The film exposes government and corporate activities to blur the lines between real news and fake news, as well as the development over time of public relations misinformation campaigns, strategic corporate campaigns to generate goodwill and the perception of good works, the use of staged photo-ops, and other manipulative PR tools that have turned the land of the free and the home of the brave into a place where citizens are now manipulated with great efficiency, and on a massive scale.
Kim Peek, the genius who inspired Dustin Hoffman’s character in Rain Man, has died from a heart attack at the age of 58. Kim Peek was classed as a “mega-savant” and had memorised 12,000 books, including the entire Bible, but had difficulty with ordinary tasks like getting dressed and combing his hair. His astonishing abilities included being able to read one page of a book with his left eye and the other with his right. It took him just eight seconds to read and remember a page.
Why Do We Talk? meets the scientists beginning to unlock the secrets of speech – including a father who is filming every second of his son’s first three years in order to discover how we learn to talk, the autistic savant who can speak more than 20 languages, and the first scientist to identify a gene that makes speech possible. Talking is something that is unique to humans, yet it still remains a mystery. A unique experiment shows how a new alien language can emerge in just one afternoon, in a bid to understand where language comes from and why it is the way it is.
It’s the world of mystical experiences and those who have been there describe the visit as the most significant event in their lives. Until recent times, it was a world known only to holy man, to saints, and perhaps to the insane. Then a generation ago, this drug, LSD, escaped from the laboratory and was consumed by millions of young people. To some, it’s a doorway to the mystical universe – chemical ecstasy, enlightenment in a bottle. To others it’s a dangerous and subversive poison. The drug challenges our very conception of reality and its’ turbulent history raises sharp questions about the dividing line between private experience and public policy. There is more to reality than meets a normal eye. Behind the curtain of everyday consciousness is hidden another unutterably strange universe.
The story of Flo and Kay, the worlds only female autistic savant twins. Savantism is a rare condition in which sufferers of developmental disorders, often autism, are capable of acts of genius that far outstrip their expected levels of ability. In Flo and Kays case, they each have extraordinary memories for facts and dates. According to psychologist Dr David Holmes, Flo and Kay’s well ordered minds are also reflected in their well ordered lives. The more that they can create order, the more secure they feel, he says. At 52 years of age, the twins are bubbly and sociable. They are passionate about music, enjoy going to gigs and love to laugh. This means that they do not fit the classic stereotype of autism sufferers.
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