After Drake announced the follow-up to 2016's chart-topping Views wouldn't be an album, but rather a "playlist," there was plenty of speculation as to his reasoning behind the categorization. Was it a move to give the artists on his OVO label, or others in his global orbit, more attention? A calculated way of acknowledging the importance streaming services place on curation today? Perhaps by treating it as a loose collection of songs, the Canadian rapper could avoid some of the lukewarm criticism leveled against his fourth studio record?
When More Life dropped Saturday night, the answer seemed to be all of the above, with the project having something for everybody. At 22 tracks, the release still feels overstuffed, but the format's casualness encourages fans to pick and choose their favourites. While the production is handled largely by a cabal of OVO regulars, including Noah "40" Shebib, Boi-1da, Murda Beatz, and Frank Dukes, the strongest tracks here are rooted in global dance music.
The rapper's relationship with Caribbean dancehall and UK grime has been well-documented, but there's also forays into South African house ("Get It Together") and lite disco ("Passionfruit"). From Canadian YouTubers 4YallEntertainment to Tomoya Ohtani's Sonic the Hedgehog theme song, here's our guide to every sample on More Life.
4Yall Entertainment, "T-Dot Goon Scrap DVD"
Sampled On: "Madiba Riddlim"
While the nimble, spiritually themed "Madiba Riddim"—co-produced by the triumvirate of Frank Dukes, Nineteen85, and Charlie Handsome—hews more closely to Afrobeat than any other genre, the parody video by popular Brampton, Ontario YouTubers 4YallEntertainment which closes the song couldn't have come from anywhere but Toronto. The clip is a 416-centred spoof of street fight compilations and significantly funnier than the time Drake and pals dressed up as Shoppers Drug Mart employees.
Black Coffee feat. Bucie, "Superman"
Sampled On: "Get It Together"
On Monday, New York City hip-hop radio personality Ebro tweeted his thoughtson the playlist, saying "Fuck it...Drake brining [sic] House Music back!!" While this proclamation might seem a little out-of-touch, songs like "Take Care" and "Controlla" show that the rapper's biggest hits come when he has one eye on the dancefloor and just a hint of melancholy in his heart.
This rework of South Africa DJ and producer Black Coffee's 2010 piano-house anthem "Superman"—British jazz-R&B singer-songwriter Jorja Smith replaces Bucie on vocals—is a natural successor to both those songs and wouldn't be totally out of place on a Now That's What I Call Ibiza Music! compilation. Drake doesn't even show up until the 1:21 mark, and he stays mostly out of the way, letting the beat do the heavy lifting.
Drake, "Doing It Wrong"
Sampled On: "Jorja Interlude"
It's a real Inception move to sample yourself, and he's hardly the first rapper to do so, but the Take Care deep cut's saxophone section fits this interlude nicely.
Earth, Wind & Fire, "Devotion"
Sampled On: "Glow"
One of the more curious inclusions on More Life, "Glow" sees Drake and Kanye West rekindling their on-again, off-again friendship and trading aspirational toasts over a sparse, metronomic beat. While it isn't the first time the latter has borrowed from the Chicago pioneers' deep discography, using Maurice White and company's 1974 hit as the outro lends the collaboration some soulful heft.
As someone who has written his fair share of terrible music criticism, I can say with authority that there is a lot of shitty music writing out there. But with all due respect to music writers' tendency toward canonizing works prematurely, writing that a producer made a beat from scratch when they're actually just looping a well-known soul hit from the 1970s, and using the word "ethereal," there's nothing worse in the trade than the impulse to conflate a musician's work with their character––except when that musician is a shitty person and a writer really, really, really likes their work. Music occupies this liminal space between art and commerce, authenticity and artifice, emotional expression and pure product––and often, we make arbitrary value judgments as to which way the pendulum ought to swing. For every critical disavowal of Chris Brown or Jef Whitehead in light of their horrible treatment of women, there is a case like Michael Gira or Dr. Dre, whose alleged abuses briefly make the news before getting more or less swept under the rug and therefore tacitly excused.
In today's all-farm-to-table-everything environment of "conscious consumerism"––where we're willing to pay more for a steak if we're told the cow was happy before somebody slaughtered it, clothing companies like Everlane use their dedication to "radical transparency" as a marketing tactic, and it is possible to purchase fair trade cocaine on the deep web––a product's worth is often linked to the perceived ethics of those who produce it. When it comes to music, this means that artists are viewed as part and parcel with the work they create. If they seem like a decent person, we're more apt to listen to their music with favorable ears; conversely, if we enjoy their work, there is part of us that automatically assumes that person embodies the values we assign to their music.
For a less extreme example of this dynamic, take Chance the Rapper. People love him for a whole lot of reasons––not only is his music warm, relatable, and technically complex to boot, but Chance casts himself as a nice guy with an independent streak and a passion for important social issues. By pretty much all accounts, he is exactly that. And for a good chunk of his millions of fans, the news that he donated a million dollars to the Chicago school system probably helped reinforce and justify that fandom: Here is concrete evidence that an artist I like did a good deed, the logic went , therefore, I can feel even better about listening to their music now that I have proof that this person's intentions are pure. Yet this same logic, applied with a different focus, becomes more complicated. While Chance's fans were quick to congratulate him on the donations, they were outraged at a Chicago Sun Times an op-ed by Mary Mitchell of the paper's editorial board, which pointed out that Chance had filed court documents seeking to set his child support payments to his ex at a rate lower than the state-recommended payment of 20 percent of the non-custodial parent's income. "You can't hand out money to benefit children you don't know and come off looking like you are being stingy when it comes to your own child," wrote Mitchell, whose piece prompted a wave of online harassment by angry Chance fans that was arguably spurred on by Chance himself. While I'd argue that it's absurd to expect art to perfectly adhere to the always complicated and messy personal lives of those who make it, if we're going to grade people's music based on their extramusical behavior, we can't be surprised or upset when someone when someone who takes issue with that behavior suggests––fairly or not––that it reflects poorly upon the artist's character. "There is something in us that wants good [artists] to be good people," the late Jenny Diski once wrote. "There's also something in us that knows pigs can't fly."
"There is something in us that wants good [artists] to be good people," the late Jenny Diski once wrote. "There's also something in us that knows pigs can't fly."
Of course, the social and technological infrastructure that fosters these attitudes is relatively new, and the tension between the attitudes of today and the events of the past can be seen in the writing that has popped up in the wake of Berry's death, much of which implicitly asks whether Berry's status in the rock and roll canon should be revoked in light of his serial misconduct with women. "When it comes to real-world actions that harm real-world people, art pales in significance," The Outline's Andy Martino asserted in a Berry post-mortem titled, "Why can't we be honest about Chuck Berry?" The thrust of the piece is below:
The St. Louis native turned to music after serving time for armed robbery as a teenager. By the mid-1950s, he had made himself into one of the most influential songwriters and performers of the century, with devotees and imitators that included Keith Richards and John Lennon, and a stylistic reach that extended into and beyond the MCs of the 1970s Bronx. His most prolific period as a recording artist thudded to a halt in 1959 with an arrest and conviction for violating the Mann Act; Berry, then 33, was accused of having sex with a 14-year-old girl.
