Paul Verge spends five years investigating what he calls the hidden machinery of world power, then builds this first chapter of his series, titled "Do As We Say, Not As We Do," around a single claim: a small number of people in positions of power can manipulate the public, and Verge sets out to show how. He drives across Canada and the United States interviewing whistleblowers and activists, and lays out the legal theory of corporate personhood, arguing that a person's legal name is registered as property of the corporations they live within. Edward Bernays gets sustained attention as the architect of modern mass marketing and propaganda, and Verge connects his techniques to Hegelian Dialectic, the compartmentalization of information, and the operation of secret societies. The film is told largely through Verge's own narration and on-camera testimony from people who say they've been affected by these systems, presenting itself as an introduction to a larger argument the series will keep building.