WEBVTT - Bonus: A Conversation with Dr. Mark Epstein 0:00:00.240 --> 0:00:02.800 Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:07.680 --> 0:00:12.000 It was an impossible dilemma in the sense that we 0:00:12.119 --> 0:00:16.560 realized that any decision we made could lead to somebody's death. 0:00:17.520 --> 0:00:19.479 We'd have to go through the rest of our lives 0:00:19.520 --> 0:00:22.680 knowing that someone had died because we had failed to act. 0:00:23.640 --> 0:00:26.320 On the other hand, I had to ask myself, what 0:00:26.360 --> 0:00:28.400 would it be like to go through the rest of 0:00:28.400 --> 0:00:31.680 my life with my brother's blood in my hands. 0:00:32.920 --> 0:00:37.640 That's David Kazinski, author of the book Every Last Tie, 0:00:38.080 --> 0:00:42.320 The Story of the Unibomber and his Family. David is 0:00:42.320 --> 0:00:46.960 the younger brother of Ted Kaczinski, a brilliant, troubled, reclusive 0:00:47.240 --> 0:00:51.120 former mauth professor who began sending bombs through the mail 0:00:51.200 --> 0:00:55.400 in nineteen seventy eight, killing three people and injuring twenty 0:00:55.440 --> 0:00:59.600 three others. When the FBI finally closed in on Ted 0:00:59.680 --> 0:01:04.480 Kazini after a nationwide manhunt that spanned years, it was 0:01:04.520 --> 0:01:09.440 because they received the ultimate tip the Unibomber's brother had 0:01:09.440 --> 0:01:18.880 turned him in. In this special bonus episode, I speak 0:01:18.920 --> 0:01:22.760 with the therapist and writer Mark Epstein, whose work in his 0:01:22.920 --> 0:01:27.679 many wonderful best selling books, explores the interface between psychiatry 0:01:28.000 --> 0:01:31.360 and Buddhist philosophy. Mark, and I will delve into the 0:01:31.360 --> 0:01:36.240 themes and ideas that present themselves in this absolutely extraordinary episode. 0:01:36.720 --> 0:01:39.880 If you haven't listened to What's Wrong with Teddy, which 0:01:39.920 --> 0:01:42.960 first dropped in season three, I hope you'll go back 0:01:43.000 --> 0:01:57.720 and listen, either before or after this conversation. I'm Danny Shapiro, 0:01:58.080 --> 0:02:01.040 and this is family Secrets, the secrets that are kept 0:02:01.040 --> 0:02:03.600 from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the 0:02:03.640 --> 0:02:09.799 secrets we keep from ourselves. Mark Epstein, it's such a 0:02:09.840 --> 0:02:12.400 pleasure to have you on Family Secrets. Thanks for joining me. 0:02:13.240 --> 0:02:14.800 It's my pleasure. Thank you. 0:02:16.200 --> 0:02:18.440 I'm curious what struck you when you were listening to 0:02:19.280 --> 0:02:20.200 What's Wrong with Teddy? 0:02:21.160 --> 0:02:23.760 Well, the first thing that struck me was, oh, my god, 0:02:23.800 --> 0:02:28.160 you're asking me to listen to this episode about Ted Kaczynski. 0:02:28.480 --> 0:02:30.600 I had no idea when you reached out to me 0:02:30.680 --> 0:02:33.960 that that's what it was going to be. And I 0:02:34.000 --> 0:02:38.320 thought the episode was extraordinary, and the humanity of the 0:02:38.400 --> 0:02:45.440 brother is what struck me. The vulnerability and honesty and 0:02:45.760 --> 0:02:49.800 courage of the brother, you know, really impacted me. And 0:02:49.840 --> 0:02:52.960 then the story itself was fascinating. I really had no 0:02:53.040 --> 0:02:56.799 idea I had read one newspaper article about the brother 0:02:56.960 --> 0:02:59.360 turning him in, but I hadn't read his book, and 0:02:59.360 --> 0:03:02.800 I had never heard and talk, and so you know, 0:03:02.960 --> 0:03:07.080 I was I was very into it right from the beginning. 0:03:07.440 --> 0:03:13.840 I think his David's humanity and his sort of extraordinary 0:03:13.880 --> 0:03:18.760 spirit of say, generosity toward his I mean, there's just 0:03:18.800 --> 0:03:23.520 not an ounce of blame even or bitterness or anger. 