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Selects: The Unabomber: Misguided to say the least · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's me Josh. For this week's select, I've
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: chosen our twenty eighteen episode about the unibomber Misunderstood. You
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: could say that the environmental visionary who predicted some of
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: the more negative aspects of our modern world. Yes, indeed,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: unrelin and killer who didn't care who he hurt. Absolutely,
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: and that kind of undercuts everything else, doesn't it. Still,
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: it's a fascinating episode, and I hope.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: You enjoy it.
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark with Charles W Chuck Bryant with Jerry Rowland.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Three of us put together, put us in some ray
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: band aviators, put a gray hoodie sweatshirt on us.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: You got stuff you should know.
• 0:53
  Speaker 4: I know, I like your costume today.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: I thought I would dress up to really kind of
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: drive home the idea that I have. I know what
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: we're going to be talking about.
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know what's funny is that today, all these
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: years later, when you see someone in aviators in a
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: hoodie with the hood up, you say, cheez.
• 1:10
  Speaker 4: You know what's up? You in a bomber?
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: It's it's part of the social fabric these days. Like
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: I ran across some I guess an article from the
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: late nineties or whatever that was talking about that famous
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: sketch and how it made its way onto like coffee
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: mugs and keychains and T shirts and like it became
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: like a pop culture icon.
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I'm sure it was on some T shirt
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: design at what's that terrible store?
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: Spencer's. Well, no, no, hot topic.
• 1:43
  Speaker 4: That one's great. No Urban Outfitters.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Wait, so you're a Spencer's fan. Huh sure, Okay, Spencer's
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: over Urban Outfitters.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: I guess that is. That's the great divide.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: You know, well, Michigan, Ohio State Spencer's Urban Outfitters.
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: Urban Outfitters is just trendy like stuff that they think
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: is clever, but it's not Spencer. You could go in
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: and get a poster of a bikini lady on a Ferrari,
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: some incense and a giant rubber peanuts, right, Like.
• 2:16
  Speaker 4: That's a great store, I guess it is. You know,
• 2:20
  Speaker 4: everything you need under one roof.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: I can't remember what I was in there for the
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: other day, but they have like the most extensive selection
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: of tasteless shot glasses I've ever seen.
• 2:31
  Speaker 4: In my life at Spencer.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which, it's like there's people collecting this.
• 2:36
  Speaker 4: You can tell I want to know who Spencer is.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: Spencer doesn't want you to know who he is.
• 2:41
  Speaker 4: Okay, that's why I called his store Spencer.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, his real name is Jackson McClain.
• 2:46
  Speaker 4: Oh wow, nice work, Jackson threw me. You sniffed me
• 2:49
  Speaker 4: off the case.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: Nice. That was a good saved, Chuck.
• 2:53
  Speaker 4: Thanks.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: Speaking of good saves, I'm gonna bail us out of
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: this intro. Let's do it take us back way back
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: to nineteen seventy nine. Eight.
• 3:03
  Speaker 4: I'm a little seven year old eight.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Sorry, Chuck, We're going to go back one more year
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy eight.
• 3:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I was seven.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: Oh so you knew I got it wrong. Okay.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: Well, in nineteen seventy eight in the Chicago Land area,
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: there's a university called Northwestern University.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: Go Wildcats.
• 3:23
  Speaker 4: I didn't look this one up.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: I think it is the Wildcats. That's what we're going with.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: And there was a security officer named Terry Maker who
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: opened a suspicious looking package. That's I couldn't find why
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: Terry Maker opened it. So I should say everybody, I'm
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: making the assumption here that it was deemed suspicious and
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: they were like, gook, get the security guard. But Terry
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: Maker opened this package and it exploded. Yeah, he got
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: some minor cuts and burns. I don't see too many
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: people counting him as a victim of the unibomber, although
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: I think Terry Maker would probably take issue with it. Sure,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: but he was, by all accounts, the first person to
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: come into contact with the unibomber or one of the
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: Unibomber's bombs.
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he was number one in nineteen seventy eight. That
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: would go on to be fifteen more bombs over the
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: seventeen year killing spree. Well, in a way, he killed
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: three people in the end, wounded many more. And we
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: won't go through all of the targets, but they ranged
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: from American Airlines Flight four forty four to the president
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: of United Airlines, Percy Wood, to a Vanderbilt University secretary,
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: to a timber industry lobbyist to an advertising executive. Part
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: of the reason why it was so maddening for so
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: many years was because there was no rhyme or reason
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: seemingly to the victims of the Unibomber's wrath.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: No, the one thing that they all shared in common,
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: and the Unibomber also wrote letters to newspapers during this
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: whole time. The thing that they had in common was
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: that they had something to do with technology, or the
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: advancement of technology, or the destruction of nature, one of
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: those two. And so these people like that was it.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: That was all you had to be doing to be
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: a target of the unibomber. He was extremely indiscriminate in
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: picking who lived or died by his hand. And you
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: have to understand all of these bombs, None of these
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: bombs were sent to scare people. Every single one of
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: these bombs, whether they killed somebody or not, were intended
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: to kill somebody. Who they killed the Unibomber didn't much care.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: And you can tell by the kind of insution attitude
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: he had toward who was targeted, like he would get
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: names wrong.
• 5:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: His last victim a guy named Gilbert Brent Murray. He
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: was a timber industry lobbyist. He opened the package because
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: he was the president of the timber industry lobby even
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: though the package was addressed to his predecessor. The reason
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: it was addressed to his predecessor was because the Unibomber
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: had picked the name out of a directory, and it
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: was an out of date directory. So this guy died
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: as a result of the bomb.
• 6:24
  Speaker 4: You know, that's a very thing to do.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: It really was.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: And I think the unibomber if you talk to the
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: unibomber today, which you could apparently he's very easy to
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: get in touch with as and become a pempal of
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: he would tell you totally fine, like I don't care
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  Speaker 1: who died, Like the head of this timber lobby died.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: That was ultimately what I was going for. So he
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: was killing people who were associated with an idea, a cause,
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: and the cause that he was opposed to was the
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  Speaker 1: destruction of nature and the advancement of technology.
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: Right, So we're talking obviously about Ted Kaczinski. It was
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: the man's real name and early on innineteen seventy nine,
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: right after these attacks started happening, the Postal Service, the ATF,
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: and the FBI got together formed a task course and
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: that's where they came up with the name unibomb unabom
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: stood for University Airline bombings, Yeah, because those were the
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: first bombs that were sent.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: And I guess the name of the case was by
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: the FBI, but the name Unibomber was made up by
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: the media covering it, right.
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's usually the case. Yeah.
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: In the end, it would become the longest running at
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: the time. I don't know if it's been outdone yet,
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: but longest running and most expensive FBI investigation in history.
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: Eventually had one hundred and fifty full time employees on
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: the case, which is amazing. And he was tough to
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: tough to get and you know, he had no forensic
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: evidence left behind.
• 7:53
  Speaker 4: He was very careful.
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: He used bombs that were made out of materials that
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  Speaker 3: were easy to find, you couldn't track them.
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  Speaker 2: He made all of them by hand, painstaking lee.
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah, made them all by hand.
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  Speaker 3: Like we said, the victims were chosen seemingly at random,
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: and had it not been for his manifesto, they may
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: still be on the lookout for this guy.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: And even still, the way that they were able to
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  Speaker 1: connect these things was because during this seventeen year campaign
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: he would write letters to the editors of newspapers around
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: the country claiming responsibility for these crimes. And then I
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  Speaker 1: think half of the bombs had the inscription FC on
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  Speaker 1: parts that were recovered, and FC stood for Freedom Club
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: because the unibomber, didn't call himself the unibomber. Again, that
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  Speaker 1: was the media. All of these things, including the manifesto,
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  Speaker 1: was signed the Freedom Club.
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  Speaker 4: A club of one right.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: But he always wrote about we whenever he was referring
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  Speaker 1: to himself. Yes, So the whole thing came to a
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  Speaker 1: head in nineteen ninety six when take Hisski was arrested
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  Speaker 1: in his cabin in Lincoln, Montana. He was known to
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  Speaker 1: his neighbors as the Hermit on the Hill, and he'd
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: lived there for years and years and years, I think
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  Speaker 1: since the early seventies, I believe.
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it was a little primitive cabin off grid.
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  Speaker 3: Inside they found about forty thousand pages worth of journals
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  Speaker 3: describing all his crimes. They found bomb parts, they found
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  Speaker 3: a bomb ready to be mailed, and they knew they
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: had their guy thanks to his brother David turning him
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  Speaker 3: in essentially after reading this manifesto. He was eventually reigned
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: in Sacramento, which is where the final murder took place,
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: and he was sent to jail. Initially, he said, now
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: I don't want to I don't want to be I
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: don't want to plead insanity. That's a big, big, point, yeah,
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: because I don't think he would have admitted something like that.
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: But he tried to kill himself in earlynineteen ninety eight
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: and his jail cell that triggered a psychiatric evaluation and
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, which triggered a plea
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: bargain that basically said, you can avoid the death penalty
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: now if you take this plea bargain. He did, and
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: in January of nineteen nine eight, he pleaded guilty, accepted
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: the eight life sentences with no parole, and is now
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: living with quite a few other famous bombers at the.
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: Florence, Colorado Alcatraz.
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: Of the Rockies the eight X there, right, which that
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: place in and of itself is crazy.
