BY: ROB HOFFMAN “A little bit of stress is productive, but a lot isn’t worth it.” I remember this advice clearly from one of my professors during exam season. Although I had taken an ‘easier said than done’ mentality back…
This Toronto school is giving the middle finger to political correctness – and for good reason
BY: JESSICA BEUKER Recently we’ve seen a rise in media, public institutions, universities, and just about everyone else in the public sphere contributing to the “coddling of the North American mind.” The article for The Atlantic explains that the rising…
It turns out that selflessness is the easiest way to save you from stress and extend your life
BY: ROB HOFFMAN “A little bit of stress is productive, but a lot isn’t worth it.” I remember this advice clearly from one of my professors during exam season. Although I had taken an ‘easier said than done’ mentality back…
Cultural genocide and addiction ruined this Native community—now skateboarding is saving it
BY: TYLER FYFE Next to a dirt parking lot of beater cars, cradled by a perimeter of sun-bleached trees, members of the Oglala Lakota Sioux glide in circles inside a smooth concrete bowl like a Ghost Dance on skate decks.…
The dirty truth behind growing up in rich kid suburbia
BY: REGAN MCNEILL I actually understand that song “Jesus of Suburbia” by Greenday. I am St. Jimmy pissed as fuck at the small world caving in around me and wondering what else (if anything) this life has to offer. I…
Mormons are throwing their religion to the wind in protest over a new anti-gay policy
BY: SWIKAR OLI Some 1,500 members resigned from the Church of Latter-Day Saints in protest of a new rule that bans children of same-sex parents from joining the Mormon Church until they are 18. The rule states that children of…
If you hate confrontation (or decency) you can pay this store to break up with someone for you
BY: JESSICA BEUKER Breakups are hard. Very rarely does the situation allow for a mature, amicable separation, where both parties walk away unscathed and on the path to friendship. No, more often one person will awkwardly stumble through a 10-minute,…
New home-sized composting unit easily converts waste into fuel for the green city-dweller
BY: JESSICA BEUKER For the city-dweller, composting can be an absolute pain in the ass. For example, I live in a townhouse in downtown Toronto, and I do not have a yard. My building only provides us with a communal…
Watch this man experience the world for the first time after 44 years in prison
BY: JESSICA BEUKER When you’re a baby you experience everything for the very first time. You’re curious and perplexed; each day is a new adventure. Now, imagine having to go through that all over again at the age of 69.…
Income inequality in America has created a vicious cycle of poverty, homelessness and hunger
BY: Jack M. “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” Franklin Roosevelt. First off, this is…
A new film series called Born Wild asks kids to put down the computers and get the hell outside
BY: ROB HOFFMAN Three moms are trying to break technology’s grip on many of our young people, which is especially frightening for a generation that cannot imagine life as anything else. They’ve proposed Born Wild, a film series with a…
This British art student is burning his student loan to make a valuable point about money
BY: REGAN MCNEILL When I first started asking people what they thought of a guy who was going to burn his student loan I mostly expected them to ask why someone would do something like that. Instead they were quick…
Photos of child refugees and where they sleep at night will break your heart into pieces
BY: JESSICA BEUKER Magnus Wennman is an award-winning photojournalist from Stockholm. He recently published a heart-breaking photo series that shows what is happening to the children in the Middle East as they flee from the conflict in Syria. According to…
How Alex Honnold lives out of a solar powered van with a kitchen and storage space (Video)
BY: ROB HOFFMAN In the rock-climbing world, Alex Honnold has rockstar status from countless free-solo ascents of American landmark walls, including Half Dome, El Capitan and the Castleton Tower. This is to say, he’s climbed thousands of metres of vertical…
Cuba might just be the first country in the world to completely eliminate HIV/AIDS
BY: DAVID LAO Ah Cuba, a beach-infested island filled with friendly people and lively faces that is just a stones-skip away from the tip of Florida. As one of the resort-oriented countries resting along the Caribbean belt, the island is…
Young couple lives in a solar-powered off-grid yurt in the mountains of Montana (video)
BY: ROB HOFFMAN In the frozen northern tip of Montana, Sean Busby can be found most days chopping firewood or casting line from his fly-fishing rod deep in the woods and up to his knees in the cold running stream…
Good news: Austria’s largest state just reached 100% renewable energy status
BY: ZOE MELNYK Austria’s lower and largest state recently entered the world’s green energy game by becoming 100 per cent reliant on renewable energy sources. With the Danube River coming down from the country’s large mountain chain, flowing violently through…
Photos from Toronto’s 1950’s design competition unveils the city’s alternate universe.
BY: ERIC ZDANCEWICZ Follow Eric on Instagram In 1956, the space now occupied by Nathan Phillips Square was a parking lot. The city was still in its infancy, having only reached a population of one million four years earlier. The…
Mad honey is the deadly hallucinogen this reclusive tribe risks their life to collect
M. TOMOSKI “A two-day walk from the nearest road, the Gurung village which documentary filmmaker Raphael Treza discovered is almost entirely self-sustaining. Growing their own food and raising sheep for wool this reclusive community of Maoist dissidents live a quiet…
These kids from a slum in Paraguay make beautiful music from recycled garbage
By: Jack M. “The world sends us garbage… we send back music.” Favio Chavez. The small town of Cateura is situated a few miles outside Paraguay’s capital city of Asunción, and for most of its existence, Cateura, with a population…