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Follow Simon Hanselmann on Twitter and look at his blog. Also buy his books from Fantagraphics and Space Face.

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Photos by the author

On Sunday, a homeless man known locally as "Africa" and "Cameroon" was shot and killed after a struggle with five LAPD officers that was caught on video. On Tuesday, protesters massed at the site of the shooting, the corner of 6th and San Pedro, where a memorial made of silk flowers, notes, books and other items had sprung up. The initial gathering was punctuated by a moment of silence, which preceded a march to LAPD headquarters just under a mile away.

During the march, protesters chanted the familiar, "Hands up, don't shoot!" and, "Hey hey, ho ho, the killer cops have got to go!" along with brand new slogans like, "You can't kill Africa!" and "Five to one. You need a gun? Really?"

It's worth noting that the LA Times,citing two law enforcement sources, reported Tuesday that the victim was a 39-year-old French national named Charley Saturmin Robinet, who was convicted of bank robbery in 2000. If nothing else, the report complicates the narrative of a mentally ill indigent man being preyed upon by overzealous law enforcement.

Still, when protesters arrived at the LAPD HQ, speakers demanded the resignation of LAPD Chief Charlie Beck, and called upon District Attorney Jackie Lacey to charge the officers involved in the incident with murder.

Scroll down for photos from the protest.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

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A scan of Nkasse Giresse's passport and some of the messages he sent on Twitter

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Yesterday morning, VICE UK received a tweet from someone called Nkasse Giresse that read: "Good day madam please i need your help, i wish to become a porn star and I want you to help me."

A quick glance at his profile revealed he'd sent the exact same tweet to about 100 other accounts, including those of a copywriter from Nova Scotia, the founder of a company that specializes in "unforgettable marriage proposals" and @Canada.

Who was this very optimistic man? Was he even a man at all? Was he, perhaps, a spam bot created to confuse Canadian social media managers? Or a real, tangible one-man troll, studiously copying and pasting the same tweet to a list of completely arbitrary accounts in the hope that one of them might offer him a porn contract so he could post the whole exchange on Reddit? Or was he the real deal?

I got in touch with him over Facebook to find out, and the first thing he did was send me a copy of his passport.

VICE: Hello. Who are you?
Nkasse Alain Giresse: My name is Nkasse Alain Giresse, a black Cameroonian.

And this is you tweeting loads of accounts saying you want to be a porn star? How can I tell you're not trolling?
How can I be lying to you when you've seen my passport? I want to prove I am a very serious somebody.

OK. Why do you want to be a porn star so badly?
Because I love the idea of the job and the fun I'd have in it. It's not about the money.

What could you bring to the world of porn?
Growth and great success for whoever employs me due to the quality of the video I will perform in and my knowledge of computer networking.

Are you in it for the acting or just for the sex?
For the acting, and for everything in it.

If it's about the acting, why not have a crack at being a normal actor rather than a porn star?
A regular porn actor is what I want to do because I love the job. I love porn more.

When did you first realize you wanted to be in the porn industry?
When I was 16 years old.

What sort of porn would you like to be in?
An amateur in nude and others.

What does that mean?
An active, famous, and straight porn actor.

Fair enough. Where exactly do you live and what's the porn scene like over there?
The southwest region of Cameroon. I have not been able to find a serious porn industry here.

Why's that?
It's illegal in Cameroon and I have been duped twice while trying to join, so I believe there is none.

How have you been duped?
Somebody took my money in the name of a registration fee and I never saw him again. Here in Cameroon, people lie a lot.

Why are you using Twitter as a platform to achieve your dreams?
Because I want to use media to achieve my goal of becoming a porn star.

What about making some homemade porn as a kind of audition tape?
It's not easy to find those as interested or as serious as I am. And because I'm not rich I can't pay huge sums to impress the few interested people.

What do your friends think about your dreams?
I don't care what they think.

What about your parents?
I'm an orphan and have nobody to care for me or think anything about me. And I don't care for the world.

Where do you see yourself in ten years?
As a great and famous porn star.

How would you spend the money you earn as a porn star?
To care for orphans like me so they don't suffer. Can you help me please?

What sort of help?
To achieve my goal of becoming a porn star.

I'm hoping this interview might help you reach a larger audience.
Are you married?

No.
Can you be my intimate friend?

No. Thanks, Nkasse—good luck in your quest.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

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Follow Patrick Kyle on Twitter, look at his blog, and get his books from Koyama Press.

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This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Death hoaxes are now so common they've almost become banal. Like plastic bags in the wind, most fail to take flight, but a small number catch an updraft and assume a life of their own. Last November, for instance, a great many people believed Macaulay Culkin had cashed in his chips, on the basis of no real evidence at all. Google now prompts anyone searching for "Macaulay Culkin" not with "Home Alone," but with the word "dead."

When rejecting the rumor, what Culkin had on his side was an enormous social media following, and thus the means to respond accordingly. The same cannot be said of the ex-presenter of British children's game show Get Your Own Back, Dave Benson Phillips, who in 2009 was hit with an online death hoax that all but ruined his career. At the time he had neither Facebook nor Twitter himself, and conducted most of his business over the phone. "I wasn't internet-savvy," he admits.

When I first raise the subject, Phillips's shackles rise, and with good reason. When he's discussed the death hoax in the past, with magazines like Loaded and Zoo, "They couldn't wait to take the piss." Before long, however, he's talking so openly that it's as though he organized the interview himself.

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Dave Benson Phillips and Big Bear

Phillips learned of the hoax when his family members contacted him, distraught at the possibility that he might have passed away. "I was on the road," he says. "It was horrible. All of a sudden I went from having work to no work, and having to spend my time proving my existence. From 2009, right up until 2012, it was not an easy ride. Everything went south."

It's difficult to believe that a plain falsehood could wreak such carnage on a man's career. But it is our propensity to blindly swallow these nuggets of supposed news that goes a long way to explaining the phenomenon. As Phillips says, "Acquaintances just read it and went, 'Oh. That's a bit of a shame. We were just about to do something with him. We'll just move on.'"

"When you hear someone has died," says Rachel Kitson, a psychologist who has written about both grief and social media, "you typically do not question it, especially if any semi-plausible details are provided. As the rumor is spread, even if someone is 12 times removed from the initial source, they will stand behind it with as much authority as the initiator."

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Onto this strange carousel of death steps Barry Elliott, a.k.a. Barry Chuckle, of BBC's popular kids' show ChuckleVision, who has been the victim of various death hoaxes, the most prominent of which was in 2010. Though it didn't have the devastating effect Phillips's rumors had, "It affected a lot of our younger fans," Elliott tells me. "They were tweeting things like, 'Oh dear, how come Barry's died?'"

His daughter, too, was upset, and called her mother, uncertain of the truth.

"To stage a death hoax," says Kitson, "one must rely upon extremely fast forms of communication. People who initiate death hoaxes know that they won't need to do a whole lot of 'work' to ensure the information goes viral."

On the road and unfamiliar with the immediate communication social media could offer, in 2009 Phillips wasn't just a sitting duck, he was a duck asleep in a hammock. When he and his team appreciated the scale of the problem, they began creating Facebook and Twitter accounts to counter the pranks. They were already too late: "A lie," said Mark Twain, "can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."

Phillips tried to make a MySpace account, but was told he was a troll making life hell for the real Dave Benson Phillips. He rang Chris Moyles's Radio 1 show but was berated for impersonating a dead man.

There followed a bizarre glut of additional pranks about Phillips. "If you go online you'll probably see other rumors; some of them were very nasty," he says. His persona as a kids' presenter left him particularly vulnerable. As well as there being comparatively innocuous pranks about him presenting Babestation or being the sixth member of One Direction, Phillips tells me that one website implied that he had an ulterior motive for working in close quarters with children.

"We had an incident just earlier this year," he says, "where I wasn't allowed to take part visually in a well-known children's project simply because they were not sure of the rumors."

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As a black presenter in the 1990s, Phillips was used to receiving insults and threats. Before ready access to the internet, however, these tended to demand more ingenuity: "People used to have to write down the message, or prepare their package, or whatever obscene thing they were going to send; they'd have to take it down to the post office and get it weighed; they'd then have to pay for it; and then they had to go away and hope that it was going to arrive," he explains. "So we'd be at the other end and just say, 'Who's sent us this big packet of poo?'"

I also speak to Austin Russell of History Channel's reality show Pawn Stars, who was lucky not to suffer any personal or professional scars when a fictitious story about his death caught an online updraft last year. Though the hoax was serious enough for the History Channel to check on his health, Russell harbors no ill will toward the perpetrators. "It was a good laugh," he tells me. He was able to extinguish the flames early by simply making an announcement on his Twitter account. This is a heartbreaking glimpse into how simple things could have been for Phillips had he been pranked in 2014. "It's too late for people like me," he says.

For Barry Elliott, the ability to officially disprove the rumors on Facebook—then later on Twitter—was equally crucial. "I tweeted them and said, 'This is ridiculous, you've upset a lot of people.' They think it's funny to say people have died." Though Twitter is often the dirty bed in which hoaxes are conceived, Elliott sees the network as being more of a boon than a bane.

The Chuckle Brothers are notoriously voracious Twitter users and, though they spend most of their time retweeting favors or taking selfies, Elliott tells me that he also berates people when they fabricate stories about him or use his name as their own. His brother Paul has also experienced death hoaxes, but none have taken flight.

I asked Kitson why people make up morbid lies about celebrities. "I think it traces back to having the biggest impact with the least amount of work," she says. "Being able to say, 'I did that'—it's a power thing." Due to the entitlement and fearlessness of many users of online media, a man's entire career can be razed to the ground through nothing more sophisticated than a few lines of text from an anonymous profile.

Though Phillips does an excellent job of trying to rise above his death hoax, it is the knowledge that he will never know who started the rumor—or why—that plagues him: "It's horrible, because what they've done has affected my life," he tells me. "I've always wanted to entertain children as much as I could until the day I died. And the next thing I know, it's all been taken away because somebody said I was killed in a car crash."

It seems reasonable to argue here that some of the blame must lie not just with perpetrators of the hoaxes, but those disseminate the lie, and those of us eager to believe them. Most of us would rather have a dubious story to tell our friends down the pub than no story at all.

"Death evokes high emotions, and we tend to get some enjoyment from riding those highs," says Kitson. "We probably want the death hoaxes to be true in the same way that we want to slow down our car while passing a car wreck. Even though someone's death being a hoax is relatively easy to refute, having to refute your own death could be very harrowing for the person themselves and their loved ones."