• 10:34
  Speaker 4: I looked into it.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like it's come up in plenty of
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: other episodes before, because it certainly sounds familiar. Yeah, So
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: I was looking into There's this fascinating article called Harvard
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: in the Making of the Unibomber by a guy named
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: Alston Chase, who I think wrote a book on it.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: But in this article it was so good you read
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: it too. Oh yeah, So he really kind of lays
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: out a pretty great case based on evidence that he
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: compiled from interviews and things like that, that it's definitely
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: not a slam dunk diagnosis that the unibomber has schizophrenia.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: And he also, I don't know if he says it outright,
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: but he at the very least intimates that it was
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: Ted Kaczinski's brother David and his legal team that created
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: the public persona of the Unibombers as a person with
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: schizophrenia to keep him from getting the death penalty. This
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: is much, much, much to the chagrin of the unibomber
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: Ted Kaczinski, who eventually did cop to this plea bargain
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: because it became clear to him that if he went
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: to trial, his defense team was going to put in
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: an insanity defense, whether he liked it or not, and
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: he was denied the ability to represent himself.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: So he was presented with a choice.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: Either go to trial it plead insanity, maybe get a
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: lesser defense, but in the meantime his manifesto would be
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: painted as the ramblings of a madman because he would
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: be deemed insane or plead guilty and not insane, defend insanity,
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: and then, in his hopes also by extension, defend his
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: manifesto and the ideas in it.
• 12:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah. So he is still in prison in Colorado.
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: Apparently, like you said, he's got a lot of pin
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: pals because he lived in a tiny, little primitive cabin
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: for so many years. By all accounts, he has adapted
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: pretty well to prison life. Being in a small room
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: is no big deal to him.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: Apparently not.
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: And you can actually go to the and I'm going
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: to totally check this out. I don't know if I
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: can do it on this upcoming tour, but you can
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: go see that original cabin at the Newseum in Washington,
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: d C. And I've looked up pictures and it's kind
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: of all right there, which is pretty interesting.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the whole thing is just right there in the Newseum.
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: So he was a brilliant guy. Like you said, he
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: went to Harvard. He's a nash MERIT finalist, he was
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: a math prodigy, started Harvard at sixteen, had an IQ
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: or has an IQ of one sixty seven. And it
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: was just a is just a brilliant, brilliant guy.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: And I think we should take a break getting a tingle.
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: And we'll come back and we'll talk. Well, I guess
• 13:21
  Speaker 4: we should talk about the manifesto.
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: Let's all right, right for this.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: All right, Chuck, and we're back and were kind of
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: left it off on Well, we promised we're about to
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: talk manifesto, So let's talk manifesto.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: And after reading the cliffs notes of this thing in
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: a few different places, one thing is clear is it's
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: not the ramblings of a madman a b he has
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: and I hate saying this, but he has a lot
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: of very salient points about where society is headed due
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: to technology.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: Or or where it was headed back in the nineties
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: where it fully is now.
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, very much ahead of his time, thinking wise. The
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: way he went about correcting this was not was abhorrent, obviously,
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: but when you read parts of this thing the industrial
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: revolution and its consequences, like here, just let me pull
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: this one for instance. Okay, here's one pull quote. Once
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: a technical innovation has been introduced, people usually become dependent
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: on it so that they can never again do without
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: it unless it is replaced by some still more advanced innovation.
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: Not only do people become dependent as individuals on a
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: new item of technology, but even more, the system as
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: a whole becomes dependent on it. Does it sound like
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: anything that everyone carries in their pocket every day exactly.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: And he also points out that like the way that
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: this happens, this dependence on technology, it comes about because
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: new technologies seem good and helpful and useful, and then
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: we eventually adapt ourselves to fit them better. We change
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: our behavior, we change the way we see things, we
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: change the way we think and interact with stuff to
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: fit the technology.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: And his whole idea was that that is the.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: Inevitable outcome from the Industrial Revolution, and that ever since
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: the Industrial Revolution, our society has been in a stranglehold
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: at the service of technology and the people who serve technology,
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: and society has been restructured and reshuffled to the detriment
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: of the individual human to local communities as a whole,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: and that the only way that this is so ingrained
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: now in our world, the only way to stop this
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: is to violently overthrow the current system. And he has
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: a very lase fair attitude about what comes after. He
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: said that we have no illusions about the feasibility of
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: creating a new ideal form of society. Our goal only
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: is to destroy the existing form of society. That was it,
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: That was the whole reason for his campaign was to
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: be one of the provocateurs of this revolution that upended
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: technological society.
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, here's another assummation of another part of the manifesto
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: about the social infrastructure that he says is dedicated to
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: modifying our own behaviors. This infrastructure includes an array of
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: government agencies with ever expanding police powers and out of
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: control regulatory system that encourages the limitless multiplication of laws,
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: an education establishment and stresses conformism. You biquit his television networks.
