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