Over the course of one year, Milgram brings randomly selected volunteers into a teacher-student scenario in which they are instructed to give electric shocks to another person. What the participants don’t know is that the shocks aren’t really occurring and this whole scenario is an experiment on obedience to authority. Though Milgram expected some shocking results (no pun intended), he wasn’t prepared to find that a startling majority of volunteers willingly kept “shocking” the other participant (an actor in disguise). His research makes big waves in the intellectual community and Milgram becomes the subject of a whole lot of hatred. This movie moves through Milgram’s life including before, during, and after his controversial obedience experiments.