In his attempt to provide a counterbalance to the critical tendency to gloss over talented male musicians' abusive behavior, Martino indulges in the fantasy that contemporary accountability politics can be projected onto the past (additionally, by failing to note that both John Lennon and Richards' bandmate Brian Jones were both domestic abusers, Martino inadvertently plays into the trope of highlighting the transgressions of black men while overlooking those of white men). Still, it is undeniable that if Berry were a modern musician who was sent to jail for sexual impropriety with a minor, his career would have deservedly ground to a halt.
Let me tell you about my handsome son, Mizue. He's a cat. He cuddles up beside me and pushes his little furry head against me when he wants to be petted. He purrs and rubs up on everyone he meets. He's the best dude, is what I'm saying here, and I am goddamn sick of people saying that cats aren't nice.
Cats are nice.
But don't take my word for it. Thanks to new research from Oregon State University, published on Friday in Behavioural Processes, there is scientific evidence that cats are, according to empirical study, nice. In fact, the study concluded, cats like interacting with humans more than they like eating food. Let that sink in: more than food. I don't like anybody more than food.
The motivation for the study was to apply cognitive tests that have already be tried out on dogs and tortoises on cats, in order to clear up some misconceptions around cats' bad reputation for being unsociable.
"Increasingly cat cognition research is providing evidence of their complex socio-cognitive and problem solving abilities," the authors wrote in the paper. "Nonetheless, it is still common belief that cats are not especially sociable or trainable. This disconnect may be due, in part, to a lack of knowledge of what stimuli cats prefer, and thus may be most motivated to work for."
Every drug scene has a stereotype. Pills are taken by party girls, meth is for homeless burnouts. Weed is for armchair philosophers, while coke is for creative agency psychopaths. Basically every community comes with a list of identifying features, which often includes how its members feel about outsiders. And members of a particular drug scene love to judge the members of other scenes.
To find out more about how and why drugs are split along demographic lines, we hung out with users and asked what they'd never touch.
Meth
Demographic profile: Meth users are predominantly male with an average age of 28 years. They often come from the lower socio-economic backgrounds.
Abdul, 27 Unemployed, Blacktown
I'd never take anything real trippy like mushies and acid. That shit makes you go skitz. I've had a biccy before that was laced with acid and I freaked out, it really sucked. I don't know why people want to take it that far and trip out so they're seeing all sorts of shit. I've heard you can get caught up in an acid trip and never return or it can just switch back on when you're older. Before you know it you'll be in a fucking psych ward talking to pigeons and dragons that aren't even there. Fuck that.
I used to chew pills (MDMA) until they started chopping them with heaps of rubbish, then I moved onto speed and ice because they're the cleanest and most potent. Everyone in our suburbs were puffin' a few years ago so it just happened naturally. No one had work in my circles, so we blew our fortnightly job seeker payments on half a gram and a spin at the pokies.
I guess it just made us feel real good, it was a bit of a distraction. I guess we're fuck ups in the real world, to our families and stuff so it was an easy getaway. To be honest, we tried getting jobs. My cousins have got me work a few times but I'm in too deep, you start with a burn on weekends and it becomes a Thursday night start and before you know it you're going around the clock.
LSD
Demographic profile: average age when first tried is 18 years, typically users are from educated middle class backgrounds.
Chris, 29 Photographer, Heidelberg
I'd probably never take heroin or any drugs you'd inject, the whole process of looking for your veins and organising syringes is way too hardcore. Not a fan of uppers like speed or coke either, they just seem to provoke anxiety for me.
Acid is great. It opens everything up, like gives you a totally new way of thinking about stuff. That's what turned me on about acid. Psychedelics are the only drugs that made me feel like you could reorganise the way you saw the world, from somewhere new. I smoked a bit of weed in high school and stuff, then a mate got me onto mushies and acid in uni. They're the only drugs I take. It might sound like natural hippy shit but they're the only drugs that have been extensively researched, and where the good to bad ratio isn't completely whack. My girlfriend suffers from depression and the mushrooms really helped her through all of her mental health issues. She'd take a point or even less, every night and it's helped her a great deal.
MDMA
Demographic profile: evenly spread across genders, predominantly students with an average age of 22 years.
Lisa, 23 Student, Manly)
No one in our group would ever take anything like ice. We've seen what it's done to guys we went to school with and their families. It seems pretty horrifying. Also the whole glass pipe thing is fucking disgusting and they all get really intense and violent. I've had ice addicts from high school message me really weird and confronting sexual messages on like weekdays at 4 AM. Why would you want to get high and act like an abusive weirdo?
MDMA was actually the first drug I ever took, when I turned 18 a bunch of the older girls gave me and my best friend one each. We had the best time ever, just got totally into the music, super happy and just loved everything about it. It felt like all the good bits of being drunk without the slurring, wastedness, and I actually preferred the comedown over a nasty hangover. These days we usually get a gram of powdered MD between a couple of us and just drop small amounts in our drinks throughout the night.
HEROIN
Demographic profile: The average age of heroin users in Australia is 37 years. Heroin users are often unemployed and are generally from lower socio economic communities.
Karl, 44 Panel Beater, Doveton
I'd never take trippers or coke. Trippers mess with people's heads too much. I reckon people are pretty fucked up as they are, they don't need to be making themselves any more delusional than they already are. And coke because it's too fucking expensive for what it is and does. It's like window-shopping, what's the point?
I don't know if doing heroin is anything anyone would be proud of, like I'm not sure if I prefer it over any other drug. But once you get a taste for it, you think you got it all under wraps but it's always going to have the last laugh. You might think you're in control but you're kidding yourself. It's only a matter of time before you're hooked and it's fucked your life. It trickles you away and it just gets worse and worse.
My mum was a heroin addict, which confuses a lot of people. They're always asking why? You know, if you had such a fucked up upbringing how do you end up making the same mistakes, and the truth is I don't know. It's sad that I made the same mistakes but I take full responsibility. I probably just knocked about the wrong crowds. We didn't have much hope; the most successful blokes I knew were drug dealers.
WEED
Demographic profile: Cannabis users in Australia are an average age of 22 years and generally from well-educated backgrounds.
Damien, 24 Construction Foreman, Logan
All the people we knew who took pills or smoked ice were pretty lame. We'd just look at them at house parties and be like fuck looking like that when you go out. I guess it all depends on the type of person you are. You're either into uppers or downers. I'd never smoke ice. It's just the worst and it's had a pretty severe effect, specifically on the immigrant communities in Logan and across suburban Brisbane in general.
I guess it takes hold on guys that have had it rough, whether they come from poor backgrounds or if they've seen some shit because they're refugees or whatever. Now I feel like a bit of a dick for saying they look lame at house parties. But it's also that you stand to lose so much more, physically, mentally, and socially. There's are just zero benefits, whereas weed has a lot of qualities that can be beneficial.
Ever since I was in my mid teens I've only ever really drank and smoked weed. That's all our older brothers were into so just followed them really. We were all skaters from suburban Brisbane. Sometimes we'd dabble in party drugs and shit but it wasn't really our vibe. A close mate grew weed so it was always cheap or free.
COCAINE
Demographic profile: Average age when first initiated is 24 years with the majority of users in their late 20s and from high income households.
Jess, 27 Model, South Melbourne
Obviously I'd never touch heroin and the crazy stuff like ice. I know girls that have got involved with guys that do it and it sounds pretty shit. I can't imagine not sleeping for days, and how quickly it becomes the central focus of their lives. I feel sorry for the girls I know whose boyfriends got them on it. Like they snorted a few lines and now they work as strippers to support both their own habit and their boyfriend's. It's so sad. I personally know two or three girls like that. They also become the worst liars. Seriously, they'll look you in the eye and make up really elaborate lies about something simple like arriving to a party late.
