First Person

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.

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.

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.

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.