All language subtitles for 1x08 - Strange Experiments_track3_[eng]

(rhythmic music)

- Imagine a man who experiments

by sticking monkey heads
somewhere they don't belong.

- He starts thinking,
can the brain still live

outside of the body?

If so, for how long?

(finger snap)

- Or a CIA plan to
use a cat as a spy.

- The CIA pumps $20 million into
training and preparing cats.

And they're looking for
that perfect cat agent.

- Or how about an
experiment that tests

if the average person
could be induced to hurt

or kill total strangers?

(machine buzzing)

- [Teacher] Wrong.

(Learner screaming)

- [Learner] You have no
right to keep me here!

Let me out!

- These are the
experiments so surprising,

they are truly unbelievable.

(suspenseful music)

Humans have been searching

for the key to eternal
youth for eons.

And that quest has led to
some extremely odd experiments

trying to hold back time.

Perhaps the strangest
is one attempted

by a Russian named
Serge a century ago.

(rhythmic music)

- Serge Voronoff is a
surgeon of Russian descent

living in Paris.

And he sets his
sights on the question

of whether there
is a way to slow

or reverse the aging process.

- As a young medical
professional,

he seeks out guidance from

a famous doctor of the time

known as Alexis Carrel.

- Working under Carrel,

Serge learns a variety
of techniques,

including transplant,

which is a very new
surgical science

in the early 20th century.

And immediately, Serge begins
to ponder possibilities.

- [Dan] Serge also uncovers
something surprising

when he studies
Egyptian eunuchs,

men who've been castrated.

- He realizes that
eunuchs, after castration,

are beset with a host
of medical maladies,

a stooping gait,
respiratory problems,

skin problems,
cognitive problems.

- It almost seems like

they're aging faster

than non-castrated males.

- [Dan] This gives Serge
a crazy aha moment.

Is it possible he has just
found the fountain of youth?

- So Serge recognizes that

if a lack of testicles

makes you age more quickly,

perhaps if you have
new, younger testicles,

you'd age more slowly

or maybe even turn back
the clock on aging.

- [Dan] Hoping to unlock
the key to virility,

Serge starts to
experiment with animals.

- He takes animals that are
older and he invigorates them

with the young testicles
of other animals.

And it turns out
that it's working.

Their coat is glossy and shiny.

They have energy again.

They're running around.

They seem more sexually
vigorous as well.

- He knows that
there has to be a way

of helping humans experience
this same rejuvenation.

The problem is human testicles

really aren't readily available.

- He makes his
next natural leap.

And his wish is to
essentially transplant

a simian or monkey testicles
onto a human subject.

(monkeys howling)

- [Dan] However, realizing
no man in his right mind

will consider a full testicle
transplant with a monkey,

Serge needs a workaround.

- He intends to take
slivers of tissue

from the testicles of monkeys,

just a few millimeters in size,

and interpose these
slivers onto the testicles

of human subjects.

- [Dan] Serge is certain
his experiment will work.

He just needs to find a subject.

And in 1920, he finally finds
his man, his older brother.

And the results?

They surprise even Serge.

- His brother suddenly
has this full ruddy face,

is stronger,

is really seeming much
younger than his age.

- So Serge moves to
monetize his procedure.

And so, he starts approaching

all these rich men
and showing them,

here, here is the proof.

I have before and
after photographs.

Serge just found the little
blue pills of the 1920s.

- [Dan] Wealthy tycoons
from around the world

sign up for the surgery,

and monkey glands for

millionaires is born.

(eerie music)

- Now he has a
huge customer base,

and he needs a
supply of testicles.

He buys a huge estate and park

and names it Voronoff Castle,
where he can raise monkeys,

specially produced for his
monkey gland surgeries.

- [Dan] Two decades and
2,000 surgeries later,

Serge considers his testicle
procedure a success.

Has he really unlocked
the secret to youth?

- Men believed they
were gaining vitality

so they felt like they were
more vital and more vigorous,

but it's a placebo effect.

