this temple, the white rats are especially lucky, there are two of them now living here. Some people come here many, many times to touch the white rats but never even see them. I can see them almost every day and this has been very lucky for me. Three years ago I had a heart attack, but because I am constantly worshipping Karni Devi, I was absent from here for only two days—and that is the only time I have been ill or failed to attend my work.

The first time I came here I was just eight years old. I thought, I don't need to go to other countries or anywhere else, only this temple.

This 55-year-old man is a constant presence at the rat temple

He said worshipping Karni Marta had provided him with all that he needed in life.

"From my birth, I have lived only here... We don't have names and we desire nothing. I am the son of the goddess Karni Devi—that is my only name. We live under her only.

In this temple are not rats, they are kabbas . There is a big story behind why they are kabbas but I couldn't begin to tell you because you would need to leave before the story was finished. You should buy a book if you want to learn. Foreigners come here and take photographs and knowledge of our culture and religion and then they just go back. Do they really understand each and every thing?

I am just a poor person and I exist only to worship Karni Devi, but the goddess feeds me. I also use drugs, mostly ganja. The almighty goddess arranges all for me, whatever I wish, my wishes are fulfilled. Also if I want the goddess will come here for us to see. But that power is so, so strong. You can understand that I cannot be using it all the time.

Anti-TPP signs at a rally held by Bernie Sanders in Washington, DC, on November 17. Photo by Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

TPP! You heard those three letters a lot during the presidential campaign. Donald Trump repeatedly denounced the Trans-Pacific Partnership as being bad for American workers, as did Bernie Sanders. Even Hillary Clinton, who played a part in negotiating TPP and called it a "gold standard," came out against it.

Since both presidential candidates were opposed to it, TPP was on life support, but with Trump's victory, it's pretty much straight-up dead. Killing it is one of the few promises you can expect Trump to actually keep, and he can do it with the stroke of a pen. And without the US in it, TPP doesn't make much sense.

So now that it's gone, let's look back on it: Why did so many people hate it, and what does it mean that it died?

The basics: TPP is a multilateral trade deal. That means it's a treaty by which a bunch of countries agree to a bunch of rules on how trade happens between their borders. It includes 12 countries from the Pacific Rim, notably not including China. Like other free trade agreements, the basic idea was to make it easier for goods to move across borders.

And the thing is, it's not that big a deal.

Big-time politicians campaigned a lot about it. There were massive protests, all over the world, against it. But it wasn't the game-changer so many TPP opponents portrayed it as.

The thing is, the barrier-lowering process has been going on for some decades now. The tariffs between TPP signatories are really low as it is. The US International Trade Commission's report on TPP said that "few tariffs remain between the United States and its existing partners," which are most of the TPP countries.

As Paul Krugman put it in 2014, "old-fashioned trade deals are a victim of their own success: there just isn't much more protectionism to eliminate. Average US tariff rates have fallen by two-thirds since 1960. The most recent report on American import restraints by the International Trade Commission puts their total cost at less than 0.01 percent of GDP." It's worth recalling that Krugman earned his Nobel Prize in Economics for his pioneering work in trade economics, so this is something that he really knows inside out. In this case, he agrees with me: TPP is meh. "If the big trade deal comes to nothing, as seems likely, it will be, well, no big deal," he wrote.

TPP did have important provisions relating to intellectual property. Two big areas are especially important in that regard are movies and drugs. Disney was looking for expanded protection for its entertainment brands. And drug companies were looking for more protections for their drugs to fend off generics. That last part was especially controversial—it was seen as boosting big companies' drug profits at the expense of the little guy. The NGO Doctors Without Borders even came out against that provision of the deal, and having those humanitarian do-gooders come out against your ho-hum trade deal is not a good look, PR-wise.

But, again, this is something on which there can be reasonable agreement. Virtually all economists and business experts agree that you need some form of rights protection around drugs. It costs billions to develop a new drug, and companies—whether it's Pfizer or some startup—aren't going to spend that money if they can't legitimately expect billions more. The question is where to put the needle. Maybe TPP put it a little too far. But again, the drug regime isn't going to fundamentally change.

