THE UNDERGROUND NEWS station VBS.tv produces some of the most incredible ground-level content I’ve ever seen. They’ve bribed their way into North Korea, met with black market dirty bomb dealers in Bulgaria, and interviewed a Scandinavian who claims he’s the ruler of the Andromeda galaxy, and captured everything on film.
But I hate their slow, clunky, and poorly organized website. Despite an abundance of great and groundbreaking investigative journalism, it’s extremely frustrating to wade through dozens of ads and bandwidth-gorging media plastered all over the site. Not to mention big chunks of skater/indie music coverage that’s cool but not as relevant to my interests. Mostly, when I tell people to check the site out, they later say “I went there, but didn’t really know what to do.”
So, I decided to lay out in clean, plain text the VBS documentaries* that I’d recommend to anyone with 10 minutes or more of free time, giving you a resource to come return to once you’re cursing the site’s cumbersomeness. Each is amazing, but I’ve rated them with the latest scientific approval metrics, the Matadorian Index, based on degree of mind-blowing-ness.
Far Out: Heimo’s Arctic Refuge –
Nzambi –
Shulgins I Have Known and Loved –
Icelandic Skin Disease Mushroom Fashion Fiasco –
Ralph Ludsten’s Andromeda Galaxy –
Vice Guide to Norwegian Prisons –
The Last Dinosaur of the Congo –
The Radioactive Beasts of Chernobyl –
*Note: These are the best of the ones I’ve been able to find–as I’m just now publishing, I’m still discovering new videos (that are years old) through the site. I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing.