Matt Shea
Presenter and Writer
matt.shea@vice.comMatt Shea is a presenter, director and writer who specialises in crime and fringe stories. He is the creator of the long-running series High Society and has won awards for Iceman, about the cold water Guru Wim Hof, and Time To Die, a feature documentary about the global underground euthanasia movement.
The Cult Who Kidnaps Christians and Is at War with the Chinese Government
The cult's core belief is that Jesus Christ has been reincarnated as a middle-aged Chinese woman called Lightning Deng who now lives in Chinatown in New York. The cult operates by infiltrating China’s underground churches and integrating themselves...
Uncovering the "Truth" Among the Conspiracy Theorists at the 2013 Bilderberg Fringe Festival
The folks who think that the annual meeting of powerful people known as the Bilderberg Group have gotten so used to protesting against conspiracies that they've started an official event: the Bilderberg Fringe Festival. I wandered around to ask...
Turkey's Weekend of Street War, Jubilation, and Bulldozer Joyrides
Social unrest has gripped the country, from Istanbul to Ankara. VICE currently has a number of reporters and filmmakers in Turkey. We called one of them on Sunday to make sure they hadn't suffocated in tear gas plumes and to get their perspective on...
Teens Are Being Trapped in Abusive 'Drug Rehab Centers'
The methods used at these facilities are arguably traceable to an anti-drug cult in the 60s called the Church of Synanon. Their method was to abduct addicts and then “rehabilitate” them through beatings and humiliation. Former patients have been airing...
Porn Sites Are Paying to Remove Tattoos of Their Logos from Hostgator's Face
Hostgator Dotcom emailed me the good news so I thought I'd call him up to congratulate him. It turns out he's doing great and his kids aren't starving, but he also has some worrying new plans to make money that involve his ding-a-ling and his future...
Reddit Wants the Boston Bomber's Blood
Only one day after the Boston bombings, a subreddit was formed to collate and analyze photos of the crime scene, expanding to more than 3,000 users in less than half a day. We spoke to Rather_Confused, one of the subreddit's mods, to get a feel for...
Berliners Are Waging a War Against Gentrification
It’s been 23 years since the Berlin Wall was demolished, and now the bulldozers are back. But this time, no one’s clapping. When word got out that a developer was planning to build a luxury apartment complex right on top of the preserved section of the...
I Tattooed Porn Websites on My Face So My Kids Wouldn't Starve
In 1990, Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, dreaming of a future in which people everywhere could bask in the glory of an interconnected global world. Two decades later, a man had the URLs of multiple porn websites tattooed on his face...
Bulletproof Kids
In December, the massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, threw the country into a deep depression, followed by a fiery debate about guns. Companies hawking children’s clothes saw sales skyrocket. One of these vendors, Amendment II...
Scientists in Wales Have Been Sewing Kittens' Eyes Shut
Cardiff University has been conducting a series of experiments in which they sew kittens' eyes shut from birth. As you can imagine, many people on the cat-lover's Mecca that is the internet got pretty angry about it. I decided to contact Cardiff...
The Raving Outlaw Biker-Druids and Their 1575-Year-Old King
Since the 80s, King Arthur and his biker-druid followers have been protesting in support of the environment, druids' rights, and establishing open access to Stonehenge. These days, you can find him and his partner, the High Priestess, campaigning in...