So why all the excitement around TPP? Well, sometimes our political fights become all the more vicious precisely because the issues involved are small. Because the stakes are low, symbolism can run rampant.

The fight over TPP wasn't about TPP, exactly, but what TPP represents. You may have noticed that globalization and technological change have destroyed a lot of jobs, and keep destroying jobs. People are angry about that. They look at TPP and they see more of the same trade deals that drove a lot of that job loss and all of its horrible consequences.

Now that that anti-free trade forces have won a major victory, what now? Trump plans to pursue bilateral trade deals with the countries that would have been part of TPP, and those deals would come with more worker protections, or so Trump says. A deal with Japan would probably make a lot of sense, as it's the biggest economy in the region, and since it's as advanced as the US, jobs are unlikely to be offshored there.

Meanwhile, China is happy as pie. TPP was less about economics than geopolitics. The point of doing a trade deal with every important Pacific nation except China was obvious: It would tie those countries closer to the US, and make sure they didn't fall into China's orbit. Now China is pushing its own version of TPP. Economically, TPP wasn't going to make a big difference either way, but the politics of it will stay with us for a long time.

Photos by Fanny Schlichter*

This story appeared in the December fiction issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.

1.

Freshman year I had a friend who'd recently dropped off the intramural rugby team but was still getting the emails. Early in the spring someone on the team wrote to the list late at night, "I just got done fucking a girl from both ends, goodnight!!!" I learned that this had happened in one of the campus's imitation Gothic archways. The archway would have been a thoroughfare for other students returning from drinking at the off-campus clubs, so maybe "in" meant the narrow maintenance staircase that led up from the archway to the building's vast slate-tiled roof. The archway was named in honor of the graduating class in which a US president of diminished reputation had matriculated. My friend—who wore his bangs in a southern-boy sweep deep across the forehead and had a middle name inherited from a different former president, and who wasn't really my friend—handed me the freshman facebook. She was a pretty girl, slightly feline. She was from St. Louis. I was from Kansas City, but you'd have to be from a place like Montana or Alaska for a fellow home-stater to care. Three years later I was taking an advanced video course and I thought of naming my notional production company in honor of this archway. Something about the story made me already nostalgic for the youth I wasn't having. A friend in the video class got the reference and told me the girl from St. Louis had been raped. That's why she was a year behind now, because she'd taken a leave.

2.

There was a girl who did the radio station's political humor segment with me on Tuesdays. I played the progressive, she the conservative. I made a comment to a radio friend about how this girl and I ought to set up a banter on the segment in which we made reciprocal and absurd accusations of sexual misconduct committed by the other. Well, she was raped last month, the friend said. A Korean electrical-engineering graduate student followed her home. She found this out later from her roommates, who had thought he was with her, though he was walking unusually far behind, maybe ten steps. She had no memory, but in the morning she could tell. She did remember the guy from earlier in the night.

3.

There was a girl in our residential college who, sophomore year, was raped or attempt-raped by this guy who got into her bed while she was sleeping there with her boyfriend. The police were called, so the story was all over the student papers, and it was the only time I saw an incident of sexual violence become public. An old man wrote in to the alumni magazine to ask why everyone let pass without comment the fact that this girl's boyfriend had been sleeping over, and was that kind of thing normal nowadays? She was moved to another residential college, and the guy—a black guy in our year from a Caribbean immigrant family—was named everywhere and withdrew temporarily and then permanently and wound up in a public university in the Mid-Atlantic city he'd grown up in.

Several years later, I heard through the guy's friend that he'd eventually been cleared of all disciplinary and legal suspicion but by then it would have been too difficult for him to return to school—whether this meant financially or socially or both, I don't know. He'd been seeing the girl in secret but he'd gotten drunk that night and wandered in, and her boyfriend woke up and confronted the guy and she was trapped.

