Dark Matters: Twisted But True (2011) s02e09 Episode Script
Unabomber, Salvation by Starvation, Get the Lead Out
This is your one and only warning.
Your screen will soon be filled with dramatized stories of scientific research that some people may find controversial or disturbing.
Viewer discretion is advised.
Ask yourself, does progress always come at a price? Are some experiments too risky or just wrong? A little curiosity can't hurt anyone Can it? I'll introduce you to geneticists willing to suffer unimaginable torture rather than use up a gift meant for all humanity.
Then there's the engineer who found a power source for the 20th Century and became the greatest mass poisoner in history.
But firstwhat type of personality are you? Introvert? Extrovert? Intelligent? Intuitive? Probably a complex mixture of all these things.
In the 1960s, one psychologist experimented with pulling personalities apart piece by piece.
But when a personality comes apart, can it be put back together? Will you end up with a different person? Could you accidentally create a murderer? Something's been puzzling me.
Maybe you can help.
What exactly were you doing in a state office at 2:00 in the morning? Henry Murray is a brilliant psychologist.
I was walking through the one door, needed to find the washroom.
The hallways all look the same.
Found another door, tried that.
This is not the interrogation of an enemy spy.
Can't find the washroom anywhere.
It's a test of our own.
A number of U.
S.
spies have failed disastrously.
They'd look good on paper but collapsed when they were out in the field.
As a result, the office of strategic services, the O.
S.
S.
, called in Murray to develop psychological profiles of potential spies.
A psychological profile defined your personality traits -- who you were and how you behaved around other people.
"Agent Gamma lies easily and creatively" Forgive me, but I'm still struggling "but his self-belief is fragile.
" claiming to be lost "when presented with inconsistencies in his account" would ignore an obvious way out.
"he tends to panic and lose heart.
" You were saying? He wants to use testing to discern who's gonna be good in dangerous situations, like spies, for example -- who can show leadership? Who's gonna be emotionally stable even under enormous pressure? So he designs his test to try and discern those characteristics.
After the war, Murray continues to develop personality profiling.
His most successful tool is the thematic apperception test, or TAT, a tool still in use today, some six decades later.
The basic idea is that you show individuals a series of ambiguous images, like this one here, and you ask them to write a story about it.
Now, some people might write a story indicating that this is an adulterous husband.
However, other people could see a man who has come home from a long day of work and he's struggling to support his family.
The key thing here is that individuals are projecting their preoccupations, their experiences onto the image and into the story, thereby revealing a little bit of their personality, giving us a personality profile.
Murray and his colleague, Christiana Morgan, begin a large-scale experiment, using TAT and other personality-probing exercises.
How many have you chosen? These 5, 16 more, total of 21.
All sophomores? Mm-hmm.
Through rounds of early testing, one young man appears to be a predictable conformist in every way.
You've called him "lawful"? Mm-hmm.
His test results are absolutely conventional straight down the line.
Thought it was appropriate.
The man referred to as "lawful" in Murray's journals is a 17-year-old math prodigy.
Henry Murray is using questionnaires, and he's doing what he calls multi-form testing, combining all of this data to try and predict people's personalities.
Lawful may seem like a straight arrow but he will turn out to be something else altogether.
All right, gentlemen You've all done a terrific job so far.
We're gonna ask you to do just one more thing.
We'd like you to write down your view of the world -- your personal philosophy, as it were.
Well, I -- I'm not sure I have a personal philosophy, sir.
Well I bet if you write it down, you'll find you do.
And we're certainly looking forward to reading it.
The students return to the lab a few days later for what they've been told is a discussion of their personal philosophy.
Well, I read your essay.
And let me tell you, I laughed a lot.
It's meant to be funny, right? Instead, they're confronted with an aggressive interrogator, trained by Murray to attack their core beliefs.
Oh, wait.
There was this one bit that was hilarious.
Hang on.
The transcripts of this conversation are locked in a Harvard archive.
But Murray's own scientific papers reveal it was confrontational, demeaning, and abusive.
What do you call that thing you're trying to grow on your face? A beard? Well, it figures, having read your philosophy.
Immature.
A child playing with big ideas.
Look, sir, I just wrote what I think.
I think -- I thought that was the point of the exercise.
Fascinating.
Mm.
Pressure is stripping the personality right back.
What Murray was trying to do was to separate out the parts of the personality -- passivity from extroversion, for example -- in order to study each in isolation.
Now, this is a standard way of working in science, to isolate the components you're particularly interested in so that you can look at them more clearly.
The problem is, it's not gonna work with human beings because your personality components -- your intelligence, your empathy -- they all interact with each other.
They influence each other.
So this is much easier said than done.
Well, tell me this, Mr.
Philosopher.
Do you believe in God? In morality? What is it that you look at yourself in the mirror without feeling disgust? I just don't.
Why are you asking me this? I thought this was meant to be a debate, you know, a discussion of ideas.
We can only guess at the effects of this interrogation on the teenage student.
I don't think Murray thought that what he was doing to these students was going to be harmful to them long-term, but you're taking students, listening to their core beliefs, and then attacking them.
There's really no way to know what the effect is going to be.
Lawful will become America's most notorious terrorist.
Student volunteers in a psychological study must watch films of themselves being insulted.
A child playing with big ideas.
Sir, I just wrote down what I think.
I thought that was the point of the exercise.
What were you thinking at this point? I wasangry.
Angry.
