All language subtitles for The UnBelievable with Dan Aykroyd s02e11 Outrageous Experiments.eng

[mysterious music]

Imagine learning, your
sibling is something

your father brings home
for a science experiment.

- The Kelloggs are treating
their two children identically.

- Donald starts taking
on the chimp's behaviors,

pant-hooting and barking.

- Or that a medical
student drinks and bathes

in something unusual,
to prove a point.

- He takes their urine, blood,

and of course, the black vomit.

- And proceeds to smear himself
over every inch of his body

like the worst cake you've
ever seen in your life.

- How about a countess whose
beauty routine is to die for?

- Elizabeth does
whatever she can

to get the thing
that she wants most.

Virgin blood.

- And she starts experimenting.

- These are stories of
experiments so outrageous,

they are truly unbelievable.

[dramatic music]

Everyone knows the stories of
"The Jungle Book" and "Tarzan",

boys brought up by wild animals.

But what if you turn the tables

and bring a baby wild animal
home to raise it like a human?

- Throughout history,
there's been a lot of cases

where children are separated
from their families

and raised by wolves or bears
or other kinds of animals.

- Records of feral child studies

get the wheels turning of
psychologist, Winthrop Kellogg.

He starts to think, what if
the situation was reversed?

Could you compel an animal

to behave as a human,

were it raised exclusively
in a human atmosphere?

- So Kellogg brings home a
seven-month-old chimp named Gua

to raise alongside his
10-month-old son Donald.

- They get the exact same
behavior and treatment,

feeding them the same way,
diapers the same way,

playing with them the same
way, having them be playmates.

The Kelloggs are treating
their two children identically.

- [Dan] And how are these
unusual siblings measuring up?

- Gua masters a lot
of human traits like

walking on two legs,
wearing shoes,

sitting in a high chair
and eating with a spoon.

She begins to understand and
respond to commands like,

"Show me your nose."

"Give Donald a hug."

- After nine months, Gua
has excelled at some things,

but she's not made any
progress with language.

She's not speaking English.

She can understand things,
but she is not moving forward.

- [Dan] But Gua isn't
the only one stuck.

- Donald is also slow to speak.

In fact, in some cases,

Donald starts taking on
the chimp's behaviors.

For example, when yelling
for food or wanting for food,

Donald joins Gua in
pant-hooting and barking.

- So this experiment to elevate
a chimpanzee to human status

is actually degrading his
son's learning capabilities

down to chimpanzee status.

- The Kelloggs are concerned
as Donald keeps falling behind.

They decide to
end the experiment

and to return Gua
to a primate center

to be back with her group,

and to allow Donald to move
forward as a normal human child.

- I guess the old adage is
true, "Monkey see, monkey do."

Which is the notion behind
a noted psychologist's idea

to test out theories on
childhood aggression.

[pensive music]

- It's the early 1960s
at Stanford University,

and there is a
social psychologist

named Albert Bandura who
believes the way children learn

is by observing the
adults around them.

So he designs an experiment
to test his theory

and see if it holds water.

- He and his assistants
fill one nursery classroom

with more aggressive
toys, darts and mallets.

Another one with less
aggressive things like crayons

and paper and paints.

And of course, there
is the Bobo doll.

- A Bobo doll is
this big blow up doll

with a clown face on it.

It's weighted at the
bottom so you can punch it

and it'll kind of
fall to the ground

and then bounce back up.

- [Dan] The children are
then brought in one at a time

to watch adults play
with the different toys.

- [Adam] So there's one group
of kids that witness an adult

aggressively beating
the Bobo doll.

- For the second group,
an adult will come in

and play with the
non-aggressive toys,

while essentially
ignoring the Bobo doll

at the front of the room.

- [Dan] Then the
adults leave the room

as researchers sit
behind a one-way mirror

to see what the children do now.

- The children who are
subjected to an adult's violence

mimic that violence.

They beat Bobo
using the mallets.

They throw him up in the
air, they sit on him,

they unload on him verbally,

saying all kinds of
caustic, awful things.

- The kids who watch
the adult come in

and play with the
non-aggressive toys,

they mimic that behavior.

They are actually
less aggressive

than even the control group.

- [Dan] Bandura's
results are published

and cause an
international sensation.

- This is really
unprecedented for the time.

It sounds so simple, but no
one has been able to show

that kids mimic adult behavior,

especially when it
comes to aggression.