I've never really tried psychedelics or dissociative drugs. Again they just sound like a bit of an extreme way to have fun. The people that I knew who took them didn't seem very social when they went out and I guess that's what my ideas about drug culture are. I see drugs as a social—a going out sort of thing. I wouldn't say they're any worse or better, just not for me.
My friends and I will only ever take cocaine because it seems like the cleanest, which is why it costs so much. There's no real comedown and it's fun, keeps me dancing and talking my friends ears off. It seems like the perfect social drug, although I'm sure like everything else it can be abused. But all the people I know using it seem to be getting by. They have great jobs, they don't abuse it and they don't let it get the better of them. I've had nights where I might've pushed it a little far but the worst experiences aren't nearly as bad as other drugs.
Ron Coleman was sitting in his office doing some calculations when a voice behind him said, "You've done that wrong." He looked around, but saw no one.
"I put that down to stress and went out and got really drunk that night, thinking that would get rid of it," he recalls. "Then it continued and then I started hearing other voices, and before very long there were about six of them going on at different times... sometimes all together."
The voices, he says, were a manifestation of various traumas: Coleman was molested by a Catholic priest as a preteen altar boy, then lost his first wife to suicide when he was 17—just one year after their wedding. He was then "locked up in hospital for years," until a support worker convinced him to go to a Hearing Voices support group, where "the first thing I heard in that group was, 'Your voices are real.' "
That shifted his perspective entirely. "It made a lot of sense, because if they were real I could do something about it," explains Coleman. "Up until then I'd been told that they weren't real, so therefore I couldn't do anything about it."
The Hearing Voices Network (HVN), where Coleman is now a trainer, is an informal yet influential collective that aims to empower people who hear voices. Members of the group believe hearing voices is a normal variation of human existence, and, notably, one that needn't always be diagnosed as an illness—unless that is how the voice hearer chooses to see it. The collective also teaches that the voices should be validated as a means to seeking meaning, even if only metaphorical.
In short, the HVN is an alternative, non-medical approach. Voice hearers, as they are known, are taught how to talk back assertively to their voices, and how to negotiate downtime from them, too. "It's a self-help movement," Coleman says. "We don't just discuss hearing voices, we discuss our response to hearing voices."
How does one set the mood for an orgy? Well apparently you just need a couple of things: inflatable furniture, sex toys, plenty of lube, and a copy of Michelle Branch's seminal hit "The Game of Love." In our second episode of Off the Record, we speak with a professional orgy organiser about the ins and outs (pun not intended, and very much apologised for) of running up the best sex parties in Sydney.
At his monthly orgies—held in apartments, art galleries, hotels, and even churches across the city—partiers will go through between 50 and 60 condoms. Everyone from labourers, to doctors, and even celebrities are on the guest list—but not just anybody can get in the door. You need to send in a photo of yourself to score an invite because "it's a physical party and we want people well presented, toned, and people you'd want to get off with."
After years in the game, our orgy organiser has seen it all: 13-person daisy chains, liberal use of strap-ons, and even people who've married after an orgy. He says he can't keep on organising orgies forever, but he'll enjoy it while he can.
Manitoba is one of the first provinces attempting to amend their laws in anticipation of weed legalization in Canada.
In doing so, the province's Progressive Conservative government introduced Bill 25 (titled the Cannabis Harm Prevention Act) into the legislature on March 20—since then, confusion and criticism have been directed non-stop towards the bill.
So, here's what you need to know if you like to get icky in the land of 1,000 lakes.
The main take away from all this (a tl;dr, if you will) is that when weed is legalized Manitoba will basically treat it as alcohol. To do this, the bill amends seven acts within the province, including the human trafficking act, the traffic act, the drivers and vehicles act, the mental health act, and the non-smoking act.
The biggest of these will be the change to the traffic act, which will see an officer allowed to suspend your licence for 24 hours is he believes you to be driving while high—you also can't smoke it while driving, in case you were wondering. Weed will also need to be transported in a similarly way as alcohol (secured and away from driver's reach.)
The other acts include the off-road act which will be amended, again, so weed is governed similar to alcohol when operating off-road vehicles. The mental health act will be amended so that cannabis can't be given to "residents in a mental health facility," and the non-smoking act will be amended to include weed.
The amendment to the public school's act makes it so that, obviously, weed is prohibited in schools. Lastly, the human trafficking and child exploitation will be amended so that you can't use marijuana as a tool to exploit or traffic people.
That's basically it, weed will kinda be treated like alcohol, so why are people mad?
Well, there is one thing that isn't addressed in these laws—the medical use of marijuana. Due to that oversight, pot advocates, experts, and the opposition NDP party have heavily criticized the government for not consulting with experts on the subject. One critic called it a "slap in the face" to medical marijuana patients.
On Saturday, a small group of protesters made their way to the legislature to protest the proposed law, arguing the proposed amendments target both recreational and medical cannabis users. An expert told the CBC that there isn't enough research on driving while high to legislate on it. Others have called Bill 25 a good first step but lament it doesn't address all the complexities of legalizing weed.
"It would have been nice if [Manitoba] would have consulted with some experts on cannabis or even if they would have consulted with the scientific literature—if they would have done their due diligence," Zach Walsh, who studies marijuana usage at UBC, told the CBC.
"I think [this proposed legislation] is uninformed."
Meanwhile, Manitoba's minister of justice, Heather Stefanson, said that with the looming legalization, the province is focused on the "safety and health of all Manitobans."
"This legislation would be an early step by our government to target drug-impaired driving and prioritize the health and safety of Manitoba youth."
Laura Avila has dedicated her life to helping migrants who pass through Guadalajara, Mexico's second largest city on the infamous train line known as "the beast" on their way to America.
La Bestia, also known as "el tren de la muerte" or the death train, is a network of freight trains running from central America, traversing Mexico to the United States.
Walk along the tracks in Guadalajara, and you will encounter an endless stream of migrants from Guatemala, Honduras, and southern Mexico. Most migrants travelling on the beast through Guadalajara have already spent days or weeks holding onto a freight train for dear life.
They hop off the moving train near the market in Guadalajara to find enough food to sustain them for the next leg of their trip, often selling or trading whatever they can find to survive.
When the migrants are strong enough for another leg of the trip, they will run and hop onto a freight train as it slows down to pass through heavily populated areas of Guadalajara, gradually making their way to the US.
Although the 64-year-old Avila has lived in Guadalajara all of her life, she sets up camp along the tracks as well, living with new neighbours every day.
"I do whatever I can to help people," said Avila, who lives on a pile of salvaged trash near the train tracks. "It's why I'm here on earth."
Avila spends her days salvaging usable trash from a nearby open market, and giving the goods to migrants who can use them.
Avila is not alone in the fight to help migrants in Mexico. A thousand kilometers east of Guadalajara, in the state of Veracruz, there is a network of women known as "las patronas."
These women stand by the tracks every day as the beast runs through town and toss groceries to the hungry men, women, and children.
Although this group of women is widely known across Latin America, Avila is part of a lesser known tradition of women living along the length of the tracks to the US who help out migrants in whatever way they can.
"Sometimes, for example, I will find a perfect shoe box. I know there are always migrants trying to sell shoes around here to get some food. I will give them a shoe box to make them look more professional, and maybe they will have an easier time selling their shoes," said Avila.