0:03:23.720 --> 0:03:25.519 I heard none of that. I felt like, this is 0:03:25.560 --> 0:03:31.399 somebody who really really struggled with his brother's mental illness 0:03:31.600 --> 0:03:34.240 and was coming to terms with understanding that his brother 0:03:34.320 --> 0:03:38.280 was mentally ill, and then you know, discovering that, you know, 0:03:38.320 --> 0:03:41.960 coming to realize who his brother was, which is such 0:03:42.000 --> 0:03:43.760 an extraordinary part of the story. But I don't want 0:03:43.760 --> 0:03:47.520 to get ahead of ourselves. He really gets into Ted's 0:03:48.680 --> 0:03:53.040 early life, and you know, the title refers to David 0:03:53.120 --> 0:03:56.000 saying to his mother as a kid, you know, as 0:03:56.000 --> 0:03:59.280 maybe a seven or eight year old kid, what's wrong 0:03:59.320 --> 0:04:05.480 with Teddy? And David idolized him? And I wonder in 0:04:05.520 --> 0:04:07.880 some of the detail which was all kind of new 0:04:07.960 --> 0:04:10.480 to me that I learned when he and I were 0:04:10.520 --> 0:04:15.320 having this conversation, but about his early life, and then 0:04:15.400 --> 0:04:20.480 what happened to Teddy, both as an infant and then 0:04:20.640 --> 0:04:24.080 as a very young freshman at Harvard. I was wondering 0:04:24.120 --> 0:04:24.880 how that struck you. 0:04:25.480 --> 0:04:28.039 Well, I thought all of that, all that material in 0:04:28.080 --> 0:04:33.640 the first the first half maybe of the conversation where David, 0:04:33.640 --> 0:04:38.719 who's seven years younger than Ted, is talking about their 0:04:38.839 --> 0:04:45.000 early life, Ted's early life and the incipient signs of 0:04:45.120 --> 0:04:50.800 what probably was schizophrenia in Ted. You know, I'm wary 0:04:50.839 --> 0:04:55.440 of the diagnosis and too much labeling. But one of 0:04:55.480 --> 0:04:58.880 the things that I learned really in becoming a psychiatrist, 0:04:58.960 --> 0:05:02.760 working in patient units in psychiatric hospitals for a number 0:05:02.800 --> 0:05:06.200 of years in my training was that schizophenia is or 0:05:06.200 --> 0:05:09.400 real disease, you know, and some people really have it, 0:05:09.440 --> 0:05:12.360 and you can be a brilliant person and still have it. 0:05:12.880 --> 0:05:16.719 And it has the feel I mean, we don't understand. 0:05:16.839 --> 0:05:20.360 Science hasn't penetrated it, but it has the feel of, oh, 0:05:20.400 --> 0:05:26.400 this must be a genetic, organic, biological thing, because the 0:05:26.440 --> 0:05:30.480 symptoms are so distinctive. But what David describes is that 0:05:30.560 --> 0:05:34.400 you know, his older brother, who, as you say, he idolized, 0:05:34.839 --> 0:05:42.960 got progressively more weird, more withdrawn, less social, more preoccupied, 0:05:43.680 --> 0:05:47.839 as he moved into his like laid adolescens you know, 0:05:48.080 --> 0:05:52.000 were mid to late adolescents as I remember it, and David, 0:05:52.040 --> 0:05:55.000 who you know, they went camping together, they did all 0:05:55.080 --> 0:05:57.880 kinds of stuff together. But at a certain point he 0:05:58.040 --> 0:06:03.960 becomes conscious of Ted having no friends and being kind 0:06:03.960 --> 0:06:08.120 of sullen and withdrawn and isolated and sometimes weirdly angry. 0:06:08.160 --> 0:06:11.479 I think, and says, you know, has that conversation that 0:06:11.520 --> 0:06:14.120 you quote with his mom, his loving mom. He makes 0:06:14.120 --> 0:06:16.279 a point, you know, they grew up in a love 0:06:16.320 --> 0:06:20.960 and household, and intellectual household, a house full of love 0:06:21.080 --> 0:06:25.400 and books and good relationships, you know. But somehow Ted 0:06:25.839 --> 0:06:28.800 starts to drift off a little bit. And I think 0:06:28.800 --> 0:06:31.400 he goes to Harvard at sixteen or something. He's got 0:06:31.400 --> 0:06:34.520 an IQ of one hundred and sixty seven. You know, 0:06:34.640 --> 0:06:38.640 he's a math genius. He's clearly brilliant. And then he 0:06:38.680 --> 0:06:42.320 gets to Harvard and he becomes part of a study, 0:06:43.160 --> 0:06:47.720 one of these social psychology studies that was popular in 0:06:47.839 --> 0:06:51.800 the early