And eventually,
people figure out

that his procedure
does not work.

Serge's gig is up.

No one's buying it.

He's a laughingstock.

And he falls into obscurity.

- Meanwhile, another
doctor takes Serge's work

to the next level, in
an unlikely setting,

death row at one of California's
most notorious prisons.

- In 1928, Buck
Kelly, a 23-year-old,

is executed at San Quentin.

They take him to the
gallows, he's hanged.

After that's done,
they take down his body

and hand it over to the

resident medical expert,

Leo Stanley.

He performs the autopsy
as one would expect

and then does one
other little thing.

He removes Buck's testicles.

- [Dan] Just who is Leo Stanley

and why is he collecting
testicles from a dead inmate?

- Leo Stanley is a guy
who goes to college

originally at Stanford,
but then he drops out.

And later, he goes
to Cooper College

and actually gets
a medical degree.

And he is looking forward
to being a doctor.

- He thinks he's
gonna live a life

of just a town
physician somewhere,

and then an opening
appears at San Quentin.

And he applies for
it, and he gets it.

- [Dan] But Stanley's not
just there to treat criminals.

He's also determined to
curb their bad behavior.

And he has some odd
ideas on how to do it.

- He feels that there
is a direct link

between the age of a
man's glands and gonads

and his tendency to commit
horrible and heinous crimes.

He writes a book called
"Men at their Worst."

And he even says things
like pedophilia only occurs

when outworn glands
start looking for relief

in the worst places.

(ominous music)

(gates clanging)

- Just like Serge, Leo
comes up with the idea

of doing testicle transplants.

But unlike Serge, he goes
straight human to human.

(eerie music)

But Leo doesn't use slivers,

he uses entire whole testicles.

(eerie music)

- Stanley believes that
his surgical process

will actually be a floor
of social rehabilitation,

that these prisoners who had

been stuck in San Quentin,

once they had a new
set of testicles,

could go out, be productive
members of society,

and would not return
to San Quentin.

- Ranging from voluntary
to involuntary,

Dr. Stanley carries
out this experiment

at least a thousand times,

taking them off of
freshly executed prisoners

and putting them onto those
who are still alive and well.

- [Dan] Eventually, the
Mad Testicle Transplanter

of San Quentin

runs into a bit of
a supply problem.

- He doesn't have enough
source of young male testicles.

They're not executing
a young inmate

every day or every week even.

So what does he do?

He turns to animals.

Goats, deer, bears,

water buffalo, you name it.

If it has balls, he's
putting it in an old dude.

- [Dan] When Stanley's patients
don't respond as he hoped,

he comes up with a
different approach.

- He does something
incredibly bizarre

and, you know, kind of gross.

He takes a bunch of testicles,

and he blends them up
into kind of a paste,

and he injects
this testicle paste

into the abdomen of prisoners.

(eerie music)

And, no! No!

(eerie music)

- Leo's testicle mash
paste injection idea

doesn't work either, so he
comes up with a new idea.

Okay, if I can't
restore your vitality,

I can at least
restore your looks.

- And so, he starts
offering plastic surgeries

to the inmates so they
can look more handsome,

so that when they get out,
they could maybe find a wife,

or get a job, or
be somewhat normal.

This guy, his chain of
reasoning is not exactly strong.

Why he wasn't fired almost
immediately is a mystery.

(eerie music)

(gentle music)

- [Dan] After 40 years, Dr.
Leo Stanley's experiments

finally come to an end.

- He's kind of your
real Dr. Frankenstein.

He sees inmates as things
that he can experiment on,

that he can play with.

He's carving up human beings.

He's carving up human beings.

And he does this 10,000
times across his career.

- Can the average
person be talked

into killing a total stranger?

In 1961, a psychologist
named Stanley Milgram

goes to unbelievable
lengths to find out.

(rhythmic music)

- Dr. Stanley Milgram
is born in the 1930s

and grows up in New York
City in a Jewish household,

with the specter of

Nazis lingering over him

and really the specter
of the Holocaust.