Avila speaks unbroken English, despite a lack of traditional education.
"I wanted to study languages in my youth, but my father forced me to marry and have children when I was very young," she said.
Avila's husband worked in a factory making clothing for decades.
"He worked in very poor conditions, it was horrible. He began huffing cement at work with his colleagues to cope. He died at the age of 30," she said.
After the death of her husband, Avila was left to fend for herself, without an education to fall back on, she decided to start collecting junk and trading it for food.
Avila has three daughters, two of them in Mexico City, and one who lives a hundred yards from Avila's bed of junk in Guadalajara.
"I could live with my daughter in those apartments over there, but I am used to living outdoors. I love nature and I love the people who come through this part of town looking for a better life."
This article was originally published in Danish on MUNCHIES DK
Jonathan Zagouri, 29, owns Zaggi's , a coffee bar in Copenhagen. What makes Zaggi's stand out in this city that drowns in cold brew, $6.50 lattes, and Aeropress filters is that all of Zaggi's coffee, cake, toast, and sandwiches cost $2.20. And Jonathan is not the prototype of a Copenhagen barista; he has been with combat troops in Afghanistan, he brews coffee for the upper class as well as street people, and he has declared war against Copenhagen coffee prices.
I started my coffee bar because something new had to happen in my life. I had been in the military for six years and wasn't really at ease with myself anymore. In 2011, I was deployed with combat troops from Slagelse, and I was seven months in Helmand in Afghanistan. It was quite a trip.
The military has given me a lot, for better and worse. I didn't know what I was going to spend my life doing, but I thought that doing something good for others would be the way forward. Whether we actually did something good for others as soldiers is a completely different story.
All photos by Amanda Bødker.
I had been home from Afghanistan for three years before I started my coffee project. I had already dabbled with the idea before I took off, but had neither the money nor the brain activity to make it reality. I was still a little boy when I went to Helmand. I had actually started civilian training paid by the military, but after I sat in the classroom for two weeks and wanted to shoot myself out of sheer boredom, I thought that something drastic had to happen.
So I borrowed a lot of money from anyone and everyone—from family and wherever I could get help. I really haven't earned a dime over the past two years. I have only paid off debt. I spent the money I made in Afghanistan on drinks and drugs and all sorts of other shit. Also for this reason, life was extra hard when I returned home. Being in the military will make you go a little crazy. You may get to the point where you bury yourself a little in your own thoughts and then find some ways to hold the thoughts at bay. And like so many others with that kind of problem, I found my solution in nightlife.
I can shut myself off, and when everything is real bad, my best friend is a bottle of whiskey. I cannot run from it. But it is something you learn to live with. And then you must try to minimize the damage to yourself and the people you care about. I didn't see a psychologist for the first three or four years after I returned home, but I have started doing that now. It does help, but everything takes time. My coffee bar helps me a lot.
Nine out of ten mornings, I wake up thinking "Fuck this shit," but the fact that you create your own little parallel society with the regular customers does give me a life, something happy and positive. And I must remember to appreciate it. It is important, especially when you tend to have a somewhat negative view of the world. It gives me the surplus energy to send a smile to those of my customers who could really need it.
Thursday evening, after four days of negotiations in Philadelphia between the U.S. women's national ice hockey team players and their sport's national governing body, USA Today confirmed that USA Hockey has reneged on earlier negotiated points and will search for replacement players—scabs—for the upcoming IIHF Women's World Championships.
USA Hockey told USA Today that "it will begin reaching out to alternate players to determine their availability." The organization is looking to pull players from the National Women's Hockey League, including the Minnesota Whitecaps, as well as college teams.
The national team forced USA Hockey to the bargaining table this week with its boycott of Women's Worlds after contract negotiations stalled between the parties sixteen months previous, with USWNT players citing poor wages and inequitable player treatment.
Not only did players note that their per diem amount, accommodations, and insurance reimbursements were inferior to those enjoyed by the men's team but the men's team also enjoyed $3.5 million dedicated to its development programs; $0 was dedicated to the women's.
USA Hockey already tried to ice a team of replacements when the women first boycotted, but players in the pipeline all the way down to the U-18 team held firm and refused.
Negotiations appeared to be proceeding well this week, but the cancellation of a friendly match against Finland and the reorganization of the team's training schedule seems to have been the impetus for USA Hockey's decision to scout once again for scabs.
All This Panic is a documentary about teenagers, but not as we know them: There are no worries over underage sexting, no Snapchat streaks, no teen orgies, and little to no parental handwringing. (The movie's biggest arguments between parent and child revolve around prosaic concerns like grocery shopping and looking for a job.)
Filmed over three years, this lyrical and candid portrait of girlhood follows a group of seven high schoolers as they grow up in New York. The usual hallmarks of a coming of age film, like first kisses or Prom, are either alluded to offscreen or not depicted at all. What the movie does show is lots of talk—teenage girls talking about coming out, mental health, school, and relationships—with the kind of frank honesty and adolescent passion that anybody who was once a 16-year-old will recognize.
We talked to director Jenny Gage, and one of the stars of the film, Olivia Cucinotta, who is now 21.
BROADLY: A lot of the film is just the girls vocalizing what they're thinking. How difficult was it for them to open up like that on camera? J enny Gage: Time was in our favor. We would revisit questions or themes and some things that they weren't ready to open up with in year one. But year three, they were—and it would go in waves. Sometimes Olivia would be like I'm ready to open up about this and Ginger would be going through something where she felt she wasn't ready. I don't think that if we did this in nine months, we would have gotten the same results. Olivia Cucinotta: I think we all loved each other, to start. That was clever, finding friends that have chemistry and trust in each other to begin with. I think so much of the movie, so much of what happens between us, so much of it is in body language and looks and tone of voice. That's the way that very close friends communicate.
Dusty and Delia. Photo by Tom Betterton
Were there things that you definitely thought were going into the film that didn't make it?
Gage: We weren't going for the classic moments of coming of age. For sure there were parties and first kisses, but we really wanted it to be in their heads—what are they thinking about, what are they talking about? We wanted to stay away from prom. Although I would have like to have gone. Cucinotta: Everyone went to prom. I was the only one who had a date for prom. Gage: I did feel [feel this] less with Olivia, but definitely more with all the girls—because we've all seen those movies so many times—they occasionally had preconceived notions of what we wanted to hear. But it ended up being the inbetween moments that were the most compelling.
Olivia, the film documents you coming out—is it weird that such a pivotal moment of your life has been captured on camera? Cucinotta: I don't think of it so much as captured on camera, but as a conversation that I really needed to have [that] was happening around people that I trusted. When I was a teenager, Jenny and Tom were the first adults who talked to me like I was also an adult and wanted to hear what I wanted to say. The fact that Jenny and Tom and a very dear dear friend of mine, Lena, who I've been friends with since we were nerds in sixth grade, were some of the first people I talked about this with—it kind of makes sense to me. I feel lucky to be able to share that moment with other people who are maybe looking for that own moment in their own lives.
Nope. That was one woman's actual experience when she found a mysterious bone in her barbacoa tacos at El Rincon Mexican Restaurant in Pflugerville, Texas. In a since-deleted Facebook post, Courtney Aguilar, wrote:
"I asked the server if this was teeth??? She said 'baby teeth.'"
That was followed by numerous green nauseated emojis, but really, there is no amount of emojis to do justice to that interaction.