So this study becomes a
really groundbreaking moment

that has implications for

the field of psychology
moving forward.

- The moral, be careful how
you act in front of your kids.

But if you think kids
can be aggressive,

they've got nothing on a
couple of German doctors

hopped up on experimental drugs.

- Surgery in the 1880s
is a miserable business.

There isn't proper
anesthesia yet.

Chloroform is being used,

but patients frequently
die on operating tables,

defeating the purpose of
the procedure to begin with.

- [Dan] Then in the 1890s, a
new discovery shocks the world.

- Scientists have
discovered that

if you inject a special solution

into the spinal cord
of the lower back,

you can numb the extremities
from the waist down.

- [Dan] And that
special solution?

Liquid cocaine.

Yes, that cocaine.

- On August 8th, 1898, a
German surgeon, August Bier,

performs the first known
spinal tap surgery.

He is able to put a man's
lower extremities to sleep

to perform a foot surgery.

- [Dan] Bier's operation
gets him worldwide attention,

but there's still a
few kinks to work out.

- Bier finds there
isn't a total blockage

of pain or sensation.

This can limit the
application of the method.

- Also, in the aftermath of
the surgery, during recovery,

patients are reporting
massive headaches,

and Bier wants to get to
the bottom of this as well.

- [Dan] So Bier decides
he needs to practice

by experimenting on his friend,
Dr. August Hildebrandt.

- Who better to
adequately articulate

what is happening to their own
body, than a fellow doctor?

They'll be able to communicate
in the exact same language.

- Bier injects the
1% cocaine solution

into his fellow
physician's spinal fluid,

and he finds that
after about 40 minutes,

the subject reports no sensation
at all from the waist down.

- But August Bier
isn't gonna take

Dr. Hildebrandt's word for it.

He has to ensure he
is completely numb.

First, he snuffs out a lit
cigar on Hildebrandt's leg.

Nothing, he doesn't feel it.

Next he takes a long
needle, plunges it

through Hildebrandt's thigh
muscle until it hits his femur.

- Hildebrandt is watching
this happen, but he's numb.

He doesn't feel a thing.

- And then Bier plucks some
of the subject's pubic hairs.

- He then takes an iron hammer

and chooses to smash
the shin of his friend.

Still zero reaction.

- Does Bier have all
the data he needs?

He doesn't believe so.

So he forcibly grabs, twists,

and pulls Dr. Hildebrandt's
testicles to no effect.

Pretty conclusive.

- After the experiment, the
men celebrate its success.

All seems well, but
Hildebrandt does describe,

like other patients, severe
headaches in the days following.

- It would take years for
scientists to discover

that the reason for
these hangovers from

cocainization spinal taps
is, cocaine is toxic.

- [Dan] Eventually doctors
switch to cortisone

and other steroid combinations,
and the headaches go away.

- Today, millions of epidurals
are conducted the world over,

for aid in childbirth and
back and leg surgeries,

all without smashing metal
hammers or testicular twisting.

- Note to self.

Be careful who you trust
when numbing agents

and iron hammers are involved.

- Throughout history,
many people have sought

an elusive goal, eternal youth,

and they're willing to
go to some pretty strange

and extreme lengths
to achieve it.

- One of the most notorious
figures of the 16th century

is a countess named
Elizabeth Bathory.

- Her family is one of the
most powerful in Hungary,

and as young as age 11,

Elizabeth is thought to
be a ravishing beauty.

She has suitors clamoring
after her from far and wide.

- Her family finds a
suitable husband for her

in Count Ferenc Nadasdy.

- He educates Elizabeth in
some of the military arts.

Most notably, torture,

and she loves it.

- [Dan] But after
nearly 30 years

of this blissfully dark
marriage, her husband dies,

leaving her a widow.

- After her husband
dies, she's in her 40s.

Her main concern, of course,

is maintaining her
youth and her beauty.

- Elizabeth resolves
to do whatever it takes

to make eternal youth happen.

- In a fit of anger one
day, she smacks the face

of a housemaid who
bleeds from her lip.

Elizabeth gets
blood on her hand.

After wiping it away,

she notices that the previously
bloodied patch of skin

seems vital,
glowing, rejuvenated,

and she hits upon
a horrific idea.

- She wants to bathe in
the blood of young maidens,

which is creepy and disgusting.

- [Dan] According to legend,
she commands her inner circle

to do her dirty work,

rounding up young peasants
from far and wide.