And he devotes his career

to trying to figure
out this problem.

What makes people
do awful things?

(rhythmic music)

- Milgram puts an ad
in the local newspaper

looking for subjects,
specifically men.

He offers subjects
$4 a pop to come in

and participate
in an experiment.

- Alright.

Sit right here.

- People answer the ad,

and they're paired
with somebody else.

Each is assigned a role,
teacher and learner.

- Could you open
those and tell me

which of you is which please?

- Teacher.

- Learner.

- [Dan] With roles assigned,

the unconventional
experiment begins.

- The learner has to memorize
words, a pair of words.

And throughout the experiment,

the teacher will
give the first word,

and the learner is supposed
to reply with the second word.

- Cat, dog, high, low.

It's a very simple
word association list.

- The learner is
sat down in a chair

that looks a lot like
an electric chair.

- The teacher is then
brought into another room

alone with just Dr. Milgram

and shown an
electrical apparatus.

- [Scientist] When you
press one of the switches

all the way down, the
learner gets a shock.

- [Dan] So just how
far will someone go

to obey an authority figure?

- Attention,
learner, your teacher

is about to begin the test.

Try and remember the word pairs.

Ready?

Begin.

- Blue girl.

- Teacher ask the
learner a question.

(machine buzzing)

- [Teacher] Incorrect.

- Learner gets it wrong.

Milgram's in the room and
says shock the person.

(machine buzzing)

- Well, now, you'll get
a shock of 75 volts.

(machine buzzing)

(man grunts)

Soft air.

- With each successive
wrong answer,

the voltage level is increased,

from 15 volts initially all
the way up to 450 volts.

- [Dan] To put it
in perspective,

450 volts is enough to power

two single family
homes in North America.

- As the teacher
is administering

increasingly severe shocks,

(zap)
(Learner grunts)

he hears via speaker the
learner in the next room

emitting screams.

(machine buzzing)

(Learner shrieking)

- The teachers are
sweating it out.

They are feeling terrible.

Some of them dig their
fingernails into their palms.

They're really, really upset.

- They are inflicting injury
on another human being,

but Dr. Milgram is
there, assuring them

that, you know, it's okay,
this is part of the experiment.

This conflict is tremendous.

- [Learner] Let me out of here.

You have no right
to keep me here.

Let me out.

- [Dan] But there's a twist.

- It's all fake.

It's all a setup.

What the teacher doesn't know

is that the learner is an
actor hired by Dr. Milgram.

There are no electric shocks.

The learner is simply
crying out in pain,

starting with like,

ow, that hurts,

but going all the
way up to sobbing

and saying, I don't feel right,

something's wrong
with my heart.

Please stop, you have to stop.

(button buzzing)

(learner shrieking)

- Milgram does the
experiment up to 40 times.

Some of the teachers
clearly hate it,

but some of them
actually enjoy it.

- 150 volts.

(machine buzzing)

(learner grunts)

- Next one.
- [Learner] (indistinct),

I refuse to answer.

- You're gonna keep getting
a shock if you don't answer.

(machine buzzing)

(learner screams)

- Over half of the participants
in the teacher role

make it up to the
450 volt level,

which is effectively
a fatal shock.

- 450 volts.

(button buzzing)

- What Milgram captures

is that ordinary, everyday,
law-abiding people

can be induced to
acts of brutality

just because they're
obeying authority.

- [Scientist] But why
didn't you just stop?

- He wouldn't let me.

I wanted to stop.

I kept insisting to
stop, but he says no.

- [Scientist] We'll have to
discontinue the experiment.

- As the Cold War
heats up in the 60s,

experiments get even stranger.

From poisonous umbrellas

to a plan to attack
Fidel Castro's beard,

nothing is off
limits, not even cats.

(cat meowing)

- Cats are notoriously
difficult to train.

They just kind of wanna
do their own thing,

but they're also very curious.

And so, in the 1960s,
the CIA hatches a plan

to train cats to become spies.