4.

My sophomore-year girlfriend, with whom I got back together for a while after we graduated, when I was living in LA and she was working for an NGO in Port-au-Prince, would misunderstand obviously sarcastic statements as sincere when she was drunk, and then argue with the sarcastic person on a point about which they were both probably in agreement. One "point" that I was making at a taqueria in Echo Park, with indoor picnic tables and hyper-colorful alpine landscape murals filled with waterfalls and galloping horses, was that it was pretty amazing that only two rapes happened at our school our last year there, per the official numbers, and what a coincidence that I knew both victims personally. It happens a lot more than that, said my girlfriend. It happened to me freshman year.

The conversation died down and moved on. The only people paying attention were two gay guys we'd gone to school with, one of whom was still claiming to be bi. When we got back to my apartment I was in a bad mood. She didn't understand why I was upset and said that this had happened a long time ago, and what she wanted to talk about was not "that" but "us," and did I love her, which I hadn't ever said and couldn't not say now. Then she flopped away from me because she also tended to overheat when she drank a lot.

5.

This girlfriend had once told me that a friend of hers, a girl who'd been on the sailing team with her and to whom I'd sometimes sold pharmaceutical drugs, had been raped by this jock who'd dropped by her room. She was too fatigued from anorexia to resist. One night senior year I had gone over with a delivery and began falling asleep on the bed—it was cold out and cozy in there, and she had a big, expensive, non-university mattress and frame; she was OK with it at first but then the wind turned imperceptibly and she weighed anchor and said, Sorry, no.

Sophomore year she'd lived in a big suite and one of the other girls, from a household-name American industrialist-philanthropist family, turned on her and ratted her out over her cocaine habit, though the heiress herself was much worse in that way, to hear my customer tell it. She spent two days in the hospital being treated for malnutrition and dehydration, was discharged, and took a taxi to where her SUV had been accumulating tickets. Six years after we graduated (she hadn't finished, but her parents argued it would be dangerously destabilizing not to allow her to walk with her class), she died back in Colorado, of heart failure. A couple of friends who knew of my relationship with her asked if I felt guilty, knowing how she eventually died, and I found the question idiotic. I visited her newspaper obituary page and clicked through to the guestbook but by then it had been archived and taken offline, and you had to pay to revive it.

6.

There was a time I went home with a Waspy willowy blonde of passing acquaintance after a champagne binge. I remember walking with her past the student health center and being unable to read but also not really bothering to read whether she was into having me back to her dorm. In her room, I later learned, I became belligerent. I kicked her out, into the hallway, then put on her nautical-theme flannel pajamas and went to sleep. She stayed on a friend's sofa down the hall. I wrote her a letter of apology on some too-large stationery that I reserved for when someone had died, but that didn't happen often so I figured I might as well use it.

This story appeared in the December fiction issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.

*The images featured here are from a new series Fanny Schlichter's working on about underage partying. The models in the photos have no association with the story.

Every fall since 1995, Disney World has been home to the Epcot International Food & Wine Festival. This year, from August 31 to mid-November, guests could stop at 40 different kiosks, each representing a different country. There were culinary demonstrations, a "beverage bootcamp," cheese seminars, daily outdoor concerts, and a lot of people with homemade T-shirts that combined a love of drinking with a love of Disney.

Though there wasn't all that much actual debauchery—maybe thanks to a curfew of 9 PM for most nights and 10:30 PM for special events—a lot of people, many of them foreign tourists, were wearing their enthusiasm for alcohol literally on their sleeves. Maybe this was thanks to Disney's fans well-known penchant for matching outfits, or maybe it was just the prospect of getting buzzed in an amusement park without having to hide your flask from security guards—whatever the reason, it was undeniably charming, and we're glad photographer Samantha Friend was on hand to capture it.

"Wait, wait, wait...shit. Sorry."