Fortunately for her, like the "fried rat" story at Kentucky Fried Chicken, the situation wasn't quite as disturbing as it may initially have seemed. After her post went viral, San Antonio-based meat vendor Laxson, which supplied the meat to El Rincon, explained that what Aguilar thought were teeth were in fact just delicious beef lips.
There's a lot more to making an album than one person writing and recording some songs, packaging them in a way that looks OK and sticking them on Spotify. You've got label meetings about everything from release strategy to marketing budgets, social media campaigns to "activate" and singles that need to reach a certain level of success so your manager won't be pacing the record label offices, sweating all over himself before deciding to drop you. And while the most important element should be whether the music is actually good, this can often get lost along the way.
To that end, take a look at the liner notes for nearly any album over the past 20 years and you'll see loads of names attached to a single track—from songwriters to producers—because that's how music is usually made: collaboratively. But weirdly, there's nothing that upsets self-proclaimed "real music fans" more. I'm sure you can remember that Facebook meme (the worst kind of meme) that very smugly compared the number of writers on Beyoncé's self-titled opus with those on Beck's Morning Phase when people questioned why the latter had won the Grammy for Album of the Year in 2015. Getting salty or questioning the talent and validity of pop stars because they might not solely write all their own material is nothing new. But the album process goes way beyond just being able to write a tune.
"Why do we get so mad at singers who don't write their own songs?!" songwriter Justin Tranter, who's written for everyone from Ariana Grande to Fall Out Boy, recently asked during a podcast hosted by fellow songwriter Ross Golan. "No one's furious with Meryl Streep for not writing her Oscar-winning screenplay. Some singers are not meant to be writers, they're just amazing storytellers; they're interpreters. That is amazing. We need them. We would have nothing without them." Tranter and Golan then name-checked Selena Gomez, someone they both praise as being "the best curator in the business". As Jamila Scott, A&R at Method Music, told me via email, "curation means bringing together various different elements (whether that's writers, artists, samples, whatever) to showcase a specific artistic end goal."
In 1969, Michael Humphrey did a 14-month stretch at the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, Ohio, on a grand larceny conviction stemming from an auto theft case. He was 18. Determined not to return, Humphrey says he never got in trouble with the law again, taking care not to so much as spit on the sidewalk after his release. Life was pretty good, or at least became tolerable when Humphrey finally overcame the nightmares about prison that had plagued him for years.
"I could still smell that place, I could still hear it," he says now. "I'd have to get out of bed at night and turn the light on just to prove to myself I wasn't still there."
But on a spring day in 2000, Humphrey was driving along Route 30 and saw a sign advertising tours of the reformatory, known colloquially as Mansfield. The place had been shut down by court order a decade earlier, just over a century after it opened, due to inhumane conditions.
Despite his reluctance to reenter that world, curiosity got the best of Humphrey. So he drove up to the striking gothic facade that led early prisoners there to dub it "Dracula's Castle," paid the admission, and went inside again.
By this time, Mansfield had found new life as a burgeoning tourist attraction thanks to the fact that the revered 1994 movie The Shawshank Redemption was filmed there (scenes from other, lesser films like Air Force One and Tango & Cash were shot there as well—the latter while Mansfield was still an operational prison). Humphrey walked around the sprawling facility, taking in the surreal decay and once more coming face to face with his temporary residence on the East Cell Block—six tiers high, it's still the world's largest free-standing steel cellblock.
Photo by Michael Goldberg
"When I was there [as an inmate] we never got to wander around the place, so it was kind of an adventure," Humphrey chuckles drily, admitting he began second-guessing his visit once the old unpleasant memories started flooding his mind. A few weeks later, he contacted the Mansfield Reformatory Preservation Society and told them about his history with the place, and by the fall, Humphrey was serving as a tour guide. Because of his background in construction, he helped rehab and preserve the crumbling structure, too.
Now 66 years old—nearly a half-century after his release—Humphrey has come full-circe, outing himself with his popular "Life of an Inmate" tour that gives Shawshank aficionados and other visitors an unflinching look at Mansfield incarceration from someone who lived it.
"When I first started doing tours [in 2000] I didn't tell anybody that I was a former inmate," he explains. "I was so ashamed of actually being a convicted felon." Humphrey says he almost quit early on, stung by the fact that he "would hear people make jokes and dumb remarks [about inmates], you know, 'They shoulda done this to him and they shoulda done that to him.'"
Now he tells people anything they want to know while providing a detailed history of the prison and how it evolved from a rehabilitation-minded intermediate penitentiary for young, largely non-violent offenders to an overcrowded and intensely violent maximum-security hellhole.
The sea change can be traced to a 1930 fire at the higher security Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus, approximately 70 miles south of Mansfield, that killed more than 300 inmates. The damage forced the state to transfer hundreds of "the worst of the worst"—murderers, rapists and others—to Mansfield.
The first thing Humphrey noticed upon being committed to the facility in 1969 was the overwhelming, horrible stench of more than 2,000 men who were allowed to shower just once per week. The violence revealed itself soon after: Fights happened like clockwork, stabbings were a regular fact of life, inmates hanged themselves. The most terrible things you can imagine happening behind bars happened at Mansfield, according to Humphrey, who fashioned his own weapon early on in his stay. "I had a toothbrush with a razor blade melted into the handle of it that I carried around my neck on a string, but in the nape of my neck so no one could really see it." Thankfully, he says, he never had to use it.
Photo by Michael Goldberg
Humphrey's cellmate was a man named Ron Crabtree—six years Humphrey's senior and in on an armed robbery conviction. The two wound up being lifelong friends (Crabtree died in 2012), and was essentially "Red" to Humphrey's "Andy Dufresne," showing him the ropes and teaching him the number one rule of Mansfield (or any prison): "Do not accept any gifts from anybody." "
"Nothing in here is free," Humphrey recalls being told, "and I heeded that warning very well."
Humphrey mainly kept to himself during his 14 months, and says he got along well with the guards. Not because he was helping them with their taxes, but because his mother would bring huge trays of lasagna and chili to him during her bi-monthly visits, and the guards would end up taking the massive leftovers downstairs for a hell of a feast. "It went from 'Ma'am' to 'Mrs. Humphrey' to 'June,'" Humphrey laughs. "And they treated me pretty well."
Another fairly important parallel between Humphrey and Shawshank: Just like Andy Dufresne, Humphrey says he was innocent. He didn't steal that car.
"Don't get me wrong, I was no angel, but I wasn't a criminal," he says. "I took the blame for something some other guys were doing. The day the police came to the house, I was the only one there, and they took me. The judge insisted that I tell him who all was involved and I wouldn't do it, and that's when they sent me to Mansfield."
Nearly 50 years later, he has little regret about that decision. "I could have gone to work at Republic Steel with my father and died of black lung like he did," Humphrey says. "If this was the plan for me, so be it."
At the time, Humphrey figured, he'd just pay the price, figuring once he was paroled, things would be fine. They weren't. Beyond being stripped of rights like voting or gun ownership, Humphrey, like many other former inmates, carried with him an unyielding sense of stigma and shame about being a convicted felon. But thanks to the support and encouragement of his colleagues at the Mansfield Reformatory Preservation Society, he filled out the necessary paperwork, and in May of 2004, then-Ohio Governor Bob Taft pardoned him.