(eerie music)

- The idea behind
Project Acoustic Kitty

is that cats are
pretty innocuous.

And they can roam
around lots of places

without concerning anybody.

So if the cats can get
themselves close enough

to private conversations,

they might be able to overhear
important information.

- Now, the cat's not gonna
just go into a CIA debrief

and say the subject said this.

The cat's not gonna do that.

So the cat is turned into
a living listening device.

- [Dan] Fighting communism
is the top priority

for US intelligence at the time,

so creating a spy cat that
can take down the Iron Curtain

sounds reasonable.

- The CIA pumps $20
million into training

and preparing cats that
can be these spies.

And as they do this,
they're vetting.

They're looking for
that perfect cat agent.

- The CIA ultimately determines

that one particular kitty cat

is ready to conduct
its first operation.

(eerie music)

- In order to make this work,

the CIA has to figure out a way

to implant this listening
device into the cat.

And what they end up
having to do is do surgery.

They put the listening
device in the ear,

and put a transmitter at the
base of the animal's skull,

and then run the antenna down
an incision on the cat's back

so that it's hidden by the fur.

Not really fun for
the cat, I'm sure.

- [Dan] With the cat
wired up and trained,

it's time for this secret
agent's first assignment.

- The goal is for
the cat to eavesdrop

on two men sitting
on a park bench

outside of the Soviet embassy.

So the CIA agents drive up with
the cat in their white van.

- The van pulls up across
the street from the park

where the two men are sitting.

- It's time to deploy
the acoustic kitty.

They get the cat ready.

They issue the cat the command.

It knows where to go.

They open the van.

The cat jumps out.

- And it immediately
gets hit by a taxi.

(wheels screeching)

$20 million out the window.

With all of this research,
they never think,

hey, you know what,
we should pull over

on the same side of the street

that the cat has to get out.

- [Dan] And just what does
the CIA after-action report

identify as the fatal flaw in
an otherwise excellent plan?

- Quote, cats are not trainable

and they don't have the same
deep-seated desire to please

a human master as a dog does.

a human master as a dog does.

- We spent $20 million to
learn that cats don't care.

Great use of money.

- We spent $20 million to
two heads are better than one.g

In 1954, a Soviet scientist
and organ transplant pioneer

sets out to prove
that, literally.

(eerie music)

- It is the height of the
Cold War, and a Soviet surgeon

named Vladimir Demikhov
begins to probe questions

of how far you can go
with organ transplants.

- Vladimir Demikhov is

actually one of the pioneers

of transplant surgery.

He's transplanting hearts

and lungs between dogs.

And he's doing it
as a good doctor,

doing really
meaningful, good work.

(rhythmic music)

- [Dan] Vladimir
Demikhov's next goal?

A full head transplant on a dog.

But since he's never
done it before,

he needs to experiment
a little first.

- Demikhov and his team
essentially do an experiment

of creating a two-headed dog.

- He wants to be able to see

if he is able to take one head

and graft that onto another

and if he can keep that alive.

- He arranges to
experiment with this

on two dogs, one smaller
9-year-old dog named Shavka

and one stray larger German
Shepherd named Brodyaga.

- Vladimir detaches
Shavka's head,

and he attaches Shavka's head

to Brodyaga's vertebrae.

- [Dan] Three and
a half hours later,

the two-headed dog
experiment is complete.

But does it actually work?

- It sounds awful.

She's just a head
attached to this body,

but she eats, she
drinks, she barks.

- [Dan] Vladimir's two-headed
dog only lives for four days,

but that doesn't stop
him from trying again,

and again.

- He does these exact kinds
of experiments 23 more times

between 1954 and 1959.

And even though none of
them are actually a success,

he firmly believes that
he's proving to the world

that head transplants
are possible.

- He is not seen
as a hero for this.

In fact, it swings hard
in the opposite direction.

He is seen as a charlatan,

and it basically
ruins his career.

- While Vladimir's
two-headed dog experiment

eventually gets shut down,

it inspires another
surgeon in Cleveland, Ohio,

Dr. Robert White.