- Using what she has learned
from her late husband,

Elizabeth takes
these young maidens

and cuts off their noses,

sticks pins under
their fingernails,

bites their shoulders,
and stabs them,

and does whatever she can

to get the thing
that she wants most,

virgin blood.

- Elizabeth bathes,
sometimes for hours,

in the blood of her
victims, washing with it,

luxuriating in it, and
sometimes even drinking it.

- [Dan] The killings
continue for years

as Elizabeth becomes
obsessed with

keeping the experiment going.

But soon, in her lust for youth,
the Countess gets careless.

- When she runs out of poor
girls that she can murder

for her bloodbaths, she then
starts inviting the daughters

of some of the lesser nobles
over to use them instead.

- No one seems to
kick up much of a fuss

over the disappearance
of castle maids

and local peasant girls.

But the tide begins to shift

when the daughters of minor
nobility begin to disappear.

- [Dan] Soon after, an
investigation is launched

by authorities to search
the castle grounds.

- They begin digging up
and finding results of

Elizabeth's little
beauty experiment

buried all over her grounds.

- Elizabeth's minions
are accused of killing

80 daughters of local nobility,

and a total of
600 girls overall.

The servants take
the punishment.

They are executed.

- Countess Elizabeth,
because of her royal status,

is spared execution, but she
is forced into confinement

in her chambers for the
remaining years of her life.

- She does attain a
kind of immortality.

She is widely
remembered as perhaps

one of the worst mass
serial killers in history.

[dramatic music]

- Elizabeth is hardly the
first or the last to believe

the blood of youth has
restorative powers.

- Billionaire Bryan Johnson
is a rejuvenation athlete.

Everything in his life,
everything he does,

is focused on one goal.

Staying young and
prolonging his life.

- He takes 111 supplements
every single day.

He goes to sleep at the
exact same time every night.

- He sleeps alone in a dark
room with blackout curtains.

He wears blue light glasses.

- [Dan] But there's one
crucial piece of his routine

he believes will keep him young

forever.

- He's spending his billions
on blood transfusions,

to the tune of $2
million per year.

- Every 30 days, he gets
a blood transfusion,

not just from anyone, but from
someone young, in good shape,

because he believes that
young blood is gonna give him

the energy and the power
he needs to avoid aging.

- But then he thinks,
"Why go to strangers?

I have a ready-made
blood supply at home.

My 17-year-old son, Talmage."

- How are you?

Do you want a bite
of super veggie?

- [Dan] Every month, the teen
donates a liter of blood

to his father.

That's a fifth of the
entire human body's blood.

- Johnson wants to be
fair about all of this,

so he donates his
plasma to his father.

- [Dan] It's the
world's first ever

intergenerational blood
transfusion experiment.

- It probably sounds
a little crazy.

It probably sounds like
it couldn't possibly work.

The thing is, it kind of
does, at least in mice.

- Researchers at
UC San Francisco

transfused blood from
young mice into older mice,

and those older mice
get some benefits,

they get a little
bit more energy.

Actually, some of their muscles
are working a little better.

And when you take the
blood from those old mice

and give it back to
those young mice,

the young mice are a
little more sluggish.

So clearly, something
is going on here.

- [Dan] Still, this starts
to get old, even for Johnson.

- After six treatments,

Johnson decides he's not getting
the results that he wants,

so he switches to
a new treatment,

shock therapy.

But not to his brain,
to his genitals.

- He receives acoustic shockwave
therapy on his genitals,

three to five times a month.

He says that the pain
is a 9 out of 10,

but it has decreased
the age of his penis

by 15 years.

- I'm not sure how Johnson
measures these findings,

but that's one
treatment I'd pass on.

- Proving a new theory often
requires extreme dedication.

One very motivated
medical student

is willing to put himself on
the line to prove he's right,

or literally die trying.

- University of Pennsylvania
medical trainee Stubbins Ffirth

wants to write a
thesis on yellow fever,

especially about how it can
spread from person to person.

- Ffirth actually believes that
yellow fever isn't contagious.

Instead, he's observed
that yellow fever

mostly breaks out in summer
months or in hot climates.

He thinks that yellow
fever is caused by heat.

- He cooks up an
experiment to prove that

you can't catch yellow
fever from someone else,

and that experiment involves

the most iconic symptom
of yellow fever,

black vomit.

- [Dan] Lucky for him, there's
no shortage of the stuff,

because Philadelphia
is in the middle of

a yellow fever outbreak.