While some college students opt to matriculate as far away from their families as physically possible, 18-year-old Olivia Love-Hatlestad decided to stay close. Just an hour and a half northwest of her hometown of Grayslake, Illinois, is Beloit College, where she plans to study theater for the next four years. The most recent episode of VICELAND's Balls Deep gave glimpses of her life and interests, from a Vagina Monologues script sitting next to a painted mural of Bernie Sanders to folded posters in bold, capital letters reading, "INTERSECTIONALITY MATTERS."

We caught up with Love-Hatlestad halfway through her first semester to find out how she's adjusting to life away from home, school, and everything that comes with the territory.

Photo courtesy of VICELAND

VICE: Have you been getting involved in the activism scene at Beloit?
Olivia Love-Hatlestad: Yeah, there's been a couple things I've been able to participate in. The night of the election was one of the worst nights of my life—I wasn't angry, just truly broken. Then I found out there was a campus event where women, people of color, and LGBTQ people could talk about how the election has affected them. At first, people sat in silence for a while. I got to get up and speak for a few minutes, though, which was really cathartic. It opened the way for others to get up and take their turn.

Have you picked up any other interests since starting college?
I'm in a theory class that might be the most frustrating thing I've ever done. It's technically a theater class, but it delves into what liking the art you like means in terms of the art you're going to make and the impact it'll have. It hurts my head, but it's incredible.

You opted to live with your longtime friend Willow. Why did you decide to take that route instead of living with someone you don't know?
Exposing yourself to different types of personalities is definitely a requisite for the college experience, but because I'm really social I didn't have an overwhelming amount of anxiety about making friends. My decision to live with Willow was because I love this person and have a really good rhythm with them. At the end of the day, I want to come home to a space that I feel I can really exhale in. I didn't really want to run the risk of not having that space, which is a problem I've run into with a lot of friends I've made. Anyway, both Willow and I have such busy schedules and involved in so many activities that we're not suffocating each other.

How has your friendship changed since you started living together?
It's definitely shifted as we both find our place in the community. We still have fun together, but we've fallen in with very different people. I think that it's really healthy, though, and it's good that we have our own social circles and support systems so we're not constantly invading each other's space.

How do you feel about Beloit's small size?
I'm used to it. I've only gone to tiny schools—my eighth grade class was four people, and I went to that school for 13 years. I'm accustomed to tight-knit communities where everyone knows one another. I like seeing familiar faces and getting close with people. It's validating, it's grounding, it's good.

What about meeting people for the first time while being followed by Balls Deep's camera crew?
It was interesting. It wasn't bad, but I would've definitely preferred to meet all of those people in a way that didn't have any sort of pressure or ceremony surrounding it. But I was so goddamn nervous. I was certain I looked ridiculous the entire time I was being filmed constantly and having these interactions with strangers while being followed by the camera crew.

How was interacting with Thomas like?
It was so weird at first—I thought he hated me! He's really reserved and minimalistic with his emotional expressions, so it caught me off-guard. But it didn't take me terribly long to get in the rhythm of finding out what he was about and the level he generally operated on. At the end, I found myself really comfortable with Thomas. He was really kind to me, really patient, and really up for anything. Plus, he let me bum a cigarette, so we're basically best friends forever.

Follow Layla Halabian on Twitter.

You can catch Balls Deep on VICELAND. Find out how to watch here.

Protesters demonstrate in solidarity with Standing Rock in Philadelphia, Thursday, December 1. AP Photo/Matt Rourke

Anyone with even a passing knowledge of energy politics surely knows what a massive, unexpected victory it was for thousands of Standing Rock campers when the US Army announced its decision to block the Dakota Access pipeline from its planned route.

For months the Sioux people insisted the pipe would put their water supply at risk. Those demands were more or less met with arrests and rubber bullets. Without warning, powers-that-be appeared to listen and agree on Sunday afternoon. Though the victory may be temporary, the move ensures the pipeline will undergo environmental review.

