Dark Matters: Twisted But True

21 GRAMS: Boston medic Dr. Duncan Macdougall sets out to scientifically prove the existence of the human soul, by weighing a man at the moment of death. If the patient loses weight, Macdougall believes he will have recorded the departure of the man's soul, and science will have shown religion to be right. But finding subjects willing to die on cue is not an easy task. His experiment, and results, remain controversial to this day. Is 21 gram the weight of a human soul? MISSING COSMONAUTS: The dawn of the space age. Two amateur radio hams are listening in, recording broadcasts from early Russian launches into space. One day, they hear a heart-stopping sound. Someone tapping out a distress signal from space. Was cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin really the first man in orbit, or did the Soviets send others up before him? Were they erased from history because they never came back? SOUND OF DEATH: There is a weapon you have probably never heard of. Some say it has never been used in anger. And yet several governments have called for it to be banned. When French scientist Vladimir Gavreau finds his laboratory flooded with a mysterious energy that has debilitating effects on the human body, his research is taken in a menacing new direction. Did he invent a new type of weapon of mass destruction? His work, and its military uses, remain shrouded in mystery to this day.

SEXY SECRET AGENT: When talk show host John Nebel married ex-model Candy Jones he had no idea that she would reveal that she was a brainwashed CIA secret agent called Arlene Grant. She claims to have been the subject of mind control experiments in the late 50s and to have been sent on foreign missions where she was tortured. But was it true, or had Candy Jones developed a split personality during her troubled childhood? Truth or fantasy? FULL BODY TRANSPLANT: In 1971, in the culmination of a series of gruesome experiments, neurosurgeon Dr. Robert White successfully transplanted the head of one rhesus monkey onto the decapitated body of another. A devout Catholic, White believed the techniques could one day save human souls when their bodies gave out. But would it ever have worked? And would we tolerate today the level of unnecessary animal cruelty that he believed acceptable? HONEY I NUKED THE PLANET: In 1962 the United States exploded a 1.4 megaton H-Bomb in space Scientist James van Allen was asked to prove the test was safe but given just weeks to do it. President Kennedy went on to use Van Allen's name to prove the tests were not dangerous. The bomb created a radiation storm around the planet that took ten years to dissipate, blew out orbiting satellites and plunged parts of Oahu into darkness. They were fortunate it wasn't far worse. Van Allen kept his own council until the test was complete but then exploded labeling it shoddy and unsafe.

The Philadelphia Experiment: In 1956 astronomer and UFOlogist Morris Jessup received an extraordinary letter. It claimed that during World War 2 the US Navy had experimented with invisibility and teleportation in a botched test on a destroyer, the USS Eldridge. Jessup's search for the truth will lead him to pay the ultimate price. APE-MAN ARMY: In the 1920s and 30s Soviet scientist Dr. Ilya Ivanov began a series of disturbing experiments to cross breed humans with apes. At first he tried to make female apes pregnant using humans as the fathers. His experiments grew so grotesque he was expelled from French Guinea in Africa when he attempted to make women pregnant using apes as the fathers. But his research continued in Russia. Did he succeed? ZAPPED TO DEATH: Thomas Edison was a great man, one of the inventors of the modern world. But even the greatest men make mistakes. Caught up in a commercial battle to supply America with electricity, Edison ran a disturbing publicity campaign against his bitter rival George Westinghouse. The campaign used Westinghouse technology to electrocute animals. Ultimately Edison's campaign went even further, leading to the invention of the electric chair. It was a battle Edison regretted for the rest of his life.