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: Who's Fair is essentially an electronic form of value, and
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: a medical and psychological establishment that promotes the indiscriminate use
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: of mind altering drugs. So again, I don't want this
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: to come across that I like look up to this
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: guy in anyway. But when you read some of the stuff,
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: you think, Man, if this guy had only reined it in,
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: he could have done good.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: I can't remember what the turning point was, but there
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: was some there was some potential path that he was
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: on where he could have done this peacefully, and he
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: pulled back and went went a violent way. And I think,
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: I think quite rightly that if he were not locked
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: up for the rest of his life. He would he
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: would keep sending bombs out, he would not stop. No,
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: because he's he doesn't he's not a.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: A moral agent.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: He is rational agent, and he sees this as a
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: rational and to the means, to his means, which is
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: taking out people who may or may not be in
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: a position to advance technological society.
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah, and that's what was That's where the line
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: the delineation occurs, where he was he's such a smart person.
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: But that's such a dumb like there's blowing someone up,
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: is gonna is not gonna halt any innovations or change
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: the course of where we're.
• 18:28
  Speaker 4: Headed as a society.
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: Right, it was just I mean to call it misguided
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: is the understatement of the year.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: So and forgive me for armchair psychologalizing here, but now
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: you start to get into the idea of whether or
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: not he was fulfilling or indulging his own desire to kill. Well,
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: you never know, because if he is thinking about things
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: like this and he is such a rational person, surely
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: there would have been other ways to do this that
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: were either more productive or on the other hand, more destructive, right,
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: like sending a bomb that might take out one or
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: two or three people is not. It's and by making
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: these bombs painstaking lee by hand over the course of
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: months and probably years, sometimes that's not a very productive
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: way of achieving this goal. So it makes you wonder
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: did this guy just want to kill people and that
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: that coupled with this this view of technological society to
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: form what we know is the unibomber.
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: Well, I think that was probably the case, is he
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: was angry at where things were headed and he wanted
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: to take it out on somebody.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but again, I want to go back to this
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: idea that he is schizophrenic.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: Right, there is a that is not necessarily the case.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: He was given a temporary or provisional or conditional schizophrenic
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: or diagnosis of schizophrenia by a court ordered psychiatrist forensic psychiatrists,
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: and that was it. I don't I don't believe she
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: ever went back and made an official diagnosis. Other people
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: in the media, other psychiatrists were basically diagnosing them from afar.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: Some psychiatrists met with him, but they didn't officially examine him.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: So basically, just based on his actions and his manifesto
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: and what was contained within, he was largely given this
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: diagnosis of schizophrenia, and I couldn't find anything that said
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: that he's being treated for schizophrenia now, which is kind
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: of a big deal because it's a twofold big deal.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: One it says it dismisses him as just a complete
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: madman who is delusional, but it also does a tremendous
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: disservice to people with schizophrenia because it says, this is
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: what people with schizophrenia do, They send bombs to people.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: They go and live in like Montana alone for thirty
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: years and send bombs to people the whole time. So
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: it's doing that same armchair psycho logulizing that I was doing.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: Is it's worse if you're an actual psychiatrist, you know?
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, I think we should talk a little
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: bit about how this manifesto came to be in public view,
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: because it's a super interesting sub story in itself. The
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: great great article from the Washington Post where I got
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: most of this part, but they make the point in
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: this article is super interesting to me that the time
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: that this happened, in the mid to late nineties, it
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: was a transitionary time in technology in and of itself,
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: and that the Internet was around, but it wasn't ubiquitous,
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: and it's not where everyone went for everything, including news.
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: So the fact that this publishing of the manifesto in
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: the Washington Post, which we'll talk about in a second,
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: it says here it was perhaps the last one, the
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: last newsworthy document to appear only in print, and it's
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: very ironic considering what he was railing against was that
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: it was before everyone was getting their news from the internet.
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: So the fact that they actually it was it was
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: an era that was it was being forgotten the newspaper,
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: print in print, and that's how he got his message
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: out finally by sending packages containing this manifesto to the
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: New York Times in the Washington Post in June of
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: nineteen ninety five.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so they each one got a package one day
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: after the other, and the one to the Post had
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: a return name and address Boon Long Ho thirty six,
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: nine Renoso Court, San Jose, California, nine to five one
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: three six. And it turns out that that address and
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: that person it was a He was a CFO of
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: a Thai circuit board maker whose headquarters were in San Jose. Yeah,
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: that was the address for that. So they you can
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: imagine that Boon Long Ho was pretty nervous, yeah, because
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: rather than being like the recipient of a bomb, he
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: was supposedly the center of this manifest to the Washington Post.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: But the FBI investigated and quickly cleared Boon long Ho
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: and the Post and the Time suddenly had a decision
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: to make because in this package with this manifesto was
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: a letter that said, if you published this, I will
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: stop killing people. If you don't, I'm going to start,
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: or we will start making our next bomb.
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so they obviously got in touch with the FBI.
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: The FBI took one look at the letter and said,
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: I think this is from the un obomber. They went, duh,
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: of course it is. There is no well there Actually,
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: they didn't know at the time how many people were
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: sending these bombs, but they met with They had three
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: meetings i think with the FBI's director at the time,
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: Lewis Free, and the task force. And then two out
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: of those three meetings, Attorney General Janet Reno came.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: That it's like such a nineties meeting nineties Lewis Free
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: and Jane Arena.
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah for sure. So they said, listen, we're
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: not in the safety business. We're not experts on this.
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: You tell us what you think we should do, and
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: then we'll make our mind up what we should do. Basically,
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: everyone said you should probably publish this because A we
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: can maybe tag and track newspapers in northern California where we.
• 24:17
  Speaker 4: Think he might be. B. Maybe someone will recognize this
• 24:21
  Speaker 4: guy and come forward. Was there a C.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: No, it's the same b okay.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: And so this is a note to all potential manifesto writers. Yeah,
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: if you are trying to keep your identity a secret,
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: probably refrain from publishing your thirty five thousand word manifesto
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: because you're going to out yourself. And that's exactly what
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: happened with Ted Kaczynski. The Washington Post and The New
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: York Times agreed to do this. Actually, the New York
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: Times is like, why don't you do it. We'll just
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: half the cost of printing and distribution.
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I thought that was pretty interesting. They didn't both
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: want to, but the Post said we'll do it if
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: you go have these, which is adorable, and they did.
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: And then they said here's what we'll do. Though, we're
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: not going to just put it in the newspaper. We're
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: going to print it in a special section with its
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: own type face, and it became a sensation. Like people
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: wanted copies of this thing, like extra copies for themselves,
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: wrote the newspaper, and they're like, we don't have any
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: other copies, And like we said, this is the last
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: time that this was sort of a viable Like now
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: anyone can throw anything on the internet. So it was
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: a really interesting time in the course of humanity that
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: this thing came out.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: As far as like mad bombers go. Having the Washington
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: Post print your thirty five thousand word manifesto is pretty prestigious.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, especially at that time. I can't decide whether
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: it be more prestigious today because anybody can just put
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: it out.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: On the internet.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: Probably so, But yeah, but I think at the time,
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, like newspapers were at still at the height
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: of their influence, you know, yeah, who knows, but at
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: the very you can imagine take Kazinsky's surprise and delight
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: when the Times published this thing. And like you said,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: it was a sensation. But it made its way into
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: the hands of Linda Patrick, who was actually a childhood
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: friend of David Kaczinski and now his wife, and she
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: noticed this or She read this manifesto and said this
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: sounds an awful lot like your brother Teddy to David,
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: and he read it and he said, oh no.
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: Should we take a break? Yeah, all right, that's it, man,
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: what a cliffhanger.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: Nice work.
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: Thanks all right, good cliffhanger.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: Thank you. I feel like we're dangling by our fingernails.
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: So where we left off was Linda Patrick, wife of Well,
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: sister in law of the unibomber, wife of David, who
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: was the younger brother, said take a look at this.
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: David read it and said, this sounds very much like
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: my brother. In fact, there was a term what was
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: the term that he used that was sort of a
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: dead giveaway.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: Cool headed logicians.
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's not something you hear every day.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: I don't use that very frequently.
• 27:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: So he saw that, and I think I can't imagine
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: just the stomach churning, sinking feeling that he got right
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: when he saw those three words, especially.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like you said, that was the dead giveaway. I
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: think if you put the whole thing together. Though he
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: had been he and his family had been receiving, actually
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: he hadn't leading up to I think nineteen eighty nine.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: He had been receiving letters from his brother about the
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: same stuff, So I think even without that term, he
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: probably would have been pretty convinced.
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: But he was convinced enough to go.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: His wife, Linda, contacted a friend who was an investigator
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: for a lawyer, and this woman kind of took charge
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: of this and hired like a criminal profiler who looked
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: at the letters from Ted and then the unibomber manifesto
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: and said, I'm pretty sure this is the same guy.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: They hired another lawyer who represented the family, and they
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: went to the FBI and said, we think we know
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: who the unibomber is.
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: I thought that was interesting in that he didn't go
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: right to the FBI, like he took it. It seems like
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: I don't know how much time, but it said weeks. Yeah,
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: I went through a lot of effort privately to suss
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: out whether or not they thought it was legit.
• 28:57
  Speaker 4: I mean, I think he didn't.