During the interrogation, student heart rate, breathing, and skin resistance were measured.
The boy code-named Lawful recorded higher stress levels under questioning than any other participant.
This was a very intense kind of interrogation in which the individual's thoughts and feelings were directly attacked.
It's hard to imagine that someone could go through this and come out undamaged.
The experiment that started over three years ago is finally over.
Lawful graduates from Harvard, gets a PhD in math, and, at age 25, takes a job teaching at Berkeley.
But he also has violent nightmares.
You are sick.
You are one sick little boy.
In 1969, he quits his job.
He moves to a simpler life in Montana.
He gets more and more reclusive and distances himself from his family and develops this philosophy based on the idea that civilization and technology are incompatible, that technology is ruining individual human freedoms.
He comes to believe that modern science and industrialized society are evil.
The math prodigy, so straitlaced he was known at "Lawful," decides the law won't hold him back any longer.
In 1978, Lawful sends a package to an engineering Professor at an Illinois University.
When a campus police officer opens it it explodes.
The officer is lucky to survive.
It is the first bomb in a reign of terror that lasts 18 years, kills three, injures 23.
His bomb targets are wide-ranging -- science and technology departments, airlines, any institution or group he sees as evil.
Years earlier, psychologist Henry Murray had evaluated his personality at Harvard.
As a young man, he was so conventional that he was code-named "Lawful," but the FBI now calls him "Unabomber.
" His real name -- Ted Kaczynski.
Was killed by a terrorist bomber.
Code-named "Unabom.
" Suspect is a serial killer.
The so-called Unabomber.
Could the three-year study have been what sent him over the edge? Well, we don't have an answer for that.
But we do know that a study like this would never be done again today because of the potential psychological damage it could cause.
into his bombing campaign, Kaczynski releases a manifesto entitled "Industrial society and its future.
" The industrial revolution and its consequences have been a disaster.
They have destabilized society, subjected human beings to indignities, led to widespread psychological suffering.
Kaczynski's brother recognizes the style and content of the manifesto and contacts the FBI.
Ted? Ted, you home? We're from the mining company.
Hey, Ted.
Aah! Aah! Go, go, go! On April 3, 1996, Unabomber's lawless campaign against technology ends.
A city under siege, its people starving, while locked in a laboratory is food -- a priceless collection of edible seeds protected by scientists prepared to sacrifice their own lives to keep their science from being eaten.
Entire species of plants are disappearing.
Humanity's survival is at risk.
That extinct plant could have been a medicine or a drought-resistant food source for future generations.
How far would you go to protect that plant? Would you sacrifice your life, those of your friends, so that people not yet born can live? You need to hurry! Do you have Ethiopia? Yes.
The Caucasus? Yes.
Wait! The Southern Caucasus.
I need to take what's here! The Germans are only 10 miles away! You're taking nothing until we've finished.
We are leaving now.
Then you're going to have to shoot us.
Just hurry.
Botanical scientists Maria Bopkova, Dmitry Ivanov, and Alexander Stchukin are trying to save the world's largest seed bank from destruction.
A seed bank is a collection of seeds that are important to feeding people around the world -- seeds from wheat, from rice, from other cereal grains, seeds that would be important to feeding people in cases of drought, for example, if there is a particular drought-resistant strain.
This was enormously valuable.
Leningrad is now under siege by the Germans.
Food supplies are cut off.
At least the seed collection is safe.
Do you know what I'd like right now? A bowl of steaming-hot borscht.
With slices of hard-boiled egg floating on top.
The scientists are entering the early stages of starvation.
When a person is starving, the mind becomes focused on one thing and one thing only, and that's food -- getting food, eating food, and getting more food.
For a month and a half, the scientists exist on just 1/8 of the calories their bodies need.
Oh.
No.
It can't be.
What are you doing? You can't bring those back! You were supposed to get them out! Haven't you heard? There is no way out.
Then find one! Look around! How are we supposed to protect it?! Look at this building -- no electricity, no coal, freezing, damp! My men are starving, and I have returned those seeds to you untouched.
You should be grateful they came back at all.
Grateful? Those seeds are protected by direct orders from comrade Stalin.
You are not.
Bring them inside.
The city is no longer secure.
People got desperate for food of any sort.
Worryingly for the scientists, rumors began to spread that there was grain inside the center.
The scientists could survive by eating the collection, but irreplaceable seeds that might save millions from famine in the future would be lost forever.
Seed banks are the toolbox that prevent famine.
Modern agriculture is susceptible to the pests and diseases in the area where your crop is growing.
At some point, you will look for an improved resistance.
This is where a seed bank comes in.
They give you the genetic material that plant breeders need to create new varieties.
That's everything.
What are we going to do with it all, Dmitry? You know we can't leave it alone, don't you? I know! I know.
Look, we need to barricade those doors.
Wolf, get everyone left and split yourselves into groups.
Take a portion of the collection each and hide it deep inside the building, yes? The strength needed to shift tons of grain and seeds is being chipped away.
Their bodies eat themselves to survive.
Normally, we get protein from the diet, and if we're not getting it from the diet, the body's gonna pull it from somewhere else, and the largest store of protein in our body is our skeletal muscle.
So as the muscles are broken down, they get smaller, and as the muscles get smaller, they get weak.
I couldn't move another thing.
Look -- it's the guizotia abyssinica.
Remember this arriving from Africa? We were so excited.