sixties. There are some famous ones, Philip Zimbardo, 0:06:52.560 --> 0:06:55.960 California and so on. But this guy, Henry Murray, who's 0:06:56.000 --> 0:07:00.320 a legendary figure in the education and psychology department at 0:07:00.320 --> 0:07:02.920 Harvard when I got there in the seventies, he was 0:07:02.960 --> 0:07:06.400 still around. He was doing a study to see how 0:07:07.600 --> 0:07:16.000 very brilliant Harvard undergraduates reacted to being brutalized basically made 0:07:16.080 --> 0:07:18.920 fun of. That's how I remember it, anyway, And Ted 0:07:19.040 --> 0:07:21.120 agrees to be part of the study and stays with 0:07:21.160 --> 0:07:24.920 it even when he's being tortured, made fun of and 0:07:24.960 --> 0:07:28.280 so on, because he wanted to prove that he that 0:07:28.360 --> 0:07:29.200 he could handle it. 0:07:29.680 --> 0:07:32.320 Yeah, that was a really haunting thing that he said. 0:07:32.320 --> 0:07:35.880 Where he later when he was on trial as the 0:07:35.960 --> 0:07:40.760 unibomber and that study came up, and the abusiveness of 0:07:40.760 --> 0:07:45.800 that study and the trauma and the gaslighting, and he says, 0:07:46.240 --> 0:07:49.119 I wanted to prove that I couldn't be broken. Maybe 0:07:49.120 --> 0:07:53.000 he was already broken. Certainly it would have made things worse. 0:07:53.200 --> 0:07:56.160 It would have made things worse for a completely healthy person. 0:07:56.720 --> 0:08:00.560 Yeah, I don't think it's enough to explain the skit, Sophia, 0:08:00.560 --> 0:08:04.320 if that's what he had. People who are vulnerable can 0:08:04.520 --> 0:08:07.960 maybe be you know, the illness seems to have a 0:08:08.040 --> 0:08:10.360 life of its own. But maybe some people can be 0:08:10.440 --> 0:08:13.920 tipped over if they're if they're in the wrong environment 0:08:14.120 --> 0:08:19.000 and that was certainly a toxic environment that Ted Kaczynski 0:08:19.240 --> 0:08:20.840 was being subjected to. 0:08:21.360 --> 0:08:24.960 Yeah. I mean, when I was preparing for this conversation, 0:08:25.760 --> 0:08:29.320 I remembered that you had gone to Harvard and I 0:08:29.360 --> 0:08:31.720 didn't do the math, But were you there when Henry 0:08:31.800 --> 0:08:32.720 Murray was there? 0:08:33.360 --> 0:08:36.360 Henry Murray was it? Yeah, I never took courses from him. 0:08:36.640 --> 0:08:39.160 I was there from seventy one to seventy five. I 0:08:39.200 --> 0:08:43.080 was an undergraduate. I majored in psychology, but they called 0:08:43.080 --> 0:08:48.240 it social relations there and a graduate student teachers of 0:08:48.320 --> 0:08:52.559 mine had studied with Henry Murray, and so I knew 0:08:52.640 --> 0:08:56.959 of him. He was a you know, a foundational figure, 0:08:57.040 --> 0:09:02.520 and he had no reputation as being any kind of problem, 0:09:02.640 --> 0:09:05.160 you know, So I was totally unaware of these kinds 0:09:05.160 --> 0:09:07.800 of studies. There were a couple of famous studies, one 0:09:07.880 --> 0:09:13.120 where a psychologist got college students to give electric shocks, 0:09:14.040 --> 0:09:19.040 painful electric shocks to students to see who would keep going, 0:09:19.080 --> 0:09:21.160 you know, they were instructed to keep going even when 0:09:21.240 --> 0:09:26.840 the subjects were expressing terrible pain. And there was another 0:09:27.000 --> 0:09:29.560 famous study that several movies were made of it in 0:09:29.559 --> 0:09:32.440 the past few years. Philips embardo that I referred to 0:09:32.520 --> 0:09:37.520 before where students were divided up into like prisoners and guards, 0:09:37.920 --> 0:09:44.800 and the guards students became increasingly sadistic when given room 0:09:44.880 --> 0:09:49.240 to act out on the prisoner students. And there were 0:09:49.280 --> 0:09:53.360 no checks and bounces on these social psychology experiments in 0:09:53.400 --> 0:09:56.880 those days that the researchers were sort of free or 0:09:57.000 --> 0:10:02.360 much freer to concoct these kind of processes, you know, 0:10:03.000 --> 0:10:07.320 and their famous experiment because they showed how relatively good 0:10:07.360 --> 0:10:11.240 hearted normal people can with just a little bit of 0:10:11.559 --> 0:10:16.079 environmental encouragement, be turned into Nazi guards or there's a 0:10:16.120 --> 0:10:19.080 lot of implications for what happened, you know, in the 0:10:19.080 --> 0:10:22.480 war in Iraq and so on. So we learned from 0:10:22.520 --> 0:10:27.240 those studies, but the people who were the subjects certainly 0:10:27.360 --> 0:10:31.040 was not a good thing. In those same times, those 0:10:31.040 --> 0:10:34.800 same days, you know, Timothy Leary was giving LSD to 0:10:34.880 --> 0:10:40.080 prisoners and so on in Massachusetts, there was a kind 0:10:40.080 --> 0:10:44.400 of freedom for the psychologists to see what kind of 0:10:45.080 --> 0:10:48.920 information they could elicit from these kinds of things. 0:10:49.400 --> 0:10:52.640 One of the heartbreaking things about that chapter in Ted's 0:10:52.640 --> 0:10:56.480 story is that he was under age. He was in eighteen, 0:10:56.679 --> 0:10:59.640 and so the school actually had to get permission from 0:10:59.640 --> 0:11:03.600 his parents, and his parents seemed really, as you said, 0:11:03.679 --> 0:11:10.079 really loving, thoughtful of people, and yeah, and his mom 0:11:10.800 --> 0:11:13.000 had this feeling of, well, maybe this will be good 0:11:13.040 --> 0:11:16.280 for him, and he doesn't have any friends, and maybe 0:11:16.280 --> 0:11:19.880 this will help him, and of course it's Harvard, so 0:11:20.280 --> 0:11:23.000 maybe all of this will be a good thing, and 0:11:23.040 --> 0:11:25.679 that's why she gave permission. And there also seems like 0:11:25.720 --> 0:11:32.679 there's so much as the story progresses, as David narrates it, 0:11:33.200 --> 0:11:35.760 that has to do with a kind of a very 0:11:35.920 --> 0:11:40.680 loving second guessing that goes on in the family. Their 0:11:40.679 --> 0:11:45.120 mother also says to David when he's quite young that 0:11:45.200 --> 0:11:48.080 she thinks that one of the reasons why Teddy is 0:11:48.120 --> 0:11:50.040 the way that he is is because he had been 0:11:51.240 --> 0:11:54.800 hospitalized as a nine month old and unable to see 0:11:54.800 --> 0:11:57.680 his parents, and that when he came back from that 0:11:57.800 --> 0:12:01.720 hospital visit, he was changed and he stopped making eye contact. 0:12:01.840 --> 0:12:05.480 And it seems like there's throughout the story a sense 0:12:05.640 --> 0:12:11.920 of a kind of almost gentle personal culpability in a way, 0:12:12.320 --> 0:12:14.440 like thinking, well, maybe it was this, maybe it was that, 0:12:14.600 --> 0:12:15.520 maybe I shouldn't do it. 0:12:15.640 --> 0:12:18.719 Yeah, well that you know. I mean, when he was 0:12:18.840 --> 0:12:21.000 nine months old, he had a rash Teddy and he 0:12:21.040 --> 0:12:22.800 went to he was in the hospital for a week, 0:12:23.440 --> 0:12:26.400 and then when he when he came back, he seemed different. 0:12:26.840 --> 0:12:31.200 But lots of kids, lots of kids have to be 0:12:31.240 --> 0:12:37.280 in the hospital and when difficult things happen, when illness strikes. 0:12:37.520 --> 0:12:40.040 When One of the things I learned when I was 0:12:40.080 --> 0:12:43.400 in medical school from a very good family doctor at 0:12:43.480 --> 0:12:47.920 Mass General was the thing called attribution theory, you know, 0:12:48.280 --> 0:12:50.880 which is that we may when things happen, when we 0:12:50.880 --> 0:12:54.000 get sick, or when someone that we love gets sick, 0:12:54.520 --> 0:12:57.280 we make stuff up about what the cause is when 0:12:57.320 --> 0:13:01.800 we don't know, you know. And doctors used to call 0:13:01.840 --> 0:13:06.160 every everything they didn't understand psychosomatic, you know, they were 0:13:06.280 --> 0:13:08.679 just they did the same thing. If you had an ulcer, 0:13:08.720 --> 0:13:11.600 it was psychosomatic until they discovered that it was a 0:13:11.640 --> 0:13:15.160 