He is in the minority, but Phillips—though he continues to DJ, present, and perform—is proof that an online falsehood can rip someone's life apart. To this day he still doesn't know who started the hoax or why. "Do you know what scares me about this whole thing?" he says. "It's that there's someone out there—possibly reading your article—who will know the answer to that."

Follow Ralph on Twitter.

Last year, a 13-year-old at the Shawnee Mission Middle School in Prairie Village, Kansas, wandered past a sex-ed poster that listed ways that people showed affection. Among them were "kissing," "sexual fantasy," and "anal sex." Outrage ensued after the girl told her mom, and ultimately a state senator named Mary Pilcher-Cook vowed to never let another pre-teen be harmed by a poster.

Tomorrow, the Kansas state House of Representatives will decide whether teachers who show their students objectionable material should be charged with a crime, which means sex ed will be nearly impossible to teach and classical art as well as other curriculum staples will be effectively banned. Although these book-banning-type bills come up from time to time in square-shaped states where conservatives live in fear of Harry Potter and think AP US History is an anti-American conspiracy, Senate Bill 56 actually stands the chance of passing. On February 25, the Kansas Senate approved it 24 to 16.

If it becomes law, Senate Bill 56 will eliminate a clause that exempted K-12 teachers from a public-morals law, subjecting them to jail time if they are found guilty of having shown "harmful material" to minors in class. A complaint from a parent about a film, novel, or even a picture of Michelangelo's David could put an educator in the slammer for up to six months, effectively ending their career.

"Nobody's out there putting pornography in front of kids," said Marcus Baltzell, the communications director at the Kansas National Education Association. "We keep telling people this is a solution in search of a problem."

So what qualifies as "harmful material," you ask? Oddly, there's a whole section of the bill that seems to be dedicated to 50 Shades of Grey, or, as the bill's language puts it, "flagellation or torture by or upon a person clad in undergarments, in a mask or bizarre costume or in the condition of being fettered, bound, or otherwise physically restrained on the part of one so clothed."

And course, any material that depicts masturbation or homosexuality is immediately off the table. However, Baltzell brings up other even more benign examples, like a Judy Blume book that mentions menstruation or wet dreams. He also says teachers could be liable if a kid picks a "harmful" book up herself as part of an independent reading assignment.

The Kansas House, like the state Senate, is controlled by Republicans. The governor's office did not return VICE's request for comment, so it's hard to say whether or not Republican Governor Sam Brownback would sign the bill.

"We live in a democracy and believe the free exchange of ideas is crucial to critical thinking," Baltzell said, adding that the biggest problem about the bill is that the language is so broad. "And there's no definition of what is harmful. You may think Harry Potter is completely reasonable or the Teletubbies, but if one parent finds something objectionable, a teacher is vulnerable to criminal prosecution."

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

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Five years ago, historians Naomi Oreskes and Eric Conway wrote a book that told an incredible tale of deception and disinformation at the heart of the American media. Focusing on three now-deceased scientists (Bill Nierenberg, Fred Seitz, and Fred Singer), their book, Merchants of Doubt, drew a straight line from paid quasi-experts defending cigarettes as healthy, acid rain as harmless, and pesticides as perfectly safe to current initiatives to discredit humanity's role in the planet's changing climate. But on each issue, these faux-experts' tactics remained the same: sow doubt so that the profitable, potentially destructive status quo remained intact.

The book caused something of a sensation. It briefly climbed to #643 on Amazon's Best Seller list—no small feat for a nonfiction book about climate change deniers, but hardly enough to enter the wider public consciousness. Still, among journalists and academics, it was overwhelmingly well-received. The Economist called it a "powerful book," while the Christian Science Monitor suggested that it "might be one of the most important books of the year." And praise from more openly liberal outlets was even more effusive. And yet here we are, five years later, and I think it's safe to say that climate change denialism—and the broader scourge of cable news–inspired false equivalence—hasn't decreased even slightly.

Enter Robert Kenner, director of the recent documentary Food, Inc. Kenner has taken on the mantle of Oreskes and Conway's mission in hopes of bringing this important story to a wider audience. He's adapted their book into a documentary film of the same title. It's a funny and engaging piece, with a polished slickness and effortless humor that will play well with the very people Kenner hopes to convert—those convinced of the dangers of global warming, but still unsure that they have a role to play in bringing about change. Hopefully, it'll come out on Netflix after its theatrical release, so that it can reach a truly wide audience.

I recently spoke with Kenner about the film, his thoughts on the balance between capitalism and the climate, and the responsibility scientists have in educating the wider public.

VICE: What motivated you to make this particular film?
Robert Kenner: I was curious why, if science has recognized that manmade CO2 affects the climate, so many people in America not believing this to be true? And at the same time, why are scientists being attacked? Why are climate scientists doing their work under the gun? Why are they being threatened with these horrible emails, and sometimes their houses being attacked? And why are newspapers presenting this as a real argument when it's not a science argument, it's a political argument? And lastly, how did this small group of people who went from tobacco to chemicals—you know, making laws that say we have to put chemicals in couches that not only don't stop fires but cause cancer, to the next big payday, which is climate? How did these people become so effective? So that became an interesting venture to sort of figure that one out and to go and meet people who are in this world, and to hear from many of the people who I would call the deniers.

One of the things that I found interesting about the film is that you place a lot of blame on the reporters, the media, and the politicians for accepting these lies.
Well look, I'm not an admirer of what these people are doing. First of all, there are different people doing different things, it's hard to lump them all as one. But I don't agree with them at all. These people who have no real scientific credentials are out there being put on the networks or in the New York Times, saying there's a real argument that exists about climate. And they would present two sides when there weren't two sides. I think the mainstream media should have done a much better job, but I think they're slowly coming around and recognizing this, to a degree.

One of the things I really enjoyed about the film was when magician Jamie Ian Swiss said "once revealed, never concealed"—
That's the key line!

Right, so this is my question: Do you think this is a issue that can be won, that if we can educate enough people, we can kind of teach people to inoculate themselves from this bullshit, or is this a constant battle?
Well, I think the answer is yes to both. It's absolutely a constant battle. There's only a few people revealing these lies and there's a lot of money perpetrating them. But at the same time, I think people will learn to look at the fact that... I was interviewed by an NPR reporter who moderated the event the next night in Washington, who said, "You know, the science is very complicated..."

The science is not very complicated. The science is very simple and to have a science reporter say it's complicated is absolutely someone who's getting lost in the nuance of what's happening, when we know what's happening. So I think that's part of the denier argument—that it's complicated. Do we know how much the sea will rise in the year 2050? No, we have probabilities. But we know it will rise. We know the earth will warm, and we know we need to do something about it. So those are facts. To what degree, obviously there are lots of questions, but the questions are really small in the scope of the big things.

Despite the enormity of the challenge that climate change represents, it was, I thought, a fairly optimistic movie.
Oh good, you're the first one who said that! As [former Republican Congressman] Bob Inglis has said to me, we crossed the Atlantic on small boats, we went across the prairie on wagons, we put a man on the moon—we're capable of doing amazing things if we can embrace there's a challenge and there's a problem. We can go at it and we can debate how to do them. But you've gotta recognize the problem. If you want a free market system, you have to take into account externalities. And we were not taking in externalities when it comes to numbers of these events. Ultimately, what I think Merchants of Doubt is about, and it cuts across many fields, is there's a revulsion to anything to do with regulations. And I think it's a perversion of the capitalist system to not take these externalities into account that need to be regulated to have a real capitalist system.

So it seems you totally disagree with Naomi Klein's recent thesis from her book that we can't have capitalism and the climate. But then how do we preserve the two toegether?
Well I think you have to start to pay the real cost for things. And that's not happening. We have a perverse form of capitalism at the moment.

So a carbon tax—that kind of thing?
Yeah, if people are throwing garbage in the air, they should pay for the garbage! And what you do with the tax is a form of an argument between conservatives and liberals who believe climate change is real. Some are saying give it back in a tax that gets passed back to the taxpayer, or others are saying use that to create green energies. But that's a real debate that you can have. But people have to start paying the real costs, and that's not happening. When I made Food, Inc., one of the things that shocked me is we are subsidizing the corn and soy [industries] that are making us sick with all these soft drinks and all these junk foods. We're actually paying taxpayer money to make people sick. And the same thing is happening with the climate world. We're paying tax money to subsidize the oil industry that's making the planet sick.

So how do we fix this?
I'm both an optimist and a pessimist. One day I wake up feeling one thing, one day I wake up feeling the other. But I do think we're capable of doing amazing things. I'll give you two reasons for optimism. In 1980 AT&T predicted they we're gonna sell 900,000 cell phones by the year 2000, and by the year 2000 they'd sold 109 million cell phones. And today there are more cell phones in the world than there are people. So that's how fast the world can change with technology. And then the other is, look at gay rights. In '08, President Obama was opposed to it. And today half the Republican Party supports it. And I do believe that there are many, many Republicans in Congress who would like to support climate change legislation but don't want to get voted out. So if we can turn a large part of their constituency to accept this, they're ready to move on it.

Merchants of Doubt premieres in New York and Los Angeles on March 6. It comes to theaters nationwide starting March 13.

Follow Tim Donovan on Twitter.

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Koko, an employee at the Pleasure Chest in Los Angeles, shows off some lube. All photos by Peter Holslin

As far as sex lube companies go, the British manufacturer Yes looks fairly tame. Its packaging is sleek and elegant, almost like a chic cosmetics line; its products are filled with luxurious and organic ingredients, like shea butter and almond oil. But based on the US Food and Drug Administration's treatment of Yes, you'd think the lube was illegal contraband.

In a way, it is. According to FDA regulations, personal lubricants are classified as medical devices and require agency approval before going on the market. Right now, Yes is waiting to get official clearance, and lately one retailer says the company's been barred from attempting to sell product in the States.

"The FDA actually started seizing our shipments of their lubricant, so we can't even get it in the store anymore," said Sarah Mueller, senior sex educator and resident lube expert at the Smitten Kitten, a sex boutique in Minneapolis. "If we continued to sell that product here, it would be technically illegal."

The crackdown highlights one of the more frustrating aspects of FDA policy regarding sex lube. The agency's rules are designed to keep consumers safe from potentially toxic products, but critics say its approval process leads to major bureaucratic hurdles for lube companies, especially smaller ones that cater to a niche audience. And in the end, a lot of lube products that end up on the store shelves aren't always that good for you anyway.

"I think it's bullshit," Mueller told me. "There are lubes that have FDA approval as medical devices that have been proven to increase STI transmission rates, kill skin cells, dehydrate mucus, and a few that even increase viral activity."

