A conversation with Temple Grandin. She is a university professor, a diagnosed autistic, and has designed 1/3 of the slaughterhouses in the United States. Temple Grandin understands and relates more easily to cattle than to people. She's renowned for her design "stairway to heaven," a curving, high-wall ramp system that utilises optical illusions to lead livestock calmly from the pen to the bolt gun and ultimately to a humane death.
A conversation with Sondra London. Her high school boyfriend was Gerald Shaefer, the same man that later became one of America's most notorious mass murderers. They broke up because of his wish to kill young women, but when she sees him in the papers she wants to see him again. They restart their relationship while he is in prison.
A conversation with Saul Kent. He is one of the pioneers in the field of cryonics, that being the freezing of persons for resuscitation in the future. He tells about his thoughts around life extension, and also about his personal experiences about this.
An interview with Bill Kinsley. He was once a promising post office worker on the brink of promotion to postmaster general. That was before he met Thomas McIlvane, kick boxer, mailman, gun freak and soon to become mass murderer. Kinsley survived the carnage that followed, but McIlvane died. Now Kinsley is living in fear, thinking that someone out there in the night is coming to kill him.
This documentary is about an unusual murder mystery. Jane Gill is found murdered in her bedroom. Next to the body the police find Max, an African parrot with a highly developed ability to speak, and a vocabulary of 450 words. Max repeated the line "Richard. No, no, no..." over and over again. Gary Grasp is charged with the murder, and his only hope to escape the gas chamber is Max and his testimony.
Clyde Roper has dedicated his life to become the first person to see a giant squid. He started off as a lobster fisherman, but then became a zoologist, and for 30 years he has been searching for this mythical creature. The giant squid is supposed to be the size of a football field with eyes as big as volleyballs.
An interview with Gretchen Worden. She is the director of Mütter Museum in Philadelphia. Here exists a unique collection of medical curiosities and deformations preserved in jars. Worden does not find the specimens monstrous, but thinks of them as having their own special and important stories to tell.
Gay Greenberg was a psychotherapist that wanted to become a writer. His career as a writer lead to nowhere, and he decided to seek help from a famous author. This is why he started to correspond with Ted Kaczynski, not knowing that he was the notorious Unabomber. Instead of finding help on his career as an author, Greenberg found himself dragged into Kaczynski's paranoid nightmare.
Andrew Capoccia is fighting in his own personal crusade against credit card companies. He is a lawyer that helps people that are ruined by debt coming from their massive use of credit cards. He wins a lot of cases, but at the same time he has been fined, sued and condemned by courts and other lawyers. Is he really a hero threatening the system of credit as we know it, or is he a fraud?
After Joan Dougherty's son's shotgun suicide, she was left alone with a gruesome mess. Having no other choice, she started to clean up herself. Now she tries to help others in the same situation. She has started her own company for cleaning up after violent crimes where others don't even stand the sight.
For 25 years Antonio Mendez worked as a secret agent for the CIA. He led two lives. To his friends he was a bureaucrat working for the American Ministry of Defense, but to the CIA he was the master of disguise. He could become whoever, wherever, at any time. To keep his identity hidden he had to stay gray and boring to his friends and to himself.
The new millenium came without disaster. No end of the world. No nothing. Nevertheless, Josh Harris, internet entrepreneur and aspiring artist, has decided that the 2nd coming is at hand. And "the new Messiah" is none other than Gilligan, that's right, that Gilligan, from Gilligan's Island. He does not mean the actor playing Gilligan. He is just an avatar for the divine Gilligan, preaching before his descent to earth. For Harris, life is a sad tug-of-war between those who control reality and those controlled by it. The weapon is media. And Harris, in an all-out onslaught on the world, has decided to make his own torpid existence into a new religion by asking a question that has never been asked before and has yet to be answered: is Gilligan really God -- or in Josh's lingo, Messiah 2.0?
Chris Langan is a body builder and a nightclub bouncer, but he is also the smartest man in the world. Compared to him, Mensa members are like schoolboys. His IQ is so high that new tests must be devised in order to measure it. By his own account it must be somewhere in the range of 190-210. Langan tells us how he discovered the truth about the universe, and how he alone has seen the mind of God. He has a vision of a world ruled by an ultra-intelligent elite, with himself as the leader.
Murray Richman is a lawyer for the worst criminals you can imagine. "Don't Worry" Murray comes as a saviour for many a gangster and brutal murderer, and he is often successful. Once, Murray got a jury to believe that a murder victim had accidentally fallen seven times onto a knife. Oddly cynical for an idealist, oddly idealistic for a cynic. In conversation with Errol Morris, Murray offers his vision of Truth, Justice and the American Way.
Rick Rosner is obsessed with doing things right. If he does not get it exactly right the first time, he just does it again. He completed high school four times before he was satisfied, at the age of 34. To manage this he had to use a combination of disguises and false IDs. Now he is just as obsessed with the TV quiz show "Who Wants to be a Millionaire"?. He attended the show, but lost due to a trick question. On the brink of madness, he now watches every program again and again in the hope of a one in a million chance of correcting his error from the past.
Part two of "One In A Million Trillion".
Michael Stone claims to understand the human psyche. He has developed his very own method for judging the personality of people. For this test he has made a list of hundreds of personality traits. By defining all the different traits and making a comparison to other lists and diagrams, he can with certainty tell who is a psychopath, sociopath, murderer and so on. Errol Morris talks to Michael Stone in an attempt to find out who he is. Has he lost himself in the quest to understand others?
A plane with 297 passengers is out of control. One of the engines goes dead and the steering mechanism does not work. No one knows what to do, except Denny Fitch who happens to be on board. He manages to navigate the plane by using the thrust controls and forces it down to a crash landing. 111 people die in the crash, but thanks to Denny Fitch 186 passengers survive. Could he have saved more passengers if he had done things differently? He is haunted by the dream of the perfect landing.
Part two of "Leaving The Earth".