- For the first step
in the experiment,

Ffirth makes an
incision in his arm

and simply pours the
black vomit into it.

There's a little bit of
inflammation at the site,

but other than that, he's fine.

- What he does next
is he takes some vomit

and he mixes it in with water

and he starts to
dribble it in his eyes.

And nothing.

- Now Ffirth starts
to get creative.

He builds a vomit sauna.

He sets himself up
in a small closet

and fries up some of the
vomit, great vomit vapors

that he inhales deeply over
the course of two hours.

Still nothing.

- Now if you thought those
were nasty, stick with me.

This story gets a
whole lot better.

- He then goes as far
as taking a patient

with essentially end
stage yellow fever,

has them throw up
directly into a cup,

and he drinks it straight up.

[tense music]

He doesn't get it.

- [Dan] But Ffirth
is not finished.

He decides he can still
take the ick factor up.

All the way up.

- He proceeds to take the vomit
and mix it with other fluids

that have come from a
yellow fever patient.

- [J Mack] He takes their
urine, he takes their saliva,

he takes their blood.

- And then proceeds to liberally
smear himself from head to toe,

covering himself
like the worst cake

you've ever seen in your life,

all over every inch of his body.

Stubbins Ffirth
still walks away,

not having succumbed
to any yellow fever.

- And he writes up
his work in a paper,

a treatise on malignant fever,

with an attempt to prove
that it is not contagious.

- [Dan] While Ffirth
did clearly prove

you can't catch yellow fever
by frolicking in black vomit,

his thesis still has
some sticking points.

- So Ffirth was right
that yellow fever

is not directly transmitted
from person to person.

But he was wrong in thinking
that it was caused by

exposure to excessive heat.

We know this because six
decades later, in 1881,

Cuban scientist
Carlos Finlay proves

that yellow fever is transmitted

from person to
person by mosquitoes.

- And so Stubbins Ffirth downed

all that black
vomit for nothing.

Our next go-getter doesn't
need to worry about

catching anything from
his test subjects,

because they're already dead.

- In 1874, Alexander Graham
Bell is a 27-year-old

up and coming inventor,
studying acoustics at MIT.

As a day job, he is a teacher
at the school for the deaf.

- At the time, the deaf are
seen and treated as outsiders.

There is no tried
and true method yet

to teach the deaf
to speak in a way

that softens their
sometimes harsh tones

when they try to
produce audible speech.

- They're unable to hear the
sounds that they're making,

and thus are unable to
refine those sounds.

- He starts to think that
if he could figure out a way

for his students
to visualize sound,

then maybe they'll understand
it and figure out a way

to repeat it.

- He's fascinated by the
way the human ear works.

Sound enters the
ear, it vibrates,

and every different
kind of sound

makes it vibrate a
little differently.

He wants to somehow capture
that vibration visually.

- [Dan] Bell sets
out to build a device

that can interpret
and draw sound.

- Bell wants to
base his invention

off of the anatomy of
an actual human ear.

So he talks to his colleague,
Dr. Clarence Blake,

who has an interesting idea.

Why not use an actual human
ear for this invention?

But humans are kind of
attached to their own ears,

so he suggests using
a dead person's ear.

- Bell's friend,
Dr. Clarence Blake,

works with medical cadavers.

He procures a human ear
that has been preserved

so that its innards,
including the ear drum,

are still intact.

- [Dan] Now that
Bell has his ear,

he can build his prototype
and start testing it out.

- Bell fixes the ear
to a stalk of hay.

The stalk of hay travels
from the eardrum to a plate

that's covered with a
thin layer of charcoal.

- [Dan] His theory is that
when sound hits the eardrum,

the vibration will
cause the hay to draw

a unique pattern
into the charcoal.

- Bell begins speaking
into this ear trumpet.

And it works.

When the vibrations of
sound hit the eardrum,

it ends up moving the hay,

thus drawing waveforms
in the charcoal.

And each one of those
waveforms is unique

to the letter or the
word that he's saying.

- Next, Bell performs the
experiment with his students.

He speaks an A into the device,

and the students can see
the shape of a proper A.

- Now the students can speak
into the device themselves,

create their own shape of sound,

and match it against vowels.

- [Dan] Bell calls
the new device

the Dead Ear Phonautograph.

- Not only does this device

dramatically assist deaf
people in communicating,

but it forms the germination
of Bell's most famous device,

the telephone.

