The critical acclaim and popularity of podcasts like My Favourite Murder and the first season of Serial, and TV shows like Making a Murderer, The Jinx, and OJ: Made in America speak to the public's gigantic appetite for True Crime. Cinema, too, mines real crime to tell compelling stories often, and has since as early as 1901's Stop Thief! Here, we've spoken to some true crime authors/experts and real life criminals about some of the most epic and violent tales that have made (or are poised to make) their way to the silver screen).

Gotti (2018)

Entourage star Kevin Connolly's forthcoming John Travolta flick is currently set to open June 15th, and is hopefully not as bad as the words "Kevin Connolly's forthcoming John Travolta flick" would suggest. It tells the story of John Gotti, the Mafia icon known as the "Teflon Don" for his non-stick ability to dodge federal charges. Gotti's style and swagger made him the perfect fodder for Hollywood, and until his death in prison in 2002, he reveled in his notoriety.

“The hype is deserved, because Gotti was a very rare bird among mob bosses,” Larry McShane, the author of Chin: The Life and Crimes of Mafia Boss Vincent Gigante, told VICE. "Look at the heads of the families in the 1980s compared to him: 'Chin' Gigante, Vic Amuso, Joe Massino, Vic Orena—not the kind of guys who go for $2,000 suits or late night dinners on the Upper East Side, or get chased around by TV reporters like John Miller. Or get movies made about them.” Fittingly, Travolta spent hours with John Gotti, Jr. and the widow Victoria Gotti to nail the part.

White Boy Rick (2018)

Slated for a September 21st premiere, the Matthew McConaughey-starring film details the life and times of Richard Wershe Jr., a.k.a., White Boy Rick. The dealer-turned-informant, who is currently the longest-serving juvenile drug offender in Michigan, became the drug lord du jour of mid-1980s Detroit.

“Nobody thought he would reach that far up the chain in an undercover capacity and be that good at playing the role,” Detroit true crime historian Scott Burnstein, who consulted on the upcoming film, told us. “Once he did, there was no looking back. His innocence was prostituted and lost, and those who put the operation he was involved in into motion looked to cover their tracks at all costs. The tale of White Boy Rick was tailor-made for the big screen. It was only a matter of time before Hollywood came calling.”

American Made (2017)

Barry Seal, the brash, smart, and reckless pilot Tom Cruise plays in 2017's American Made, eventually got caught up in his own ego and greed, hauling caravans of cocaine for the likes of Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel all the while working as a DEA informant with ominous CIA ties.

“Barry was pleasant person to talk to socially, friendly, and generous,” Del Hahn, a friend of Seal's and the former FBI agent who authored Smuggler's End: The Life and Death of Barry Seal, told VICE. "It is an example of how the Witness Protection Act fails because it's not mandatory," Hahn said of Seal's grisly end.

Black Mass (2015)

Before he was portrayed by Johnny Depp, Boston's Whitey Bulger was part of the most powerful Irish mob in the country. At his height, he was little different than other ruthless killers who rule by fear and intimidation. His legend, however, grew out of the 16 years he spent on the lam after he fled Boston in 1995. He was the number-two most-wanted man in the world, just behind Osama Bin Laden.

“The Whitey Bulger scandal was the biggest black eye in the history of the FBI," Mark Silverman, a former Boston mob associate, and the author of Rogue Mobster: The Untold Story of Mark Silverman and the Boston Mafia, told VICE. "His story is unique in the fact that he became the most powerful mobster while his brother became the most powerful politician. Add in the fact that the FBI made all of it possible—rather than become an informant, which many believe he was, Whitey paid the FBI and called the shots. His cunning and intelligence allowed him to flip the script.”

Kill the Messenger (2014)

In the mid-80s, "Freeway" Rick Ross became the poster boy for the failures of the War on Drugs. Through a CIA operative named Oscar Danilo Blandon, San Jose's Mercury News investigative journalist Gary Webb discovered that Ross was selling cocaine for the CIA in order to fund the Contra rebels in Nicaragua. On-screen, Michael K. Williams played a fearsome Ross, while Jeremy Renner went down the rabbit hole as Webb.

“At the height of my career I was doing 100 keys a day," Ross told VICE, "Some days I did 200 keys, so you figure at $15,000 a kilo, that’s $1,500,000. There’d be days that I took in three million. Even though I did want some fame and recognition, I never knew it could go to this level. Gary Webb found out everything.”

The Iceman (2013)

Richard “The Iceman” Kuklinski, portrayed in 2013 by actor Michael Shannon, was a Mafia hitman who claimed to have taken contracts on and murdered over 100 people. Undercover ATF agent Dominick Polifrone, who made it into the film's "Special Thanks," was the man who brought him down.

“[We] had a lot of circumstantial evidence,” Polifrone told VICE. “But once Kuklinski was telling me everything, we had direct evidence for each crime he committed. It just fell into place. It was an unusual case because he murdered people with pure cyanide and they couldn’t it figure out."

Alpha Dog (2006)

The story of Jesse James Hollywood truly is stranger than fiction. As portrayed in the 2006 film by Emile Hirsch (as "Johnny Truelove"), he wasn’t a street-kid who came from nothing, he was just a free-wheeling dealer on a power trip. “This is exactly the kind of story that, for better or worse, makes great material for books, documentaries, and of course Hollywood films,” Christian Cipollini, the author of Lucky Luciano: Mysterious Tales of a Gangland Legend, told us. “The hype surrounding this case almost clouds entirely the fact that an innocent kid lost his life here. It's an important tale because so many aspects of it demonstrate how the tragic downward spiral of situations can create a perfect storm of variables—money, machismo, paranoia, impulsiveness, fear, and bad advice—which leads to murder.”

Paid in Full (2002)

Back in the 1980s, when crack was flooding New York City, Azie Faison, Alberto “Alpo” Martinez, and Rich Porter were the young kings of Harlem's drug trade before the three fell victim to the devices of the drug game themselves. (Martinez murdered Porter out of greed, while Faison was almost killed in a robbery gone wrong.) Paid in Full stars Cam’Ron, Wood Harris, and Mekhi Phifer, and was produced by Jay-Z and Damon Dash.

“[Faison, Martinez, and Porter] were friends and Harlem crack cocaine dealers who operated in the 1980s,” Ron Chepesiuk, who authored Gangsters of Harlem, told VICE. “There were hundreds of individuals like them in the hood, because the drug trade was so profitable. Greed and money eventually destroyed their relationship."

"It is a sad, even tragic story," Chepesiuk explained. "Alpo was a snitch and killer, got caught, and went to jail. Now he’s in the witness protection program. Porter got himself and his brother killed. If anybody is a hero in the story, it’s Azie Faison, who turned his life around and is now doing good.”

Belly (1998)

Starring rappers Nas and DMX, Hype Williams's film about two childhood friends who get caught up in the streets is a classic. What's less known is that screenwriter Anthony " Romeo" Bodden, a Hollis, Queens native, loosely based the story on two gangsters he grew up with, Alfred “Al Monday” Cleveland and John “Shakim Bio” Edwards. The film's Omaha, Nebraska, setting was actually Lorain, Ohio, and Al Monday, who was the basis for DMX's "Buns" character, is doing life in an Ohio prison.

“[Nas's character] Sincere didn't really exist,” Shakim Bio, who wrote about street life in The Omega Jon Christ - The Last Illest and is currently incarcerated with Al Monday in Ohio, told us. "That's Romeo narrating the story because he was around us more where he got to see mad shit. He told the story from a narrative side by making himself a character. I had Lorain on smash from 1988 to 1991. My character was the grimy one, Knowledge, who really put Buns onto Nebraska."

"A lot of the movie's shit came from real events and scenarios," Bio said. "I was in tune with Romeo while I was in United States Penitentiary Terre Haute, but we had no input in the movie."

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The Toronto van attack that left 10 dead and 14 more wounded on Monday has raised a lot of questions—and a Facebook update, that was seemingly posted by accused mass murderer Alek Minassian just before the attack took place, only further added to the confusion.

At about 1:30 on Monday afternoon, for around seven minutes, a white rental van drove at high speeds on Yonge Ave and Finch in northern Toronto mounting the curb and at times driving in the wrong direction, striking pedestrians. Minassian was arrested shortly after and faces 10 counts of first-degree murder and 13 counts of attempted murder.

The following post was confirmed by Facebook to VICE as authentic to Alek Minassian’s profile, however police have not confirmed he wrote it, just that it appeared on his page.

“Private (Recruit) Minassian Infantry 00010, wishing to speak to Sgt. 4chan please. C23249161,” reads the post. “The Incel Rebellion has already begun! We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys! All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!”

Incel is short for “involuntarily celibate” and centres itself on men who blame women for the fact that they aren’t able to get laid. The group, while decentralized politically, is toxically misogynistic and virulently anti-feminist with many men wishing violence and rape upon women. The essential belief in the community is that the “system” is sexually rigged against men in favour of women. The term incel was actually coined by a Toronto woman in 1993 but was co-opted by men in recent years.

The group exists on websites like Lookism or the /r9k/ page of 4chan. On Reddit, the most popular page for Incels, r/Braincels, actually felt the need to state they do not condone the attack, writing “r/Braincels, does not support, encourage, or glorify any violence or physical harm, or those who commit such crimes.”

Last year Reddit banned the r/incels subreddit, which boasted about 40,000 members at the time.

The “Chads and Stacys” that are referenced in the post refer to sexually accomplished men and the women who pass over the incels in favour of the “Chads.” Within the community, Elliot Rodger, who was name-checked in Minassian’s Facebook post and the man who introduced the world to Incels, is often praised as a hero.

“I'm 22 years old and I'm still a virgin,” reads a portion of Rodgers manifesto. “I've never even kissed a girl. I've been through college for two and a half years, more than that actually, and I'm still a virgin. It has been very torturous. College is the time when everyone experiences those things such as sex and fun and pleasure. Within those years, I've had to rot in loneliness.

“It's not fair. You girls have never been attracted to me. I don't know why you girls aren't attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it. It's an injustice, a crime, because ... I don't know what you don't see in me.”