You know, I think this is the only example left in the whole world.
Give us food! Give us food! Give us food! Give us food! Give us food! I wonder how long we can keep them out.
If they get in, that will be it.
It'll be extinct.
In a city with the food value of the seeds is tiny.
Their potential future value -- incalculable.
You cannot buy back genes that have been lost.
A lot of material was already only present in Leningrad and lost in the country of origin.
One seed could grow into a plant that would give you the genetic resistance to important diseases.
The collection, at the time, consisted of about 200,000 samples from all around the world.
It was a truly priceless collection.
It can't just be flour.
Sure.
It's potatoes, too.
Are you going to keep it all for yourselves? We're all hungry here.
Dmitry, it's wallpaper paste.
Here.
Sorry.
To protect the millions who might die in some unknown future famine, the scientists are starving to death, surrounded by food.
As the siege of Leningrad continues, the scientists are slowly wasting away.
Do you feelhungry? No.
I was just thinking how strange that is.
Ah, waiter! My friend is full.
Please clear our plates and prepare our carriage.
We shall go dancing.
Something really strange happens during starvation.
You reach a certain point where you stop feeling hungry and you actually start to feel happy.
You stop feeling hungry because the stomach atrophies, and when it shrinks down to a certain size, feelings of hunger disappear.
At that same time, you're really accelerating fat-burning, and the acceleration of fat-burning results in the production of ketones, and ketones cause a feeling of euphoria.
On the streets of Leningrad, the Nazi blockade continues.
With food supplies entirely cut off, the people get increasingly desperate.
No! You can't.
Please.
Please, this is our future.
I had five children.
Now I have three.
This is their future.
Please! You think it is better we should leave it for them? Hmm? Hmm? Aah! Aah! What? What? That! Aah! We're going to lose it all! We can't! We just can't! Let's move everything in there.
We'll take it in turns to keep watch out here.
Come.
Come.
Here.
Andsome extra.
Where did that come from? It's Wolf's.
A shell fragment got him while we were outside collecting rations.
He's dying.
We can't waste it.
Merry Christmas.
Five months into the siege of Leningrad, the scientists' bodies cannot last much longer.
Even though your body is sort of cannibalizing itself, there still isn't enough to be able to support your life, so you have all these problems, like skin lesions, neural degeneration, brain dysfunction, fatigue, weakness, electrolyte imbalance.
All these things would have been experienced by the scientists at some point.
Dmitry, why does my stomach look so full? Have I eaten? No.
It's fluid collecting.
Malnutrition.
Everybody outside looks like that, like they've been gorging.
I could eat anything.
No, Maria.
You couldn't.
I've seen that outside.
Leave her alone! She's my wife! Leave her alone! Aah! You could never go where they have gone already.
As the siege went on, the people of Leningrad were literally tortured by hunger.
They ate the animals in the zoo.
They ate their pets.
They ate any stray dog, cat, or rat they could find.
They even began to eat the dead bodies of other people.
The Leningrad police even created a special unit to deal with cannibalism.
And there were rumors that people literally sawed off their own limbs to eat.
No, no, no, Alexander.
If you won't eat your rations, I will! Dmitry.
Dmitry, Alexander is not there.
Yes, he is.
He is.
He's right Dmitry Alexander is dead.
You remember.
Shh! Shh.
In the end stages of starvation, there's essentially not enough fuel to run the brain, and the critical body systems start to fail.
There's neural degeneration.
The heart starts to fail.
The kidneys start to fail.
The muscles start to fail.
Dmitry.
Dmitry? Dmitry! Nine scientists starve to death surrounded by food.
After the war, the collection they fought to protect is used to replace destroyed by the Nazis.
Their sacrifice saves the lives of millions.
A scientist discovers a miracle solution for the fledgling automobile industry.
He reinvents the motorcar and fuels the American dream.
But this magical compound is poisonous, and it is spreading all over the globe.
turned science into money.
It was bold, ingenious, and produced what the world wanted -- bigger machines, faster cars.
Unfortunately, it also churned out one particular poison in unprecedented amounts, damaging the health and reducing the intelligence of generations to come.
The poison's inventor probably knew the risks.
Then again, it was profitable not to know.
Thomas Midgley Jr.
-- a talented engineer.
He's been asked to solve a problem afflicting one of the great inventions of the 20th Century -- the motorcar.
Car engines have no guts.
They eat gas, and my neighbor's horse can walk up a hill faster than I can drive it.
Sure, but they work.
Everyone wants one.
They're changing everything.
Isn't that good enough? No, it's not.
"Good enough" is not Good enough.
In the early 20th Century, the car of the day was the model T Ford.
It had an engine that had a 2.
9-liter capacity but only developed so, by today's standards, that is a very low-powered engine.
A car engine squeezes a mixture of fuel and air with a piston.
A spark plug ignites the mixture to drive the piston back down and power the car.
The more you squeeze the fuel and air, called the compression ratio, the more power you get.
That's the theory.
But in practice, it's not that simple.
Morning, Bob.
Morning, boss.
Well? Look, I pushed the compression ratio on her like you said, and Well, sure, she gives more power, but But what? Well, listen.
Owee! You sound like you've got loose metal smashing you up from the inside.
Turn it off.
The problem is called knocking.
The fuel/air mixture will get hot when it's compressed, and if it's compressed too much, it'll explode before the spark ignites it, and it'll cause a shock wave that creates a knocking sound that'll really damage the engine.