- He begins to theorize
that you could use

the sound of your voice to
create an electrical current

to send your voice
down a telegraph wire.

And voila, two years later,
the invention of the telephone.

- Bell has no idea
that 150 years later,

his invention will be small
enough to fit in your pocket,

and annoy parents at dinner
tables all over the world.

- Some of the greatest
books and movies

feature tales of the undead,

but you probably wouldn't
be surprised to learn that

they take their inspiration
from real-life research.

- It's 1803 in Italy.

A 40-year-old researcher
named Giovanni Aldini

is on a mission
to prove a theory

that the human body runs on
its own electrical current.

- And he believes that
if there is already

an electrical current
within the body,

that by subjecting a dead
body to electrical current,

you can very possibly
reanimate the dead.

Aldini decides he wants to
get a body on the up and up,

and he reaches out
to local prisons

to try to acquire the corpse

of a recently executed prisoner.

- Lucky for Aldini, a
man named George Foster

has been sentenced to death,

and they're willing to
give Aldini Foster's body

fresh from the gallows.

- The execution goes as planned,
Aldini acquires the body.

And then, at London's
Royal Academy of Surgeons,

he schedules a real event,

invites the press to
showcase his theory

with this freshly dead body.

- The theater is packed with

the best and
brightest of the day,

and everyone in the oval
theater has their eyes on

the wooden slab where
Foster's body is lying,

covered by a white sheet.

- [Dan] Aldini rips the
sheet from Foster's body

as a hush falls over the room.

- Aldini picks up prods
that are connected by wires

to a zinc battery.

The electricity flows forth,
he approaches the body,

and the crowd is on the
edge of their seats.

He touches the prod to
the dead man's face.

The dead man, George Foster,
opens one of his eyes.

Then Aldini takes the prod and
puts it in his nether regions

and his whole body convulses.

- George Foster's arm
then goes up in the air,

his legs are starting to move.

The entire audience
thinks that the deceased

is about to stand up.

- [Dan] And then,

Aldini's battery dies
and the experiment ends.

But while George Foster
doesn't come back to life,

Aldini's legacy does live on.

- The experiments do
indicate that electricity

can at least
stimulate dead tissue.

That part of the
experiment is a success.

- As bizarre as the
Aldini experiment is,

he's credited with pioneering
electrotherapy as we know it,

as a modality of treatment.

But there's also another thing
that he is credited with.

Mary Shelley wrote the
book "Frankenstein"

10 years after the
Aldini experiment.

Frankenstein, in which a
dead body is reanimated

with electrical impulses,
sounds very familiar.

- But it doesn't end there.

Fast forward a century later

and these electrifying
ideas find a new life

with yet another mad scientist.

- Robert Cornish is born
in 1903 in San Francisco.

He graduates from
high school at age 15.

By age 21, he is
a practicing MD.

- One thing marks him
as a little strange.

His fascination with death.

- Although he may have
been somewhat influenced

by the work of Aldini or
maybe even the writer Shelley,

he devises his
own special method

of attempting to
reanimate the dead.

- He straps his dead
patients to a seesaw

and he injects them with
adrenaline to stimulate them,

and heparin to thin their blood.

And then he vigorously
teeters the seesaw

to stimulate their circulation.

- Cornish completes his
experiment a number of times

with absolutely no luck.

- [Dan] But Dr. Cornish isn't
about to let his theory die.

- Dr. Cornish reasons that he
needs a freshly dead being.

Well, he starts with animals.

- [Dan] Cornish acquires
five fox terriers

and names them each Lazarus,

a cheeky nod toward
the biblical character

who rose from the dead.

- Cornish is so convinced
that his theory is correct,

he makes a spectacle of this.

He invites the public,
he invites the press.

- He then euthanizes
these five dogs,

straps them to the
seesaws, injects them,

and starts the teetering.

Three of them don't make it.

- But in fact, two of the
five dogs come back to life.

One is in a state of paralysis
and is not responsive.

- [Cornish] His nervous
system was shocked badly,

and even now he is
still in a stupor.

- [Dan] The fifth
and final Lazarus

not only comes back to life,

but within four days,
makes a complete recovery.

- Cornish's experiments
are hailed as a success

and he's lauded in the press.

A film called "Life Returns"
is even made about him in 1935.

- [Dan] After the success
of Lazarus the Fifth,

the modern day Prometheus
is ready to try once again

on humans, but he'll
need a fresh corpse.