While supermarkets tend to hawk mass-market products like K-Y Jelly—the iconic lube formerly owned by American multinational Johnson & Johnson and now run by the UK maker of Durex condoms—the Smitten Kitten has long boasted a specialty lube section that focuses on lesser-known brands, like Überlube and Sliquid, whose lubes are made with natural ingredients like purified water, plant cellulose, and guar gum. Having high-quality lube is kind of like putting high-quality gas in your car: Everything runs a lot better.

"The first sex toy that anyone should buy is lube," said Sarah Tomchesson, director of Business Development and Strategy at the Pleasure Chest, a sex toy retailer with locations in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. "Regardless of whether you feel like you need it, lube can make all kinds of play better, because it just creates less friction."

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Over the years a number of brands have turned their attention toward healthier, organic lubricants—some of which have added health benefits. For example, lubes like Divine 9 contain a seaweed extract that is supposed to prevent the growth of HPV cells. Yes's Yes Baby kit features two sets of lubes with different pH balances, along with ovulation tests and instructions designed to aid couples in the adventure of conception. (A spokesperson for Yes declined to be interviewed for this article because the company's clearance with the FDA is still pending.)

Lube specialists say it's paramount to be mindful of what you're using the lube for, and also what's inside. "Vaginas and butts are mucous membranes, as susceptible to harmful ingredients as mouths," said Epiphora, a sex toy writer who runs the website Hey Epiphora!, in an email interview. "They'll absorb whatever we put in them and react accordingly."

Eric Pahon, a spokesperson for the FDA, told me that it's the agency's job to ensure that American consumers have "both safe and effective products." If there weren't regulatory protocols in effect, he said, "people could put out a lot of stuff out there that could have hidden ingredients in them that could possibly be dangerous."

According to Pahon, personal lubricants are classified as Class II medical devices, putting them in the same category as items like condoms, acupuncture needles, and powered wheelchairs. In order for their products to be sold on store shelves, lube companies must obtain what's called premarket notification or 510(k) clearance, a process that requires a comprehensive round of safety testing.

John Goepfert, CEO of the lube maker Simply Slick, says the process to get 510(k) for his company took about two years and cost over $200,000. Simply Slick's lube is based on a novel formula that includes glycerin and castor oil—which, Goepfert notes proudly, is also the stuff used to slicken NASCAR V8 engines. According to lab documents Goepfert showed me, tests included examinations for condom compatibility and an antimicrobial study. Lab workers also spent five days injecting the lube into the vaginas of New Zealand white rabbits in order to check for possible discharge, irritation, and infection.

That latter part is what concerns Dean Elliott. The founder and CEO of Sliquid, he's long championed ethical, environmentally friendly business practices, and he considers himself a great animal lover too—indeed, the company regularly makes charitable donations to animal sanctuaries in Georgia, Utah, and Texas.

He's currently in the process of obtaining 510(k) certification, and he's gathering up data to present to the FDA to show that they won't need animal testing for their products. (Pahon, the agency spokesperson, says animal testing isn't required if a company can provide a suitable alternative.)

"For me, it's led to hundreds of sleepless nights," Elliott says, thoughts of defenseless bunnies being probed with Sliquid lube running through his head. "There's a better way to do this than put us all through the animal testing."

What's strange is that, for all of the FDA's strict regulations, many lubes currently being sold don't actually have 510(k) clearance. Partly it stems from confusion over how the FDA categorizes different products. While the agency counts lubricants as medical devices, it also has a category for "moisturizers," which are considered cosmetics and held to lower standards. However, some moisturizers can also be classified as drugs if they have certain ingredients or make claims about affecting the structure or function of the human body.

For years, Elliott was under the impression that Sliquid lubes were considered cosmetics—that is, until the FDA contacted him in the fall of 2013 and told him otherwise.

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More recently, the confusion came to the fore in February, when a California woman filed a class-action lawsuit against a British toy maker and Fifty Shades of Grey author E.L. James. According to the Hollywood Reporter, she accused them of flouting FDA rules by marketing a Fifty Shades–branded "Pleasure Gel" as having "aphrodisiac"-like qualities without registering it as a drug.

Mueller, the lube expert at Smitten Kitten, thinks the FDA's regulations are beneficial in some ways. In recent years, she says, demand has increased for lubricants, especially among baby boomers who are opening their minds to new sex toys and eager to find products that will help them find pleasure as their bodies change through old age and other health issues.

Still, as Yes awaits the official thumbs up from the FDA, she can't help but feel bummed that she can't sell their products in the store.

"It's the most popular lubricant that we sell to post-menopausal women, and we can't get it in," she says. "Almost every day, we get somebody coming in being like, 'Hey, do you have this in stock?' And we're like, 'No, we can't get it for the foreseeable future.'"

Follow Peter Holslin on Twitter.

Unless there is some eleventh-hour reprieve, execution by firing squad is the fate of the prisoners on Nusakambangan Island, including Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. The political and legal back and forth as to whether or not the executions will be carried out has captivated Australia, and many men and women, both in government and out, have taken up the fight for clemency.

The other foreign prisoners slated for execution have not stirred the same level of passion in their home countries, and the reactions of their respective nations' government, public, and media run the gamut from outrage to disinterest.

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Raheem Agbaje Salami, Nigeria
Raheem Agbaje Salami, mistaken initially as Spanish, is a Nigerian who was sentenced to life in prison in 1999 by the Surabaya District Court for importing 5.3kg of heroin through the local airport. In 2006 his sentence was upgraded to death.

The attitude of the Nigerian government toward the execution appears more resigned when compared to Australia's. Nigerians have already been executed and, even if Raheem were to be granted clemency, there are still more on Indonesia's death row.

A Nigerian citizen, Daniels Enemuo, was amongst the foreign prisoners most recently executed by Indonesia on January 18. Soon after, the Nigerian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Aminu Wali, summoned the Indonesian ambassador to register his nation's protest over the execution.

While it's true the Nigerian Federal government and National Assembly have appealed for clemency for the twelve Nigerians remaining on death row, including Raheem, there is a sentiment in some levels of the Nigerian politics that the situation is hopeless and that the prisoners are to blame.

President of the Senate, David Mark, is reported as having said there is little or nothing the government can do because the convicts' actions were violations of Indonesian law. "In the Sixth Senate we took up this matter and we sent a delegation to Indonesia," he explained, "And they brought a report back that all the people on death row were people who had gone for trafficking in drugs. And they had exhausted all the legal system possible."

The Nigerian newspaper Vanguard quoted a former envoy to the USA and Brazil as saying, "I have been to their airport in Jakarta; you see signs warning people carrying drugs that the penalty is death. But unfortunately, some people think that they can beat the system."

Nigerian citizens have held protests outside the Indonesian embassy in Lagos, and have expressed frustration at what they perceive as a lacklustre effort by their government. One protester, Okey Samuel, is quoted as saying, "We are not happy that our government is keeping quiet and allowing the Indonesian government to murder us like fowls."

Like his Australian counterparts Raheem seems to have reformed in prison, he has been cited for his concern over fellow prisoners and he teaches many of them English. Amongst his final requests are a phone call home — Nigerian families are often unable to afford a trip to Indonesia to see their imprisoned loved ones — and that his eyes and kidneys be donated after he is killed. Whether or not this is possible has not been confirmed, as medical facilities on Nusakambangan are poor.

There is a general desire in the African nation that Nigerian prisoners be returned to their home country to serve out their sentences. Nigeria still has the death penalty but not for drug offences.

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Rodrigo Gularte, Brazil
Rodrigo Gularte, a 42-year-old Brazilian national suffering from severe schizophrenia, was arrested in 2004 with two other Brazilians for bringing 6kg of cocaine into Indonesia. Suffering from depression since his teenage years, his family has argued that drug addiction made him a susceptible to cartels looking for mules.

Brazil also had a citizen executed on January 18, Marco Archer. In response Brazil recalled their ambassador — he has since returned to advocate for clemency on behalf of Rodrigo. Like the PM in Australia the president of Brazil Dilma Rousseff is believed to have written an appeal directly to Indonesian president Joko Widodo.

In a tale that appears quite damning of the Indonesian justice system, Gularte's family claims to have been defrauded by their lawyer.

Rodrigo's mental illness caused a temporary delay in the upcoming executions of all prisoners. However, this had more to do with infrastructure than with any moral or legal complications arising from shooting a mentally ill person. As Indonesian Attorney General spokeseman Tony Spontana stressed to the Jakarta Post, "The prison management will need time to expand the capacity of the isolation chamber. That's why we've delayed the transfer of the death-row convicts".

More recently the Attorney General Muhammad Praseyto has denied that Rodrigo was mentally ill when he acted as a drug courier, and pointed out that Indonesian law states that only children and pregnant women are exempt from the death penalty.

Rodrigo, who tries to 'protect his aura' with a tightly bound backwards baseball cap filled with paper, believes the voices in his head that have told him the death penalty has been abolished the world over. It is unknown to what extent he will comprehend the firing squad and its purpose.

The last reported example of capital punishment in Brazil happened in 1876, and hasn't been handed down since the proclamation of a republic in 1889. All but abolished, it is still legal during wartime.

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Serge Areski Atlaoui, France
Like his Brazilian and Australian counterparts for their countrymen Francois Hollande, the French President, also sent a letter on behalf of Serge Ataloui. However plans to send the French Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius, to Indonesia were derailed by the Ukrainian crisis. Instead a phone call was made on Feburary 11.

Atlaoui, who has always maintained his innocence, was sentenced to death in 2007 for installing machinery in what he thought was an acrylics factory but was actually an ecstasy factory. His family, like so many of the prisoner's families, have stuck by him and made direct appeals to any Indonesian officials and members of the media who will listen. His wife Sabine told French newspaper Le Parisien, "If he makes a mistake, he takes responsibility. So I have no doubt of his sincerity."

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, he was not that long ago granted a temporary reprieve so that a last-ditch appeal can be heard. If the execution goes ahead Ataloui would be the first French person to face capital punishment since France abolished it in 1981.

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Martin Anderson, Ghana
In June 2004 Martin Anderson was sentenced to death for the crime of possessing 50 grams of heroin. In contrast to the responses of other countries Ghana doesn't seem to care at all about Martin Anderson. Only Amnesty International have made any effort on his part to advocate for clemency

The closest Ghanaian consular office is in Malaysia and an officer there told news.com.au that, to his knowledge, no Ghanaian official has visited Martin since he was arrested eleven years ago. "But when he was arrested in 2004, it could be he may not be from Ghana," he said. "It could be he is a person from another country using a false passport."

The fate of Martin Anderson doesn't seem to have made an impression in Ghana's media.

