weird news
Meet the Last Lykov
When I asked 70-year-old Agafia, the sole surviving member of the Lykov clan, if she wished that the geologists who discovered her family in the isolated wilderness of Siberia’s taiga forest had never found them, she shook her head. “I don’t know if we...
Bulgaria’s Immigrant Bummer
Bulgaria’s “special homes” are essentially prisons for immigrants. The official purpose of these centers is to detain illegal immigrants until they can be deported, but many long-term inmates are refugees seeking asylum who have gotten caught in the...
Have You Ever Pooped Your Pants?
Who hasn't pooped their pants or at least squeezed out a shart or two on the long road of life. Pooping yourself is kind of like losing your virginity or going to war, people who haven't done it just can't relate. We asked some New Yorkers about their...
A Catholic Hospital Is Arguing That a Fetus Is Not a Person
Legally, the argument is sound. Colorado, the state, does not define a fetus as a person. But what kind of blatant hypocrisy would motivate a Catholic hospital to argue in court that only individuals born alive are people?
All Welcome the Bomb-Sniffing Mice Infestation
An Israeli biologist named Eran Lumbroso wants to make mice the cutest little soldiers in the global war on terror, and if his efforts are successful they could result in mass layoffs of bomb-sniffing dogs.
Your Dog Is Full of Dirty Diseases
Recent research has shown that sharing an ice cream cone with your dog or letting your cat nap on your face isn’t just unhygienic, it could kill you, shit-for-brains, so cut it out.
Titty Twisters and Striptease Turkeys
Sorry I went Earl Sweatshirt on you for a few months. But I'm back. You haven't missed much—just babies getting their nipples twisted off, strip clubs giving away turkeys, a ton of cocaine, and ladies riding manatees.
Gunrunning with the Free Syrian Army
Blindfolded, I fidgeted nervously in the back of an unmarked car, squished between a gunrunner and a young Free Syrian Army soldier. It had been at least an hour since we left the border town of Kilis, Turkey, and we were now off-roading across the...
Who Loves Ya, Bashar?
In the Gardens of the Trocadéro in Paris, around 40 protestors with signs and whistles gathered around an enormous Syrian flag to show their support for the country’s president. In the photographs affixed to the signs, Bashar al-Assad wears a gray suit...
Take Jesus's Wife, Please
The tale of finding the ancient papyrus at Smithsonian is window-dressing to the actual narrative embedded throughout: the sexism of Christianity.
Anti-Life Sciences
I met with Professor Malcolm Dando from the University of Bradford, a biologist turned international security guru, to discuss how the chemicals sloshing around in your brain can be manipulated by law enforcement agencies for diabolical ends.
Criminal Chlorination
There exist gentlemen scientists, who seek to further the field of psychoactive-drug synthesis in the privacy of their own homes. Here I present an interview with a clandestine chemist whose curiosity of forbidden molecules left him locked in a cage.