Today we are sharing an episode from one of our newest series -- A Show About Animals. This season, we tell the strange and wonderful story of the wildly famous Koko the “talking” Gorilla.  In the early 1970s, a grad student named Penny Patterson set out to investigate a big question: is language unique to humans? So she begins an ambitious experiment -- with the help of a young gorilla named Koko. Pretty soon, Penny says Koko is learning sign language. But, of course, that’s not the whole...

AJ (Abdullah Jabbar) grew up in East London hanging out in barber shops. But when he was thirteen, he and his family moved to Syria, right into the middle of a civil war. AJ started vlogging his daily life growing up in a warzone. Now after seven years, AJ has documented a rare side of the Syrian civil war. Source Material is a multimedia project that takes you behind the headlines and straight to the source. It is also a video series. Watch here for the original episode.   See...

Hurricane Maria touched down in Puerto Rico on September 20, 2017. It knocked out power for months and killed nearly 3,000. Years later, the island still bears the storm’s scars. Laura Marrero, a college student in San Juan, vlogged the storm and its aftermath. Source Material is a multimedia project that takes you behind the headlines and straight to the source. It is also a video series. Watch here for the original episode.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Cori Langdon was driving a taxi on the Vegas Strip the night of the deadliest mass shooting in American history. When she heard gunfire, she turned on her video and drove towards the massacre, filming her rescue of victims fleeing the scene. Source Material is a multimedia project that takes you behind the headlines and straight to the source. It is also a video series. Watch on VICE.com for original episodes.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Source Material will be back on Friday, December 18th with a brand new episode. In the meantime, we are presenting an episode of VICE News' The Distance: Coronavirus Dispatches.  During the pandemic Nicole’s politics have changed; she recently helped get a mandatory mask order rescinded in Orange County, California. Listen to more episodes of The Distance here. Source Material is a multimedia project that takes you behind the headlines and straight to the source. It is also a video...

On August 1st, Riley Brown, a teenager in Georgia saw three Facebook and Tik Tok videos from inside the prison near her house. The live streamed videos, taken on inmates’ contraband cell phones, showed an uprising which left several inmates and correctional officers at Ware State Prison wounded. Then the livestreams went dead. We hear about what happened that day through the recordings and the accounts of those who watched it in real time -- an inmate’s wife, a correctional officer, and a...

On September 8, 2020, a fire ignited on Almeda Drive, a quiet street in Ashland, Oregon. Dry air and fierce winds sent the fire ripping up the valley towards the towns of Talent and Phoenix. Thousands were evacuated including Bow DeBey, who lives in Talent. That night, with fires still burning and little information about the destruction, Bow decided to sneak back into town and livestream the Almeda Fire to his friends and neighbors.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On June 14, 2017, an emergency call from London council housing Grenfell Tower reported a small fire on the fourth floor of the building. Hours later, all 24 stories of the building were on fire and 72 residents were stuck inside. While residents called for help from the roof and from their windows, family members and neighbors watched in horror from the street. Many recorded the event.  Nabil Choucair was there. Six members of his family were unable to escape.  As the government...

The death of George Floyd ignited protests and riots across the U.S. In Louisville, Kris Smith joined protestors who took to the streets to say George Floyd’s name, and livestream the public uproar. When the Kentucky National Guard came to enforce a curfew on Louisville, Kris would end up live streaming the shooting death of his friend, David McAtee, at YaYa’s BBQ.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

When a global pandemic forced most of the world into lockdown, Cass and Riley were working onboard cruise ships. Then ports closed to tourists and they were trapped at sea. Cass was stuck in the Caribbean, confined to her room, while Riley’s boat lingered off the coast of Southeast Asia. For Riley, who once dreamed of working on a cruise ship, it was a once in a lifetime experience. For Cass, it was a nightmare. Through their YouTube channels, they both document life in a floating hotel when...

Unnarrated. Unfiltered. World events told through the recordings of those who lived it. From cruise ships trapped at sea during COVID to prison uprisings on Facebook Live to taxis that became ambulances during the Las Vegas massacre, Source Material is an experiment. There is no host and no reporters. You hear directly from the people who lived it and recorded it. Every podcast episode is paired with a short film. Source Material is a multimedia project that takes you behind the headlines and...