- When he looks at what's
happening in the Soviet Union,

with them creating
a two-headed dog,

he starts thinking, if
the brain is still alive

inside of this broken body,

can the brain still live
outside of the human body?

Could he keep a brain alive?

And, if so, for how long?

- [Dan] To find out, he
obviously can't use humans,

so he turns to another species.

- What he does is
removes the brain

of one rhesus monkey
and puts it in a machine

where it's fed oxygenated blood

coming from the
body of another one.

- So you have the
naked bulb of brain

flushed with blood, pink.

He hooks it up to electrodes,

and those electrodes
go peaking along,

and there're peaks and
valleys showing you

that that brain, without
any body attached at all,

is still thinking.

- [Dan] The reaction from
the medical community

is a little disappointing.

- He takes this
amazing experiment

and all that it has
discovered to a conference,

and he shows them the graphs,

and none of his
colleagues believe him.

- So he decides to
transplant a full head.

So when you transplant
a full head,

you can actually see the
new head doing stuff.

So you don't have to question

whether or not there's
activity occurring.

It's obvious to see.

- [Dan] On March 14th, 1970,

Dr. Robert White is
finally ready to perform

the first ever head transplant.

- It's kind of gruesome.

He takes two monkeys,
Monkey A and Monkey B,

and restrains them.

He attaches a tube from Monkey
A to the brain of Monkey B,

then he severs the
heads of both monkeys,

and attaches Monkey B's head
onto the body of Monkey A.

- [Dan] About an hour later,
it's time for Dr. White

to wake up his hybrid
monkey and find out,

has he accomplished
the unbelievable?

- Once he has
stimulated this brain

with electrical activity,
the eyes do, in fact, open up.

And it appears that there
is actually consciousness

and awareness in
the monkey's brain.

- Dr. White
approaches the monkey

and it immediately tries
to hiss and bite him.

So he recognizes Dr. White.

This monkey's head, which
is essentially just a head

plumbed into another
monkey's body,

is alive and still with us.

- Dr. White is thrilled.

He starts to perform a
series of experiments.

He moves a pen, and the
monkey is able to follow it.

(finger snap)

He makes sounds, and
the monkey reacts to it.

(finger snap)

This is it.

He did it.

He successfully transplanted
the head of one creature

onto the body of another.

- Because the experiment
requires severing

the spinal cord,

the monkey actually can't move,

and it can't feel
anything below the neck.

But what it can do is see,
smell, hear, and taste.

- [Dan] An immune
response causes the monkey

to die nine days later.

But there's still more
for Dr. White to learn.

- He does this procedure and
others like it 300 times,

severed monkey's heads, trying
to keep a monkey head alive,

because he wants to do
this on human beings.

And as horrible as
that sounds to us,

his reasons are very much tied

to prolonging the life of
victims of horrible diseases.

- It's different from
the two-headed dog

because in this case, he
really is trying to do

a medical service.

- What's stranger than
performing testicle transplants

or creating two-headed dogs?

Perhaps it's insisting
that you be experimented on

after you're dead.

That's just

what famed English philosopher
Jeremy Bentham does in 1832.

(eerie music)

- The year before his death,

Jeremy writes a pamphlet,

"Auto-Icon, Farther Uses
of the Dead to the Living."

- An auto-icon is essentially

a taxidermied
version of yourself,

where you are dressed
in your favorite clothes

and you can still participate

in the daily lives

of those you've left behind.

- [Dan] The point of Jeremy's
auto-icon experiment?

To see if it's possible
to remain relevant

after you're gone.

- So he leaves very
specific details in his will

as to how to treat his body,

how to turn him
into an auto-icon.

First step is to send his body

to the anatomy school at the

University College London

and allow it to be dissected.

(eerie music)

- After the dissection,
the body is taxidermied,

and dressed in his suit, and
seated upright in a glass case.

When they are
taxidermying the head,

something goes terribly wrong.

(eerie music)

- It comes out all
weird and grotesque.