Even before that surprise, Indigenous groups north of the border were already encouraged by what was happening in Standing Rock. Just last month, Kanesatake Grand Chief Serge Simon made it clear that mass civil disobedience is on the table for Indigenous people opposing megaprojects. The Mohawk leader told APTN Canada could see "20 Standing Rocks" if projects go ahead without free, prior and informed consent.

As if to prove Simon wasn't kidding, Mohawk activists stopped a Canadian Pacific Railway line for 24-hours in solidarity with Dakota protesters last week. It was the second blockade of its kind in two weeks. Those actions were met with equally bold warnings from Canada's natural resource minister, who said defence forces and police would be used to deal with non-peaceful protest.

With rhetoric ratcheting up on both sides, VICE surveyed Indigenous and environmental activists to see where they think tensions could rise in the coming months and years. Though they may not come down to Standing Rock-style direct action, these projects seem to be the country's most divided battlegrounds.

Trans Mountain

Kinder Morgan's recently-approved Trans Mountain expansion, which will transport raw bitumen from Alberta through BC's lower mainland, is the most obviously heated pipeline fight in Canada, and one the major political players are already gesturing toward. "The Standing Rock Sioux won today, and we will win on Kinder Morgan," Green Party Leader Elizabeth May said in an email blast yesterday. Opponents say the project will increase tanker traffic in the area sevenfold and put Canada's climate targets in jeopardy.

Because the project goes through a major urban centre, activists say the capacity for large-scale blockades is greater than any other megaproject in Canada. But Dogwood Initiative's Kai Nagata told VICE that a number of legal challenges could stop the project before it comes to direct action. "I think we're a long way off from that scenario," he told VICE, naming the Tsleil-Waututh and Coldwater Indian Band cases. Burnaby Mountain was the site of over 100 arrests in 2014, when the company began preliminary drilling.

Lelu Island camper in 2015. Photo by KJ Dakin

Lelu Island

Because First Nations land west of the Rockies is largely unceded, British Columbia will see some of the most concentrated resistance to energy projects, say advocates, and that's already proven true on Lelu Island, along the province's northern coast. Pacific Northwest LNG's massive liquefied natural gas terminal proposal just got a green light from Trudeau's government in September, despite opposition from hereditary chiefs up the Skeena watershed. Opponents say the project endangers salmon habitat, have camped out on the site, and have also pledged to take legal action. Erica Ryan-Gagne of the Haida Nation said Trudeau's decision would lead to "the Standing Rock of the northwest."

Read More: Everything You Need to Know About the $36-Billion LNG Project That Has Turned Many First Nations Against Trudeau

Muskrat Falls dam

Inuk protesters already claimed victory after a month-long hunger strike in October, but there's still a chance the hydroelectric project could see more grassroots opposition. The government of Newfoundland and Labrador agreed to an independent review of Nalcor's engineering reports, and has already begun first-phase flooding of the reservoir. The Nunatsiavut, NuatuKavut and Innu governments are concerned with methylmercury levels in water and fish.

Energy East

While TransCanada's Energy East pipeline has generated a lot of headlines and put Rick Mercer at odds with lefties, the organizations working on this issue don't see this particular project becoming a battle that involves rubber bullets. Basically there is so much opposition in Quebec—over 300 municipalities, and in places where Trudeau made huge election gains—Steven Guilbeault of Equiterre told VICE the project will likely be killed long before it gets to that. "We see absolutely no appetite with this government for Energy East," he said. "And we're at least two and a half years away from a National Energy Board recommendation to the federal government."

Site C Dam

This BC hydroelectric project has flown under the national radar, but with farmers being told to leave by December 27, activists say the massive Peace River dam could be another (albeit smaller scale) site of upcoming protest. Opponents argue the power isn't needed, that upstream First Nations haven't been properly consulted, and that the $8.8 billion megaproject will flood farmland, destroy Indigenous hunting and fishing lines, and ruin archeological and cultural sites. Two nations are fighting it in court, on grounds it violates treaty rights.