bacteria that caused the ulcer. You know. But people do 0:13:15.280 --> 0:13:18.920 that too when accidents happen, when someone gets cancer, when 0:13:19.520 --> 0:13:21.640 you know, it's like, oh, it must have been this, 0:13:21.760 --> 0:13:23.880 it must have been that. And I think you hear 0:13:24.000 --> 0:13:26.800 that in this in this story, not that a week 0:13:26.800 --> 0:13:29.560 in the hospital for a nine month old it wasn't 0:13:29.600 --> 0:13:35.200 traumatic for the parents and for the child. But you know, 0:13:36.600 --> 0:13:40.040 David talks in the podcast about the mother making him 0:13:40.080 --> 0:13:43.800 promise in the aftermath of that, you know, don't don't 0:13:43.800 --> 0:13:46.760 ever abandon your brother. That's what he fears the most, 0:13:46.880 --> 0:13:50.040 you know, when when David was seven. So the mother 0:13:50.120 --> 0:13:55.000 had obviously been really affected by that, that first separation 0:13:55.120 --> 0:13:57.600 from her baby. And you can't blame her, but I 0:13:57.720 --> 0:14:01.040 see it more as they you know, the first tiny 0:14:01.120 --> 0:14:06.680 signs of what might have blossomed into schizophrenia, which usually 0:14:06.720 --> 0:14:12.440 doesn't show itself until late adolescent, you know, your late teens, 0:14:12.480 --> 0:14:17.880 early twenties, the symptoms usually start to come, and that 0:14:18.200 --> 0:14:23.840 seems to have been the case with Ted Kaczynski. You know, 0:14:23.880 --> 0:14:25.720 one of the things that struck me in the whole 0:14:25.760 --> 0:14:29.360 story for David was that there were these series of 0:14:29.480 --> 0:14:33.600 losses where he's very close to the brother, and then 0:14:33.720 --> 0:14:36.720 the brother retreats even from David and from the parents, 0:14:37.040 --> 0:14:40.760 and sends letters to the parents saying, you know, I 0:14:40.760 --> 0:14:43.000 don't ever want to speak to you again, et cetera. 0:14:43.360 --> 0:14:46.160 And so they lose contact and then the whole thing 0:14:46.280 --> 0:14:50.560 of the reveal that maybe he's the unibomber. So there's 0:14:50.560 --> 0:14:54.120 one loss, two losses, you know, each time there's another 0:14:54.600 --> 0:14:58.520 gulf that descends upon the relationship. You know, it's so tragic. 0:14:58.760 --> 0:15:02.600 Yeah, and makes it all the more extraordinary the way 0:15:02.640 --> 0:15:09.520 that he has absorbed and metabolized this life, this family, 0:15:09.600 --> 0:15:14.280 this life, this brother into his life as an adult. 0:15:15.080 --> 0:15:20.680 So the break that happens between David and Ted, that 0:15:20.800 --> 0:15:24.040 is really the permanent break, is when David, who has 0:15:24.440 --> 0:15:28.320 been living a kind of monastic life himself, he describes 0:15:28.360 --> 0:15:31.680 it as a pilgrimage, and his solitude is very much 0:15:31.680 --> 0:15:35.520 in the direction of wanting to know himself better, whereas 0:15:35.520 --> 0:15:38.240 Ted's is in the direction of getting angrier and hostile 0:15:38.360 --> 0:15:42.800 and blaming. But then David falls in love with a 0:15:42.880 --> 0:15:47.160 childhood friend, and that, for Ted is a total break 0:15:47.160 --> 0:15:49.760 in the relationship and he cuts things off. He says, 0:15:49.800 --> 0:15:53.760 I don't want to have anything to do with you anymore. 0:15:54.080 --> 0:15:56.760 And there's this moment that also really struck me, and 0:15:56.800 --> 0:16:00.440 I wonder what you thought of it, where David makes 0:16:00.480 --> 0:16:04.560 this very gentle inquiry because he's now with Linda and 0:16:04.600 --> 0:16:07.600 they're getting married and they're going to spend their lives together, 0:16:07.720 --> 0:16:11.480 and he he says, was Ted thinking that love is finite? 0:16:13.120 --> 0:16:16.880 Oh? That's interesting, I don't remember. I don't remember that phrase. 