You can read an in-depth look into the incel subculture below:

Shortly after posting the manifesto Rodger stabbed three men to death, shot three sorority sisters (killing two,) and shot up a deli-mart, killing one. The rampage only ended when Rodger put a bullet in his head. At the end of the day Rodger had killed seven (including himself) and injured 14.

The online community was dealt a blow in November of last year with Reddit making the rare decision to ban the incel subreddit. The subreddit was dubbed a “support group” for incels. The social media platform stated that the group had broken its rule against inciting violence. The subreddit referred to Rodger as “Saint Elliot.” Since r/incels was shut down a new subreddit, this one called r/Braincels, opened up, which now has 16,900 followers and describes itself as “incels and guests celebrating incel culture.”

The two incel subreddits have gained enough notoriety that they actually spurred a watchdog subreddit called r/inceltears that chronicles and makes fun of the incels.

Members of the incel community have tried distancing themselves from Minassian by declaring he wasn’t a true member of the community or that his connection to the group is “fake news.” However, not all users distanced themselves from Minassian, on 4Chan and on r/Braincels some users started to praise Minassian in a similar way to Rodger leading the mods of the reddit to delete numerous posts.

In the end, the mods had to close comments on the post which outlined CBC confirming Minassian’s alleged incel status, writing “there's too much edgy garbage and brigading in this thread. The last thing we need right now is more comments violating the content policy.”

Shortly after the attack, Facebook deleted Minassian’s account as it violated their content guidelines. A VICE News exclusive also found that Minassian was briefly a member of the Canadian military, and that two of the numbers mentioned in his post may relate to the military, with “00010” being the actual trade number for the Canadian infantry and "C23249161" seeming like a legitimate service number.

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Allison Mack, the Smallville actress accused of helping create a sex cult that enslaved and branded women, will be heading to California after her mother signed for $5 million bail in a Brooklyn federal court today.

Mack was arrested on sex trafficking, sex trafficking conspiracy, and forced labour charges Friday. Her co-accused Keith Raniere was not granted bail earlier this month. According to a federal indictment the two allegedly plotted to recruit women “slaves” into a secret group that sexually abused, threatened and blackmailed members.

Raniere is the leader of a self-help empire called Nxivm, which primarily sells expensive courses to aspiring millionaires and has been described as “cult-like” since 2003. His students undergo intense self-reflection sessions that surface their deepest fears and secrets, which former insiders say is used as leverage to encourage deeper participation.

Young women who became part of Raniere’s inner circle were allegedly pitched a secret women-only “sorority” that would help harness their career potential and change the world for good. But before they could learn more about the “badass bitch bootcamp,” they allegedly had to submit naked photos or damaging information as “collateral”—to prove their commitment to secrecy.

Sarah Edmondson, a former “slave” who agreed to join the group last year told VICE she was then coerced into giving more “collateral,” stripped naked at an initiation ceremony, and filmed while a doctor branded the skin near her crotch with Mack and Raniere’s initials. If women like Edmondson spoke out about abuse, they believed their “collateral” would be released.

Mack is accused of acting as lead “master” to dozens of “slaves.” Court documents allege she previously pledged to be Raniere’s “slave” for the rest of her life. All the women including Mack were required to stick to extreme low-calorie diets, and some were allegedly ordered under threat to have sex with Raniere.

Mack’s next court appearance has been moved to May 3 according to court documents viewed by VICE, on the assumption that she may reach a plea deal. Sources familiar with the case say she is likely to testify against Raniere.

Meanwhile, Seagram’s heiress Clare Bronfman, who has funded countless lawsuits against Nxivm’s critics, has taken over as leader of the remaining “slaves,” according to former Nxivm publicist Frank Parlato. Bronfman is a “fanatic” Raniere follower, says Parlato, and has a history of intimidating whistleblowers through lawsuits.

Toni Natalie, former girlfriend to Raniere, told VICE that as long as Clare remains out of custody with access to her family’s fortune, women will likely continue to stay loyal “slaves” for fear of retribution. “As long as Clare is out, the torture will go on,” she said.

Mack will stay with her parents under house arrest and authorities will track her location. She is banned from phone, internet access and having any contact with Nxivm insiders.

A widening FBI investigation into Nxivm’s other dealings is ongoing.

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When Dorothy wound up in Oz, she got there by way of a particularly trippy tornado. But the real Land of Oz—an abandoned Wizard of Oz theme park from the 1970s—is much easier to find, nestled at the top of North Carolina's Beech Mountain, along a decaying yellow brick road.

The Land of Oz has been abandoned for decades, but its decrepit buildings overrun with weeds have attracted urban explorers looking to photograph the eerie ruins of Munchkin Village and the wicked witch's castle. Now, according to the Charlotte Observer, the park will reopen its gates to the public for six days this June, offering "immersive" tours of the expansive property inspired by the film.

"You may even get the chance to play one the roles of Dorothy's trusted companions or the wicked witch that she meets throughout her journey," the park's website states.

Photo by Johnny Joo via

Developers originally opened the park to lure families to Beech Mountain outside of ski season. In 1968, Ray Bolger (the actor who played the Scarecrow in the 1939 film) broke ground on the Land of Oz with a "psychedelic" shovel. When it opened in 1970, Debbie Reynolds cut the opening-day ribbon with a teenage Carrie Fisher by her side, and the park attracted 400,000 visitors in its first season.

But the Land of Oz was plagued by bad luck. One of its founders died of cancer just months before the park opened. And according to the park's website, a fire destroyed the park's Emerald City and damaged its museum in 1975, including Judy Garland’s original gingham dress from the film. By 1980 the park was no longer open to the public.

Photo by Johnny Joo via

In its heyday, the Land of Oz featured a replica of Dorothy's Kansas farmhouse and a barn that housed a petting zoo, singing and dancing actors who portrayed Dorothy and her friends, a gift shop, restaurant, and live show that was performed every half hour, and a ski lift with cars that looked like hot air balloons, which would ferry visitors back to the "real world."

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When Donald Trump announced Saturday that he was considering pardoning Jack Johnson, a long-dead black champion boxer who was convicted of a crime in 1913 for taking his white girlfriend across state lines, it took the country by surprise. Not just because Trump hasn't shown an interest in Johnson before, but also because Trump cited a conversation with actor-director Sylvester Stallone as the inspiration. Seriously?

The New York Times reported that "the White House did not immediately respond to a question about the frequency with which Mr. Trump and Mr. Stallone communicate," but it's been known for a long time that Trump talks with a lot of his famous fans and friends regularly. The Times documented Trump's phone habit last year in an article that listed a score of people the president called for advice—a crew largely comprised of millionaires and billionaires that included Trump's family members, fellow elderly real estate moguls, and right-wing media figures.

Trump is far from the only president to seek outside advice—it's a habit that goes back at least to Andrew Jackson's "Kitchen Cabinet." But Trump is uniquely famous for adopting the views of the last person who spoke to him, and as has been made clear from many reports over the past couple years, he speaks mostly to people who are exactly like him: older white guys who are vaguely angry about the world. His off-the-cuff phone calls could become more important in coming days, as, according to a Tuesday CNN report, Trump is using his cell phone more and more, possibly in order to circumvent White House Chief of Staff John Kelly.

Here's a brief primer on some of the more colorful characters Trump seems to be hitting up these days, based on media reports.

Sean Hannity

The conspiracy-mongering Fox News host isn't just Trump's most prominent defender in the media, and he doesn't just share a lawyer with the president in Michael Cohen. No, Hannity is also a frequent recipient of calls directly from Trump. According to an LA Times story from October that cited an anonymous source close to the White House, the chief executive had a habit of tuning into Hannity's show and calling the host afterward. Further reporting from the Washington Post last week concluded that the two men "discuss ideas for Hannity’s show, Trump’s frustration with the ongoing special counsel probe and even, at times, what the president should tweet... Trump is known to cite Hannity when he talks with White House advisers."

Lou Dobbs

Dobbs, another Fox News supporter of the president's, was launching into strange rants about race and questioning Barack Obama's place of birth before Trump made a real foray into the national political scene. But he seems to have become more powerful thanks to Trump's favor. According to sources who spoke to the Daily Beast, Trump has even puts Dobbs, a hardliner's hardliner on immigration, on speakerphone during White House meetings.

Corey Lewandowski

Lewandowski was Trump's campaign manager during the GOP primary season but got fired after continually stirring up bad headlines, including plenty for an incident where he grabbed a female Breitbart reporter's arm at an event. He's stayed in Trump's orbit ever since, however, even after pro-Trump singer Joy Villa accused him of sexual assault—specifically, slapping her aggressively more than once on the butt—at a gathering at one of Trump's hotels. Apparently, he was so involved in the day-to-day workings of the White House that some officials there thought he was involved in a "smear campaign" against Rob Porter, who was fired after it was revealed two ex-wives had accused him of domestic violence. (Lewandowski denies this.) Despite all this drama, Lewandowski, who has apparently moved on to lobbying, has been bragging about having "unfettered" access to Trump, according to CNN.

Tom Barrack

Barrack isn't as famous as the above three names but he's arguably the most influential of Trump's outside advisors. The Arab-American businessman has been close with Trump for three decades, according to a Washington Post profile, and also has deep ties to Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries. He's also said to be one of the few people who can convince Trump to change his mind on anything, and doesn't share the president's xenophobic views on Muslims or Mexicans. "It is shocking to me that he would talk that way because he is not that way," Barrack told the Post of Trump's rhetoric about Mexicans being "rapists"; the travel ban that targeted several Muslim-majority countries, Barrack said, "is one of the things that hit me the hardest because it is the most complex." Barrack was Trump's top fundraiser during the 2016 campaign, but turned down a cabinet-level post so he could have sway from outside.

Roseanne Barr

Trump doesn't appear to have gotten any advice from the star of Roseanne, but he did call up Barr to congratulate her on the high ratings the revival of her show earned. "We just kinda had a private conversation, but we talked about a lot of things, and he’s just happy for me," Barr, a Trump supporter, told Good Morning America.

Chris Ruddy

Trump has kicked Steve Bannon to the curb, but Ruddy, a less well-known right-wing media impresario, still has access to the president. Ruddy is the founder and CEO of Newsmax, a conservative website, and has been one of Trump's biggest boosters in the media, often serving as a kind of unofficial ambassador to mainstream publications who may not put much stock in other, more bombastic Trump confidants like Hannity.