Woodfibre LNG

Another LNG plant with a green light from the feds as of November, Howe Sound opposition has mostly been the hippy grandma variety. But with a new study that shows BC could miss its climate targets by 220 percent if all LNG plans go ahead, the first of Premier Christy Clark's promised moneymakers could become a climate flashpoint.

Police watch Standing Rock protesters Thanksgiving weekend. Photo by Hilary Beaumont

Read More: Here's How Energy Companies Woo First Nations on Controversial Energy Projects

Enbridge Line 3

With Northern Gateway now off the table, Line 3 has become the largest pipeline project in Enbridge's history. The company wants to double the capacity of the existing line, which cuts from Alberta through Saskatchewan and into Wisconsin. It's one of the five major projects named in an Indigenous anti-pipeline treaty between Atlantic, Quebec, Ontario, Prairie, BC and US First Nations in the fall.

Keystone XL

Probably a long shot, but Donald Trump's election last month has put TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline back on some climate campaigners' radar. The big question here is whether or not the application would have to start over from square one. Canada's side of the pipe is already approved at all levels, so any physical opposition would likely be happening in Nebraska, where a collection of First Nations, environmentalists, and ranchers have proven themselves as vocal, dedicated opposition.

Teck Frontier mine

"If there's one major fight on the horizon in Alberta it's the Teck Frontier mine," Cam Fenton of 350.org told VICE. "It's the next major open pit mine proposal... one of those things that starts to test the actual backbone of the Alberta climate strategy."

Etc. etc. etc.

Though BC seems to be the most likely setting for a potential Standing Rock-style standoff, there are plenty more battlegrounds east of the Rockies. Activists say water access on reserves, fracking in the Yukon, and plans to bring a new refinery to Ontario's Chemical Valley stand out as conflicts that could simmer and grow in 2017 and beyond. West Coast fish farms invited stand-offs with First Nations this summer, which could happen again in the spring. And two major Supreme Court challenges raise similar issues of consent and consultation: one against Arctic exploration in Clyde River, Nunavut, and a massive ski resort in the Kootenay mountains.

Over the next few years, Dene activist Caleb Behn sees the most heated conflicts happening where water and hydrocarbon development intersect with strong Indigenous alliances. He worries it's not just Indigenous leaders like Chief Simon who feel emboldened. "That language of 20 more Standing Rocks—that makes some racist cop's wet dream," Dene activist Caleb Behn told VICE. "They get to shoot rubber bullets at Indians and get paid for it."

Follow Sarah Berman on Twitter.

Three episodes of VICELAND's new series RISE will debut at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.

RISE is an examination of Indigenous life in the modern age and gives viewers a rare glimpse into the frontline of Indigenous-led resistance.

One of the episodes to be screened is "Sacred Water," which sees host Sarain Carson-Fox, of Anishinaabe lineage, visit and examine the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation's resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline.

The resistance became a worldwide news story as the largest gathering of Indigenous people in more than a century came together to protect the area's water. In a stunning victory, the Sioux were able to get the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline rerouted.

With the Trump presidency looming overhead and white supremacy making a comeback, Indigenous-led activism is at the forefront of a cultural pushback.

The show, produced in partnership between VICE Canada and APTN, will be played in the Short-Form Episodic Series programme.

"RISE is groundbreaking through its voicing of important issues around land, decolonization, and political governance told through an Indigenous point of view by showcasing the people who are leading this change globally," said Michelle Latimer, the Algonquin/Métis the director and series producer of RISE.

The other two episodes playing at the festival will be "Apache Stronghold" which focuses on the San Carlos Apache tribe's fight to protect Oak Flat, their sacred land, and "Red Power" an examination of the evolution of the Indigenous resistance movement.

Sundance 2017 will take place from January 19 to 29, RISE will be played in the Special Events category and will feature an extended Q&A with Latimer. The show will premiere on VICELAND on January 27.

Follow Mack Lamoureux on Twitter

Despite having an international image of being a country purportedly full of angels, Canada has its fair share of unscrupulous transnational fugitives running amok and thwarting international law enforcement agencies.