0:16:17.160 --> 0:16:19.640 He uses the metaphor of like pieces of a pie. 0:16:19.920 --> 0:16:23.640 Yes, I do remember, yes, yes, yes, the whole story 0:16:23.680 --> 0:16:27.400 of David. I mean, that's the other fascinating thing in 0:16:27.400 --> 0:16:30.320 the podcast. I did a little research on the side 0:16:30.360 --> 0:16:33.360 after listening to it. David goes to Texas and digs 0:16:33.360 --> 0:16:36.320 a hole and covers it with like metal sheeting and 0:16:36.360 --> 0:16:39.520 lives in the hole for like for a couple of years. 0:16:39.960 --> 0:16:42.840 I mean, Dave David is emula after going camping in 0:16:42.880 --> 0:16:46.640 the Yukon with Ted, you know, they have this real 0:16:47.120 --> 0:16:50.920 the two of them go and and really bond and 0:16:50.960 --> 0:16:53.480 are living in the wilderness, and then they each go 0:16:53.680 --> 0:16:56.880 Ted goes to Montana or wherever, and David goes to 0:16:56.960 --> 0:17:00.960 Texas and digs the hole, and that somehow comes out 0:17:01.000 --> 0:17:03.960 of that realizing that he wants to marry this girl 0:17:04.040 --> 0:17:06.719 who he knew when he was eleven and tracks her 0:17:06.760 --> 0:17:11.160 down and marries her and then tells Ted, and Ted 0:17:11.240 --> 0:17:14.760 responds as your as you're describing, like it's almost like 0:17:14.880 --> 0:17:20.680 David was his accolyte, you know, and now he's rejected 0:17:20.720 --> 0:17:25.719 the Guru and found another, you know, somebody else to 0:17:25.960 --> 0:17:29.399 bond with, and Ted, as you say, you know, writes 0:17:29.440 --> 0:17:33.919 him off, and the woman that David marries is because 0:17:34.760 --> 0:17:38.000 is into Buddhism, and I think becomes or was already 0:17:38.000 --> 0:17:42.200 a professor of religious studies and a Buddhist practitioner in 0:17:43.600 --> 0:17:46.320 upstate New York at Union College. And I think you 0:17:46.359 --> 0:17:50.400 can hear in that phrase, is love finite maybe David's 0:17:50.520 --> 0:17:58.280 later embrace of kind of spiritual understanding that he wasn't 0:17:58.280 --> 0:18:02.800 brought up and they were brought up in a very academic, intellectual, 0:18:03.560 --> 0:18:08.920 non religious, non spiritual kind of environment, similar to the 0:18:08.960 --> 0:18:10.800 one that I was brought up in. But then I 0:18:10.800 --> 0:18:14.920 think you discover something about the infiniteness of love that 0:18:15.600 --> 0:18:18.719 would be very different from the way that Teddy is thinking. 0:18:20.160 --> 0:18:23.920 I love that phrase, the infiniteness of love, and it feels, 0:18:24.080 --> 0:18:27.119 you know, I'm going back to something that David said 0:18:27.200 --> 0:18:31.720 early in our conversation, which was that his family's core 0:18:31.880 --> 0:18:36.639 value was the life of the mind, and that part 0:18:36.680 --> 0:18:39.280 of that core value was that by developing your mind, 0:18:40.119 --> 0:18:43.080 you could develop your spirit and become someone who could 0:18:43.080 --> 0:18:47.160 really contribute to the world. But the mind was the portal, 0:18:47.280 --> 0:18:48.480 or the mind was the vehicle. 0:18:48.760 --> 0:18:51.199 Yeah, well, I think they were definitely humanists, and you know, 0:18:51.520 --> 0:18:55.000 I grew up in an academic environment in New Haven. 0:18:55.080 --> 0:18:58.280 My father was a professor of medicine at Yale, and 0:18:58.359 --> 0:19:03.600 so I really understand that, you know, that belief in 0:19:03.640 --> 0:19:07.280 the life of the mind as being fundamental. But I've 0:19:07.320 --> 0:19:10.560 had the experience, you know, as a practicing therapist with 0:19:11.119 --> 0:19:17.359 parents who have these brilliant, brilliant but asocial kids. You 0:19:17.400 --> 0:19:21.880 know where the hope is, Oh, my kid is so brilliant. 0:19:21.920 --> 0:19:23.639 You know, he's got an IQ of one hundred and 0:19:23.640 --> 0:19:26.760 fifteen hundred and sixteen hundred and seventy. He's doing math, 0:19:27.040 --> 0:19:31.040 you know, he's doing calculus in fifth grade kind of thing. 