The last execution to be carried out in Ghana happened in 1993. A firing squad was used. Its death penalty status is considered abolitionist de facto.

Follow Girard on Twitter: @GirardDorney

1. ANTARCTICA
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet Is Melting

Our oceans are rising. As the use of hydrocarbons skyrockets, waters around the world are getting hotter, and warm subsurface water is washing into Antarctica's massive western glaciers, causing them to retreat and break off. Antarctica holds 90 percent of the world's ice and 70 percent of its freshwater, so if even a small fraction of the ice sheet in Antarctica melts, the resulting sea-level rise will completely remap the world as we know it. In the past decade, the melt rate of some of the continent's most significant glaciers has tripled. VICE co-founder Shane Smith traveled to the bottom of the world to investigate the instability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and to see firsthand how much it's melting.

Learn more about our rising oceans this month on VICE on HBO.

2. CHINA
The 18-Year-Old Basketball Phenom

Last summer, 18-year-old basketball phenom Emmanuel Mudiay made the unconventional decision to forego college entirely and accept a one-year, $1.2 million contract to play for the Guangdong Southern Tigers in China. His path from the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo to stardom at a Texas high school was certainly unique, and his decision to go pro could change the way the world thinks about amateurism and the NCAA. How is he dealing with the pressure and expectations that come with a high-profile sports contract? How is he doing after an ankle injury derailed his season? We went to Dongguan to find out and followed Mudiay as he practiced with his teammates, checked out the local cuisine, and got hit on by girls who wanted his autograph.

Watch the documentary, coming soon to VICESports.com.

3. CANADA
A Country Feast in Quebec

In our latest episode of Keep It Canada, we sent Chef Matty Matheson to rural Quebec, where he hooked up with the country's coolest purveyor of rare vegetables and decadent maple syrup: Société-Original. Co-owner Cyril Gonzales showed Matty where to find the freshest honey, the best foraged vegetables, and the happiest pig farm in the province. Matty also went boating with Charles-Antoine Crête and Emma Cardarelli, two of our favorite chefs in Montreal. They helped Matty catch his first fish, which ended up as someone's dinner at Cardarelli's restaurant, Nora Gray, that night. The three of them then went skeet-shooting, because why not? The adventure ended with a cookout at a chalet, where Matty whipped up tourtière, whelk pie, and more. It's a good one.

Watch Keep It Canada: Countryside Quebec this month on Munchies.VICE.com.

4. NEW YORK
A Drug That Could Stop the AIDS Epidemic

Truvada is an antiretroviral drug that has been used for years to treat HIV-positive patients, and in 2012 it became the first drug approved to prevent HIV infection. By taking Truvada daily, an HIV-negative person will significantly lower his or her risk of contracting the illness, even if he or she has sex with an HIV-positive person without using a condom. For the first time in the history of HIV and AIDS, the epidemic may have an end in sight. But Truvada is not without controversy, and naysayers warn that the drug will usher in a new era of sexual recklessness and sexually transmitted infections. Could Truvada really mean the eradication of the virus? We explored the vast implications of the Truvada revolution in the first state to commit itself to ending the epidemic: New York.

Watch the doc this month on VICE.com.

5. NORTH CAROLINA
The Price of Electricity

Coal ash is what's left over when we burn coal for electricity. It contains some of the world's worst carcinogens, and the EPA's most recent count puts the amount of coal ash produced in a year at 110 million tons. Coal ash is stored in almost every state in the US, sometimes literally in people's backyards. With very little oversight in place, these storage sites have been known to leak toxic chemicals into nearby communities, contaminating drinking water and making people sick. We went to North Carolina and Pennsylvania to meet people who've been gravely affected by this dangerous waste product. We also met Hartwell Carson of the Waterkeeper Alliance, who said, "The problem with burning coal as an electricity source is that if you continue to burn coal you're always going to produce a toxic byproduct, which is coal ash."

Watch Toxic: Coal Ash now on VICENews.com.

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A protest in Ferguson inspired by the killing of Michael Brown by Officer Darren Wilson. Photo by Alice Speri/VICE News

Although the report doesn't officially come out until Wednesday, multiple news outlets have obtained leaks from the long-awaited federal probe into the Ferguson Police Department launched after the killing of unarmed black teen Michael Brown.

The gist? The man who shot Brown, Officer Darren Wilson, will almost certainly not face civil rights charges, but his employer sure as hell will.

When Wilson killed Brown last August, it set off a wave of protests from coast to coast and started a national debate on racism—both of which were revived when a grand jury declined to indict the officer the following November. Missourians reacted both by peacefully marching down city streets and, occasionally, looting local stores. The outburst of emotion certainly seemed to be the culmination of systematic ill treatment of the city's overwhelmingly black residents by it's mostly white police force.

And that's exactly the report will confirm, according to the New York Times. Although Ferguson is 67 percent black, that population makes up 85 percent of traffic stops, 93 percent of arrests and 88 percent of use-of-force cases. The Department of Justice collated these stats from two years' worth of arrest reports and supplemented the investigation with hundreds of interviews, reviewing some 35,000 documents along the way, according to the Washington Post.

Among the findings were two racist emails between police and court employees. According to a source interviewed by NPR, one questioned President Barack Obama's staying power around the time of his election in 2008, asking, "What black man holds a steady job for four years?"

Another email joked about a black woman having an abortion and later receiving a check from "Crimestoppers."

As of now, it's unclear who, exactly, sent and received the emails.

Along with old-school racial animus, the DOJ report suggests that the desire to generate revenue played a key role in the discriminatory practices. To make up for filling city coffers with petty arrests, Ferguson will now likely be forced to pay some kind of settlement.

The Ferguson report will be the second major DOJ probe involving the death of a young black man to come out this year. On February 24, the Department of Justice declined to bring civil rights violations against George Zimmerman, the Florida neighborhood watchman who shot Trayvon Martin in 2012. Because he was not an employee of any official law enforcement agency, a probe into the Sanford Police Department was apparently deemed unnecessary.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

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The fence outside the Regina Provincial Correctional Centre. Photos by Jen Parenteau

Behind the fences, gates, and thick walls of the aging Regina Provincial Correctional Centre (RPCC) in Saskatchewan, 15 inmates began a hunger strike Monday morning. Living in a high-risk unit, allegedly with gang affiliations, the inmates turned away their food so they could instead have access to cultural programming to help them heal with First Nations customs.

"They don't let us smudge or go to sweat lodges or pipe ceremonies; they deny us all our cultural rights," inmate Joshua Bird told the Regina Leader Post.

"They think they're making the jail a safer place by locking us away, but actually they're making us more violent and taking our human spirit away."

Later that same day, executive director of corporate affairs for the Ministry of Justice Drew Wilby explained that hunger strikes, especially to this extent, were rare but safety in the facility is top priority.

"It's a high-security, high-safety-risk unit. All of the individuals there have significant gang affiliations or they were put there because of behaviour within the facility as well as a concern about compatibility with other inmates," Wilby explained.

After local media attention and meetings with the inmates, the correctional centre staff and the inmates came to a compromise Tuesday afternoon. In an email to VICE, a representative for the Ministry of Justice said a smudging unit had been planned in advance of the hunger strike and would be operational within a week. The offenders will also get a microwave and an extra $10 per week of their own money to spend in the canteen. The other request of the inmates, access to the outdoors, was not granted.

The Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies (CAEFS) executive director Kim Pate says that although solved quickly, it shouldn't have been an issue in the first place. CAEFS has worked with women in similar situations usually in federal facilities. Pate explained according to our Charter of Rights and Freedoms Section 15 people should have access to their religious practices and cultural practices whether or not they are in a correctional facility.

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The Regina Provincial Correctional Centre

"Even in the most secure environments there are elders who have, will, and continue to provide opportunities for individuals to participate in ceremonies. There isn't an excuse unless the elders, him or herself, are saying they don't want to perform the ceremonies for whatever reason," says Pate.

"In this situation I suspect, although I don't know for certain, that the overcrowding issues, the cuts to programs and services generally, are limiting access to many provincial territorial and federal prisons right now."

A report released just five months ago by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives echoed Pate's suspicions. The report, called "Warehousing Prisoners in Saskatchewan: A Public Health Approach," said Saskatchewan's prison system is among the most highly strained in Canada, with provincial jails housing nearly twice the number of inmates they were designed to hold. To accommodate the "crisis" classrooms, gymnasiums, workshops, and even visiting rooms are being turned into dormitories, and most of the province's cells are being double bunked, the report warned that triple-bunking is a "distinct possibility in the future." At the RPCC the report found some inmates had no washroom facilities in their cells. Inmates were left waiting for hours to be brought by a guard to a washroom, some using their garbage cans as an alternative. It also pointed to cancellation and discontinuation of programs, including cultural, because the rooms they would be done in were given a new purpose.

Pate says that in light of the hunger strike "it generally triggers... a concern that there is a much deeper and longer standing problem within that prison and usually it means that the rights have not been adhered to for some time."

Stacey Swampy has seen a lot of changes in the justice system. The former inmate spent more than 20 years navigating his way through the foster care system, welfare system, young offender facilities and eventually both provincial and federal correctional facilities.

"My dad was a bootlegger so I saw people come to the house 24 hours a day, seven days a week... I started drinking when I was nine," Swampy told VICE, adding his downturn really took hold after his father's death when he was 13.

"I started drinking more. I started doing drugs more. I picked the wrong role models. The people I looked up to were coming out of the jail system. They had tattoos all over them, good shape, (and) women chased them... I started to live like those people."

After spending the majority of his life in different kinds of facilities, Swampy started to connect with his culture from behind the bars.

"The ceremonies inside the system gives us the idea of who we are. If I wasn't allowed to attend ceremonies when I was in the system, I would probably be doing a life sentence or probably six feet under right now. The ceremonies that are in the system helped me deal with the traumas that I carried all of my life," says Swampy.

Unfortunately Swampy's story is less the anomaly and more likely the norm.

A 2013 report by the Office of the Correctional Investigator found that while aboriginal people make up about four per cent of the Canadian population, 23.2 per cent of the federal inmate population is aboriginal, the provincial system parallels similar statistics. The incarceration rate for aboriginal people is ten times higher than non-aboriginals and that over-representation just continues to grow. Since 2000 the federal aboriginal inmate population has increased by over 56 per cent and the overall aboriginal representation rate for inmate population has increased from 17 per cent to over 23 per cent. In just the prairies between 2010 and 2013 corrections saw nearly 40 per cent of all new federal inmate growth and most was led by aboriginal offenders, who now comprise more than 45 per cent of the prairies' inmate population.

