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