Shut it off.
Midgley believes he can quell this explosive knocking with a fuel additive.
The search takes him three long years.
Midgley takes his results to the head of Dayton -- Charles "Boss" Kettering, a legend in the auto world -- the man who invented the electric automotive starter.
So, we tried alcohol.
And guess what -- it worked.
No more knocking.
I heard.
So, I had the boys run the numbers.
And turns out, if we grew grain in every field in America and used every bootleg still south of the Mason-Dixon, we still couldn't make enough alcohol for right now, and there are more cars coming.
Well, we know the principle works.
We can add something to fuel and kill knocking.
We just need a magic ingredient better than alcohol.
Midgley dedicates every waking hour to finding this magic ingredient.
In 1921, Midgley makes a breakthrough.
What's all this rumpus? You boys into the benzene again? Knock-knock, boss.
Who's there? T.
E.
L.
Listen to this.
It only takes You're a genius, Midgley.
They set up a new company to market the miracle compound.
we found a solution.
Gentlemen, this fuel will transform America -- better fuel efficiency, more power, less engine damage.
Welcome to the future of motoring.
Midgley's new compound, T.
E.
L.
, is a sensation.
Everyone's talking about it.
Midge.
Hey, boss.
I have to say, you don't look great.
You've been on this treadmill five years now.
Maybe you've been overdoing it.
Midge? Midge.
Within a month of the launch, Midgley falls ill with chronic lung problems and constant chills.
He's suffering from lead poisoning.
It's the T.
E.
L.
-- tetraethyl lead.
Lead is a very poisonous element.
It's a neurotoxin.
When it's ingested, it affects critical enzymes in the body, and it can lead to organ damage of the liver, the kidney, and the brain, ultimately leading to madness and even death.
Midgley recovers but finds he's not the only one feeling the effects.
Two lab workers develop psychosis and later die from lead poisoning.
Frank, put the chair down.
T.
E.
L.
is about to fuel a public-health disaster.
Thomas Midgley's brilliant formula for high-performance gasoline turns out to have fatal side effects.
What is this, Midgley? Frank? Madness and death do not make for good headlines.
Between 1923 and 1925, are poisoned.
New York bans the sale of leaded gas.
New Jersey and Pennsylvania follow suit.
Mr.
Midgley, how do you respond to the reports of the danger of tetraethyl lead? Look, I don't know how many times I got to tell you fellas it's safe.
Maybe I ought to show you.
This is how dangerous t.
E.
L.
is.
If it was as bad as they say, I'd have to be crazy to do this, and you guys don't think I'm crazy, do you? Did Thomas Midgley know that tetraethyl lead was dangerous? Take your picture, boys.
Yes.
But he's deeply invested in the financial success of this product, so he thinks it's gonna make hundreds of millions.
It turns out to make billions.
The Surgeon General convenes a hearing to investigate leaded gas.
Toxicologist Dr.
Alice Hamilton believes its risks reach far beyond the factory workers.
Leaded gasoline will dump on our land each year.
I advise that we ban it nationwide to protect the public from slow, cumulative lead poisoning.
Dr.
Hamilton's speech is very emotive, but we haven't heard too many facts.
Perhaps she can tell us how many cases of lead poisoning have been reported so far.
Tetraethyl lead has only been on the market for two years.
The burden of proof is with the industry -- with you, sir -- to demonstrate its safety.
No.
The responsibility of industry is to synthesize the best anti-knock fuel.
The best fuel will be safe, as well as quiet.
I suggest you synthesize that.
Do you have any suggestions? What fuel would you like to get you home to Harvard, Dr.
Hamilton? Thomas Midgley has a last chance to save his creation.
There's simply no alternative to leaded gasoline.
Other compounds just don't work.
Say no to T.
E.
L.
and you're saying no to progress.
You're saying no to the motorcar, to the free American individual surging onward into his own future.
Midgley and Kettering win the debate.
The Surgeon General finds no grounds for banning leaded gas.
State bans on leaded gasoline are overturned.
By 1936, 90% of fuel sold in the U.
S.
was leaded gasoline.
T.
E.
L.
makes Midgley rich and respected.
But nature shows him no mercy.
In 1940, he's infected with an incurable virus -- polio.
Midgley is not a man to take things lying down.
Hi, Midge.
Hey, boss.
Look, I've got something to show you.
See, the tension in this rope directly compensates for the lack of balance and heft.
Well No one can say you aren't one smart man.
You surely have changed the world.
By 1943, few cars on sale will work without leaded gasoline.
Banning it would bring the U.
S.
to a standstill.
But every day, the amount of lead in the air increases.
Americans are inhaling hundreds of times more of the poison than before the introduction of T.
E.
L.
Children are the most vulnerable.
Lead poisoning is more serious in children.
It actually gets absorbed more rapidly as their bodies are growing.
And lead poisoning in children can cause learning problems, behavioral problems, decreased I.
Q.
, as well as violent tendencies.
In 1944, Midgley is found dead.
Reports suggest he was accidentally strangled by his own contraption.
Not everyone agrees.
It's possible, maybe even likely, that Thomas Midgley committed suicide.
He certainly was depressed.
His product was widely accepted, he was making a lot of money, but it had come at the cost of many people's lives, and we know that this affected him a lot.
By the time leaded fuel is finally banned in 1996, every part of the earth's surface is contaminated with the deadly toxin, affecting millions of adults and children -- the lethal legacy of Thomas Midgley Jr.