Phil Ruffin

Continuing the theme of "rich white guys Trump has known for decades," Ruffin is one of Trump's closest friends—the two men have both been in the casino business and both have married much younger Eastern European models; Trump was Ruffin's best man at his 2008 wedding. He was so closely linked to Trump that there was speculation that he'd become White House chief of staff, but he laughed it off, telling the Wichita Eagle, “I hate Washington. I HATE the place. It’s so dysfunctional.” But he was still in contact with Trump last year in an informal capacity, according to the New York Times.

Jay Goldberg

Many of Trump's phone buddies don't talk in detail about their conversations with him, at least not without telling reporters not to use their names. But Goldberg, a New York attorney who used to do work for Trump, blabbed about a recent phone call to the Wall Street Journal in which the lawyer told Trump that Michael Cohen, Trump's personal lawyer and fixer, would turn on the president now that he (Cohen) was under federal investigation. “You have to be alert,” Goldberg said he told Trump. “I don’t care what Michael says.”

Michael Cohen

Oh, right: Trump also called Cohen himself a couple weeks ago, according to the Times:

Mr. Trump called Mr. Cohen on Friday to “check in,” according to two people briefed on the call. Depending on what else was discussed, the call could be problematic, as lawyers typically advise their clients against discussing investigations.

So there's that.

Bobby Knight

According to a 2017 CNN story, Trump likes to talk to the former college basketball coach, who is famous for being an asshole. It's unclear if Trump still calls Knight, but during the 2016 campaign he appeared at an Indiana rally and told a reporter, "I think a great idea would be involving our various military services along the border all the way from San Diego to Houston. We’ve got military bases all over the country. We can just move some people down there and let those cartels who are doing a lot of hurt the youth of America, let those cartels fight against the Marine Corps.” That is pretty close to Trump's position—this month, he ordered the National Guard to the border.

Bill Belichick

That same CNN story mentioned the notorious cheater of a Patriots coach as someone Trump called up on occasion. Trump himself said he talked to Belichick during the 2016 campaign, when he read a letter of support that the NFL coach had sent him. It's unclear whether Trump is still in touch with the coach, but if he is, let's hope Belichick isn't advising him on, well, anything.

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Remember when our friend Oobah made his shed the best restaurant in London? Last month, that whole thing was discussed incredibly seriously by a special committee of Singaporean lawmakers, who blew up photos of Barry from Eastenders and Oobah's foot on a big screen in their special parliamentary debate room. It's great to see our work finally getting the respect it deserves.

Some context, for those of you who need it: last year, VICE writer Oobah Butler spent far too much of his own time making the shed he lives in the top-rated restaurant in London. Impressively, when The Shed at Dulwich reached number one on TripAdvisor's "Best in London" list it had never served a single meal, because it wasn't actually a restaurant, just a shed with a load of fake reviews on a travel website. This didn't stop real people from making real phone calls to request a real table, so Oobah eventually opened The Shed for one night only and served everyone microwaved ready meals decorated with little herbs.

After we published the article revealing it had all been an incredibly long-winded joke, lots of people wanted to speak to Oobah – including Good Morning Britain's Susannah Reid, who called him a "naughty boy" on live television, and a Japanese production company, which made an hour-long show on the whole thing.

Arguably, though, what this was all building up to – what we had all really hoped it would result in – wasn't an interview on morning television, or write-ups by the global press, but this: Singaporean lawmakers discussing it extremely sombrely in a special Parliamentary hearing on fake news.

At the first meeting of the newly formed Select Committee on Deliberate Online Falsehoods, Mila Pilao – Director of Core Technology Marketing at Trend Micro – was called on to explain exactly how Oobah had fooled TripAdvisor into believing his shed was the best restaurant in London. You can watch the video yourself, but she uses The Shed as a jump-off point to talk about click farms, and it's all very earnest and straight.

Also, Member of Parliament Edwin Tong highlights the photo used on the Shed's TripAdvisor page, of what looks like a fried egg and ham hock, but is in fact a fried egg and the side of Oobah's foot. "So he had someone put up a picture like this," says Tong, "which is held together by a foot, but looking quite attractive otherwise."

If you want a reminder of just how attractive that foot was, go ahead and watch the video we made about The Shed below:

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

“When I told my mom I was applying to study sexuality, she was like, ‘You're going to school to study WHAT?’” said Kimberly Huggins. "'We don't need to study that! It's just one-two-three boom!'” she recalled her mother saying.

Huggins is one of several sexology students I spoke to who are currently studying at Pennsylvania's Widener University. She's pursuing a Master of Social Work and Master of Human Sexuality Studies. Over the last few years, a growing number of schools have started training students for careers in sexology, pushing the boundaries of sex education and exploring fields that were once taboo.

But as students of a relatively young subject, many graduating sexologists find their career prospects unpredictable. Lingering stigma around sex means that students may need to explain—repeatedly—why their expertise is needed, or to take the lead in creating new careers that never existed before.

Academically speaking, the boundaries of sexology are still somewhat vague. It can be generally defined as the study of sex and relationships, but that can touch on just about any discipline; from biology to business to sociology to engineering. The work of a sexologist could include working with trauma victims, assisting sex workers with legal challenges, educating doctors in developing nations, or designing sex toys. As a result, sexology is often seen as a multidisciplinary approach to sexual and intimate wellbeing.

The freedom with which sex researchers now “poke and pry” into sex is a relatively recent innovation, said Matt Tilley, a clinical psychologist and lecturer in the Department of Sexology at Curtin University in Perth, Australia. But it’s a change that’s been a long time coming.

“A fundamental human experience is the experience of pleasure,” he said. “But we have such negative messages in our childhood.” An expert in sexual health, Tilley’s career is anchored at the intersection of sex, pleasure, and education.

"Even a decade ago we were seen as fluff and fun,” he said of his field. But today, thanks in part to expanding academic attention, “people [are] recognizing that they have a right to experience pleasure, and maybe some of their socialization as a child didn't give them the right information. They're starting to step up and say, ‘I don't like this aspect of my life. I want to do something about it.’”

Students in sexology-related programs are on the cutting edge of that shift in thinking.

“What we study is beyond the act of sex,” said Crystal Reed, a student of Clinical Social Work and Human Sexuality at Widener. She recited a long list of topics her fellow students are currently investigating: “Sexual development, sexual identity and gender development, sexual subculture, the body and its functioning, chronic illness and disability, postpartum changes [...] We can talk about sexual products and technology, trauma, sexuality and spirituality [...] our work is very interdisciplinary.”

“People who are sexologists could be professional dominatrixes or switches,” said Nicoletta Heidegger, a marriage and family therapy intern and co-host of the Sluts and Scholars podcast. “They could be sex educators and give talks or lectures, they can be sex surrogates, who do hands-on sex therapy and sometimes actual sex with clients to help them through issues. There are sexological bodyworkers who help people through trauma or help people to orgasm. There are abortion doulas. Some sex workers might consider themselves educators as well [and] porn performers."

"Sexuality education can be done across the lifespan,” said Kimberly Huggins. “I've done workshops for elderly adults about STDs and HIV. It seems strange to talk to people who are our grandparents’ age, but some older adults haven’t had education throughout their entire lives."

Jessica Sanchez, currently pursuing a Masters of Social Work and Masters of Education in Human Sexuality Studies at Widener, applies her training to her work as a personal trainer at a VA hospital in Pennsylvania. “A passion of mine is with pleasure and adjusting pain,” she said. “A lot of military trauma is associated with pain [...] we talk about pelvic floor, functioning, sexual assault and abuse, grief and loss of body parts […] a trainer who doesn't have a sexuality training doesn't talk about that.”

Crystal Reed noted that sexologists have had a significant recent impact on the intimate items industry, pointing out that experts have helped many adult companies adjust their focus: “Instead of products being marketed in a way that's very binary, male and female, how can we make products that are more targeted to different bodies, sizes, abilities?” she asked.

But despite the growth in academic programs and the need for trained professionals, sexology students must still confront skepticism from colleagues.

“The people in charge of having students take classes were not recommending them,” said Kelly Conroy, currently pursuing a Master’s in Human Sexuality at Widener. “Being a sexuality professional, you're constantly having to explain what you're doing. Just getting information out there, that's the biggest barrier for us in academia."

But those barriers continue to fall as more students enter academic programs, then graduate and move into professional settings. “Our seat at the table has been very limited in the past,” said Jessica Sanchez. “People are beginning to realize we've been missing a sexuality expert at our table.”

Part of being a sexologist today is making space at that table not just for oneself, but for colleagues as well. In Sanchez’s case, that means reaching out to sisters in her Latina sorority about job opportunities.

“Sex can be taboo in Mexican Latino culture,” she said. “I make sure to post on our national board what I study and where I'm studying, just to let them know that this career is so feasible.”

Sexology students are also focused on the field’s future, with broadening programs making it possible to address previously-overlooked issues.

“I'm really interested in how we talk to young people about pleasure,” said Kimberly Huggins. “We do a lot of talking to young people about STDs, unintended pregnancies, consent […] we talk about everything from a problem perspective. [...] As a consequence, we may have a generation of young adults who don't know how to have conversations around negotiating what you want to have happen in a sexual encounter.”

Compared to previous eras, Huggins said, sexuality education has made significant strides in the past few years—but progress at educational institutions could face new challenges from a hostile administration in Washington. “It's somewhat dependent on who's the president,” she said. “That dictates what content is allowed to be addressed in school settings.”

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When I was six years old, I woke up to find a large black wolf standing at the side of my bed. The wolf was staring down at me. With a nod of its head, it directed me to get up. Oddly, I felt no fear as it led me out of my bedroom, into the living room, and onto the couch. The wolf spoke in a calm but authoritative voice, explaining that I was part of its tribe—"One of us," it said. Then the wolf led me back to my bedroom window, outside of which was an old stone well. When I looked out, three other wolves surrounded the well. They looked back in my direction. Atop the well, they had presented me the corpse of a slaughtered deer. “This is who you are,” the large black wolf said. Then it disappeared.