0:19:31.119 --> 0:19:37.200 And there's such a veneration of intelligence that it's easy 0:19:37.480 --> 0:19:43.639 to overlook, you know, what's missing and to try to 0:19:43.720 --> 0:19:49.080 get the help that those kind of brilliant but remote 0:19:49.160 --> 0:19:54.040 kids need. And I don't know that you can head 0:19:54.080 --> 0:19:58.840 off a psychotic illness, you know that's destined to come 0:19:59.359 --> 0:20:04.080 in in one third decade. But some of those kids, 0:20:04.240 --> 0:20:05.320 some of those kids. 0:20:05.080 --> 0:20:07.000 Can learn to relate. 0:20:08.119 --> 0:20:10.920 You can hear in David's talking about his mom how 0:20:11.000 --> 0:20:14.679 much his mom was wishing for that for her older 0:20:14.760 --> 0:20:17.560 son and hoping that it could be David who could 0:20:17.640 --> 0:20:20.159 help him, could be Harvard, that could help him, you know. 0:20:20.680 --> 0:20:23.320 And then at the end, at the end, David is 0:20:23.359 --> 0:20:26.879 scared to tell the mom that he thinks that Teddy 0:20:27.000 --> 0:20:31.000 is the unifomber. He waits to tell her until it's proven, 0:20:31.480 --> 0:20:33.879 and he's worried, you know. And then and then she 0:20:33.960 --> 0:20:36.159 gives that beautiful response. 0:20:35.760 --> 0:20:38.440 You know that I know what you're doing. 0:20:38.480 --> 0:20:39.520 You're doing out of love. 0:20:39.640 --> 0:20:44.080 Basically, Yeah, that was extraordinary. I mean, I'm hoping that 0:20:44.400 --> 0:20:48.800 people listening to our episode will go back and listen 0:20:48.880 --> 0:20:50.720 to What's wrong with Teddy. 0:20:51.280 --> 0:20:54.680 Oh, it's so moving, We'll be right back. 0:21:00.040 --> 0:21:01.240 I mean, there's a part of me that wants to 0:21:01.280 --> 0:21:03.240 talk about every single aspect of it, and part of 0:21:03.240 --> 0:21:06.760 me that wants to leave some of the surprises in 0:21:06.800 --> 0:21:09.920 there as surprises. But I think I do want to 0:21:09.960 --> 0:21:16.840 say for listeners that might not know the unibomber story, 0:21:17.080 --> 0:21:21.000 first of all, one of the way that ultimately Teddy 0:21:21.119 --> 0:21:25.880 was caught is that he writes a manifesto. He's already 0:21:25.920 --> 0:21:29.119 been killing people with these bombs that he sends through 0:21:29.160 --> 0:21:32.080 the mail, and he writes a manifesto and he contacts 0:21:32.160 --> 0:21:35.640 newspapers and asks them to publish it and says, if 0:21:35.680 --> 0:21:39.000 you publish my manifesto, I won't send any more bombs, 0:21:39.600 --> 0:21:45.000 and so the manifesto is published, and somehow that's how 0:21:45.240 --> 0:21:46.399 Glinda sees it. 0:21:46.600 --> 0:21:50.520 Yeah, he had sent sixteen bombs between nineteen seventy eight 0:21:50.520 --> 0:21:54.280 and nineteen ninety he'd sent sixteen bombs, killed three people, 0:21:54.400 --> 0:21:58.000 injured twenty three people. And then he writes to the 0:21:58.040 --> 0:22:00.600 New York Times on the Washington Post and says, if 0:22:00.640 --> 0:22:04.840 you publish my entire thing, I'll stop. And it was 0:22:04.920 --> 0:22:07.520 I remember when that when it was published, and it 0:22:07.600 --> 0:22:10.520 was like like how you know, it was like a long, 0:22:10.720 --> 0:22:14.119 long thing, and they had big debates at the newspapers 0:22:14.160 --> 0:22:16.119 whether to publish it or not because it was a 0:22:16.119 --> 0:22:19.679 sort of extortion, but they decided, you know, if they 0:22:19.680 --> 0:22:23.240 could save lives, it was worth doing. And the story 0:22:23.280 --> 0:22:27.879 that's told in the podcast is that David wasn't really 0:22:27.920 --> 0:22:31.359 paying that much attention to the unibomber or to the 0:22:31.400 --> 0:22:37.840 manifesto or anything, but his wife read it, and his 0:22:37.920 --> 0:22:41.760 wife had never met Ted, but had read the letter 0:22:41.920 --> 0:22:45.560 that Ted had sent to David saying I don't want 0:22:45.560 --> 0:22:46.520 to be your brother anymore. 