Your screen will soon be filled with dramatized stories of scientific research that some people may find controversial or disturbing.
Viewer discretion is advised.
Ask yourself, does progress always come at a price? Are some experiments too risky or just wrong? A little curiosity can't hurt anyone Can it? I'll introduce you to geneticists willing to suffer unimaginable torture rather than use up a gift meant for all humanity.
Then there's the engineer who found a power source for the 20th Century and became the greatest mass poisoner in history.
But firstwhat type of personality are you? Introvert? Extrovert? Intelligent? Intuitive? Probably a complex mixture of all these things.
In the 1960s, one psychologist experimented with pulling personalities apart piece by piece.
But when a personality comes apart, can it be put back together? Will you end up with a different person? Could you accidentally create a murderer? Something's been puzzling me.
Maybe you can help.
What exactly were you doing in a state office at 2:00 in the morning? Henry Murray is a brilliant psychologist.
I was walking through the one door, needed to find the washroom.
The hallways all look the same.
Found another door, tried that.
This is not the interrogation of an enemy spy.
Can't find the washroom anywhere.
It's a test of our own.
A number of U.
S.
spies have failed disastrously.
They'd look good on paper but collapsed when they were out in the field.
As a result, the office of strategic services, the O.
S.
S.
, called in Murray to develop psychological profiles of potential spies.
A psychological profile defined your personality traits -- who you were and how you behaved around other people.
"Agent Gamma lies easily and creatively" Forgive me, but I'm still struggling "but his self-belief is fragile.
" claiming to be lost "when presented with inconsistencies in his account" would ignore an obvious way out.
"he tends to panic and lose heart.
" You were saying? He wants to use testing to discern who's gonna be good in dangerous situations, like spies, for example -- who can show leadership? Who's gonna be emotionally stable even under enormous pressure? So he designs his test to try and discern those characteristics.
After the war, Murray continues to develop personality profiling.
His most successful tool is the thematic apperception test, or TAT, a tool still in use today, some six decades later.
The basic idea is that you show individuals a series of ambiguous images, like this one here, and you ask them to write a story about it.
Now, some people might write a story indicating that this is an adulterous husband.
However, other people could see a man who has come home from a long day of work and he's struggling to support his family.
The key thing here is that individuals are projecting their preoccupations, their experiences onto the image and into the story, thereby revealing a little bit of their personality, giving us a personality profile.
Murray and his colleague, Christiana Morgan, begin a large-scale experiment, using TAT and other personality-probing exercises.
How many have you chosen? These 5, 16 more, total of 21.
All sophomores? Mm-hmm.
Through rounds of early testing, one young man appears to be a predictable conformist in every way.
You've called him "lawful"? Mm-hmm.
His test results are absolutely conventional straight down the line.
Thought it was appropriate.
The man referred to as "lawful" in Murray's journals is a 17-year-old math prodigy.
Henry Murray is using questionnaires, and he's doing what he calls multi-form testing, combining all of this data to try and predict people's personalities.
Lawful may seem like a straight arrow but he will turn out to be something else altogether.
All right, gentlemen You've all done a terrific job so far.
We're gonna ask you to do just one more thing.
We'd like you to write down your view of the world -- your personal philosophy, as it were.
Well, I -- I'm not sure I have a personal philosophy, sir.
Well I bet if you write it down, you'll find you do.
And we're certainly looking forward to reading it.
The students return to the lab a few days later for what they've been told is a discussion of their personal philosophy.
Well, I read your essay.
And let me tell you, I laughed a lot.
It's meant to be funny, right? Instead, they're confronted with an aggressive interrogator, trained by Murray to attack their core beliefs.
Oh, wait.
There was this one bit that was hilarious.
Hang on.
The transcripts of this conversation are locked in a Harvard archive.
But Murray's own scientific papers reveal it was confrontational, demeaning, and abusive.
What do you call that thing you're trying to grow on your face? A beard? Well, it figures, having read your philosophy.
Immature.
A child playing with big ideas.
Look, sir, I just wrote what I think.
I think -- I thought that was the point of the exercise.
Fascinating.
Mm.
Pressure is stripping the personality right back.
What Murray was trying to do was to separate out the parts of the personality -- passivity from extroversion, for example -- in order to study each in isolation.
Now, this is a standard way of working in science, to isolate the components you're particularly interested in so that you can look at them more clearly.
The problem is, it's not gonna work with human beings because your personality components -- your intelligence, your empathy -- they all interact with each other.
They influence each other.
So this is much easier said than done.
Well, tell me this, Mr.
Philosopher.
Do you believe in God? In morality? What is it that you look at yourself in the mirror without feeling disgust? I just don't.
Why are you asking me this? I thought this was meant to be a debate, you know, a discussion of ideas.
We can only guess at the effects of this interrogation on the teenage student.
I don't think Murray thought that what he was doing to these students was going to be harmful to them long-term, but you're taking students, listening to their core beliefs, and then attacking them.
There's really no way to know what the effect is going to be.
Lawful will become America's most notorious terrorist.
Student volunteers in a psychological study must watch films of themselves being insulted.
A child playing with big ideas.
Sir, I just wrote down what I think.
I thought that was the point of the exercise.
What were you thinking at this point? I wasangry.
Angry.
During the interrogation, student heart rate, breathing, and skin resistance were measured.