With the insight of 20 years in the system and now 10 years of sobriety, Swampy said it's critically important that First Nations people in and outside of the judicial system start connecting with their culture.

"The ceremonies show you what you need to be doing for yourself. It shows you how to be responsible, it shows you how to be accountable. Then you start to have that self esteem that we don't have (since residential school), that pride in who you are," says Swampy, who works alongside the Str8 Up program in Saskatoon, Sask. to help women and men exit the gang life, adding that it's the only way to break the legacy of self destruction left by residential schools.

"That's what ceremony does for me, it's given me responsibility which I've never had before. Ceremony has given me accountability which I never had before."

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Hosts Monika Deol and George Lagogianes. All photos courtesy Monika Deol

Just the mention of Electric Circus will get any Canadian who danced in the 90s dripping with candy-coloured nostalgia for those asphyxiating vinyl blazers and go-go shorts they hung up long ago. For 15 years the iconic live dance program gyrated its way onto TVs across the country, where viewers eagerly awaited new music videos, exclusive performances, and tried to decipher the lyrics to Jet Fuel's anthemic intro song. "Hey DJ come with a...choon? A broom?"

Though best known for its prime time Friday evening slot, the Citytv show humbly began airing on Saturday afternoons in 1988. In just a few years EC evolved into a rallying point for the emergence of dance culture in Canada, a position that was solidified when it began broadcasting nationally on MuchMusic in 1993. Taking its name from the club that previously tenanted Citytv's original east end location, the show arrived at a time when Eurotrash was still just "European," and when the more zippers you could fit on your pants, the better. Rave hadn't been inducted into the urban dictionary yet, club promoters laboriously hung up posters before the times of Facebook event pages, and dance music was still a genre awaiting mainstream exposure.

The ninety minute program transcended the television experience by becoming a destination unto itself. It wasn't just a show to be watched, but one on which to be seen: volunteer dancers from local clubs graced the show's stage while fans lined the streets outside the CHUM City building. It was a party; it was Canada's premier club; and it endeared itself to generations.

Cancelled in 2003, EC exists as a neatly packaged exhibit of everything that was cool in the 90's, like a hedonistic transmission that cultural historians will one day look back on and say "Whoa! Your mommy and daddy sure had some crazy hair." But more importantly, EC is remembered for turning Toronto's dance scene into a coveted destination for touring DJ's and bringing dance to the remote regions of the country awaiting local scenes of their own. The original producers and hosts have since scattered throughout Canadian media, but they still fondly remember that time when all they wanted to do was dance. This is the history of Electric Circus, in their words.

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The first dance
Joel Goldberg (Original Producer): I was producing another show called Toronto Rocks at the time. It was a very important show that I took over and was honoured to produce. It was pre-MTV, pre-MuchMusic, and it was on from 4:00-5:00 PM everyday, and it was huge back in the day because that's where everyone got to see their music videos in Toronto. After MuchMusic came on there wasn't the same exclusivity anymore, so MuchMusic pretty much stole most of the audience from Toronto Rocks. Citytv head Moses Znaimer came up with this idea to do a dance show in the Toronto Rocks time slot. I was very reluctant in the beginning. I didn't know a lot about that scene. It was a very fringe, underground thing at the time.

Monika Deol (Host 1988-1996): I was a real club kid. I loved dancing, music, disco nights, house music: it was just about playing fantastic music really loud and just dancing your face off. I was a club DJ and I had my own band. I took my demo reel to Toronto hoping to get a record deal, and instead I got a job offer to work at Citytv and MuchMusic. I started on the weekend, anchoring entertainment, and that quickly progressed to adding on Electric Circus, City Pulse Entertainment at 10 then at 6, then Ooh La La. So, basically I was doing five shows at the same time. I did Electric Circus from the very beginning. I was part of the founding crew. Moses just wanted to do a dance show and he had the name in place: Electric Circus. He had the idea to do this live to air dance show and he asked me to host it, largely because I was a club DJ and I was very into club culture.

Joel Goldberg: I don't know whether Moses saw something in the States or in Europe, but he thought it would be a good thing to do. He was constantly looking for new and interesting things to put on the air. When Moses approached me I was like "Aww, man, I don't want to do a dance show." It was John Martin, who was running Much at the time, who took me out for a beer and said, "Look we don't have anyone else to do this, you're the guy who can do it." I'm glad he talked me into it though, and I'm very proud of the fact that it ran for about 20 years after that. For a long time, it was one of the top rated show's on MuchMusic. Moses decided it would be 90 minutes long and that he wanted it on during the day so that people would come and watch through the windows at the station. Moses always had this thing about bringing people to us. He didn't want to do it at a dance club, which was one thing that was discussed. He wanted to make the building a place to come to in Toronto. So that was the original concept. Dance, videos, 90 minutes, and people coming to the building.

Monika Deol: The idea was to be interactive and to do it like a club in a club setting. That didn't scare me because I was used to live audiences. When you tour with a rock band across western Canada, you learn how to deal with a live audience. It's very immediate: you have to win them over and you have to feed off energy and connect the dots in a very spontaneous way. I had that experience of walking into crowds cold and trying to make it something just with energy.

Joel Goldberg: The budget of the show was mostly below the line. It was run by internal staff, the directors also worked at MuchMusic, and we had the same production crew. At the beginning it was very tough because people would laugh at us, like, "What's this stupid dance show?" And we'd be out in the streets trying to bring people in. If we saw a good looking couple we'd say, "Wanna come in and dance? We'll give you a t-shirt." It was tough. My job was to really establish the show, establish the formula, and I did that. I think I did it successfully. I worked through a lot of the problems and perceptions that people had of us as a sleazy dance show and then Sharon Kavanaugh took it to the next level.

Sharon Kavanaugh (Associate Producer/Producer): I was working at Citytv at the time. I was working with Joel, and he had started Electric Circus. I was doing camera and shooting field stories for them, but I was really loving the show and really into dance music at the time. Joel and I were friends and still are really good friends, so I was telling him about different tracks I was hearing about and I was helping more and more with the show as Joel was getting busier and busier directing music videos. He started veering in that area, and as I started helping him more with the show he made me associate producer. Eventually Joel left and started his own company and I became producer of the show in 1991.

Monika Deol: When we started, it was an afternoon dance show and, to be very honest, we were sort of the black sheep of the MuchMusic/Citytv family. Most people in the station thought we were a joke and we were a little bit cheesy. We had the budget, technicolor 80's risers—and, I mean, we were a dance show in the middle of the afternoon on Saturdays, which wasn't really ideal. So I kind of figured we'll give it a shot and see what happens and it just kind of built momentum.

Sharon Kavanaugh: The buzz was starting, but it was still pretty small at that point. It was after I started that we really developed the whole street-front thing and put the dancers in the windows and really made it more of a spectacle. We hired a decorator who worked in a club at the time, so we wanted to create that club feeling but still make it unique and accessible through the street front. Even on a day when it was -30, we still had the windows open and people would be standing out there. They used to do a chart on Billboard that was like a video chart, so I used to look on that to see if there were videos we didn't have in our library in Canada. I would try and hunt down the company to see if they would send us a copy. I [ended up getting] some of the cooler videos that were made that we might never have gotten.

Joel Goldberg: The reason Moses, John, and I started it during the day was because we thought the dancers were going to be in the clubs at night. Sharon's tip was we don't want to compete with the dance clubs, but if we do it at night from 7:30-9:00 PM, then we're not going to be competing with dance clubs because no one goes until 10:00 or 11:00 PM. When she moved it to the evening in around '93 is when Electric Circus really took off.

Sharon Kavanaugh: I saw the show going in the direction of true dance music—to really get into the scene of dance music versus playing stuff like AC/DC on the show. It gave it more of a focus. Early on they played a lot of pop and even a lot of rock, and I introduced bringing in DJs. The club scene was so huge and the DJ was such a big celebrity. People that were in the club scene knew that. Electric Circus became a huge stop for the biggest DJs in the world. They would often say to me, "Man, why don't we have something like this in Chicago?" It was a cool stop for them. I ran into Junior Sanchez years later when he was at MuchMusic for something else and he saw me and came running over to say, "Sharon! Oh my god! We all miss Electric Circus so much, it was such an important thing to us as DJs." It gave them a whole different audience that they never had before. [Normally, they] would just play in clubs, but this helped to build their celebrity status as well. It was a good thing for everybody.

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Monika Deol on the cover of The Toronto Sun's TV Magazine

Monika Deol: Sharon and I were a very good match, we had a lot of chemistry, we got each other and worked really well together. Our turning point was when we convinced Moses that the show had to go to night time. He was completely convinced it should be a daytime show. We begged and pleaded. I felt it had gone as far as it could go as a daytime show. I thought it had way more potential, as did Sharon. So when Moses was away for two Fridays, we convinced him that, for these days, we would make it a night time show without any interference from him and see what happens. He agreed. So Sharon and I went around to all the clubs during the week and got all the great dancers we could. We told people we were going to night time for these two nights only and the response was huge. Everybody came out, all the fantastic dancers from all the clubs and the rest is history. It was permanently on at night after show that.

Joel Goldberg: With me [the show] was very minimal: I had different performance areas and dance areas, but there wasn't really glitz, it wasn't really art directed. Sharon had that eye; she took a look at it and said, "We could make this much better." After producing the show I left to pursue producing and directing music videos. My next career grew out of Electric Circus: there was a young 18-year-old rap artist called Maestro Fresh Wes. Everybody knows him now, obviously. We put him on the show and he did great. Then we put him on again, during a show with an R&B artist named Stevie D, a Florida-based artist who had a couple of pretty big hits at the time. He saw Wes perform and called his record company in New York and said, "There's this Canadian kid who's awesome." Next thing you know, Wes flew down there and they signed him. Wes and his manager came back to me and were really grateful for showcasing his talents. They knew I was starting to do music videos, so offered to have me produce and direct his first video. That was "Let Your Backbone Slide" in 1989, and released 1990. Fast forward and I ended up doing seven or eight music videos with Wes. We're friends till this day.

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Rising stars
Monika Deol: I knew we had something when the producers of Club MTV came up to Toronto and said, "How do you do this live?" Then, a travel show called Rough Cuts came to Toronto and did a special feature on Electric Circus, which ran all over Europe. [One time,] when Will Smith was in town, he called us and said, "I've been watching this show and I wanna come down and hang out.' And we were like, "OK, but you understand it's not a night club? There's no drinks, no food, just people dancing...." So he came down just to hang out on Electric Circus. Shemar Moore, who was on The Young and the Restless at the time, was in Toronto shooting something and again he called us. "Listen," he said, "I really want to come down and hang out on your show." We were like, "Really?!" That's when we realized things were out of control in a really great way, in a really energetic, great way.