0:22:46.520 --> 0:22:47.240 I don't ever want to. 0:22:47.200 --> 0:22:49.199 Talk to you again. You know, when he was breaking 0:22:49.200 --> 0:22:52.200 off contact with both the parents and with David, and 0:22:52.320 --> 0:22:56.480 she recognized in the syntax, in the in the sort 0:22:56.480 --> 0:23:03.280 of drivenness of the prose, recognized that there was a similarity, 0:23:03.680 --> 0:23:08.399 and she like woke David from his torpor, you know, 0:23:09.040 --> 0:23:11.560 and said, this could be your brother. You know. She 0:23:11.680 --> 0:23:14.840 sort of pulled him, kicking and screaming into looking at it. 0:23:15.320 --> 0:23:20.080 And it struck me how careful they were from that point, 0:23:20.240 --> 0:23:23.159 from the point where where Linda says to him, I 0:23:23.520 --> 0:23:28.400 think that this could be your brother, they're very careful. 0:23:28.680 --> 0:23:30.400 I mean, they have experts look at it. 0:23:30.840 --> 0:23:33.280 Yeah. They brought it to a psychiatrist, yeah. 0:23:33.080 --> 0:23:36.640 Yeah, And they then brought it to a forensic expert 0:23:36.760 --> 0:23:39.560 who tells them that he thinks that there's a sixty 0:23:39.600 --> 0:23:41.879 percent chance that these letters were written by the same person, 0:23:43.800 --> 0:23:45.960 whatever that is, whatever that is. It's sort of a 0:23:46.040 --> 0:23:48.520 terrible number because it's it's you know, if it were 0:23:48.560 --> 0:23:50.879 like ninety nine point nine percent or if it was 0:23:50.920 --> 0:23:53.440 like three percent, but sixty percent is. 0:23:53.359 --> 0:23:55.159 Like, this is what they need a eye for. 0:23:55.520 --> 0:23:59.960 Oh boy, just tipping it to a I would have 0:24:00.119 --> 0:24:05.040 solved this. And then David decides to go forward without 0:24:05.119 --> 0:24:08.280 telling his mom, and as you mentioned, and the reason. 0:24:09.080 --> 0:24:12.280 The reason is, well, what if he's wrong, and why 0:24:12.359 --> 0:24:15.280 put her through that? I mean, every step of the way, 0:24:15.400 --> 0:24:18.640 there's an incredible amount of compassion and care. 0:24:19.119 --> 0:24:22.000 Well and a real ethical dilemma. That's what struck me, 0:24:22.640 --> 0:24:25.800 you know, because he's deciding should I turn in my 0:24:25.920 --> 0:24:30.560 brother in order to save you know, potentially save lives 0:24:31.119 --> 0:24:35.119 like which is worse, you know, like squealing on the 0:24:35.200 --> 0:24:40.760 brother who could potentially be face to death penalty, you know, 0:24:41.440 --> 0:24:45.800 or allowing him to continue and possibly kill other people. 0:24:45.880 --> 0:24:49.560 And he makes the decision to turn him in with 0:24:49.640 --> 0:24:53.320 the hope that he can save him from the death penalty. 0:24:54.359 --> 0:24:57.320 You know. That's sort of the fasting and bargain that 0:24:57.359 --> 0:25:01.040 he makes with himself and doesn't go so smoothly. Let's 0:25:01.040 --> 0:25:01.760 just put it that way. 0:25:02.720 --> 0:25:06.040 Yeah, you know, I found myself thinking about the flip 0:25:06.080 --> 0:25:08.879 side of compassion, if it's a flip side, which is 0:25:08.920 --> 0:25:12.639 cruelty because there were things that went on, you know, 0:25:13.000 --> 0:25:15.040 Promises were made to David and Linda that they were 0:25:15.040 --> 0:25:17.199 going to be kept out of it, that they they 0:25:17.200 --> 0:25:21.280 would remain anonymous, and the opposite of that happens, and 0:25:21.400 --> 0:25:25.480 it's it's a media circus and they have to you know, 0:25:26.240 --> 0:25:30.159 hide from from the media. And there's a moment that 0:25:30.240 --> 0:25:32.879 he talks about it's only it's the only time I 0:25:32.920 --> 0:25:36.400 heard a hint of anger in anything that he had 0:25:36.440 --> 0:25:40.240 to say completely understandably, which is that there was a comedian, 0:25:40.280 --> 0:25:42.960 there's a popular comedian at the time who made some 0:25:43.119 --> 0:25:46.720 just really terrible joke about you know, these two brothers, 0:25:46.760 --> 0:25:48.600 and one was the unibomber and the other one was 0:25:49.000 --> 0:25:50.480 you know, I'm not even going to say it. And 0:25:50.920 --> 0:25:54.800