The boy code-named Lawful recorded higher stress levels under questioning than any other participant.
This was a very intense kind of interrogation in which the individual's thoughts and feelings were directly attacked.
It's hard to imagine that someone could go through this and come out undamaged.
The experiment that started over three years ago is finally over.
Lawful graduates from Harvard, gets a PhD in math, and, at age 25, takes a job teaching at Berkeley.
But he also has violent nightmares.
You are sick.
You are one sick little boy.
In 1969, he quits his job.
He moves to a simpler life in Montana.
He gets more and more reclusive and distances himself from his family and develops this philosophy based on the idea that civilization and technology are incompatible, that technology is ruining individual human freedoms.
He comes to believe that modern science and industrialized society are evil.
The math prodigy, so straitlaced he was known at "Lawful," decides the law won't hold him back any longer.
In 1978, Lawful sends a package to an engineering Professor at an Illinois University.
When a campus police officer opens it it explodes.
The officer is lucky to survive.
It is the first bomb in a reign of terror that lasts 18 years, kills three, injures 23.
His bomb targets are wide-ranging -- science and technology departments, airlines, any institution or group he sees as evil.
Years earlier, psychologist Henry Murray had evaluated his personality at Harvard.
As a young man, he was so conventional that he was code-named "Lawful," but the FBI now calls him "Unabomber.
" His real name -- Ted Kaczynski.
Was killed by a terrorist bomber.
Code-named "Unabom.
" Suspect is a serial killer.
The so-called Unabomber.
Could the three-year study have been what sent him over the edge? Well, we don't have an answer for that.
But we do know that a study like this would never be done again today because of the potential psychological damage it could cause.
into his bombing campaign, Kaczynski releases a manifesto entitled "Industrial society and its future.
" The industrial revolution and its consequences have been a disaster.
They have destabilized society, subjected human beings to indignities, led to widespread psychological suffering.
Kaczynski's brother recognizes the style and content of the manifesto and contacts the FBI.
Ted? Ted, you home? We're from the mining company.
Hey, Ted.
Aah! Aah! Go, go, go! On April 3, 1996, Unabomber's lawless campaign against technology ends.
A city under siege, its people starving, while locked in a laboratory is food -- a priceless collection of edible seeds protected by scientists prepared to sacrifice their own lives to keep their science from being eaten.
Entire species of plants are disappearing.
Humanity's survival is at risk.
That extinct plant could have been a medicine or a drought-resistant food source for future generations.
How far would you go to protect that plant? Would you sacrifice your life, those of your friends, so that people not yet born can live? You need to hurry! Do you have Ethiopia? Yes.
The Caucasus? Yes.
Wait! The Southern Caucasus.
I need to take what's here! The Germans are only 10 miles away! You're taking nothing until we've finished.
We are leaving now.
Then you're going to have to shoot us.
Just hurry.
Botanical scientists Maria Bopkova, Dmitry Ivanov, and Alexander Stchukin are trying to save the world's largest seed bank from destruction.
A seed bank is a collection of seeds that are important to feeding people around the world -- seeds from wheat, from rice, from other cereal grains, seeds that would be important to feeding people in cases of drought, for example, if there is a particular drought-resistant strain.
This was enormously valuable.
Leningrad is now under siege by the Germans.
Food supplies are cut off.
At least the seed collection is safe.
Do you know what I'd like right now? A bowl of steaming-hot borscht.
With slices of hard-boiled egg floating on top.
The scientists are entering the early stages of starvation.
When a person is starving, the mind becomes focused on one thing and one thing only, and that's food -- getting food, eating food, and getting more food.
For a month and a half, the scientists exist on just 1/8 of the calories their bodies need.
Oh.
No.
It can't be.
What are you doing? You can't bring those back! You were supposed to get them out! Haven't you heard? There is no way out.
Then find one! Look around! How are we supposed to protect it?! Look at this building -- no electricity, no coal, freezing, damp! My men are starving, and I have returned those seeds to you untouched.
You should be grateful they came back at all.
Grateful? Those seeds are protected by direct orders from comrade Stalin.
You are not.
Bring them inside.
The city is no longer secure.
People got desperate for food of any sort.
Worryingly for the scientists, rumors began to spread that there was grain inside the center.
The scientists could survive by eating the collection, but irreplaceable seeds that might save millions from famine in the future would be lost forever.
Seed banks are the toolbox that prevent famine.
Modern agriculture is susceptible to the pests and diseases in the area where your crop is growing.
At some point, you will look for an improved resistance.
This is where a seed bank comes in.
They give you the genetic material that plant breeders need to create new varieties.
That's everything.
What are we going to do with it all, Dmitry? You know we can't leave it alone, don't you? I know! I know.
Look, we need to barricade those doors.
Wolf, get everyone left and split yourselves into groups.
Take a portion of the collection each and hide it deep inside the building, yes? The strength needed to shift tons of grain and seeds is being chipped away.
Their bodies eat themselves to survive.
Normally, we get protein from the diet, and if we're not getting it from the diet, the body's gonna pull it from somewhere else, and the largest store of protein in our body is our skeletal muscle.
So as the muscles are broken down, they get smaller, and as the muscles get smaller, they get weak.
I couldn't move another thing.
Look -- it's the guizotia abyssinica.
Remember this arriving from Africa? We were so excited.
You know, I think this is the only example left in the whole world.