Sharon Kavanaugh: The big shows at Canada's Wonderland and Winterlude in Ottawa, I think those were great peaks. We did a show in Ottawa on Parliament Hill and it was cold that day, there was ice on everything, and we were so cold trying to build the set that I thought, Who's going to come out to this? Just a little while before show time we looked out and there were thousands of people out there. I thought, Wow, this is really amazing.

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That iconic theme song
Sharon Kavanaugh: That was written by Carl Armstrong (Jet Fuel) he's an amazing guy. He's really into dance music as well and a really musical guy, so he really loved the show. He was working in the creative department for MuchMusic at the time and he just wanted to help out however he could. He went into his little home studio started playing around and created the theme. He was doing some of his own stuff around that time, too. He did the theme, and then we worked on the opening together, he shot the opening that had all the dancers in the window. [That song,] "Hang on Here We Go," was featured on some of the compilations, and on the Much Dance compilation.

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Dancing in the spotlight
Joel Goldberg: It became a destination for the dancers before going to the clubs. A lot of them would meet at Electric Circus, maybe go out have a few drinks, and then go to the clubs all night.. [Being on the show] would raise their profile as club dancers.

Sharon Kavanaugh: People would come and stand outside and we'd pull them in. A lot of dancers auditioned or were found in clubs. We went through a few dance co-ordinators that went to clubs and recruited. Some of the dancers that were on the show were go-go dancers in clubs, so they'd bring their friends on, too. It turned into a whole big family thing. Everyone that was there really felt connected and became friends and would all go out to a club afterwards.

Monika Deol: There were times, not often, but it is a live television show, and the audio would just go in the room. So everyones dancing and all of a sudden there's no audio in the room. Which sometimes happens at parties! I would look at the floor director who would say to me, "The music's still up on air," so people watching at home could hear the music. So I'd literally be saying, "Keep dancing, everybody!" And we'd all be dancing away to nothing. This sometimes went on for a minute and a half, but that's what a great sense of spirit there was. There was such camaraderie. We'd all be dancing away as if there was a song on.

Agata Synowiec Green (Dancer 1995-1996): During the show, me and my friend went down to hang out. I was 16 at the time so we didn't have money to do anything else except take the subway downtown. We went out and they were playing a really good song and we started dancing. I was just out on the street dancing by the window. Then the dance coordinator Nadine, she came out and asked if we wanted to come inside. At the end of the show, she asked if we wanted to come back. It was fun, it was live, it was current music. These performers you'd only see at a club, so if you couldn't make it to a club in Toronto you could see them on the show.

Jeremy Ying (Dancer 2001-2003): I was at the mall with some friends (we were all break-dancers) in Scarborough. We were done practice, and weren't up to anything else, that night. One of my friends suggested, "Hey! Let's go down! Let's check out EC!" Friday night, nothing else to do—why not check it out? We joined the screaming crowd near the MuchMusic front entrance. And, of course, having come from breakdance practice, we were still pumped up. We did some dancing, the Electric Circus floor director took notice of us, and invited us back. So we came back the next week. Then again, and for the next three years I was there pretty much every week.

Agata Synowiec Green: I was shy, but when I was dancing I wasn't. I would dance at home. I just loved to dance. [Dancing on the show] paid nothing. It was for the fun of it and the connections. I would be at a club and be approached by people who saw me on the show. It would feel kind of weird. People would want me to get them in. When I tell people I was on the show now they think it's really cool, it brings them back.

Jeremy Ying: Some people were just there to have fun and mingle. Others were really working hard towards become successful performers and wanted exposure, so the more screen time they got, the happier they were! So, for the latter group it was very competitive. EC also showcased a lot of local talent. This is something that I really liked. It gave these up-and-coming artists a chance to showcase themselves and talk to a nationwide audience.

Sharon Kavanaugh: A lot of them became celebrities themselves. They would go to clubs and just walk through the door.

Monika Deol: It was the personification of Moses Znaimer's vision. It was like a mini UN. We had people on that dance floor from everywhere in the world. You could be anybody—if you wanted to come here and be part of this show, you could be, whether you were dancing on a riser or standing outside on the street looking in the windows. People dressed how they wanted, danced how they wanted, and sometimes people weren't even the best dancers. Sometimes people just had an energy or an attitude about them. And that was good, too. It wasn't about being super good looking, it wasn't about the best dressed—more than anything else it was about energy. It was about been spontaneous. There's no point in being super good looking if, when you don't like a song, you turn down the energy volume. The dancers made that show interesting. It wasn't just a video show, it was about these personalities. I think the people on the streets, which we put a huge emphasis on including, that's the sort of stuff you don't get on the internet. You don't get those spontaneous live moments.

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What happens on live television...
Monika Deol: We did everything and anything. Our theory was try anything once and if it doesn't work, it's OK, we'll never do it again. Because I was a co-producer, I had the ability to tell the crew downstairs what I think we should do during commercial break. One time we were in a two-minute commercial break and I saw a streetcar coming down Queen West and I looked at the streetlight and said, "By the time that streetcar gets here, that light is going to turn red. We're going to cross the street on camera one for a wide shot, we're gonna pick up camera four on the street, walk onto the streetcar and ask who wants to come dance. We're gonna take them off the streetcar dance across the street and bring them inside." And everyone's going, "Ah Monika! Monika!" And the technician starts counting down, "10, 9, 8....." and were up and we did it! And it worked.

Sharon Kavanaugh: There were so many great moments! When the show was on Saturday afternoons, there was a couple that were just married and had gone into Speaker's Corner. Monika was out on the street and she saw them and dragged them onto the show to do their first dance. Monika was fantastic. She was so good at bringing the show from inside to out, and bringing the people from outside in.

Monika Deol: Another time, there were people that lived across the street in an apartment and they would always kind of hang out their windows and stare at everybody dancing on the street. But they always had this, "Ugh, look at them" look on their face. So one time I went across, opened the door and went up stairs, all on camera. I knocked on the door and said, "Hey! Y'know you guys think your so cool, but if you're so cool what are you doing home on a Friday night watching us?" They were shocked. Sometimes things didn't work, though, like the time I was on the street on Valentine's Day and asking people about their relationships. This young lady starts talking to me about her boyfriend in prison and how she loved him so much and needed to be there for him. I remember kind of going, Ohhh, this took a turn I wasn't expecting... So we kind of had this Oprah moment on Electric Circus. Sometimes things didn't go quite as planned because they were so spontaneous.

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The Electric Circus crew on Parliament Hill

The last dance
Sharon Kavanaugh: I wasn't on it right at the end, I'd left to go on a maternity leave. I came back but they were trying to take it in a different direction. They had alternating MuchMusic hosts and were trying different things to make it work. They were experimenting with it, and I took over Much on Demand. Instead of bringing me back and having the idea of how I wanted it, they wanted to take it in a new direction. They were focusing a little less on underground music and were trying to go more mainstream. They were probably trying to bring it back to the way it was originally. It started to go down when dance music took a dip. It kind of went away and everyone was listening to Good Charlotte, Fall Out Boy, and stuff like that—people weren't listening to hardcore dance music as much. If you looked at the charts, there wasn't a lot of dance on it. That's when it took its hardest hit and when they ultimately decided to stop the show.

Monika Deol: I was quite sad to hear that they were taking it off the air. No one's done anything like it. I left in 1996 and I left it at the top of the ferris wheel. I made the decision that I was going to step away from work and focus on having a family life for awhile.

Joel Goldberg: It was a product of its time, just like Speaker's Corner. After the internet came in, it took over. Which is cool now because there's completely different ways to do both things. We had Destiny's Child, Pink, Daft Punk, acts that were really amazing for that community at the time. I had Grandmaster Flash on and he's my hero.

Sharon Kavanaugh: I would've wanted the show to change with the time and with what music was doing. I probably would've tried to maintain the relationships with DJs and indie labels in the States and tried to keep the pop side of it connected as well as what was happening in the clubs.

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Salt 'N' Pepa on the Electric Circus set

EC's legacy
Joel Goldberg: For me, Electric Circus had the perfect timing to go on the air. There was stuff like Soul Train and American Bandstand, stuff that was on before we were born, but there was nobody else promoting dance music on Canadian television. There was a couple radio stations bringing it to life, but with dance music, it's very visual. If you went out to clubs, people were wearing crazy outfits, and the dancing itself was amazing. The timing was perfect for it.

Monika Deol: I see this resurgence with EDM and just how huge these festivals are and it makes me smile because I think for Canadians, Electric Circus was the first show that brought urban music, hardcore dance music, and club music to the forefront. And gave it a venue, it gave it the star treatment. We had Frankie Knuckles, David Morales, every big DJ from Chicago, from New York, from Europe, and local people, Toronto, Vancouver DJs. We gave DJs a spotlight and we gave them sets from four to eight minutes to play as if they were in a club. We made them the stars that we thought they were. They would say to us, "Wow, we can't believe there's nothing like this." We were the first show that really played up DJs and the importance of a fantastic DJ.

Sharon Kavanaugh: It's amazing that of all the things that I've worked on, of all the shows I've done—producing red carpets at MMVAs, live at Much with Katy Perry—whenever I say I used to produce Electric Circus, that's when people go, "Oh my god!" That's what always gets the biggest reaction. I think it was unique. I think the music made people feel good. Watching people dance made people feel good. I think it was a great thing to watch before people went to a party or a club. There was nothing else like it, so I think people really connected with that. It was informative, too. We were giving out information on the hottest club tracks; people were being introduced to DJs that they might not have known; fashion—what people were wearing. One other thing that people really loved about it was there were so many cultural backgrounds in that room and it didn't matter—everybody was just all one thing. That was very unique for Canadian television.

Monika Deol: It was a fantastic moment in my career and my life. What's really nice is all these years later is, not a word of a lie, everyday somebody, a complete stranger says to me, "Oh my god, I used to love that show." All these years later. Everybody says it with a smile on their face. It was a happy time in their life.

Sharon Kavanaugh: They've tried to bring it back a couple of times for one-off specials and it just doesn't feel the same. I would like to hope that it can be recreated because it was such a great thing. They tried to do a special once a month, and if it connected they would start the show up again, But it never quite found what it had. Maybe because it was unique to its time.

Monika Deol: I sure wish someone would do it again. I know my kids would love to watch it. If someone did a one-off reunion show, I would totally do it. It would be fun! Maybe just a cameo....