It's half melted, and
most of the hair is gone,

and it doesn't look
like Jeremy at all.

It looks like a
strange creature.

- So the head is
actually removed

and replaced with a wax one.

And so, it's a wax face that
still actually looks like him

that's looking out on campus.

- [Dan] So what happens
to his real head?

- They realized that
they can't toss it

because that goes
against Bentham's will.

So what do they do?

They put that
hideous looking head

between the philosopher's feet.

- [Dan] In the end, is
Jeremy's experiment a success?

Well, he has been
sitting in the same spot

for almost 200 years.

- His body is still on
display to this day at UCL.

He's seen by people coming
and going across campus.

In many ways, him being
on display like this

has helped keep him as
even more central figure

than he otherwise
would have been anyhow.

- Clearly, Jeremy is as present
in death as he was in life.

Up next, a different
kind of experiment

performed by a doctor
known as the Lobotomy King.

(melancholy music)

- The US experiences
a mental health crisis

during the 1930s and '40s.

Lobotomy is,
at the time,

considered a very
humane procedure

and a very legitimate treatment
of severe mental illness.

(rhythmic music)

- The procedure consists of
drilling two holes in the skull

(drilling)

and then inserting
implements into those holes

to cut off the frontal
lobe of the brain

to disconnect a person from
reality, to calm them down.

- [Dan] And there's one
man who has just performed

the most famous
lobotomy of all time.

- In 1941, Rosemary Kennedy,
John Kennedy's oldest sister,

has been battling for years

a whole host of
mental health issues.

Joseph Kennedy reaches
out to Walter Freeman,

a doctor who had been
experimenting with lobotomies.

And Joseph Kennedy submits
Rosemary to a lobotomy.

- Dr. Freeman's lobotomy
doesn't go exactly as planned,

and she is permanently disabled
for the rest of her life.

But despite that, the lobotomy
is considered a miracle

of modern science and medicine.

- [Dan] Suddenly, Dr. Freeman
finds himself in high demand.

But lobotomies are
time consuming.

- Walter Freeman keeps thinking

there's gotta be a way to
make this more expedient.

And one day, while he's at home,

he opens up a drawer
in the kitchen

and he sees something
kind of interesting.

It's an ice pick.

And he thinks, what
if we were able to do

a quickie lobotomy?

(apprehensive music)

- He is basically
gonna put an ice pick

in the back of the eye socket

and swish it around in
the front of the brain,

so basically an ice
pick to the brain.

- [Dan] Freeman calls it
the transorbital lobotomy.

Because it takes just
10 minutes to perform,

he decides to hop in his van
and take this show on the road.

- Freeman becomes a kind
of surgical troubadour

and travels around to
asylums across the country.

- [Dan] First, there was
the Planters NUTmobile,

then the Oscar Mayer
Wienermobile, and now...

- The vehicle that he
uses to drive around

is dubbed by onlookers
as the Lobotomobile.

- This is the era of Route 66

and Detroit manufacturing
at its peak.

We have fast food, we
have drive-in restaurants,

and now we have mobile
fast lobotomies.

- Freeman drives
his Lobotomobile

across the United
States and Canada,

doing as many as 25
lobotomies in a day, 25.

- [Dan] But by 1967,
after 21 years,

Dr. Freeman's road trip
hits some speed bumps.

- Freeman performs about
4,000 of these lobotomies.

It's partly performance.

It's a little
snake oil salesman.

And unfortunately, about
a hundred of his patients

die from the treatment.

- He finds himself
getting banned

from hospital after
hospital after hospital.

And he ends his career as a
pariah of the medical community.

And he ends his career as a
pariah of the medical community.

- Luckily, the Lobotomobile
hits a dead end,

and Walter Freeman's
strange road trip is over.

- Do you believe
that you have a soul?

And if so, can you
scientifically prove it?

In the beginning of
the 20th century,

one ambitious physician
intends to find out.

(gentle music)

- In 1901, Dr. Duncan
MacDougall,

a Massachusetts physician,

decides to test the
premise of the soul.