Give us food! Give us food! Give us food! Give us food! Give us food! I wonder how long we can keep them out.
If they get in, that will be it.
It'll be extinct.
In a city with the food value of the seeds is tiny.
Their potential future value -- incalculable.
You cannot buy back genes that have been lost.
A lot of material was already only present in Leningrad and lost in the country of origin.
One seed could grow into a plant that would give you the genetic resistance to important diseases.
The collection, at the time, consisted of about 200,000 samples from all around the world.
It was a truly priceless collection.
It can't just be flour.
Sure.
It's potatoes, too.
Are you going to keep it all for yourselves? We're all hungry here.
Dmitry, it's wallpaper paste.
Here.
Sorry.
To protect the millions who might die in some unknown future famine, the scientists are starving to death, surrounded by food.
As the siege of Leningrad continues, the scientists are slowly wasting away.
Do you feelhungry? No.
I was just thinking how strange that is.
Ah, waiter! My friend is full.
Please clear our plates and prepare our carriage.
We shall go dancing.
Something really strange happens during starvation.
You reach a certain point where you stop feeling hungry and you actually start to feel happy.
You stop feeling hungry because the stomach atrophies, and when it shrinks down to a certain size, feelings of hunger disappear.
At that same time, you're really accelerating fat-burning, and the acceleration of fat-burning results in the production of ketones, and ketones cause a feeling of euphoria.
On the streets of Leningrad, the Nazi blockade continues.
With food supplies entirely cut off, the people get increasingly desperate.
No! You can't.
Please.
Please, this is our future.
I had five children.
Now I have three.
This is their future.
Please! You think it is better we should leave it for them? Hmm? Hmm? Aah! Aah! What? What? That! Aah! We're going to lose it all! We can't! We just can't! Let's move everything in there.
We'll take it in turns to keep watch out here.
Come.
Come.
Here.
Andsome extra.
Where did that come from? It's Wolf's.
A shell fragment got him while we were outside collecting rations.
He's dying.
We can't waste it.
Merry Christmas.
Five months into the siege of Leningrad, the scientists' bodies cannot last much longer.
Even though your body is sort of cannibalizing itself, there still isn't enough to be able to support your life, so you have all these problems, like skin lesions, neural degeneration, brain dysfunction, fatigue, weakness, electrolyte imbalance.
All these things would have been experienced by the scientists at some point.
Dmitry, why does my stomach look so full? Have I eaten? No.
It's fluid collecting.
Malnutrition.
Everybody outside looks like that, like they've been gorging.
I could eat anything.
No, Maria.
You couldn't.
I've seen that outside.
Leave her alone! She's my wife! Leave her alone! Aah! You could never go where they have gone already.
As the siege went on, the people of Leningrad were literally tortured by hunger.
They ate the animals in the zoo.
They ate their pets.
They ate any stray dog, cat, or rat they could find.
They even began to eat the dead bodies of other people.
The Leningrad police even created a special unit to deal with cannibalism.
And there were rumors that people literally sawed off their own limbs to eat.
No, no, no, Alexander.
If you won't eat your rations, I will! Dmitry.
Dmitry, Alexander is not there.
Yes, he is.
He is.
He's right Dmitry Alexander is dead.
You remember.
Shh! Shh.
In the end stages of starvation, there's essentially not enough fuel to run the brain, and the critical body systems start to fail.
There's neural degeneration.
The heart starts to fail.
The kidneys start to fail.
The muscles start to fail.
Dmitry.
Dmitry? Dmitry! Nine scientists starve to death surrounded by food.
After the war, the collection they fought to protect is used to replace destroyed by the Nazis.
Their sacrifice saves the lives of millions.
A scientist discovers a miracle solution for the fledgling automobile industry.
He reinvents the motorcar and fuels the American dream.
But this magical compound is poisonous, and it is spreading all over the globe.
turned science into money.
It was bold, ingenious, and produced what the world wanted -- bigger machines, faster cars.
Unfortunately, it also churned out one particular poison in unprecedented amounts, damaging the health and reducing the intelligence of generations to come.
The poison's inventor probably knew the risks.
Then again, it was profitable not to know.
Thomas Midgley Jr.
-- a talented engineer.
He's been asked to solve a problem afflicting one of the great inventions of the 20th Century -- the motorcar.
Car engines have no guts.
They eat gas, and my neighbor's horse can walk up a hill faster than I can drive it.
Sure, but they work.
Everyone wants one.
They're changing everything.
Isn't that good enough? No, it's not.
"Good enough" is not Good enough.
In the early 20th Century, the car of the day was the model T Ford.
It had an engine that had a 2.
9-liter capacity but only developed so, by today's standards, that is a very low-powered engine.
A car engine squeezes a mixture of fuel and air with a piston.
A spark plug ignites the mixture to drive the piston back down and power the car.
The more you squeeze the fuel and air, called the compression ratio, the more power you get.
That's the theory.
But in practice, it's not that simple.
Morning, Bob.
Morning, boss.
Well? Look, I pushed the compression ratio on her like you said, and Well, sure, she gives more power, but But what? Well, listen.
Owee! You sound like you've got loose metal smashing you up from the inside.
Turn it off.
The problem is called knocking.
The fuel/air mixture will get hot when it's compressed, and if it's compressed too much, it'll explode before the spark ignites it, and it'll cause a shock wave that creates a knocking sound that'll really damage the engine.
Shut it off.