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: I mean, by all accounts, he didn't want to do that,
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: and he was even worried what his mother would think.
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: And finally the mother did say, you know. She took
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: his head in her hands and kissed him and basically
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: was like, I know you loved Ted and you had
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: to do this.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: Basically, she said, I knew it was Eufredo.
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: So now we should jump back in time and sort
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: of explain the relationship with David and Ted and how
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: they got here because they were estranged for twenty years
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: before this. Interestingly, you know, we talked about had he
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: not decided to start sending bombs, he could have led
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: a more productive life.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: Oh easily.
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: But David was sort of cut from the same cloth,
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: like they bought this land together in Montana.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: Hold on, I want to say something here, Chuck. You
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: just said that he could have led a more productive life.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: I said that he could have been more productive earlier too.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: Do you realize what we're talking about is we're saying
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: that he could have better fit into the technological system
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: that he was railing.
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: Or not, or maybe have been an outspoken advocate in
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: a productive way on Facebook.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: Shit, there you go, Sorry for interrupting. Has had to
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: point there.
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: No, that's all right. So they originally had bought this
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: land in Montana together. They both had these sort of
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: similar ideals about removing themselves from society. For David, though,
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: it was like back to nature, getting out of the
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: the hustle and bustle.
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: Of the world to find himself, to.
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: Find himself like a spiritual journey. For Ted, it seems
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: very much like I don't like people. Yeah, he was
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: a bit of a misanthrope. And they even have stories
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: dating back to when he was like seven years old,
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: when David asked mom, like, what's wrong with Teddy? Like
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: when people come over to visit, he runs to the
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: attic and hides something's wrong. And his mom said, you
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: know what, when he was a baby, he was hospitalized
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: for a few days with a rash and being separated
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: from us for those few days is what is caused this.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: So and then she says, so, don't ever abandon Teddy.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: That's what he fears the most.
• 31:03
  Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, not quite true actually, So.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: She lays that on this kid, and this is like
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: her his older brother that she's talking to him about,
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: you know. But he said that as they grew up,
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: he was kind of like Ted's entree into socialization, Like
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: David would go to parties, and I get the impression
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: that Ted would kind of tag along even though he was.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: The older brother.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: But that's not to say that David didn't. He says
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: that he looked up to Ted, and Ted was just
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: this whiz kid, wonder boy, genius when it came to math. Yeah,
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: you said he went to Harvard at sixteen. Like, say
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: that again, man, he went to Harvard at age sixteen.
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think he got like in master's and his
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: PhD in math by the time he was like twenty
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: or twenty one or something.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, so this guy was a mathematical genius who,
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: from what the Atlantic article by Austin Chase says, kind
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: of lays a lot of a lot of this at
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: his dad's feet for pushing him. Yeah, at a very
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: early age to become like to go to Harvard, to
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: jump a couple grades in school, that kind of stuff.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: So he was already you could say, misanthropic, potentially socially maladjusted.
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: Who knows. He wasn't like the.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: Most easygoing kid on the block, but supposedly once you
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: got to do him, especially if you were a grown
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: up and not one of his peers, he was very
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: easy to be around.
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: Actually.
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so little brother David, he looks up to Ted,
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: he tries to go to Harvard, is rejected, and then,
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: like I said, they bought this land together. Ted builds
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: this cabin. David later on says, well, can I build
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: a cabin? You know, I want to build a cabin
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: on this land too. Ted was like, no way, dude,
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: this is my cabin and my land. So David, I'm sure, was,
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: you know, very disappointed. He goes finds it his own
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: land in West Texas, built his cabin and they corresponded
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: for many years, one thousand miles apart, about their journeys
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: toward living off grid and getting back to nature.
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: I think he lived just like Ted did for at
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: least eight years, I believe. And then he said his
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: brother disowned him when he sent a letter saying that
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: he was moving out of the Forbidden Zone into upstate
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: New York to go marry Linda Patrick.
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think he thought he was a sellout basically.
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: That's what I get too.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: He sent him, like I think, a blistering twenty page
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: letter saying I'm done with you. We're done, and that
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: was it. That was the last contact that he had
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: had aside from one letter after their dad was diagnosed
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: with lung cancer. That was the only contact he'd had.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: So he hasn't spoken to his brother, corresponded really with
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: his brother since nineteen eighty nine.