"It's still emotional for me," Humphrey says. "I can't begin to tell you what it did to me, but it absolutely changed me for the better. It took that weight off my shoulders. I'm happy now. I can talk to anybody and not feel like a second-class citizen."
There aren't any more nightmares, but there are areas inside Mansfield that still bring back terrible memories. Yet even in his darkest of times during his incarceration, Humphrey never considered "crawling through a river of shit" or any other means to escape. "I just never wanted to be looking over my shoulder," Humphrey says. "I'll say this, though—I wanted out pretty bad, and in '69 and '70, when I looked at those guards carrying those keys, I sure wished I had them."
He laughs. "And now I do. I have the keys to the place."
A version of this article originally appeared on the Trace.
Last week, the National Rifle Association splashed television ads across the country, warning viewers in dire tones that without five conservatives on the Supreme Court, Americans can kiss their gun rights goodbye. The campaign cost the NRA roughly $1 million, and its timing was not incidental. The blitz was pegged to overlap with the Senate confirmation hearings of President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, whose appointment the gun group is aggressively promoting.
Yet the NRA's investment Gorsuch is in some ways an act of faith. In his decade on the federal bench, the Tenth Circuit judge has produced precisely one direct opinion on gun rights, in which he declared, "The Second Amendment protects an individual's right to own firearms and may not be infringed lightly." Last week, across two days of questioning before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week, Gorsuch shared few further clues. Quizzed by California Democrat Dianne Feinstein, he simply said that he would respect the precedent set by the landmark District of Columbia v. Heller ruling establishing the personal right to own a gun—essentially the same position struck by Obama nominee Sonya Sotomayor during her confirmation grilling, and one that elides the big questions that the landmark 2008 decision left unresolved.
Gorsuch's thin record and tempered testimony doesn't concern David Hardy, an eminent conservative constitutional lawyer who shares the NRA's confidence in Trump's pick. And on matters of the Second Amendment, Hardy's assessment carries great weight among gun proponents.
In 1974, Hardy became the first student in the United States to publish a law review article arguing that the Second Amendment is an individual right. Nearly four decades later, during McDonald v. City of Chicago, the 2010 case in which the Supreme Court extended the rights guaranteed in Heller to the states, his work was cited in an opinion written by Justice Clarence Thomas.
To get a better understanding of what gun rights activists see in Gorsuch, The Trace spoke with Hardy by phone, reaching him at his home office in Tucson, Arizona.
Despite his spotty track record on the gun issue, gun rights proponents are bullish on Gorsuch. Isn't that a bit of a gamble? David Hardy: Well, I'm rather pleased about the fella—Gorsuch sounds like an eminently good justice-to-be. He's said to be an originalist, and if you're an originalist, the Second Amendment wins every time.
So if Justice Scalia's famously literal interpretation of the Constitution produced Heller, and Gorsuch views the law the same way Scalia did, that leaves you confident he'll rule in the same direction on gun cases that may come before the Supreme Court in the future? Earlier this week, during his hearing, he made a point of stating that Heller is the law. Saying it in that way sets him apart from the judicial tendency to go with the view that all words are ambiguous and indeterminate and therefore it is the job of the Court to give meaning to words. But judges don't make policy. People who make policy are elected. That doesn't hold true if a judge believes words are indeterminate. Gorsuch doesn't seem to have that particular flaw. He believes there is law that exists outside his own policy judgments.
But even Scalia, the ultimate originalist, allowed in his Heller opinion that it's okay to prohibit firearms in certain "sensitive spaces," like schools. Doesn't a phrase like "sensitive spaces" leave much open to interpretation? Yes, it's hard to say where that has any originalist backing to it. On the other hand, I can see that concept, so long as it isn't too widely extended.
Is there any reason to believe Gorsuch might take a more expansive view of gun rights than Scalia did? I can't say specifically that he will or won't, but he seems to be inclined that way—he at least wouldn't hold it to its narrowest possible meaning. Heller merely deals with gun possession inside the home. But originalists believe that, according to history, the right to keep and bear arms gives the right to bear arms, not just to keep them. The circuit courts have split on this—some say carrying outside the home is protected, but others have said that only the Supreme Court can make us apply the right outside of the home. I think Gorsuch would recognize that the Second Amendment is the right to bear arms as well as keep them, and thus apply the right outside of the home.
Check out the Motherboard documentary about the strange, troubled history of the Smart Gun in America.
Would you have felt more comfortable with a nominee who had a more concrete record on these questions? A paper trail is hard to get on the Second Amendment. Up until Heller, nobody would have written an opinion of the Second Amendment as individual right. Nine years just isn't a lot of time for a whole lot of courts to come down with opinions. To an extent, you have to make an educated guess on how someone in Gorsuch's position would come down in Second Amendment cases. I don't think Justice Roberts had a paper trail on the issue, and I'm not sure Alito did either.
Are you saying that the little that's known about Gorusch's position on gun laws is as much as you can hope to know about any nominee? He has more of a paper trail than 90 percent of the federal judiciary—maybe even 95 percent. Most Second Amendment cases are going to come out of two circuits—the Second Circuit and the Ninth Circuit. The Ninth has California and Hawaii and Second has New York and Connecticut. Those states have the strictest gun laws in the country. But you're never going to get a Second Amendment case out of, say, Arizona or Texas or Virginia.
Let's talk more about the one gun significant gun case in which Gorsuch was involved: In Colorado, a man pleads guilty to attempted robbery, and during the sentencing portion of his trial, the judge says, "If I accept your plea today, hopefully you will leave this courtroom not convicted of a felony and instead granted the privilege of a deferred judgment." Later, the man gets caught carrying a loaded gun with an obliterated serial number. He's charged as a felon in possession of a firearm because felons are not allowed to possess guns. That case later comes before Gorsuch's court, where Gorsuch writes a dissenting opinion saying prosecutors should have to prove the man knew he had a criminal record that disqualified him from firearms ownership, because according to the relevant federal statute, a felon in possession of a gun must "knowingly" violate the law to be found guilty. Gorsuch essentially says the man in question conceivably wasn't aware he was felon—the judge in the robbery case might have confused him. I like judges who require knowledge for a criminal conviction. There are way too many laws out there that allow someone to be convicted without having to prove criminal intent.
But with something like gun possession, isn't it sometimes absurdly difficult to prove someone "knowingly" violated the law? I like things to be hard to prove when it comes to putting someone in jail.
Sure — but where do you draw the line? If someone commits a crime, and tries to hide what they did, then they probably knew it was illegal. For example, if a guy didn't know what he did was wrong, then did he hide the gun? Why didn't he confess, if he wasn't worried about getting in trouble? Why did he flee the scene?
What happens when there's more ambiguity? What if the trial judge in the case Gorsuch ruled on had not mentioned anything about a "deferred judgment"? How do you think Gorsuch have applied the "knowingly" standard under those circumstances? That would be a different story. You would then have to start with the assumption the man is a convicted felon who knows what he's convicted of. If the man then wants to claim he didn't understand he was a felon, well, let him get on the stand and say that.
A version of this article was originally published by the Trace, a nonprofit news organization covering guns in America. Sign up for the newsletter, or follow the Trace on Facebook or Twitter.
On Wednesday, the Institute for Women's Policy Research released a report that calculated the year the pay gap between men and women will close in America: 2059. A long ways to go, it goes without saying.