He said, if there's
a human soul,

it has to have some kind
of physical presence.

It has to have a weight.

- He's so convinced of
this that he decides

to conduct some experiments.

He wants to weigh human bodies

just at the moment of death

so that he can see if
there's a perceptible shift

in their body weight.

- He proceeds to select patients

from among nursing homes
or old folks' homes.

- MacDougall gets
six volunteers,

people who are dying from
tuberculosis and diabetes,

to be his test subjects.

- [Dan] When the test
subject seems close to death,

their bed is placed onto a
precisely calibrated scale

built for livestock.

- Dr. MacDougall is at the
ready with his stethoscope

and other means of measuring
vital bodily functions.

And he takes a measurement

immediately before
and after death.

- The results are inconclusive.

Two of the volunteers show
no difference in weight

before and after death.

Two others, the results
have to be discarded

because of technical
difficulties.

- He has one, however,

that drops 21.3 grams

at the moment of death.

He just sets aside
all of the data

that doesn't fit his hypothesis

and he latches
onto this one death

that does fit his hypothesis.

And this gives him the
idea that the soul,

the human soul, weighs 21 grams.

- The experiment is
widely regarded as flawed

because of the
small sample size,

because of the
unscientific results.

- [Dan] Dr. MacDougall is

determined to prove his theory,

but there's a problem.

The nursing home where

he's experimenting

is no longer on board

with his shenanigans.

- So he decides to turn to dogs.

And he weighs 15 dogs
at the moment of death.

- Now, here, he's not finding
any sort of drop in weight.

And so, this leads
him to conclude

that dogs do not have souls.

And of course we all
know that's ridiculous

'cause we've seen the movie
"All Dogs Go to Heaven."

- Scientifically, the
whole experiment fails,

but that doesn't mean that
people didn't start to believe

that, yes, the human
soul weighs 21 grams.

- [Dan] What if I told you
that you don't need to die

to lose 21 grams?

Just try a popular experiment
from the 19th century.

- In the Victorian period,

you have a strange fad

for looking a bit like

a tuberculosis patient,

pale, and fragile,
and very, very thin.

- We have all sorts
of different ideas

to try and achieve that look,
whether it's wearing a corset,

whether it's actually
taking poison.

- [Dan] However, there's
an even stranger method

used to achieve that
tuberculosis look.

And it involves a little
help from a friend.

- You just swallow a little pill

that has a tapeworm
egg inside of it.

And if all goes right, that
tapeworm egg will hatch

and start to grow inside
of your intestines

and consume a portion
of everything you eat.

- You're not just eating for
one, you're eating for two.

- You have no restrictions.

You don't have to
watch your calories.

You don't have to avoid any
particular type of foods.

You can eat as much,

eat what you want,

and the tapeworm is going

to do all the work for you.

- [Dan] But once you
hit your goal weight,

there's a problem.

How do you now get that
pesky parasite out of you?

- They recommend patients
not eat for a few days

so that the tapeworm
is very hungry.

Then they take food
and put it in a capsule

that they swallow, with
the idea that the capsule

will travel all the
way through your system

and out the other side,

and the tapeworm, so hungry,

will follow it right
out of your body.

- Another more
homespun way to do this

is a belief that tapeworms
really like milk.

- So the woman would
place a glass of milk

on either side of her
body where it opens up,

at those orifices,

and wait for the
worm to be attracted,

one way or the other, to then
wiggle its way up or down

and out of the body.

- [Dan] Experimenting
with tapeworms

is not just a diet fad
of Victorian times.

It makes a comeback
in the 21st century.

- In 2013, a woman
in Iowa purchases

a tapeworm egg off the
internet and swallowed it,

but she immediately regrets it.

And she goes to her doctor,

who prescribes antiparasitics
to get rid of it.

- At least now
there's modern methods

for properly deworming somebody

who has tried to use
the tapeworm remedy

who has tried to use
the tapeworm remedy

that doesn't involve a glass
of milk under your bum.