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they had this system worked out where if there
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: was a family emergency, then David was to put a line,
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: draw a line under the stamp of the letter, and
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: that's the only thing that he would open. If you
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: send me any other letters, I'll burn them. And if
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: you take advantage of this system and fool me by
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: putting a line under it and it's not an emergency,
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: then I'm never going to open a letter again. So
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: he did send that one letter with a line under
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: the stamp about his father. Ted didn't even reply except
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: to say thank you for sticking to our system, and
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: he didn't even mention the fact that their father was dying.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: Right, So that was the last time they corresponded. Yeah,
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: that was in nineteen ninety four, but that was it
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: for the correspondence from basically from eighty nine onward, David
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: and Ted were estranged. And so come nineteen ninety five,
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: David's already not spoken with his brother for six years,
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: and now he suddenly has faced with this idea of
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: turning his brother in. Yeah, knowing that he's probably going
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: to get the death penalties. So when they finally did
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: go to the the FBI, and the FBI had their
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: own linguistic analysis done on these letters and they.
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: Said, yeah, this is the guy.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: David started this campaign to paint his brother as mentally
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: ill in order to thwart the federal prosecutors from seeking
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: the death penalty. So apparently they told him that they
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: wouldn't and then they reneged on that, and he felt
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: extremely betrayed, so much so that he's apparently a crusader
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: for an anti death penalty activist now based on that
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: betrayal from the federal prosecutors.
• 35:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah, this is amazing. He works.
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: He's the head of the New Yorkers Against the Death
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: Penalty group. And get this, I know you know this
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: talking to everyone else.
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: His closest friend, his bestie is Gary Wright, who is
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: one of the computer store owners in Utah who was
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: a victim of Ted.
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they became good friends.
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: Friend, two pieces of shrapnel lodge in his body from
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: one of Ted's bombs, and now he and David Kazinski
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: are best buds.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: And so also from that same bomb that was nineteen
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: eighty seven, one of.
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: Is it Gary, right?
• 36:15
  Speaker 4: Gary us bonds?
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: No, Gary Wright?
• 36:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah?
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: I think Okay, Gary Wright's employee is the woman who
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: saw the unibomber and gave that description to this sketch artist. Wow,
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: I know that was a turning point in a bunch
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: of people's lives right there.
• 36:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that sketch didn't even look like him really.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: Though, I've seen people be like, gosh, it's the spinning
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: image of them. It's like, no, once you have oversized
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: aviators on and it doesn't look like anybody. Yeah, So
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: David turns on his brother Ted. Kazinski's arrested on April third,
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six. He pleads guilty in nineteen ninety eight,
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: and he's been serving his eight consecutive life sentences ever since.
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: And recently there was a big few were I think
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: in twenty twelve or thirteen. When the twenty twelve I
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: guess because it would have been his fiftieth class reunion. Yeah, Harvard,
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: the people running his class, in publishing the class directory,
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: reached out to him like they did everybody.
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: Else in the class.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: That's crazy and send him a form to fill out,
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: and he filled it out and sent.
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: It back in and they published it.
• 37:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: He said his job was a prisoner and that he
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: he listed his that was it eight life sentences as awards.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and gave his address at the Florence, Colorado super
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: Max facility. And it was a huge Obviously, it was
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: a huge embarrassment for Harvard because they were not paying
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: attention and a bit of a scandal too. I think
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: Ted Kazinski probably thought it was hilarious.
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, should we finish with a little dy new mom
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: about this weird Harvard experiment?
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: Only if you say d new Ma again, all.
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: Right, So going back in time once again to follow
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: fifty nine through spring of nineteen sixty two, there was
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: an experiment at Harvard University led by psychologist Henry Murray
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: and how they describe it here in this article as
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: a disturbing and what would now be seen as ethically
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: indefensible experiment on twenty two undergrads. They each undergrad that
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: took part. Ted Kazinski was one of them, had had
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: a code name for the purposes of anonymity, and ironically
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: Ted Kazinski's was Lawful was his code name. So basically
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: what would happen is is they would get it. It
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: was interrogation is what they would go through. So they
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: would go into a room, they would go downstairs, to
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: this basement room and then a voice would say, you know,
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: enter the room. They would enter the room, they would
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: sit down and be faced with a spotlight that would
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: blind them in an otherwise dark room. And then they
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: would sit in front of a board of inquisitors that
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: would order them to do things kind of start slow
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: and then eventually build up to where they're screaming and
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: yelling at these kids, these in Ted's case, I guess,
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: like sixteen seventeen years old, and berating them basically.
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: And this was not just like you you dressed like
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: a slob, or you know, your mother's meat loaf is terrible,
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: like part step one of all is this was that
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: you're you were supposed to talk about some of your
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: most deeply held beliefs, Yeah, the most treasured beliefs in
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: values and views on things.
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: And then these.
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: These inquisitors, who were actually like like law student graduate students,
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: would would harangue you over your beliefs and explain to
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: you why they were so stupid and why you were
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: such a useless human being for holding these beliefs. And
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: the whole point of this, the entire point was to
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: find out the psychological limits for humiliation and stress brought
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: on by humiliation and when people would crack. And this
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: is not a one time thing that he went and
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: did for extra credit. This was carried out over three years. Again,
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: the kids sixteen at the time. He's already socially awkward.