- Cornish gets a volunteer,

a convicted killer
named Thomas McGonagall,

who's willing to donate
his body to science.

- This is the chance of
a lifetime for Cornish.

He approaches

the California Department of
Corrections for permission.

- By law, once an inmate
is executed for a crime,

they have technically
served their sentence.

- Were he to be
revived from death,

there would be no
choice but to allow

this reanimated
murderer to reintegrate

into California society.

That is a price the California
Board of Corrections

are unwilling to pay
in the name of science.

- McGonagall is put to death,

and Cornish is not allowed
to recover his body,

putting an end to
Cornish's dream of becoming

the first real Dr. Frankenstein.

- I guess we can rest
easy knowing there are no

reanimated convicted
murderers out there

walking around like
Frankenstein's monster.

- Today, we don't think twice
about having a tiny camera

sent down our throats,

but that's hardly the
case about a century ago

when some pioneering souls
decide to be the first

to boldly go where no
one has gone before.

Inside the human body.

- Physician Adolf Kussmaul

is attempting to diagnose
stomach ailments,

in particular, tumors
of the stomach.

He faces a key barrier,

which is that he has no way
of gazing into the organ.

- There is no instrument
that's capable of doing this.

And so what does he want to do?

He wants to invent it.

- [Dan] Kussmaul crafts
a rigid metal tube

that's a foot and a half
long, half inch wide,

and lit by a gas lamp.

- A tube of this length
inserted into the esophagus

is going to be uncomfortable.

- Anatomically, there are a
bunch of structures in your way.

There's the larynx.

There are all of the muscles
associated with swallowing.

And there is the gag reflex.

- A lot can go wrong
with this procedure.

In the 1860s, if you pierce
the esophagal tube itself,

that is a death sentence.

So this procedure
requires exquisite care.

- He racks his brain.

Who could he get to
test this procedure on?

And then he has an idea.

- Back in the day in
the streets of Germany,

he would see street performers,

but not just any street
performers, sword swallowers.

Kussmaul finds the
perfect test subject.

A man named The Iron Henry,

who has mastered the
art of sword swallowing.

- [Dan] Kussmaul spends months
developing his new procedure

with Iron Henry, and by 1868,

he's ready to show it
off to the medical world.

- The onlookers are
unaware that the subject is

a professional sword swallower.

All they know is that
this man is about to have

an oblong, foot and a
half long, metal tube

inserted down his throat.

- Kussmaul slowly maneuvers
the device into his esophagus,

down into his stomach.

- [Dan] While Kussmaul
succeeds in getting the tube

into Iron Henry's stomach
without killing him,

he does run into another issue.

- The big problem is it's pitch
black inside the human body.

Because of the
limitations at the time,

he has this gas flame

that can barely illuminate
a portion of the esophagus,

and it is not seen by any means

by the medical community
as a slam dunk.

- A dozen years later,

an Austrian team is able to
improve upon Kussmaul's design,

and make it something that
is now clinically useful.

- And it comes from electricity.

- Today, over 75 million
endoscopies are performed

every year in the U.S.,

which were inspired by
Kussmaul's original design,

the gastroscope.

- Something to think about the
next time your doctor says,

"Open wide and say, ahh."

But if sword swallowers
advancing medicine

sounds shocking, wait until
you see this next experiment.

[pensive music]

- In 1963, Stanley Milgram

conducts a very
famous experiment

to see how far people will
go against their conscience,

when instructed by
an authority figure.

- He sets up an experiment

in which there is a teacher and
a learner, and they're told,

if the learner answers
the question incorrectly,

you're to shock the learner.

[electricity buzzing]
[participant shouting]

- What the teachers
don't know is that

the learners aren't actually
participants, they're actors.

And so when they're
screaming and crying

and begging for the
teachers to stop,

none of that's
actually happening.

[electricity buzzing]
[participant screaming]

- Almost a decade
later, in 1972,

two behavioral researchers,

Charles Sheraton
and Richard King,

decide that they want to build
on the Milgram experiments.

- Critics of Milgram's
original work said

maybe the teachers knew
those weren't real shocks,

so they want to use
real shocks this time.

Obviously, they're not
allowed to administer shocks

to humans, so they decide
rather than using actors,

they're going to use puppies.

- For the experiment, they
picked 26 volunteers,

half men, half women, and
they're brought into the room

in front of the
control panel and told

they are meant to help
train a puppy discern

between a steady light
and a flickering light.