To the outsider, it would be easy to dismiss this vision as nothing more than a false memory, either a recent invention or the rumblings of my six-year-old imagination. But it is the most vivid memory I have of childhood. It happened, as surely as every other tangible, provable event in my life. But it really doesn’t matter if anyone believes me—more than anything else, it shaped who I would become. Today, at the age of 48, I describe myself as a traditional Luciferian witch. But to the casual outside observer, or the Bible-beater, I’m a Satanist.

While I was raised nominally Christian, worshipping in the Methodist churches of rural Indiana, the occult has always been a part of me. My father’s family was part of the Northern European migration of the 1700s, the clans that followed Daniel Boone into the Appalachian Mountains and settled as farmers and hunters. With them they carried the folk magic and superstitions of the old world. Before my father’s passing, I asked him to describe the southern Kentucky community he grew up in. They were “Christians, but with very pagan beliefs. Their bible was the Farmer’s Almanac, and you did things by how the stars and the moon were aligned,” he told me. “The doctrine of Christianity yielded to the land, not the other way around.”

Although the industrialization of rural America in the 1950s caused my family to abandon the land for the steel mills, the old ways were passed down and maintained. As a child I was taught to fish, hunt, read the stars, dowse for water, and use pendulums for guidance. Yet compared to my mother’s side of the family, this was nothing.

Her first relative to ever set foot in America came from Hampshire, England in the 1600s to Massachusetts, only before hightailing it back across the Atlantic under the presumption of being a witch. My great-great-grandmother, Cora, who went through men like wine, was known to sit in her parlor with a Ouija board affixed to her lap, scoffing at the notion that one should never use the spirit board alone. This practice was passed onto me through my mother, who used the Ouija board with her children the way more pious families might gather around the family bible.

There were two childhood Oujia board readings in particular that foretold my path. The first was when my mother, sister, and I asked the board what I would be when I grew up. The board said I would be an attorney, something I did not want to be, but became. The other was when my sister dared to ask who was speaking to us. The board carefully spelled out S-A-T-A-N. After freaking the fuck out, as any kids would do, we immediately put the board down. But there was something in me that wanted to continue the conversation.

In the 1980s, the Satanic Panic invaded every living room, with nightly news stories linking Satanism and heavy metal music to a litany of social ills, particularly drug use, child abuse, and murder. I was in middle school at the time when a rather conservative congregation that sat across the street from my grandmother’s house, brought the Satanic Panic to my hometown. Every Wednesday night, a study group focused in on the Devil’s influence in rock’n’roll, something me and my best friend were obsessed with. Of course, their warning backfired. Instead of steering me away from the Devil, I only became more fascinated with the dark arts. I spent my late teens driving around the heavily wooded country roads that surrounded my town, always in search of the best places to either have sex or to park with friends and drink Bud Light, smoke the occasional joint, and blast The Cure, the Dead Kennedys and Metallica. More often than not, the best spots would have some supernatural legend attached to it, be it an abandoned dwelling in the middle of the woods or a local graveyard. I, of course, revelled in the ghost stories surrounding these places.

By the time I attended college at Indiana University in Bloomington, I had settled into paganism and Wicca. Quite literally, the devil was in the details: Much to the horror of my hippy-dippy, white-light coven at the time, I remember making a connection early on between Lucifer and the Horned God of Wicca. Had I simply stayed on this path, things may have been fine. I was happy, even if I appeared aimless. My only worries were what the Tarot and the cycles of nature would have to say.

A girlfriend at the time told me I was like a wildflower, growing along my own path. Except somewhere along the way, I got tired and gave in to what I thought was expected of me. Largely out of economic fear and anxiety (being a wildflower doesn’t pay much), I convinced myself that it was time to put away childish things and become a normal, functioning member of society. I left behind my bell, books, and candles for a more settled life. What I didn’t realize at the time was that these common pursuits were triggering a darker rebellious part of myself that would eventually make itself known in starkly self-destructive terms, following years of suppression and neglect.

Oblivious to this, I turned 30, got married, had two kids, and, after living out-of-state for many years, went back to Indiana for law school. I did all the things that outwardly made of me a productive member of society. Yet inside, I was slowly shutting down, the light inside myself dimming. Having studied philosophy in undergraduate and graduate school, I was used to intellectual freedom of thought and spirited debate in the classroom. I mistakenly thought this skill would help me excel in law school, but I quickly learned that law wasn’t about freedom of thought and intellectual pursuit, but instead fitting your arguments into smaller and smaller boxes of arbitrary and settled legal standards. Just as I was editing and censoring my thoughts to conform with what was appropriate for the courtroom, I was also reducing myself to fit into a role I was not born to play. It didn’t take long to I realize I had made a big mistake, but bills were piling up, and it was too late to back out now without at least getting the degree that would supposedly alleviate that debt. At the end of this ridiculous endeavor awaited divorce, mountains of un-payable student loan debt in the amount of nearly $200,000, life in a city and state I had no desire to be in, and a sense of self that was all but shattered. Normalcy had driven me to spiritual desolation.

In my early 40s, I entered my “dark night of the soul.” I had arrived there as a result of putting my life on cruise control and exchanging the magic within me for dour rationalism and extreme atheism. I took to mindlessly indulging in a variety of excesses to soothe the spiritual void. By the time I finally awoke, my relationships were in shambles, my job as a criminal defense attorney was in jeopardy, and I was facing criminal charges for driving while under the influence of alcohol. I needed a spiritual reset. I needed to go back to zero, but I had no idea how.

A cycle of addictions and two years of regular heavy drinking had rewired my brain. Not knowing where to turn, I checked into a treatment center, and goddamn if it didn’t work. Although I no longer craved the poison physically, spiritually I was fumbling around in the dark. Something was still missing.

My required attendance at one of the many “anonymous” meetings only made it worse. Meeting after meeting, step by step, I found myself surrounded by the beaten-down souls of people who exchanged one form of addiction for another. It soon became clear that my life was on the line. If I was going to survive, I would have to figure out how to do it on my own.

This is what led me to the Left-Hand Path. Throughout history, Satan or Lucifer has been invoked by outsiders, romantics, and anarchists as the patron saint of human liberation, the serpent who tempts with the Forbidden Fruit. He was the one who freed humanity from servitude to God, and God, reacting like the loving patriarch "He" is, cast humanity out from his metaphysical playroom and into the world of matter. If you believe that nature is evil, then certainly this great fall was the result of it. But for a pagan soul like me, beaten down by normative Judeo-Christian values and the world of late-stage capitalism, nature was the only thing still worthy of worship. “Nature is Satan’s church,” says Charlotte Gainsbourg's character in the movie Antichrist—and that’s where I go to pray.

In nature there is no sin, only actions that benefit you or don’t. Unlike Christ on the cross, or Alcoholics Anonymous’s “Bill” and his “big book,” in nature you don't have to self-flagellate over past wrongs to find forgiveness. Back then, I had only to take responsibility and ownership for my behavior. I began to think of my mistakes as evidence of the demon inside me, and it soon became time to embrace that part of myself. To suppress my shadow, rather than to embrace, nurture, and love it, had only given way to self-destruction. The path forward had to be through the expression and integration of the Devil into my spirituality.

The first thing I did was dust off my library. Because of my time spent in academia, as well as my past history with the occult, I already had numerous books for reference sitting on my bookshelf. I carried them with me wherever I went. If it was cardio day, I had Stephen Flowers’s Lords of the Left-Hand Path propped up on my bike at the gym. Between hearings in court, I was poring over the works of historian Jeffrey Burton Russell. Every night at home was spent holed up in my room with books strewn around the bed, as I read and cross-referenced what I found with what was available on the internet.

Stories of the Devil, interpretations of the adversary throughout history, and examinations of the role of the rebel against unjust authority only led me into deeper and wider rabbit holes. Rather than the blood-soaked orgies that may come to mind when one thinks of Satanism, my first steps along the diabolical path came through incessant scholastic asceticism. I found invaluable resources in The Devil’s Party, edited by Per Faxneld and Jesper Aa. Petersen, and Jules Michelet’s classic Satanism and Witchcraft. Ultimately though, this narrative starts in the Holy Bible and finds its culmination in the works of John Milton and William Blake, where Satan is seen sympathetically, in contrast to an authoritarian, violent, and judgmental God. From out of this “just rebel” archetype arose also the more "occult" Luciferian/Promethean archetype, the one that demands people to be their own masters. It was this thirst for knowledge of both myself and the deeper mysteries of the world, unimpeded by others’ dogmas, that drove me.

In my books, I found the strength to remain sober, to remain alive, and the light of Luciferian gnosis showed the way. Friendships fell by the wayside, as did any semblance of trying to fit in. Instead, I wanted to burn it all with fire, with the goal of forging myself anew. I focused inward and what I found was an elemental essence, one as equally capable of destruction as it was creation. A rebellious god of fire, anarchy, and liberation. Satan was the archetype that was already waiting for me.

Immersed in the writings of Anton LaVey and Michael W. Ford, I joined the Satanic Temple, as well as the short-lived Greater Church of Lucifer. I performed rituals of blasphemy like renouncing the Holy Trinity, some of them drawn from LaVey and some from the world of traditional witchcraft. I focused in on divorcing myself from the yoke of a society I no longer wished to be part of, a sort of un-baptism of my soul.

These were all merely starting points, though. I quickly realized that no Satanic organization or grimoire could do anything more than point me in the direction that lay ahead. My own path was always going to be more rooted in paganism and witchcraft than most bastions of modern Satanism, and neither the Satanic Temple nor the Church of Satan made room for that sort of magical thinking. While I do think LaVey’s work is an excellent explication of the human animal, and my own social and political proclivities are aligned with that of the Satanic Temple, after years of atheism, I was slowly but surely headed towards theism, or the belief that there is a transcendental reality and that gods do exist.

At this point, I should probably take a moment to clarify what I mean when I say “Satanist,” because among those who consider themselves as such, there’s a lot of in-fighting as to what is and isn’t Satanism. Personally, I’ve always found this internecine warfare hilarious, given that most of society views even Wiccans as inherently Satanic—and technically, they’re correct. Viewed from an absolutist Christian viewpoint, anything that isn’t Christian is Satanic, since it stands in opposition to Jesus. Try explaining the distinction between a Satanist and a Pagan to an evangelical, and you’ll know what I mean.