But millennial women, at least, are making more than ever before, and that's worth celebrating. More money means more opportunity to invest in recreation, and sex has a way of working itself into that realm. According to those with different hands in the pleasure industry, from professional dominatrixes and porn distributors to escort agencies and more, an increasing number of women are coming forward to invest in their services.
While reliable data on the sex work industry is notoriously scarce, research would seem to confirm their word. One study by UK researchers Dr. Sarah Kingston of Lancaster University and Dr. Natalie Hammond at Manchester Metropolitan University—one of the most extensive to date to explore how women are purchasing sex—combed through over 27,000 online escort ads, and found that between 2010 and 2015, profiles of male escorts rose from 5,246 to 15,732, a nearly 200 percent increase. Profiles of female escorts rose from 11,056 to 28,614 in the same time, a 158 percent increase.
What's motivating women to spend money on sex? One reason, it appears, is to take the reins back from men.
Angie Rowentree first entered the porn industry in the early 1990s, and it didn't take long for her to notice that the content, almost always, was created by men. Though that's slowly changing, too, it was a factor behind her eventual decision to step behind the camera and start her own women-focused, subscription-based porn site, Sssh.com, in 1999. In the past few years, she said she's experienced an increase in the amount of women signing up for subscriptions, and has a working theory as to why.
Porn is a logical step for women looking for an easy way to explore the different sides of sex. "Technology allows women to engage with the industry at a part time level and not feel like they are going all the way," said David Ley, a clinical psychologist and author of Ethical Porn for Dicks: A Man's Guide to Responsible Viewing Pleasure. But those looking for a more hands-on approach to their sexuality are turning to their local BDSM dungeons to find lessons and role models to emulate.
Snow Mercy, a professional dominatrix for the past 12 years, said she's seen a sharp rise in the number of women walking through her doors as of late. While some are there to enjoy her more traditional services, others are looking to learn how to emulate dominatrixes in their personal lives. "I'm getting more women who want to learn how to be dominant," she said.
Justine Cross has seen something similar. She's been in the BDSM scene for the past ten years; a few years back, she started managing dungeons around LA. These days, she's been getting more and more calls from women wanting to rent out her spaces.
"I think more women are talking to their partners about what they want," she said. She suspects more mainstream depictions of kinky sex are to thank for helping kickstart the conversation. Take 50 Shades, for instance: "That was everywhere," she said. "It was advertised on billboards. You could find it in the airport. It was featured in your mom's book club. You couldn't escape it."
According to Dr. Carol Queen, an author, educator and staff sexologist at the San Francisco-based sex shop Good Vibrations, these kinds of in-person endeavors can help women map their progress toward sexual self-discovery. "In an era when people feel they can learn it all online, I think many feel the next step might be exploring in a controlled environment," she said.
For the past few years, Cross has organized "play parties" around LA. Like Queen, she recognizes the need to provide a space for those interested in pursuing certain sexual desires. Doing so in a "controlled environment" means certain rules have been put in place: no smoking inside the venue, for one, and limitations on how tickets can be transferred between individuals, too. Also, men aren't allowed in. Cross said turnout has increased year-by-year, only getting stronger.
Of course, a female-only event sounds like an easy sell to those active in the queer community. But it's not just about queer women, said Cross. "There are a lot of straight women who want to explore BDSM in a safe way, without men present," she explained. For them, securing a spot in a low-risk, sex-positive play space is worth the cost. And keeping men out of the picture is one way to keep those conditions intact. "Women don't experience same-sex contact as being as intrusive or threatening, so it lets them ease into situations more easily," Ley noted. He also makes the point that women tend to feel safer around other women: "They have less fear of sexual assault or their boundaries being violated."
But there are other ways for straight women to take the reins on intimate encounters. Garren James started the male escort service Cowboys4Angels back in 2009. The company, which caters exclusively to women, launched with just 15 working companions. Today, they represent around 95 guys, with demand for their services rising daily.
"I keep hearing about women going on bad date after bad date," he said. "With us, you're paying to get the perfect boyfriend for the night." James notes his employees are selling companionship and time; per the company's website, "anything that may or may not happen is a matter of personal choice and personal preference between two or more consenting adults."
According to James, the women walking into his office are doing so armed with increasingly fatter wallets. That money buys them the luxury of calling the shots. "The women, they're thinking, 'I'm paying. You're going to act the way I want you to act. We're going to do what I want to do.'" And the men he represents are compensated to do just that.
Women may not be the most likely demographic to spend money on sexy forms of fun, but those who do do so for very specific reasons. Escorts interviewed for the 2015 UK study echoed Ley's conclusion that the rise is partly attributable to technology's ease of access; another possibility is that women may have less need for relationships today, preferring the ease of access to male companionship that the sex work industry provides. Either way, men have enjoyed safe, secure and stress-free ways to experiment with sex and pleasure for a long time. Better salaries, less stigmas and more options mean women can finally get in on that game, too.
Barry Jenkins, fresh off his triumphant Best Picture Oscar win for Moonlight, has signed on to write and direct an adaptation of Colson Whitehead's popular award-winning novel, The Underground Railroad, Amazon Studios announced Monday.
The limited series, slated to run in hour-long episodes on the streaming service, will follow Whitehead's original story about Cora, a young girl born into slavery who decides to escape her Georgia plantation using the underground railroad—an actual train network that will shuttle her northward. The book has already sold more than 850,000 copies and garnered the praise of the Moonlight director, whose production company, PASTEL, will also produce the film alongside Brad Pitt's company, Plan B.
"Colson's writing has always defied convention, and The Underground Railroad is no different," Jenkins said in a press release. "It's a groundbreaking work that pays respect to our nation's history while using the form to explore it in a thoughtful and original way."
Outside of a brief stint writing for HBO's The Leftovers, this will be Jenkins's first time working in television. But after captivating the nation with his Academy Award–winning film about a young boy growing up gay, poor, and black in Miami, Amazon says its psyched to see what the filmmaker will bring to the medium.
"Colson Whitehead's book is a sweeping, character-driven, boundary-destroying epic," Amazon Studios's Head of Comedy, Drama, and VR, Joe Lewis, said in a statement. "Having Barry bring it to life for Amazon Studios is thrilling. We couldn't be more excited to see what they create."
Each episode of the new podcast Written Inside from Chicago public radio station WBEZ begins with the same striking introduction: "The US incarcerates over two million people, more than anywhere else in the world," a host says. "What does it mean to be locked up, confined to a small space for ten or 20 or 30 years? How does one get by?"
To answer that question, Written Inside takes listeners inside a maximum security state prison 35 miles outside of the city and presents personal essays read by actors and written by an inmates serving lengthy sentences. In the first episode, Demetrius Cunningham describes teaching himself to play piano on a homemade cardboard keyboard, practicing so often that he developed callouses on his fingers. In the second, Oscar Parham explains his relentless battle with the cockroaches in his cell: the decades-old memory of an inmate nicknamed "Fester" who had roaches crawling through his hair and beard. "It was... in that moment that I went to war with everything that Fester represented," Parham writes. "The loss of vigilance against the elements of prison that subtly ask you to surrender your dignity. So, when I entered that cell [with the roach infestation], I said to myself, 'I'm not gonna let this beat me.'"