Midgley believes he can quell this explosive knocking with a fuel additive.
The search takes him three long years.
Midgley takes his results to the head of Dayton -- Charles "Boss" Kettering, a legend in the auto world -- the man who invented the electric automotive starter.
So, we tried alcohol.
And guess what -- it worked.
No more knocking.
I heard.
So, I had the boys run the numbers.
And turns out, if we grew grain in every field in America and used every bootleg still south of the Mason-Dixon, we still couldn't make enough alcohol for right now, and there are more cars coming.
Well, we know the principle works.
We can add something to fuel and kill knocking.
We just need a magic ingredient better than alcohol.
Midgley dedicates every waking hour to finding this magic ingredient.
In 1921, Midgley makes a breakthrough.
What's all this rumpus? You boys into the benzene again? Knock-knock, boss.
Who's there? T.
E.
L.
Listen to this.
It only takes You're a genius, Midgley.
They set up a new company to market the miracle compound.
we found a solution.
Gentlemen, this fuel will transform America -- better fuel efficiency, more power, less engine damage.
Welcome to the future of motoring.
Midgley's new compound, T.
E.
L.
, is a sensation.
Everyone's talking about it.
Midge.
Hey, boss.
I have to say, you don't look great.
You've been on this treadmill five years now.
Maybe you've been overdoing it.
Midge? Midge.
Within a month of the launch, Midgley falls ill with chronic lung problems and constant chills.
He's suffering from lead poisoning.
It's the T.
E.
L.
-- tetraethyl lead.
Lead is a very poisonous element.
It's a neurotoxin.
When it's ingested, it affects critical enzymes in the body, and it can lead to organ damage of the liver, the kidney, and the brain, ultimately leading to madness and even death.
Midgley recovers but finds he's not the only one feeling the effects.
Two lab workers develop psychosis and later die from lead poisoning.
Frank, put the chair down.
T.
E.
L.
is about to fuel a public-health disaster.
Thomas Midgley's brilliant formula for high-performance gasoline turns out to have fatal side effects.
What is this, Midgley? Frank? Madness and death do not make for good headlines.
Between 1923 and 1925, are poisoned.
New York bans the sale of leaded gas.
New Jersey and Pennsylvania follow suit.
Mr.
Midgley, how do you respond to the reports of the danger of tetraethyl lead? Look, I don't know how many times I got to tell you fellas it's safe.
Maybe I ought to show you.
This is how dangerous t.
E.
L.
is.
If it was as bad as they say, I'd have to be crazy to do this, and you guys don't think I'm crazy, do you? Did Thomas Midgley know that tetraethyl lead was dangerous? Take your picture, boys.
Yes.
But he's deeply invested in the financial success of this product, so he thinks it's gonna make hundreds of millions.
It turns out to make billions.
The Surgeon General convenes a hearing to investigate leaded gas.
Toxicologist Dr.
Alice Hamilton believes its risks reach far beyond the factory workers.
Leaded gasoline will dump on our land each year.
I advise that we ban it nationwide to protect the public from slow, cumulative lead poisoning.
Dr.
Hamilton's speech is very emotive, but we haven't heard too many facts.
Perhaps she can tell us how many cases of lead poisoning have been reported so far.
Tetraethyl lead has only been on the market for two years.
The burden of proof is with the industry -- with you, sir -- to demonstrate its safety.
No.
The responsibility of industry is to synthesize the best anti-knock fuel.
The best fuel will be safe, as well as quiet.
I suggest you synthesize that.
Do you have any suggestions? What fuel would you like to get you home to Harvard, Dr.
Hamilton? Thomas Midgley has a last chance to save his creation.
There's simply no alternative to leaded gasoline.
Other compounds just don't work.
Say no to T.
E.
L.
and you're saying no to progress.
You're saying no to the motorcar, to the free American individual surging onward into his own future.
Midgley and Kettering win the debate.
The Surgeon General finds no grounds for banning leaded gas.
State bans on leaded gasoline are overturned.
By 1936, 90% of fuel sold in the U.
S.
was leaded gasoline.
T.
E.
L.
makes Midgley rich and respected.
But nature shows him no mercy.
In 1940, he's infected with an incurable virus -- polio.
Midgley is not a man to take things lying down.
Hi, Midge.
Hey, boss.
Look, I've got something to show you.
See, the tension in this rope directly compensates for the lack of balance and heft.
Well No one can say you aren't one smart man.
You surely have changed the world.
By 1943, few cars on sale will work without leaded gasoline.
Banning it would bring the U.
S.
to a standstill.
But every day, the amount of lead in the air increases.
Americans are inhaling hundreds of times more of the poison than before the introduction of T.
E.
L.
Children are the most vulnerable.
Lead poisoning is more serious in children.
It actually gets absorbed more rapidly as their bodies are growing.
And lead poisoning in children can cause learning problems, behavioral problems, decreased I.
Q.
, as well as violent tendencies.
In 1944, Midgley is found dead.
Reports suggest he was accidentally strangled by his own contraption.
Not everyone agrees.
It's possible, maybe even likely, that Thomas Midgley committed suicide.
He certainly was depressed.
His product was widely accepted, he was making a lot of money, but it had come at the cost of many people's lives, and we know that this affected him a lot.
By the time leaded fuel is finally banned in 1996, every part of the earth's surface is contaminated with the deadly toxin, affecting millions of adults and children -- the lethal legacy of Thomas Midgley Jr.