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: He's already isolated from his peers just by the virtue
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: of his intelligence, let alone his personal choices at being
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: isolated from everybody, and he's being harangued by like these
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: people about his most deeply held beliefs. His brother David
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: said in another article, he doesn't believe that that had
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: anything to do with creating the UNI bomber. Plenty of
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: other people are like, no, I'm not so sure about that.
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: Well, here's what I think. And what was the name
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: of the article from the Atlantic. Did Harvard create the unibomber?
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: Harvard and the making of the unibomber?
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it certainly didn't help, especially when he had this
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: core belief system that was so firmly entrenched. For to
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: sit in a room for three years off and on
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: and be criticized and screamed at and called a liar
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: and denigrated like that, I'm sure it did not help.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, supposedly it wasn't a very relativistic person. It was
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: things were black and white, and if you believe something
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: was right, it was right. So to have it as
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: sailed like that, yeah, surely it had some effect somewhere.
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: It just couldn't well, I mean, ka Ted Kazinski later
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: said that Harvard were the worst years of his life.
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so in some small way, I guess he got
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: him back by getting that published in the directory and
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: embarrassing the class.
• 41:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, revenge is a meal best serve of cold through
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: a tiny slot in a metal.
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: Door, doing eight life sentences.
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if you got anything else.
• 41:49
  Speaker 4: I got nothing else. Man. That was a good one,
• 41:51
  Speaker 4: it really was.
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: And again I think it bears repeating.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: Nothing about what we've said that agreed with the unibomber
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: and his theories has anything to do with agreeing with
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: violence of any kind, especially indiscriminate random killing of people
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: with bombs through the mail. It's probably the most cowardly
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: way you could injure or hurt anybody. So we don't
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: agree with that at all. It's fine to say it
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: one more time, Yeah, for sure. If you want to
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: know more about the unibomber, it's all over the place
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: you can go. Type that word you N A B
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: O M B E R in your favorite search bar
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: and it will bring up lots of stuff. And in
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: the meantime, it's time for listener mail.
• 42:35
  Speaker 4: I'm going to call this subway episode.
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: Remember we release our selects on Saturdays, and I believe this.
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: I don't know if it was this one of your picks.
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: No, I guess it was mine then on Subways. So
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: it's an old episode, but a recent re release. O La,
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: Josh and Chuck. I'm in Andrea from Mexico. I've been
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: listening to your podcast for a bit over a year now,
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: but it's first time I'm writing in I listened to
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: and even though it's a rerun, I really wanted to
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: comment because I have some fun facts. As you mentioned
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: in the episode, sometimes digging for subways has led to
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: curious discoveries. In case of Mexico City, the digging of
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: the metro led to the discovery of a lot of
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: the remains of the Aztec city. Even though it was
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: common knowledge that the Spanish city had been built over
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: the ruins of Oh here we go, Tina.
• 43:22
  Speaker 4: Titlan, that was pretty much it close.
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: It was only when excavation started in the sixties that
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: they could uncover a whole underground world. Since then, they
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: have uncovered more than twenty thousand archaeological objects and continue
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: to find new things to this day. If you have
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: a chance to walk around the city center, you may
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: find the Templo Mayor right beside the Spanish Cathedral. Who
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: else can say their everyday commute includes walking by the
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: altar of eh catal Nice, god of wind. Anyway, I
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: think these are very interesting fun facts that I wanted
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: to share with you and the fellow listeners. Maybe one
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: day you can do how Mexico City works episode. The
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: history of the city is super interesting. I think it's amazing.
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: You can literally see the layers of time in the
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: city today. And she attaches some pictures and this is
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: Andrea Gonzalez and man, we should do a show in
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: Mexico City. Sure, man, I bet you we could get
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: a thousand people.
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: We we'll find out.
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: Into a room.
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: I know we haven't delved outside of English speaking countries before,
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: but I bet you, of all the cities, we could
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: probably do so in Mexico City.
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: If Morrissey does good in Mexico City, I'm sure we
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: could too.
• 44:31
  Speaker 4: That's kind of we try and model our career after Maz.
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: Did you see that picture she sent?
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the altar of the wind God. I'm like humans
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: were sacrificed on that. Yeah, that's insane that you just
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: walk past that on.
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: Your way to the subway every day. I know, it's
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: pretty interesting.
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: Well, if you want to tell us about your interesting commute,
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: we always want to hear stuff like that. You can
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: tweet to us at sysk podcast. You can send us
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: an email The Stuff podcast at HowStuffWorks dot com. As
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: always joined us at our home on the web, stuffishoudo
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: dot com.
• 45:06
  Speaker 4: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.