But to me, the term “Satanist” is nothing more than an attention-grabbing placeholder for anyone traversing what we call the Left-Hand Path, which is something far greater. What this refers to is any path of self-individuation as an alternative means to achieving mundane or spiritual goals. For most, this means finding a practice that runs in opposition to any prescribed path to salvation. I personally don’t give a damn if someone calls me a Satanist or not. Unlike organized religions with holy books and set practices, the Left-Hand Path forces you to think and act for yourself. It’s highly personalized, and no one person’s practice should look like another's. My own practice is centered around Luciferian witchcraft and incorporates a large amount of Norse paganism. (There is enough congruence between Heathenry and the Left-Hand Path that it is not uncommon to find practitioners who make the Northern mysteries part of their journey.)

The only goal in Luciferianism is the rather amoral goal of gnosis, something I attain through the study of occult theory, ritual meditation, dreamwork, and intuition. Gnosis basically means “knowledge,” but specifically the knowledge of hidden or purposefully corrupted spiritual mysteries including finding the divine within one's self. Much like the concept of enlightenment, no one else can teach it to me. It’s a never-ending quest, and even when I come to understand and assimilate one aspect of the mysteries, another one awaits that may take years to grasp.

On top of forcing the self into places beyond the bounds of socially accepted religious practices—for instance through the use of entheogens (mind-altering substances), sex rituals, and blood magick—it requires rigorous self-examination. I have to know myself so well that I can parse out what is real and what is the byproduct of psychological predispositions, past traumas, fantasies, or undue mental and physical stressors. These could include everything from the time of the year, to what I ate that day, to what a coworker said in passing. And I have to do it all while upholding myself as both the student and the master. Certainly, there are plenty of religions for the faint-of-heart, but the practices that populate the Left-Hand Path are none of them.

Today, I am the taskmaster of my own spiritual practice. I can say honestly that I’ve finally filled the void within my own self, rekindled my soul, and lit my way out of that long, dark night. I’ve taken my place among the tribe alluded to by the black wolf from my childhood. I’ve found peace in following the path set forth by the Devil and his many forms. My demons are my angels, and the restless burning energy within me has a meaning and a purpose. Even if it’s only for myself, it’s enough. Satan saves, Jesus slaves, and I owe my life to the light betwixt the horns.

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The Simpsons caught some serious flack last month for an episode that made a half-assed attempt at tackling the controversy surrounding its character, Apu—the show's stereotyped South Asian character who's voiced by a middle-aged white guy. Instead of addressing the problem head-on, the show snuck an awkward shrug of an apology into a scene about Marge's favourite kids' book, a patently offensive tome she has to rewrite to make PC.

Critics panned the scene as lazy and insincere—including Hari Kondabolu, whose powerful 2017 documentary The Problem with Apu dragged the debate over the character into the limelight. Now, it looks like even Hank Azaria—the actor who voices Apu—thought the apology was pretty awful.

Azaria sat down with Stephen Colbert on The Late Show Tuesday night, where the two dug into the Apu controversy. As Azaria tells it, he didn't have anything to do with the writing of the apology scene—and what's more, he doesn't agree with its suggestion that "people need to lighten up or grow a thicker skin" when it comes to Apu.

"That’s certainly not the way I feel about it," Azaria said. "That’s definitely not the message I want to send."

In The Problem with Apu, Kondabolu explores how the character's stereotypical persona had real-life consequences—how Apu has been used to mock and bully folks who happen to look like him. It's an issue Azaria addressed head-on in his interview, saying he'd only ever wanted to use Apu to "spread laughter and joy."

"The idea that anybody, young or old, past or present, was bullied or teased based on the character of Apu, it just really makes me sad," Azaria said. "The idea that it's brought pain and suffering in any way, that it was used to marginalize people, it's upsetting, genuinely."

Azaria took the conversation a step further, telling Colbert that he'd like to bring some South Asian voices to The Simpsons' writers room, or even find a South Asian actor to replace him as Apu—a move he said "certainly seems like the right thing to do." With more and more South Asian actors landing leading roles, and speaking out about racism and the problems with being type-cast in the film industry, at least some folks in Hollywood are listening.

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It’s almost inevitable that at some point you’ll compare yourself to other people in your life. Careers, finances, and relationships can be frustrating when it seems like everyone else is reaching important milestones—enrolling in grad school, snagging promotions at work, getting married, etc.—while you’re stuck treading water.

If you find yourself huffing why can’t it be me? after seeing a friend’s exuberant status update announcing her wedding engagement while she’s vacationing in Tulum with her hot boyfriend (who’s a pediatrician, naturally), it’s totally understandable. A recent study in the Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking journal found that Facebook use was associated with lower self-esteem, poorer mental health, and greater body shame. In fact, those that quit Facebook immediately experienced a boost in life satisfaction and positive emotions.

To be clear, comparing yourself to others isn’t inherently a bad thing. Feeling a sharp pang of envy can put you in touch with your inner desires. If you’re mooning over your friends’ successes, maybe you can direct some energy into improving facets of your own life.

But if your envy isn’t a useful emotion, and you truly feel like your life isn’t measuring up to those around you, there are ways you can snap yourself out of it. We asked therapists, life coaches, and financial whizzes what you can do to shake off those feelings of inadequacy.

Unfollow and Refocus

Are you obsessed with all 5,000 fashion bloggers you're following and feeling bad about yourself because you can't afford to wear a new outfit every day? If that's the case, unfollow them! Unfollow anyone who makes you feel bad about yourself for any reason. Or, just limit your use of social media. Don't check it ten times in a hour. Instead of comparing yourself to others, compare yourself to where you were yesterday. Compare yourself to where you were a year ago, five years ago, even. Stay in your own lane, think about your own goals, and focus on achieving them. That's a lot more productive than focusing on what everyone else is doing. —Kayla Buell, Founder, Gen Y Girl

Take Control

Comparison is not always a bad thing. Comparing yourself to others helps us to keep reaching for our goals and not settling for mediocrity. It becomes unhealthy when it is being obsessed over daily and is prohibiting you from living your best life in the here-and-now. Comparison puts focus on the wrong person. You can only control your life, not the life of others. Ultimately, you are wasting precious time focusing on other people’s life than your own. —Kiaundra Jackson, LMFT, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist

Rewire Yourself and Say Thanks

As soon as you catch yourself comparing yourself to someone, replace the habitual thought (“So and so is so much [fill in the blank] than me”) and replace it with a helpful truth. For example: “So and so is [beautiful, rich, popular etc] but I don’t know what the rest of their life is like. They surely have struggles I don’t know about.” Another trick you can use when tempted to compare yourself to others is to catch yourself in the habit and instead think of something you’re grateful for. If you focus on what you don’t have, you’ll feel frustrated and envious. If you focus on what you do have instead, you’ll feel so much more content and less tempted to compare. —Dr. Susan Biali Haas, Wellness Expert, Life and Health Coach

Get Friendly

Be a friend. Ask how someone else is. If you have a friend whose life always seems perfect, make a point to connect with them in person. Talk to them about how their life is going. In most cases they will share the truth, which may be a lot more “real” than you perceived. People have breakups. People have career setbacks. People have boring lives sometimes. But it’s not the kind of thing people show (or should) show publicly. Be a real friend and you will get real info and feel a lot more like you are the same level playing field as everyone else. Everyone has something, trust me. Also as a quick fix, meditate. I use the Headspace app. — Bobbi Rebell, Certified Financial Planner and host of the Financial Grownup podcast

Answers have been edited and condensed.

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The story about the Canadian man who was "lynched" by a mob in Peru has taken yet another turn. Prosecutors in the country now suspect the Canadian whose body was found in a makeshift grave in Ucayali region, Sebastian Woodroffe, may have been responsible for the death of revered Indigenous shaman Olivia Arévalo, according to a spokesman for the attorney general’s office, Reuters reports.

The two men with arrest warrants for allegedly being involved in Woodroffe’s lynching seem to have fled, according to Ucayali region prosecutor Ricardo Jimenez. In a blurry cell phone video, a man (Woodroffe, as identified by officials) was seen being dragged by a noose around his neck through a puddle of mud amidst a crowd of onlookers.

Woodroffe, 41, of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, had originally gone to Peru on a journey to become an addictions counsellor via studying plant medicine, including ayahuasca. Several years ago, he had a crowdfunding page where he raised thousands of dollars for his travels. But, last week, he was accused in the shooting death of Arévalo.

Arévalo, 81, was a member of the Shipibo-Conibo tribe and part of a healing centre that offered ayahuasca retreats, the Temple of the Way of Light. Reportedly, Woodroffe was one of her patients.

The dominant hypothesis prosecutors are looking at now alleges that Woodroffe may have killed Arévalo because of a debt. According to a Reuters report, Arévalo’s son may have owed Woodroffe about $5,565 (or, 14,000 soles). The report also claims that authorities located a document dated April 3 indicating Woodroffe bought a gun from a cop, according to Jimenez. That police officer is also now wanted for questioning.

“We want to see if that weapon actually existed. We haven’t found it yet, but we’re looking,” Jimenez said. “With the new evidence that has appeared, [Woodroffe] is the main suspect.”

A supposed witness claimed that he saw a silver pistol fall from Woodroffe’s backpack when he was being attacked by the lynch mob, according to Jimenez.

Investigators were also considering alternate theories in Arévalo’s death, including that a different foreign national could have been involved.

A friend of Woodroffe’s in Canada, though, Yarrow Willard, does not believe the accusations. He said Woodroffe went to Peru “seeking healing as he was feeling troubled and slightly lost.”

“He was a loving father and kind man who was not capable of the crimes he was accused of,” Willard told Reuters.

Peruvian authorities have now ordered lab tests on Woodroffe’s body to be expedited to aid in the investigation. Results are expected this week.

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Why did Alek Minassian allegedly climb into a van on Monday and kill ten people in Toronto? It goes without saying that each and every crime like this is determined by a number of factors. The one silver lining in all this is that since the alleged killer was arrested, we may have to opportunity to understand what led to Monday’s horrific events.

In the interim, all we have so far is reports that it appears Minassian is a high-functioning autistic man who made a Facebook post in the minutes before the killing invoking misogynist murderer Elliot Rodger and announcing the inauguration of the “incel rebellion.”