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

Timothy Hurst/College Station Eagle via AP

US NEWS

Protestors Dominate White Supremacist Event
Protestors were the main event when white supremacist Richard Spencer, one of the alt-right's leading voices, spoke at the Texas A&M campus late Tuesday. Activists were pushed back by cops who showed up in force, but some did make it inside the conference room to protest. "At the end of the day, America belongs to white men," Spencer told his audience.—CNN

Man Carrying Gas Can Arrested Near Rockefeller Center
New York City Police arrested a man holding a gas can and matches outside Rockefeller Center and charged him with making terrorist threats. Police said 38-year-old Bronx denizen Yuriy Alterman was shouting anti-police remarks and carrying a copy of Sons of Hama.—NBC News

Son of Trump National Security Advisor Pick Resigns from Transition
The son of Donald Trump's national security advisor choice Michael G. Flynn has been forced to resign from the president-elect's transition team because of his tweets about "pizzagate" and other false news stories. Michael T. Glynn had tweeted: "Until #Pizzagate proven to be false, it'll remain a story."—CBS News

Refrigerator May Have Caused Oakland Warehouse Fire
Investigators suspect the Oakland warehouse party fire that killed 36 people may have been caused by a refrigerator, or one of the other electrical appliances found at the scene. An official with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives said there was "no indication that this was intentionally set."—AP

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Indonesian Earthquake Leaves at Least 97 Dead
A 6.5-magnitude earthquake that struck Indonesia's Aceh Province early Wednesday morning has killed at least 97 people, according to the province's army chief. Rescue teams have been searching through damaged buildings to try to find dozens of people still missing, who they fear may still be trapped in the rubble.—Al Jazeera

Angela Merkel Backs Full-Face Veil Ban in Germany
German chancellor Angela Merkel has proposed a partial ban on the wearing of the full-face veil. Merkel, both admired and criticized for her progressive approach to immigration, told her party's conference that the burqa and the niqab were "inappropriate."—VICE

Syria Rebels Give Up the Old City in Aleppo
Syrian government forces advancing in eastern Aleppo have taken control of the last areas of the Old City held by rebel fighters. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, rebels have withdrawn from the area around an ancient, walled citadel. They have held at least part of the city for the past four years.—AFP

LaMia Airline Boss Arrested in Bolivia
The head of the airline whose plane crashed in Colombia and killed 71 people, including most of the Chapecoense soccer team, has been arrested. Gustavo Vargas has been detained for questioning by police in Bolivia, where the LaMia airline has its headquarters.—BBC News

EVERYTHING ELSE

Beyoncé Leads the Way with Nine Grammy Nominations
Beyoncé has received nine nominations for the 59th annual Grammy awards, the most by any artist this year. Drake, Rihanna, and Kanye West all received eight, though Kanye missed out on any of the crossover "general field" nominations.—Billboard

Apple Music Reaches 20 Million Paid Subscribers
Apple Music has surpassed 20 million paid subscribers signed up to its music-streaming service, having doubled the number of customers in 2016. It still lags behind Spotify, which now has 40 million paid subscribers.—BuzzFeed News

Chelsea Manning Considered a Man by Military Psychologist
A military psychologist has refused to change Chelsea Manning's gender on official records, according to court filings. Manning wants to be listed as female to allow her hair to grow longer than the two inches that male prison inmates are allowed.—AP

Standing Rock Benefit Concert Announced
Fiona Apple, Sky Ferreira, TV on the Radio, and Devendra Banhart will all play a benefit show for groups campaigning with the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. The "We Rock with Standing Rock" concert is at LA's Fonda Theatre on December 18.—Noisey

Congress Finally Moving on Flint Help
Congress has finally agreed on the outline of a bill that would authorize $170 million in aid for Flint, Michigan. The bill, which could be voted on later this week, would also give $220 million for other communities across the US facing drinking water emergencies.—Motherboard