The podcast began when the journalist and author Alex Kotlowitz, a writer-in-residence at Northwestern University, was invited by his colleague and philosophy professor Jennifer Lackey to visit a class she was teaching at the prison. During Kotlowitz's three-hour visit, he asked his 15 students to complete an in-class writing assignment about their prison cells. He was so amazed by the results that he offered to work with them over the coming months to sharpen and polish the pieces. After he told some friends in the publishing world, five of the essays were published in December on the New Yorker's website, and the podcast—which adds immersive sound design, like the of chill-inducing sounds of skittering of cockroach legs—will release a total of eight through mid-April.
I recently spoke with Kotlowitz about what the show reveals about life both in and out of the prison's confines.
VICE: In the episodes I've heard, the listeners don't really get any detail about the actual crimes the author has committed. Why make that decision? Alex Kotlowitz: I knew they were all there for violent crimes—many of them, if not all of them for as far as I know, for murder. This was not meant to be an exercise that somehow would excuse them for or try to explain what they did. It has everything to do with their time in prison. Also, I know well enough from my time writing about poor communities where many people end up in these places [that] when you're in prison, you don't talk about your crime. It's this moment that has defined you, so you spend much of your time trying to move away from that as best you can. So I wasn't interested in what they had done. In one case, I learned what the crime was. But in the others, I don't know what got them there.
Do you consider this a political show? Does it take a stance on mass incarceration? I feel like any piece of art is political. I can't speak for the guys in prison. [But] if you're asking me, I feel like we've really kind of gone amiss in this country, given the number of people who we send to prison—not only the number of people we send to prison, but the number of people we send to prison for very, very long sentences. I think there are any number of arguments you can make about why that's misguided. But if that's our policy—how we think we ought to deal with punishment in this country—then we really owe it to ourselves to fully understand what it means to do that to individuals. And a disproportionate number of those [individuals] are people of color, so it's easy for much of the country to feel disconnected from those who are spending all this time behind bars.
It seems as though for that system of mass incarceration to keep chugging along with nothing changing, it requires everyone else to not really pay attention. It requires us to put our heads in the sand. If that were my brother or my sister, locked up for ten or 15 years, I think I would come to know in a very visceral way the kind of pain and distress that is involved in that—not only for the people who are locked up, but for the family and friends. But there's almost a glibness about the way we send people away to prison.
What have you learned from this process? I just struck by the ingenuity and inventiveness in a place like prison. Demetrius's essay about learning to play the piano—this is a story of a guy who's got access to a piano for maybe an hour a week in the church choir, and he wants to teach himself to play, so he builds himself a cardboard piano and actually becomes a fairly talented pianist as a result. What imagination!
What do you think it says about us as a country that we lock up more people than anywhere else? Do we have more criminal actors per capita than other countries? Or is something else going on? You can't look at the mass incarceration that has taken place in this country over the past 20 or 25 years and not think or talk about race. Because such a disproportionate number of people locked up for long periods of time are people of color, there's a real inequity there, and you see it in sentencing laws—the most obvious being the difference that existed for so long in the sentencing between crack and powdered cocaine.
In the end, I think we're kinda confused as a country. On the one hand, we think of ourselves as this very generous, forgiving place. But we send people for such long periods of time—and I'm not sure whether we're doing that because we feel that's the appropriate punishment, or whether we feel like this is what it's going to take to rehabilitate someone, although of course there's very little energy put into that. Or are we doing this because this is somehow going to make our communities safer? You can argue that [is the case] with some people.
But for me, it comes down to the question "What feels right?" Now, again, I want to be clear: the guys who wrote these essays have committed violent crimes and are serving enormously long sentences. [But] they all struck me as dignified, graceful, generous individuals. I suspect if I'd heard what they'd done, it would be hard to reconcile with who I met and what had happened. So the question [when you're] talking about violent offenders is, "What's long enough?" At what point do you ask yourself, "Is this person ready and capable of living in the outside world again?" [In the podcast] there's this beautiful essay by William Jones. It's probably the most literary of all the pieces. He writes about everything that's not in his cell. And [in] the last line[s]... he talks about how [he's] not that person who came here 35 years ago.
[Editor's note: The exact ending of the piece reads, "My cell is without a criminal. I'm now 61. The young ruffian who came into this cell ready to take on the world died a long time ago."]
I'm envisioning folks on the conservative end of the spectrum saying, "Why have a podcast about criminals? Why not have a podcast focus on victims of violent crimes, or their families?" What do you say to that? I write about people who are trying to stay erect in this world that's slumping around them—people who, for reasons of race or class or gender or ethnicity, are living somehow along the margins of America. In this moment, I've taken these stories and presented them in the voices of these individuals—but I'm working on a book now about the violence of Chicago that will also talk about some of the victims of crime. It's all important.
Is there anything in particular you want folks to take away from this podcast? For me, the power of story is that it allows you for a moment to stand in somebody else's shoes. And that's what these stories do, I think, is that for this brief moment, they allow readers and listeners to step inside the shoes of these inmates who talk about life in their prison cell. It's as simple and as complicated as that, I suppose.
Gunfire rattles steadily around the Austin Rifle Club, a private gun range on the outskirts of Texas' metropolitan capital. Among the pick-up trucks and camo-wearing gun enthusiasts, a young woman in a light plaid top and sandals leans forward with a pistol, her arms and knees bent. She pulls the trigger, steady and confident. As she fires, her target—a poster of a zombie hipster waving an iPhone and a purse dog—perforates with a tight, consistent grouping.
The 28-year-old woman, Reina Mercado, holds fire as her friend and instructor, Sarah Rossig, walks her through reloading the handgun under speed and pressure. It's the kind of work that combat shooters practice constantly, but it's less common at a range full of weekend target-plinkers like this one. It's even less common to see shooters like Mercado at the range. Mercado is a transgender woman who immigrated from the Philippines when she was 6 years old. She went from making toy guns out of scrap on a family farm to Houston, Texas, deep in the heart of gun culture and oil money.
Mercado represents a new and unlikely set of players in the gun culture that dominates America in general and Texas in particular. They're young, liberal, and many are members of the LGBT community. They're not the kind of people you think of when you think of gun rights advocates, but after watching Donald Trump's rise to power during the 2016 election, they're all ready to exercise their second amendment right to bear arms.
Convicted pedophile Christopher Neil, 42, better known as "Swirl Face" for the way he distorted his face while posing in child porn, will be living in Vancouver once his prison term is completed this summer.
Neil, a former teacher, was sentenced to five and a half years in prison last year for sexual interference involving underage boys in Cambodia, and possessing and accessing child pornography. But with time served, he only has a few months left on that sentence.
He previously served a five-year sentence in Thailand for sexually assaulting young boys.
Neil was given the nickname Swirl Face after authorities released images of him in which his face was swirled—a technique he used to disguise himself in 200-plus photos that showed him sexually abusing children. Unswirled versions of the photos were posted to Interpol's website, and Neil was eventually tracked down and arrested in Thailand in 2007. He was sent to Canada in 2012, where he was arrested again.
On Sunday, BC Corrections issued a public notice that said Neil will be living in Vancouver once his sentence is complete.
Christopher Neil. Photo via BC Corrections
In a statement to media outlets, Cindy Rose, B.C. Corrections spokeswoman, said Neil is a high-risk offender. She listed the conditions of his release, which include not having any contact with persons under the age of 16; not engaging with anyone under 16 online; avoiding parks, playgrounds, schools, and community centres; and not directing anyone to possess electronic devices on his behalf.
"[W]e want the public to be aware of this individual's presence in the community and to contact authorities if they observe Mr. Neil engaging in any activity that could be considered a violation of his court order," Rose said.