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Nordic Poetry scarf, Le Coq Sportif tracksuit, vintage jewellery

PHOTOGRAPHY: ALEX DE MORA
STYLING: KYLIE GRIFFITHS

Hair: Sami Knight using Unite
Make-up: Lydia Warhurst using Mac Cosmetics
Nails: Ellie Hicks using Mac Cosmetics
Set designer/props: Penny Mills
Photographer's assistant: Theo Cottle
Stylist's assistants: Thomas Ramshaw and Rachel Williamson
Models: Jennifer Munby, Jack Warner, Belinda O'Brien, Alex B, Jane Elizabeth Marney, Deepak Anad, Lynne Bennett, Selina O, Simon Taylor, Mike O

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Joyrich hat and tracksuit, American Apparel socks, Adidas sliders, vintage watch

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Adidas top and shorts, Gogo Philip earrings; Champion jacket, Joyrich top, Gogo Philip earrings, vintage rings

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Mary Katrantzou x Adidas dress from Harvey Nichols, Gogo Philip earrings and ring, K-Swiss trainers; Topman top and shorts, American Apparel socks, Topman trainers

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Vogue sunglasses, vintage earrings, Ryan Lo necklace and ring, Juicy Couture tracksuit, Moschino bracelet and top from Harvey Nichols, Charlotte Simone bag from Harvey Nichols, Gourmet trainers

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Vintage T-shirt, Adidas tracksuit bottoms, vintage watch, American Apparel socks, Topman shoes; Beyond Retro jacket, vintage T-shirt, Topman shorts, American Apparel socks, Gourmet trainers

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Bandana from Beyond Retro, Champion sweatshirt

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Images by Mark Duffy

The situation, as it stood, couldn't have looked much worse. A man had cornered a tearful, terrified woman in the lobby of an apartment building and wouldn't let her leave. If another person entered at that moment, the woman would say the man was a complete stranger. She'd say she had no recollection of how she'd got here.

The third person would—quite reasonably—deduce that, in all probability, the man had drugged the woman and, if he had a shred of human decency, would come to her rescue by whatever means. Maybe he'd call the police. Maybe he'd beat the shit out of him. After all, this man was clearly planning to rape the woman. There was almost no explanation in which the man came out looking like a good guy. Almost.

I played the hypotheticals through in my head and, to a God I decided in that instant was real, I prayed. I prayed that as long as I stood there with my girlfriend, in the midst of a severe dissociative episode, no other soul would appear. God, if you're reading this: I owe you one.

We were in bed early one Christmas morning when she first told me about her dissociative identity disorder (DID). At this point, our relationship was eight months old, and she'd been open about pretty much everything from the beginning—apart from this. I don't think it was so much that she was worried it'd scare me off, but that she had to know she could trust me completely with this information virtually no one else knew.

She explained the condition very briefly to me—at its worst, she said, she would not only struggle to identify who she was, but even what she was; unable to process the concept of her own humanity. It caused her a great deal of pain talking about it, which I think was probably a major factor in so few people knowing. For her sake, I didn't really ask any questions or press her on it further. When she finished talking I told her it didn't change anything and that I loved her regardless. Four months later, I saw for the first time what she had described.

The night began with us watching a movie at a friend's place. About halfway through the film I noticed a shift in her breathing, and it became faster and shallower. This wasn't particular cause for alarm—she'd suffered severe anxiety since long before we met, and was generally pretty good at overcoming it. I rubbed her back and shoulders in an attempt to reassure her, but it gradually became more and more apparent that this panic wasn't going to shift. After about 20 minutes, she whispered in my ear: "We have to leave. I'm about to dissociate."

We quickly gathered our stuff and apologized to the hosts, claiming we were both just exhausted and needed to get home to sleep. Once we got out of their building she placed her hand in mine. "Promise me that whatever happens, you will not let go," she said. I promised.

As we walked along the street I could see it beginning to take hold; she was becoming visibly confused by her surroundings. I managed to flag down a taxi straight away. There were a few moments of good fortune that night; this was the first.

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Hackneyed as it sounds, the silence was eerie. This was a woman who made most extroverts look like J. D. Salinger, someone who could engage even the surliest of bouncers in cheery conversation and charm them enough to let her obviously underage friends into bars. And she just sat there, staring out of the window. For the first time in our relationship she was speechless.

I squeezed her hand and said, "I love you." She looked at me blankly for a few seconds then turned back to her window. I knew I couldn't take it personally and tried to rationalize the matter—after all, it wasn't like she was mad at me and giving me the silent treatment after a fight. She simply didn't know who I was. In retrospect, it feels a little selfish that I even stopped to consider how her nightmarish ordeal was affecting me, but it was inescapable. It was a deeply and uniquely upsetting situation.

In the eyes of the woman I loved, I was now a stranger. I was crushed.

The last ten minutes of the journey went by without incident. She remained calm in spite of the sheer terror she was clearly facing, for which I was (again, perhaps selfishly) grateful—I didn't fancy explaining to our driver the specifics of a condition I myself knew next to nothing about. I had just enough cash for the fare when we pulled up outside her apartment building, another tiny but glorious stroke of luck.

I opened my door and, careful to not let go of her hand, awkwardly maneuvered myself out and pulled her with me. We crossed the road, walked through the courtyard and through the front door into the lobby of her building. This was when things got difficult.

I guess, up to this point, we'd been in public, and the presence of the taxi driver would have provided a certain level of reassurance. Now she was alone with a man she had, to her knowledge, never met before. And while it was her building we were entering, this too was unfamiliar in her current state of mind. Although she was able to identify that she was dissociating, she had no idea how she got here. If you've ever tried to lead someone back to their tent while that person was K-holing, it was a little like that, only amplified to a whole other level.

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Picture the situation: A relatively small woman suddenly becomes aware she is inside a building she doesn't recognize with a strange man who is significantly larger than she is. She did what any woman would do in that situation and ran, pulling her hand out of mine and making for the door. I was surprised by my reaction as instinct kicked in and I leapt after her, wrapping my arms around her waist and lifting her away from the exit.

Physically restraining a distressed woman, it turns out, is not an action that says, "No, really, you're safe with me," but I had no other choice. Had I let her run out at night into streets she couldn't possibly navigate, she could have faced serious, life-threatening danger. I placed her in a corner and stood a few feet back, acting as a barrier between my girlfriend and the door. I spoke softly and raised my hands, the universally accepted body language for "Seriously, I'm chill."

She cowered in the corner. "If you come one step closer, I'll scream," she warned me. I stayed put. It was then the hypotheticals entered my head. As we already know, whether by sheer good luck or an act of God, we remained alone. Helpful as this was, it didn't change the fact I was still standing in a lobby with a woman who had no idea who I was and wouldn't let me take her to her apartment.

"You have your phone on you, don't you?" I asked her. She looked into her bag and nodded. "Do you know who George is?" She nodded again. George was an ex-boyfriend, one of her oldest friends, and the only person outside of her immediate family, doctor, and me who knew about her condition. As someone who'd been in her life significantly longer than I had been, she had more memories attached to him and so hadn't forgotten who he was. "Call George," I said.

This is perfectly normal, I thought, as she scrolled through her phone looking for George's name. I'm just a guy, standing here, getting my girlfriend's ex to vouch for my existence.

Her first attempt went through to voicemail. Quietly and tearfully, all she could say was "help me" a dozen or so times. I wondered if he was at work. It could have been hours before he was able to check his phone. In our last stroke of good fortune for the night, he called back a few seconds later. I can't remember exactly what was said or how long they talked for; it might have been a minute, it might have been five. She mentioned that there was a man here she didn't know who was claiming to be her boyfriend, and in a sort of exaggerated stage whisper I said, "George! It's me!"

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She listened for a little while longer and then passed the phone to me. "He wants to talk to you." I spoke to George for a couple of minutes. I've never been so relieved to hear the voice of a girlfriend's ex. He calmly talked me through the next steps—to get her into her apartment, sit her down, and pull up something she'd seen before on Netflix. Familiarity was key, he told me. I thanked him and returned the phone. They talked for a few more seconds, then she hung up.

"George says I can trust you."

I took her by the hand once more and led her up the stairs.

Once we were inside her flat, things got easier. I closed the door behind us and she immediately sat down on the wooden floor and told me her feet hurt. I helped her take off her shoes and then pulled her up, before walking her round the room, pointing out the framed photos on her wall and asking if she recognized the people in them. "That's me!" she said cheerily. "And that's George!" This helped a lot.

In the space of a few minutes the dynamic of our relationship had shifted from one of me as her would-be attacker to a bizarrely paternal thing. As her boyfriend, both of these were a little odd, but at least with the latter she was no longer afraid. For the rest of the night we watched TV together while I waited for the woman I loved to return.

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A few hours after she first told me, I took some time to read up on dissociative identity disorder. As with many mental illnesses, there's a lot of speculation and theory surrounding the condition, which is understandable when you comprehend what a convoluted labyrinth the human mind is. However, DID is considered "probably the most disputed of psychiatric diagnoses," with "no clear consensus regarding its diagnosis or treatment."

It's a rare condition, but one that crops up in popular culture a huge amount. If you've not heard of DID before (I hadn't), you probably know it as multiple personality disorder, to which it was formerly referred. Its representations in fiction are often quite harmful, with multiple personalities frequently portrayed as good versus evil, such as in Jekyll and Hyde. As with schizophrenia and other conditions, sufferers are often portrayed as murderous sociopaths—when the reality is they're far more vulnerable to being attacked.

Many people suffering from DID report sexual or physical abuse in childhood, which has led some researchers to believe that DID is a reaction to trauma. I already knew that, growing up, my girlfriend had repeatedly been beaten by her father, so it's likely this played a part in her condition. Another hypothesis suggests that DID is caused by therapists "recovering" memories from patients that then cause them to behave a certain way—but this didn't apply to my girlfriend.

For her, the episodes occur sporadically; she could go months or years without suffering one, but they could also happen several times in a relatively short time span. They almost always happened in times of extreme stress. She'd later tell me that dissociative episodes happened when her brain was unable to cope with the stress, so it would essentially remove itself from her body for a short period of time to give her a break.

About three hours into the episode, I could see a few faint glimmers of her personality reappearing. She recognized a favorite character and a grin spread across her face. A little while later I asked if she knew who I was. "I know you," she said. "I love you." It meant a lot to hear those words.

When we finally got into bed that night she fell asleep instantly, emotionally and physically exhausted. She'd wake up with no memory of what had happened and wouldn't want to know. I lay awake a little while and wondered whether there's anything more terrifying than the human mind.

I doubt there is.