For those uninitiated into the heart of darkness called Extremely Online, incels or “involuntary celibates” are a group of sad men so upset at their lack of sexual activity that they fantasize about raping, murdering, and otherwise brutalizing all women as a kind of guerilla anti-feminist warfare. They first came to media prominence in 2014 after Rodger killed six people in California in 2014 and issued a 100+ page “manifesto” where he crudely turned his personal history of social and sexual frustration into a political crusade against all sex-havers.

(For anyone looking to get a taste of this particular rabbit hole, journalist Arshy Mann has compiled an excellent primer on Twitter.)

Every explosion of masculine violence is a different symptom of the same underlying social disease. It has very deep roots, especially in this country—the Montreal Massacre, where 14 women were murdered, happened long before Marc Lepine could post anywhere on the “manosphere.” But now death cults fitting every type of broken manchild flourish on the internet like weeds in the wake of a wildfire, or the slimy tendrils of some ancient underground fungus creeping up to consume the dead and dying.

Misogyny seems to be the fontspring closest to the poison well this violence draws on. But all these toxic streams—white nationalism, fundamentalist religion, gun fetishism, whatever—do the same work: they link masculinity and power with anger and violence in a way that promises an illusion of mastery and control to men who feel they have none.

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There are some illuminating comparisons you can make with the case of Alexandre Bissonnette, the Quebec City mosque shooter. His crime too was overdetermined—court documents describe a young man losing himself to alcoholism who initially considered shooting up a mall—but nonetheless a clear expression of the conspiratorial Islamophobia Bissonnette was quaffing from far-right Twitter.

I am not here to make the case that there is a new crisis in masculinity, or that we need to take special focus on redeeming our Millennial “lost boys”—the losers of a changing social hierarchy who posted once on 4chan as teenagers and turned into neo-Nazis as adults. It is more worthwhile to think about this as a problem of nihilism. The incel case is a good example.

The committed incel is one who believes that the sexual (and thus social) world is determined by rigid genetic and biological hierarchies. The common understanding is that incel anger stems grows out of their perception that they do not receive the sexual gratification they are entitled to by virtue of their place on the social pyramid, largely because feminism and the sexual revolution and multiculturalism and cultural Marxism and blah blah have encouraged women and minorities to usurp the natural order of things. (Elliot Rodger’s manifesto is primarily misogynist but it also shows a preoccupation with the impropriety of race-mixing, something which aggrieved the mixed-race shooter to no end.)

This social corruption must be resisted and overturned (e.g. Men’s Rights Activists, other garden-variety sexists, etc.) or its gynocratic social-sexual system otherwise completely abandoned by self-actualized hermits (e.g. Men Going Their Own Way). It goes without saying that this fixation on disruptive feminine Chaos and the restoration of manly Order is also the root of why so many sad men get aggressively into ur-stepdad Jordan Peterson.

But there are others who recognize that this social-sexual hierarchy is determining and immutable, and they recognize themselves on its lower tiers because of some perceived psychological or physical defect. This is the really terrifying nihilistic turn: to find yourself in a violent and cruel fantasyworld that casts you as the rightful subhuman, to see the full terrible truth of the universe laid out before you that tells you you’re born only to lose. Nothing matters except sex and love and you will never have it. The world is too corrupt. This becomes a true contempt not only for all women but also all the men who sleep with them—the Chads and Staceys from the popular table in high school you could never sit at, now transformed into metaphysical social units that walk the streets and mock you with their very existence. You can see how this would be the last stop before the end of a very dark road, especially if healthy emotional expression is constrained by other underlying psychological issues and/or the gendered psychic prison you have constructed for yourself.

Nihilism is contagious in the 21st century. We live under the shadow of ecological doom and the violent shuddering of an openly larcenous economy. Trust in traditional political and social institutions have been corroded by nearly 20 years of imperial overextension in increasingly meaningless and interminable wars both real and discursive. Hundreds of millions of post-literate citizens are drowning in the ubiquitous uncritical flood of information called the internet. If you’re so predisposed, it is very easy to convince yourself that everything is falling the fuck apart and that nothing matters, and an increasing number of failsons in the developed world respond to these stressors by coupling their suicidal ideation to an explosion of mass violence.

Anti-feminist killers like Rodgers or Minassian or Lepine would style themselves as guerrilla counterrevolutionaries in the sexual revolution that has been ongoing and periodically intensifying for more than the last half century. It is worth noting that the two biggest massacres in the last 40 years of Canadian history have been explicitly misogynist attacks.

Toxic masculinity is a security issue. Not only in the event of misogynist terrorism, but nearly all idiosyncratic outbursts of violence. “Deradicalization” efforts need to see the root beneath each individual subcultural bush. The teenagers who flew to Syria to found a Caliphate of murder and sexual slavery, the boys who stormed Columbine Highschool, the man who slammed his car into protestors at Charlottesville, the hundreds of other men who are convinced the only way they’ll ever feel justified and alive is to break the lives of others—these bitter fruits all grow from the same seed.

Some men are raised to be as hard and rigid as the phalluses they dubiously worship. When confronted by the inevitable emotional challenges entailed by living in the world with others, they can only break, not bend.

Alek Minassian’s alleged murders were overdetermined. What is at the heart of his particular brokenness? Maybe he will tell us; maybe the keys to that puzzle are buried somewhere in the ruins of his unconscious. Maybe it really simply is that a man struggling with his mental health fell down a bad internet rabbit hole one day and it completely warped his brain. More likely there is no single, straightforward answer to explain the processes that caused someone to hate women and himself so much that he turned to mass murder.

We may or may not crack Minassian’s code. But here’s the thing. For every grand spectacle of violent death, there are many more men - sexually frustrated, emotionally stunted, bitter, brooding, isolated, invisible - who carry around an inexpressible anger in their hearts, unknown to all except their own dark digital cabal.

Unless we start taking toxic masculinity seriously as a social policy problem, things will get worse before they get better.

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Last month, surgeons at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore successfully performed the first total penis and scrotum transplant in history on a young US military veteran. VICELAND's Desus and Mero wanted to know more about the operation, so they watched a handy animated medical tutorial that Johns Hopkins released on Twitter.

You can watch the latest episode of DESUS & MERO for free, online, right now. New episodes Monday to Thursday at 11PM on VICELAND.COM.

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Once Travis Reinking was suspected of killing four people and injuring others in a mass shooting at a Nashville Waffle House on Sunday, the country predictably starting hunting for a motive. One possibility seemed to emerge after USA Today obtained the police report from the time Reinking was arrested while trying to arrange a meeting with Donald Trump in Washington, DC, last summer. According to that document, the 29-year-old told officers he had a right to inspect the area around the White House because he was a "sovereign citizen."

The so-called Sovereign Citizen Movement appears to have been launched by people fixated on the noxious concept of Christian Identity on the West Coast around 1970. The progenitors called themselves posse comitatus, and generally believed the United States had been ruled by an illegitimate government since as far back as the 1800s. Some also thought they could "redeem" themselves by destroying certain documents. After that, the thinking went, they'd no longer subject to taxes or the law—a prospect that has made sovereign citizenship an appealing concept to all kinds of financially desperate people in the decades since. The complex conspiracy theory continued to gain adherents thanks in part to a series of economic crises, among them the Great Recession. That catastrophe coincided with the proliferation of social media, and was preceded, among many other cultural events, by the release of The Matrix. In fact, Sovereign Citizens were the first right-wing group to use the "red pill" analogy to refer to a sort of political call to consciousness, according to Mark Pitcavage at the Anti-Defamation League.

To learn more about the movement—and how important an alleged mass shooter's connection to it, however tenuous, might be—I called up Pitcavage, who's been studying sovereign citizens for about 25 years. He told me how people get sucked into their fascinating and bizarre belief system, while urging caution about concluding that Reinking himself was a legit adherent.

VICE: Saying a specific ideology is relevant to this Waffle House shooting is tough, because the connection to the chief suspect seems so tenuous. Do you think it's fair to say this guy is or was a sovereign citizen?
Mark Pitcavage: The frustrating thing with regards to the [alleged] Waffle House killer is that only two pieces of information have emerged that at all suggest he may have been tied to the sovereign citizen movement itself. The first was the police report for the White House incident, in which he said that he had the right to be on the grounds because he was a sovereign citizen, and the other was a separate police report from 2016, which described him as someone who didn't recognize the authority of the police. Unfortunately, in both of those reports, you have some off-hand comments without detail or explication. I can imagine someone generically using the term sovereign, or even sovereign citizen, in the context of the White House incident, as a way of saying, "I have as much of a right to be here as anyone else." Similarly, there are lots of people in the heat of the moment who might not recognize the authority of the police in such a situation. So both of these are sort of tantalizing possibilities but not smoking guns. (Editor's note: After this interview took place, a third piece of evidence tying Reinking to Sovereign Citizens—an anecdote from at least one former co-worker—was reported by the Associated Press, as Pitcavage himself tweeted.)

What would tip you off to the fact that someone might be involved with this crowd?
People in the sovereign citizen movement tend to say certain things. They tend to write certain things—their names and their addresses very distinctively. So that's what you tend to look for to get confirmation. So far with this person, I haven't found that confirmation, so I hesitate to accept the notion that he was one. The first thing he did after getting arrested was ask for a lawyer.

And most sovereign citizens would want to represent themselves, since they're into studying law books and taking seminars in fake legal theory, right?
That's absolutely right, because of a particular conspiracy theory surrounding lawyers that they believe in. Some would get a lawyer, reluctantly, but it's very common for them to not want that.

It's absolutely true that the movement is very arcane, and you can go as deep as you want to into pseudo-legal theory, but not everyone has to. People can leave the thinking to others and just sort of accept the conclusions, so to speak. If you don't have the faculties or inclination to get into the pseudo-legal stuff, you don't have to. Of course a lot of them like to.

We see several. The first is financially desperate people. This offers them someone to blame for their plight—illegitimate governments, illegitimate banking systems. And it purports to offer them a way out of their financial plight: the idea that you can eliminate your mortgage or your debt through pseudo-legal tactics, though there are also millionaires who get involved in this movement. And the second personality type is just those who can't cope with modern bureaucracy. They wanna fight City Hall and get angrier and angrier over things like zoning and traffic regulations. It offers them a way to ignore those rules and regulations. Then, through so-called paper-terrorism tactics, it offers them a way to retaliate against the system. So that can be very appealing.