- It's a hot summer day in 1963

at a bull ring outside
of Cordoba, Spain.

A battle is about to occur
between a giant beast

and Spain's top neurologist.

(eerie music)

(suspenseful music)

- [Commentator] A bull
ring in his native Spain

provides the setting

for Delgado's most
spectacular demonstration.

- He's this little guy, he's
wearing a sweater and a tie,

and he comes out with
a traditional cape,

but also holding a
radio transmitter.

- [Dan] Certainly,
this tiny scientist

is no match for the bull.

Luckily for Dr. Jose Delgado,
he has a secret weapon,

mind control.

- The scene is set
up to be a bloodbath.

The bull begins to
charge at Dr. Delgado.

(suspenseful music)

And he presses a button

on a little transmitter
he's holding,

and the bull immediately
stops in its tracks,

shakes its head in confusion,
and then calmly walks away.

- [Dan] We've all heard of
a remote-controlled car,

but a remote-controlled bull?

- He has previously
implanted electrodes

in this particular bull's
head, in its caudate nucleus,

that are intended to cut the
bull's natural aggression.

- [Dan] However, the
area of the brain

that Delgado is targeting
has another function.

- The reality here is
that the caudate nucleus

is partially responsible
for motor control.

And so, what Dr. Delgado
is actually doing

is causing the bull
to freeze in place.

- When Delgado
presses the button,

a signal short circuits that
area in the bull's brain,

just momentarily, but just
enough to stop the charge.

(bull snorting)

- That freeze button
might sound like a dream

to some married people.

But for one couple,
it's a reality.

(eerie music)

- Kevin Warwick is a
professor of cybernetics

at Redding University
in England.

And in 1998, he decides to go
from lecturing about a subject

to being part of it.

- Dr. Warwick transplants

a hundred electrodes

into his left forearm.

The electrodes are connected
to a smart building,

and so his arm can
communicate via radio signals

to the technology
in the building.

- So when he enters
the building,

the doors will open,
the lights turn on,

his computer goes to
his favorite website.

- [Dan] Remarkable,
sure, but in 2002,

Dr. Warwick kicks it up a notch.

- Professor Warwick has a
more advanced micro-electrode

surgically implanted
into his body,

and this now allows him

to directly communicate
with his computer

just by thinking about it.

- So try and think of something.

Think of moving your hand.

That is your brain working.

- The connection is so good

between the human
mind and technology

that he is able to send commands

to open and close a
robotic hand in New York.

So the power of his mind
is jumping the Atlantic

and moving a piece of
cybernetic technology.

- This is the beginning.

but he wants this terminal

not to be hooked
up to some machine

but to be connected to
another human being,

- [Dan] Not just
any human being.

Dr. Warwick, or Captain Cyborg,
as he's dubbed by his peers,

has the perfect person in mind.

- Captain Cyborg does
something that most married men

are reluctant to do.

He has a processor inserted
into his wife Irena.

- He and his wife are
literally in communication

at the level that you only
ever get with your own body.

- The communication that
happens is when his wife

thinks about opening
or closing her hand,

which then sends a signal
back into Warwick's arm,

causing his hand
to open and close.

- His wife has
control over his body.

I don't like giving
anyone that I'm dating

control of the remote control.

- [Dan] Kevin
Warwick's experiments

give us a glimpse into a
future where cyborg technology,

as strange as it may seem, is
part of our everyday lives.

- We are moving toward a
cyborg future for humanity,

where we have chips
implanted in our bodies

and we communicate with
the world around us.

Imagine if you can
actually just think

and turn on the lights, run
your bath, make your coffee.

We have the old commercial,

help me, I've fallen

and can't get up.

Imagine if you could
just think that

and rescuers come for you.

The future of
humanity is unlimited

'cause humans are so
smart and amazing.

(rhythmic music)

- We've seen experiments that
are weird and disturbing,

some that can control minds,
some that even do good.

But no matter what
their original intent,

these experiments all
share one thing in common.

They're truly unbelievable.