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[body_image width='1642' height='1309' path='images/content-images/2015/03/03/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/03/' filename='bogdan-girboveanu-interview-photography-bucharest-communist-studio-flats-876-body-image-1425413463.jpg' id='32674']The photographer in his studio flat.

This article was originally published by VICE Romania.

Eastern Europe is paved with dystopian public housing blocks—all divided into tiny studio apartments built to house the thousands of workers who were moved from their villages to industrial centers during the communist era. As you can probably imagine, most of these apartments are much smaller and in worse shape than anything similar in the West. So much worse in fact that they grabbed the attention of Romanian photographer Bogdan Gîrboveanu. Fascinated by the anthropology and the geometry of these spaces, Gîrboveanu set out to photograph all the studio flats in his building.

Since my neighbors only welcome me in their homes when they want to show me the leaks caused on their ceiling by my flat's old pipes, I called Gîrboveanu to talk about the difficulties he encountered while working on this project.

VICE: How did you come up with the idea for this project?
Bogdan Girboveanu: Just by thinking about my personal space, the place in which I live, meditate, work, and make love. I had started taking pictures in the studio and had become obsessed with that space—I found it looked completely different depending on the angle I'd take the photo from, because the perspective over that space was changing. I think I was passionate about that cube because I'm also obsessed with mathematics and precision.

And how did you end up visiting your neighbors?
Well, I thought that practice makes perfect so I decided to copy this cell all the way down. The problem was that I didn't know if all the studio flats in my building were the same. I live on the tenth floor and was lucky that the lady downstairs, the one living on the ninth floor, asked me to help her with a door from inside her flat that had a hinge problem. I was shocked when I got inside, because it was something else completely. I mean, the space was identical but the décor was completely different.

Romanians are quite difficult when it comes to being photographed. How did you manage to convince people to let you inside their homes?
Again, I started out from mathematics and took advantage of all the connections between the building's residents. From the neighbor who lives on the ninth floor, I ended up in the room on the eighth floor. Eight is familiar with both floor nine and seven, and so on. It was like a game.

I had a few issues with the younger neighbors, who didn't understand why I wanted to do this and were complaining that their girlfriends weren't home. I'd leave and return later until I pulled it off. Also, I only took photos of them on Sundays, when people tend to be more relaxed.

[body_image width='1642' height='1309' path='images/content-images/2015/03/03/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/03/' filename='bogdan-girboveanu-interview-photography-bucharest-communist-studio-flats-876-body-image-1425415454.jpg' id='32698']Mrs Biţa has been living in her studio flat on the ninth floor since 1967.

I like that there's a character in each photo.
It doesn't work without one. A friend used to say that a photograph without a character is like a postcard. A lot of people asked me why they needed to be sat, but I told them that was my only request. I wasn't interested in neither the space's cleanliness, nor that they'd sit in a certain spot. I sat in all possible manners in my own room and found the one that made for the best composition.

I didn't want them to stand up, because that would look like I'm drawing a line through that space. And they take up a lot of volume anyway, even when they're sitting down; I've always liked the idea of a compositional portrait which also captures the atmosphere, not just the person's face.

I find the decorations in old people's houses fascinating and so completely different to those in the younger apartments.
There were age patterns: The young ones had a minimal, airy style, while the older ones took the opposite approach. I'm convinced that our generation is also going to grow old and become hoarders, although maybe we'll be blessed with bigger spaces. It's not easy to get rid of all the things you pile up in a lifetime, even if others don't find them pretty.

What are the strangest things you've seen inside a house?
I was more interested in why those things were there, rather than asking what's this or that. For example, on the ninth floor, on top of the wardrobe that's visible in the background, there are some books placed in an impressive way and I asked her why they're placed like this and she simply said, "So that they don't fall." The books placed on top of each other were intertwined with the ones standing up in a pretty symmetrical way; that was the decoration she had come up with.

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It's fascinating how different from one another your characters are, through the environments that they've created.
Yes, some have said that I was trying to show a mix of social classes, but I simply photographed the apartments of my neighbors. The lady whose face you can't see is a journalist with academic credentials. There was a lady on the first floor who used to be an illustrator for the National Bank of Romania; another lady was a house painter, and a gentleman—who told me his nickname was Don Lukas—made his money working abroad. They all have a story.

I think the most interesting image is the lady with the canopy bed. What's the deal with that?
The building is in close proximity to the market and that lady sometimes accommodates people who work there. They sleep in that canopy bed. That's why she's put a curtain on the side. She sleeps in the small bed right next to it.

How did the apartment block administrator react to the project?
He opened the door of an uninhabited studio for me. He let me in and happily talked to me and, because it was empty, I asked him to pose in the flat for me so I could have a character in that space too.

How did your subjects react when they saw the pictures?
Most asked me "Why are we so small?" because I had told them I was taking portrait photos, but they didn't know what technique I was using to capture their room for a portrait. And so they asked if I could take their pictures in a more restricted way, and I did. That seemed to satisfy them.

The Architect—a VICE News documentary about Dr. James Mitchell, a SERE expert who was involved in creating the CIA's interrogation program.

As 2014 rattled its way towards the grave, a Senate report into the agency's interrogation techniques confirmed that it used brutal and ineffective methods to try squeezing information from suspects rounded up after 9/11. What was generally missed in the coverage of this coverage is that "Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape" (SERE), a torture survival program that the CIA's methods were based on, had already caused a national scandal back in 1995 because of the use of similar techniques. That year, television and newspapers reported complaints of physical and sexual abuse by US Air Force (ASAF) cadets who had been through the SERE program.

The Senate Intelligence Committee report explained the CIA did not use experienced interrogators to design their program. Instead they turned to experts in SERE. This is a training program meant to prepare Air Force pilots and other personnel to deal with capture. According to the Senate report, SERE "exposes select US military personnel to, among other things, coercive interrogation techniques that they might be subjected to if taken prisoner by countries that did not adhere to Geneva protections."

In preparing their interrogation program, the CIA asked for advice from the Commanders of the Military's SERE school, and hired two retired US Air Force (USAF) psychologists, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, who ran SERE training. Mitchell and Jessen's company was paid $81 million for helping design and run interrogations, using SERE techniques. James Mitchell gave an exclusive interview to VICE News in December in which he confirmed that he had been involved in the CIA program and admitted to waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks. He also disputed the report's accusation that he was inexperienced, saying he has decades of experience in interrogations and in dealing with the "types of people" who withhold "actionable intelligence."

"They dressed me up as a woman. They put me in a skirt, put makeup all over my face, and made me follow around one of the NCOs as like his little toy."

Even at that point, SERE had already caused controversy. In 1995, ABC News reported Cadets at the USAF's Colorado training base suffered abuse during SERE sessions in 1993. One male cadet told the ABC program 20/20, "They dressed me up as a woman. They put me in a skirt, put makeup all over my face, and made me follow around one of the NCOs as like his little toy." He was then partially stripped, tied to a bench, and another cadet was "made [to] get on top of me and act like he's having sex with me."

Another cadet described this humiliation and mock rape, saying, "The perception I got was they were trying to make him out to be sort of the—the love slave of the people who were running the compound. They would sit him up on a stand on their laps and call them, you know, their little girl or whatever, and—but they basically, like I said, treated him like he is their little love toy or whatever, in front of the entire camp."

A female cadet came forward with even more serious allegations. She had complained within the USAF, prompting two inconclusive investigations by USAF generals. She then sued the USAF for damages.

According to official reports of her 1996 hearing, the cadet entered SERE training in 1993 where "she was selected as the victim in a simulated rape and exploitation scenario." As she told the court, "she was forced to lie on the ground, her shirt was removed and her legs pried apart. She was hooded during the proceedings and does not know the identities of the participating cadets. Other cadets stood by and observed, joking about what was occurring." The papers say that the SERE training involved deliberate humiliation alongside sexual violence, as "the simulated rape was filmed and the videotape shown to other cadets."

The court heard that her "torture included being required to assume stress positions to the point of passing out." She was also slapped, beaten, held without food, and kept awake with "white noise," just like the CIA's prisoners would be years later.

But the judge also emphasized that the Cadet's abuse was, "sexually charged," and "included having to kneel down while a male cadet put his crotch in her face and made sexually explicit comments to her, having her fatigues soaked with urine, and being forced to put a stick in her pants and call it her 'masturbation stick.'"

The former cadet's case was contested for two years, and was finally settled out of court. The amount of the settlement is confidential.

The USAF cadet's experiences that came to media attention in 1995 were echoed in the CIA's "enhanced interrogations" techniques, exposed in the December Senate Report, where detainees were forced to wear women's underwear and were subject to similar abuse. The sexual aspects were not necessarily the worst parts of the CIA interrogations—at least one detainee froze to death because of "temperature manipulation" and another was beaten to death. However, using sexual humiliation and abuse was a signature feature of War on Terror interrogations.

SERE was originally informed by the experience of US prisoners in the Korean and Vietnam wars. After two servicewomen who were captured by Iraqi troops during the first Gulf War were both sexually assaulted, it was decided that US troops should be prepared for this grim possibility, so "sexual exploitation" was added to the training after 1991. A 2008 report by the Senate Armed Services Committee detailed the US Army's own investigation into the 2003 abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US forces at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The investigator found that "what started as nakedness and humiliation, stress, and physical training (exercise) carried over into sexual and physical assaults." This "depravity and degradation" was "imported" and could be "traced" through interrogations in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay—where the SERE-based interrogations took place.

The significance of the 1995 scandal has mostly been overlooked: 19-year-old news reports generally fade from view. But this earlier abuse of USAF cadets already very closely foreshadowed what has happened to detainees at the hands of US security forces during the War on Terror. Both the Department of Defence and the CIA must have been aware of the 1995 scandal—it had led to national news reports, military investigations, and a court case. Many of the SERE specialists, including Mitchell and Jessen, worked at the advanced SERE school in Spokane, Washington, rather than Colorado, where the abuse scandal occurred. But Jessen and Mitchell were reportedly at meetings of military psychologists to discuss the training in Colorado in the early 1990s.

After the 1995 scandal, SERE training was suspended for USAF cadets for a few years, then re-introduced in 1998, but with the "Sexual Exploitation" element removed. Following 9/11, when US Vice President Dick Cheney was telling US forces to " work the dark side," the CIA turned to SERE as the basis for their new, brutal interrogation techniques, apparently including the elements that had been suspended in America.

The program that was supposed to protect US troops from sexual exploitation ended up subjecting them to it in 1995. In 2003, the US Army's captives in Abu Ghraib prison were victims of similar abuse. Whether there was a direct causal link, or lessons were not learned, Saddam Hussein's legacy of torture had come full circle, and had infected the US Army as history repeated itself.

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