The last personality type are con artists who want something for nothing or a way to get a quick buck. The movement generates tons of scams and cons.

But are these people who sell sovereign citizens binders full of dubious legal advice, for instance, true believers? Or is there someone knowingly profiting off this mass delusion?
At any given moment, there are lots of sovereign citizens running scams, and some of them definitely know they are scams. There are con artists using the cloak of the ideology to help them. But there's this other category of people who also believe in it to varying degrees. They know if they create a bogus financial instrument, banks aren't gonna accept it, but they'll sell it to people telling them it'll help pay off their mortgage. But they think the banks won't do it because the banks are part of the con, right? They think they should do it, but they don't do it. You have pure con artists, but the people who are the best salesmen do buy into it, because they can sound sincere and really can be convincing.

People typically join movements to feel a sense of community but this one seems quite isolating. What do people get out of the subculture?
As a movement, they're not huge into forming groups, though they form some. Most people are in it as individuals, or are part of loose networks. Or they follow particular gurus. And they are the ones who come up with the pseudo-legal tactics and preach and teach them through seminars or YouTube videos. Many people are disciples to one or more of those gurus. But a lot of them have also been put behind bars, so there's a sort-of shortage of top-tier gurus of the 21st century right now. That's making some room for new people to possibly emerge.

Given that their preferred method of action is so-called "paper terrorism," or inundating the legal system with nonsense filings, as a you mentioned, what might push some of them to physical violence?
When you look at the criminal activity of these guys, it tends to fall into three categories. Paper terrorism is one. Then there's scams or frauds. And the third is violence. Although this is a movement that can produce terrorist plots, a lot of the violence is spontaneous. Like an unplanned encounter between a sovereign citizen and a police encounter during a routine traffic stop. The sovereign citizen thinks the officer has no authority over him whatsoever and decides to take their personal stand right then and there—their own private Alamo. Some of them can go from zero to 60 very quickly in terms of their anger.

To loop back to the (still vague) connection between Reinking and the sovereign citizen movement, a Waffle House doesn't seem like an obvious target for anti-government extremism.
Right. Even if this person was involved in the sovereign citizen movement at any time, I don't think this particular incident is related to that at all. A lot of evidence suggests that this person had a serious degree of mental illness, and that may have played more of a role than anything in this attack.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

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There's an interesting realm between being awake and being deep in sleep that researchers associate with intense, creative thinking. It's in this space, technically called hypnagogia, that you have dreams called microdreams—seemingly random, short dreams that you don't remember when you wake up. Now, Adam Horowitz, an MIT graduate student, wants to change that.

Horowitz and his team created a device called Dormio to maximize this stage of dreaming, which actually allows users to influence the content of their microdreams. The device consists of an Arduino microcontroller mounted to a glove with small flexion sensors, and it works alongside a smartphone app that suggests thoughts as the user sleeps. Researchers hypothesize that being able to tap into this in-between stage of associated thoughts and creativity could be insightful.

Motherboard’s Daniel Oberhaus talks about the possibilities of tapping into dreams on this episode of the VICE Guide to Right Now Podcast.

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Peter Madsen, the inventor accused of murdering and dismembering journalist Kim Wall aboard his homemade submarine last summer, has been sentenced to life in prison, the New York Times reports.

On Wednesday, a Danish court found Madsen, 47, guilty of the "premeditated killing" of Wall in August 2017, while the Swedish freelance reporter rode with him on what was supposed to be a two-hour submarine trip off the coast of Copenhagen. Once Wall was reported missing, Madsen originally told police that he had safely returned her after their trip. But when Wall's dismembered body parts began washing ashore, he changed his story, claiming she had died in an accident onboard from a head wound, then later from carbon monoxide poisoning. Madsen ultimately admitted to dismembering her body, though he maintained he did not kill her.

Prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen painted a different picture of the incident during the trial, presenting evidence that suggests Madsen "tied up" and sexually assaulted Wall before stabbing and killing her. It was, Buch-Jepsen claimed, all part of a plan that Madsen had meticulously researched and discussed ahead of time. According to Wired, a friend of Madsen's received texts from the inventor before Wall went missing saying he had "a murder plan ready in the submarine." According to Reuters, investigators also found videos of women being decapitated, strangled, and tortured on Madsen's lab computer.

"This case has crept under my skin more than other cases," Buch-Jepsen said after hearing the court's guilty verdict, calling Madsen "not normal" and "a danger to society" in his closing argument earlier this week, the Times reports.

Madsen's lawyer, Betina Hald Engmark, told reporters that she is "not satisfied" with the court's decision and plans to appeal the verdict. According to the Times, Madsen could be considered for release in 12 years.

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Look, college can be pretty rough, no matter what Van Wilder promised it to be. It crams you into shitty dorms with even shittier roommates, overwhelms you with debt, and ravages your brain with early-morning classes. But the University of Utah has apparently hatched an exciting new plan to help students deal with the dark side of higher education—by letting a student install a "cry closet" in the campus library.

Thanks to the new closet, which was dreamed up by University of Utah student and visual artist Nemo Miller, college kids can relieve their stress, one private sob at a time. Buried in homework and feeling down? Dumped via text while studying for midterms? Just plop out a few tears in private and get back to work!

According to the rules posted on its door, the closet—described as a "safe place for stressed-out students"—has a strict ten-minute-per-weep policy, presumably to accommodate all the college kids in need a brief bawl.

The rest of the rules ask people to knock before entering, for privacy's sake, and to be only used by one person at a time, so it doesn't become some sort of terrible sex closet. It also asks people to use the hashtag "#cryclosetuofu" when posting about it on social media, because this is 2018 and we never have to cry alone again.

From the look of some photos on Twitter, the closet actually looks pretty cozy inside, outfitted with padded walls and floor and even a few stuffed animals, in case someone wants to drown a toy in tears.

Sure, the cry closet is basically an art installation, with the University of Utah acknowledging that the whole thing is pretty tongue-in-cheek to begin with, but it's still found its share of people whining about weak-ass millennials and how they need to "toughen up." But let's be real, here: Someday—maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow—you might find yourself in a public space with that familiar lump in your throat and an imminent flood of tears, and say, "Damn, wish I had a small box to go sob inside for ten minutes or whatever." The world is currently full of things to cry about, so maybe we could use a few more of these things.

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In a world where headlines barrage readers with news of mass attacks on humanity, the inefficacy of elected leaders, and sexual predators in power, finding levity in it all can feel counterintuitive. Counterproductive even. But 2018 is perhaps a perfect moment to celebrate the tragicomic—or finding humour in life's darkened corners.

The revival of the #MeToo movement, a rallying cry coined over a decade ago by Tarana Burke, has empowered women to call out and dismantle institutional sexism and sexual harassment. And it’s welcome progress. Yet one artist is finding catharsis in a subtler, and snarkier, way: by calling men out on their bullshit through satire and unpacking the insidious masculinity that fuels today’s headlines.

“I’ve always found that humour is an incredibly valuable tool for both coping and change,” Shelby Lorman, the 24-year-old writer and artist behind the bitingly brilliant Instagram account @awardsforgoodboys, told VICE. She started the account in 2017 as a way to make fun of “good boys”—her moniker for men who expect praise for not being absolute monsters.

“People are so quick to praise men for avoiding vehemently bad behavior, whilst holding women to a million standards they’ll never meet,” Lorman explained. “It’s like, ‘Oh, he didn’t murder anyone? He’s my hero.’”

The @awardsforgoodboys account unpacks the double standards of hardwired sexism while making women howl with laughter. And if you gauge by Lorman’s nearly 20,000 followers, clearly it’s resonating. “The vibe I get from my followers and friends is that it’s a relief to consume something that is still topical, still critical, but has some levity,” she said.

No one is safe from Lorman’s ire; when an IRL dude once gave her a backhanded compliment on her illustrations via Tinder messenger, she screenshotted it and put his DM up on her account. “Obviously him ‘complimenting’ my work is not evil,” Lorman explained. “I think he meant it in earnest. The issue is that men like this compliment downwards: it’s inherently patronizing.”

Calling men out in this way isn’t meant to be malicious. Lorman’s trying to get them to recognize when they marginalize women, intentionally or not, and then laugh at themselves. “When you’re laughing, your guard is down, and when your guard is down, sentiments can seep in,” she said. “Something you may have previously pushed away, because it was too hard to think about [or hit] too close to home,” can be reframed as a nonthreatening way to think about behaviour.

Lorman is acutely aware that the issues she’s addressing on her account were around “a long, long time before Hollywood elites decided they wanted change.” She thinks the current conversation around #MeToo is incredibly important but also “inherently flawed, as most large movements are. It leaves things out. It’s stemming from a lot of powerful and rich white voices.” Trying to fundamentally change society via Instagram doodles isn’t what @awardsforgoodboys is about, but it provides a critical perspective on the issues making headlines by calling out everyday examples of bad behaviour.

While the general response to @awardsforgoodboys has been, according to Lorman, overwhelmingly positive, certain folks haven’t embraced its criticism. There are men (and women) who object to her public chiding, especially if they feel they may be the butt of the joke. But whenever a GoodBoy™ thinks a post is shaming him—or even “about” or “for” him—it proves the account's point. “If people can laugh and think critically, in lieu of outright judgement,” Lorman said, “that’s an effective loophole to get people talking.” And talking is exactly what women are doing.

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On Monday, a man turned a van against the pedestrians walking along Yonge Street in north Toronto, killing ten people and injuring over a dozen.

Alek Minassian, 25, was arrested and charged with ten counts of murder and 13 counts of attempted murder. The attack was horrendous with witnesses describing a frantic, hellish scene of the vehicle mounting curbs, driving the wrong way, and throwing people in the air. To add to the odd feeling that one gets when their home is attacked and people are mercilessly run down is the recognition that this method of attack isn’t necessarily unique.