- So the puppy is brought in

and he is shown to stand
in front of the light

that is flashing.

The participants are told
if the puppy gets it wrong,

they have to administer an
electric shock to the puppy.

- The puppy receives a shock,

but it's really only
enough to elicit a yelp

or a whimper at first.

And the people are horrified

and want to stop pretty
much immediately.

But when told by a figure in
a lab coat they must continue,

that's exactly what they do.

When people begin
to see these puppies

enduring increasing
amounts of pain,

they do everything
they can to stop.

Some of them even try
to hint to the puppy

which way to go,

and yet when they are
told to continue, they do.

[tense music]

- 20 out of 26 subjects

listen to the man
in the white coat

and they amp up the
electrical shock

all the way to the furthest
extent that they are told.

[puppy whimpering]

- [Dan] Sheridan and King
had originally predicted

the women would be more
averse to shocking the puppies

and would eventually stop.

But what they find is
something different.

- Of those subjects
who go all the way

in administering the
electrical shocks,

100% are female,

54% are male.

It's an odd and
unmistakable division.

It could be that our
stereotypes of gender roles

are just that, stereotypes.

[tense music]

- Thankfully, none of the
puppies are seriously injured

in the making of
this experiment.

- How long can a person
go without sleep,

and can it kill you to find out?

These are the burning questions

two high schoolers decide to
answer in the early 1960s.

- Randy Gardner and
Bruce McAllister

are 17-year-old
high school buddies,

and they're trying to
come up with an idea

for their science fair.

- Randy hears about
a DJ in Honolulu

who stayed awake for 11 days,
which set the world record,

and they decide, hey, what if
we try to break that record?

- Now since it's a science fair,

they have to pose a
question that will be solved

by their experiment.

The question they ask,

"What is the effect
of sleep deprivation

on cognitive function?"

And because they're
two 17-year-old dudes,

they add, "And performance
on the basketball court."

- This sounds like a fun idea,

but the thinking is at the time

that long periods
of sleep deprivation

can do real psychological harm,
potentially even kill you.

- The boys flip a
coin to determine

who will not be sleeping.

Randy loses and so Bruce
will monitor his progress,

and try to keep him awake, with
the help of a third friend,

Joe Marciano.

So between the two of them,

someone will always
be up with Randy.

- [Dan] During
Christmas break in 1963,

the experiment begins.

- The first day goes
by without issue,

but after 24 hours,
Houston, we have a problem.

- Randy can already start
to feel the effects.

He has difficulty
concentrating, reading,

and even watching TV.

- After two days without sleep,

Randy starts having
trouble with his hands

and repeating back
tongue twisters.

- [Dan] The local papers
get wind of their experiment

and soon it goes the
1960s version of viral.

- Believe it or not, at
the time, it becomes

the third most written
about story in the nation,

only behind The
Beatles' trip to America

and the Kennedy assassination.

- [Dan] That's when the
experiment catches the attention

of Dr. William Dement,

a sleep science expert
who offers to help.

- So by day three, Dr.
Dement and his team arrive,

and they begin testing
Randy's cognitive function.

They start giving
Randy memory tests

and Randy epically fails.

He can't identify
what a light bulb is.

- [Dan] As the sleepless
days and nights continue,

his condition worsens.

- He becomes nauseous.

He's moody, incredibly
temperamental.

Randy starts
snapping at reporters

and he's barely able to
resist the urge to sleep.

- Interestingly, some of his
senses actually get amplified,

like his sense of
smell is stronger

and some of those
smells agitate him.

- [Dan] There's also
another unbelievable upside.

- His performance on the
basketball court is elevated.

It's incredible.

- In the end, Randy
stays up for 264.4 hours,

which equates to around
11 days and 25 minutes,

beating the record set
by that Honolulu DJ

who only made it to 260 hours.

- [Dan] After the
experiment ends,

Gardner sleeps for
14 straight hours

and then feels completely fine.

- The experiment wins Randy
and his friends first place

at the 10th Annual Greater
San Diego Science Fair.

- Fast forward 50 years,
Randy is interviewed by NPR

and he says that
after doing this,

he suffered from insomnia
for the rest of his life

and he's really never
quite been the same.

- While not every experiment
produces the results

we hope for, they always push us

further down the
road of knowledge.

From never sleeping, to
hacking your own blood,

to sipping on black bile,

as long as we keep
testing the limits,

we'll continue to
find the unbelievable.

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