It doesn’t take much time to think of other recent attacks that used this method—Nice, Berlin, London, New York City, Stockholm, and Charlottesville, just to name a few, have all experienced mass killings in which vehicles were the primary weapon. Amarnath Amarasingam, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, says there are several reasons why these attacks have been ramping up. For one, it’s relatively easy to get a vehicle.

“Unlike stockpiling weapons, it's not really going to raise any red flags,” Amarasingam told VICE. “Using traditional weapons produces quite a risky paper trail, whether it be buying guns, or stockpiling fertilizer [used in improvised bombs]. It is highly unlikely that law enforcement is going to look twice at a car or van being rented.”

It’s important to acknowledge that many more pedestrians die each year of run-of-the-mill traffic accidents than in purposeful rampages. (The Toronto Star found that, in 2017, at least 42 pedestrians were killed in the city.) Still, experts who study vehicular mass killings say the phenomenon isn’t new. They were frequently used in the mid-90s by Palestinian militants, for example. However, as Amarasingam points out, incidents have spiked in recent years as “Al-Qaeda and ISIS have basically called on citizens to use whatever they can get their hands on to cause damage.”

Both of these terrorist groups have published explainers and guides on how to conduct such attacks through their propaganda channels.

Police have not suggested that Minassian was part of a terror cell, and he isn’t facing any terrorism-related charges at this time. Although a post appeared on his Facebook page suggesting he was involved with a misogynistic online group who call themselves incels (involuntary celibates), his motives remain unknown.

Other factors play into the rise of this style of attacks. Vehicles can be used to inflict mass casualties in areas that have strict gun laws like Europe and Canada.

According to the University of Maryland’s global terrorism tracker, the usage of vehicles as weapons has exploded in recent years. The tracker lists 183 incidents globally which involved vehicles (but not car bombs) from 1970 to the end of 2016, and 122 of them occured since 2010.

The graph from University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism tracker showing the spike in vehicles used as weapons. Photo via screenshot.

Some security experts have said that vehicle attacks are an unpreventable form of terrorism. Others are looking for ways to stop further attacks. Paul Hess, an associate professor of geography and planning at the University of Toronto, says there are several methods cities can use to prevent these attacks, and in some cases, bigger cities are already doing them. These include putting up bollards (short sturdy posts) or other barriers in areas with many pedestrians, like Nice’s Promenade des Anglais or New York’s Times Square, and using large vehicles like garbage or fire trucks to block access to areas that experience heavy temporarily heavy pedestrian traffic, for example at rush hour or during parades. Hess said that an example of the latter occurred in Toronto the day of the attack near the Rogers Centre, as the Leafs took on the Bruins.

Hess pointed out that urban planners are mostly focused on making cyclists and pedestrians safer from average drivers. As noted earlier, road accidents are responsible for far more injuries and deaths than deliberate vehicular mass killings.

“The main thing is to try create barriers between vehicles and pedestrians,” said Hess. “You probably can’t protect every street, it would take more time and money than we have.” If someone is truly determined to carry out an attack, he added, only so much can be done to stop them.

It’s not just municipalities that can work against preventing attacks. A 2017 paper by the nonprofit policy group Counter Extremism Project (CEP) suggests that tech companies can also do more. The paper points to YouTube in particular, which has failed to prevent a lot of propaganda on its site—YouTube has responded by ramping up AI efforts to flag and remove videos inciting violence.

"Following the New York attack that occurred a few months ago, we discovered pieces of ISIS and Al-Qaeda propaganda online encouraging these types attacks,” CEP's senior research analyst Josh Lipowsky told VICE. “For an example, there was an ISIS video clip the encourage[d] truck attacks." Companies like YouTube should be more “proactive,” he said, in monitoring for this sort of content and removing it.

Lipowsky said that there are programs that are designed to identify extremist content and that he believes the companies can be much more active in monitoring by using keywords and following up on reports, and tracing videos back to remove them at the source.

Of course, as we’ve seen in Toronto, the attacks aren’t always Islamist in nature. In 2017, Darren Osborne drove a rented van into a group worshippers outside of Finsbury Park mosque in London, killing one and injuring eight. Prosecutors argued at the time that Osborne was “brainwashed” by far-right wing propaganda and wanted to kill Muslims with the vehicle. (He was found guilty of first degree murder in early 2018.) Furthermore, in Charlottesville last summer, a white nationalist used a black Dodge Challenger to run down anti-racist protesters, killing one.

Minassian remains in custody and Toronto is determined to carry on in the face of one of the worst mass killings in Canadian history. As for vehicular attacks, “I think we'll see a lot more of this,” said Amarasingam. Local authorities and cities, he added, will need to find new ways to protect their residents. “But it is going to be very difficult.”

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Sensible, oatmeal-coloured cardigans. Fully completed newspaper crosswords. A cupboard filled with Werther’s Original sweets. Grandparent cliches err on the side of wholesome in a way that totally obscures what your older relatives may have been like in their youth. I’m talking about the time before your own parents were even a twinkle in gran or granddad’s eye. Ever stopped to think about what your grandpa was like aged 19, out on the pull and potentially careening into the night? No? Well, that's where we come in.

One of the great things about older people is their wisdom. And so you’d do well to ask about their stories of going out when they were younger, for an insight into how they partied. It’s more interesting than reading endless newspaper stories now about how Gen Z don’t drink or take drugs or do anything but worry about the crushing weight of their future student loans. That being said, music and drugs are in the sort of long-term relationship that won’t be entirely destroyed by a generation choosing to destroy fewer brain cells with illegal and legal substances. So rather than hear about people our age’s 4/20 plans last week, we rang up a bunch of retirees to find about their most memorable moments that combined an extreme high and music.

"The acid hit and we took all our clothes off in the street, in the middle of the day"

It was the early 1970s and I was trying to start a band. I’d already found a drummer and he introduced me to this dude who could play bass guitar. It turned out our bass guitarist was a massive acidhead and shortly after we met he gave us some LSD blotters as a welcoming gift, which we all preceded to swallow. That day, a local parade ran through town, so the streets were packed with people in a happy mood—it was a hot summer’s day, too.

The acid didn’t really hit us until we made it to the fare and “Sex Machine” by Sly and the Family Stone started playing on the tannoy speakers. The guitar on that particular song is so funky it almost sounds like it’s singing words to you. Now, “Sex Machine” is a 13-minute instrumental track, but I became convinced Sly was singing "take your clothes off" throughout. And because the music sounded so transcendent it felt like it was our duty to submit to Sly’s commands.

The three of us were reportedly dancing together on the high street… butt naked. The next thing you know, our drummer started telling us he was dancing with Minnie Mouse. And, shit, I became convinced I could see her too! So, here we all were dancing with Minnie Mouse, when one of my friends spots us and throws us into the back of his car.

We were three young black men dancing naked at a public event during a time where the police were pretty racist. Honestly, if my friend hadn’t come and saved us, we would have all ended up in jail for indecent exposure. The experience was amazing. But it ended with me never doing acid ever again. — Norman, 64

"On LSD and weed, a woman thought weasels were climbing out of a Frank Zappa vinyl cover"

Me and my mates used to have these gatherings, where we’d get stoned and listen to music at one another’s houses. It was the summer of 1970 and Weasels Ripped My Flesh by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention had just come out. We were all a bit stoned on weed and also had some LSD, so everybody was really chilled out at my flat.

One of our group got hungry and asked if I had a bowl of fruit. I told her the fruit bowl only had oranges and apples. She fancied an orange so I threw it in her direction. That orange took forever to reach her. Honestly, it felt like it took at least a year. It was just like the scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey , where the monkey throws the bone and it lingers for eternity in the air. Yep, we were tripping.

We were sat listening to “My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama,” which is completely off the scale. The song was like this great ascendency, with the drugs and music elevating one another perfectly. There’s a big group of us zoned out to the music, nodding our heads, with great smiles, when we suddenly hear a scream.

The same girl who I had passed the fruit to earlier had asked one of my friends what the music was. He handed her the record sleeve and she could see the smiling man on the front cover, who is holding a weasel, which is ripping into the flesh of his cheek. She started freaking out and screaming. The imagery and those four words—Weasels Ripped My Flesh—became stuck inside her head. Throughout the trip, she was convinced weasels were out to get her. Fortunately, the rest of us had a great time. — Phil, 62

"I started feeling like I was in a mental health facility while listening to Pink Floyd"

I know it’s a cliché to say, but when I was younger Pink Floyd were a band whose music could be stunningly enhanced under the influence of weed—especially Dark Side of the Moon. That record in particular created an enhanced sense of euphoria that I found very relaxing and inspirational.

It's hard to describe, but I could hear nuances in the music that seemed purposefully constructed so that only a listener in the same "frame of mind" would ever be able to hear them. The strongest one made me feel like I was in some sort of mental health facility. The part in “The Great Gig in the Sky” with a weird vocal sample, where the man says: “Why should I be frightened of dying? There's no reason for it, you've gotta go sometime” actually made me see one of this fictional facility’s patients.

It also helped that at the time, I worked as an orderly at the local hospital and spent many a shift in the psychiatric ward. Listening to that album always took me back there. It was fascinating, irresistible, and also caused me some very unsettling feelings. Overall though, I loved smoking a joint and sitting back with the headphones on. Retirement is just around the corner and I soon intend to put Willie Nelson to shame in the weed department! — Randy, 62

"A powercut made me feel like my mind had teleported inside a Jackson Browne song"

My wife and I used to smoke a joint to The Beatles like most couples our age did; it was a great way of increasing the depth of the musical experience. But I’d say one of the best things to do when getting high is to actually play some music yourself.

It was the 1970s, and my wife and I were renting this flat. I decided to smoke a pretty fat hash joint, and afterwards I played guitar and started singing at the dining room table while my wife was in the other room. The flat we were renting had this slot meter and the electricity ran out, so the living room suddenly went pitch black.

Instantly, the darkness made me feel like I no longer existed as a human being and as if my consciousness had teleported inside of the Jackson Browne song I was playing. The lights must have been off for about five minutes, but it felt like I was submerged in this 'dark place' for a lot longer. During this time, it was as if I had been completely absorbed by the music, which I was somehow still playing and singing absolutely perfectly. When the lights came back on, I was very confused. — Colin, 73

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This article originally appeared on Noisey UK.