April 17, 2018 • 46 mins
The Unabomber was one of the most notorious and longest lasting cases in the history of the FBI. Just because the manifesto reads like he was a fortune teller doesn't make his actions any less deplorable. Learn all about this fascinating case in today's episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Boo boo boo boo dooo boo boo doo. We're coming
to a landown under I get chuck. We're going to
Australia and New Zealand and New Zealand. That's right, oh man,
Like we are really excited. This has been years in
the making. We're finally pulling the trigger. In September. We
are doing shows on September one at the Astro Theater
(00:23):
in Perth, Sunday September two at I c C in Brisbane,
which heads up down there to you guys, that's spring
for you, not fall al right, well all September three,
Monday at Goldfields Theater in Melbourne. We're really getting around Thursday,
the sixth of September at the Inmore Theater in Sydney.
And then man, we are going to wrap it up Friday,
(00:44):
September seven at the Bruce Mason Theater in Auckland, New Zealand.
I cannot wait for that one, yea. You can go
to s y s K Live dot com to get
info and to buy tickets, which are on sale April.
We will see you in September. Australia and New Zealand.
Welcome to stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works
(01:07):
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant with Jerry Rowland. Three
of us put together, put us in some gray band aviators,
put a gray hoodie sweatshirt on us. You got stuff
(01:27):
you should know? I know, I like your costume. Today.
I thought I would dress up to really kind of
drive home the idea that I have. I know what
we're going to be talking about. Yeah, you know what's
funny is that today, all these years later, when you
see someone in aviators in a hoodie with the hood up,
you say, jeez, you know what's up? You in a barmber?
It's it's part of the social fabric these days. Like
(01:52):
I've ran across some some I guess an article from
the late nineties or whatever that was talking about that
famous sketch and how it made its way under like
coffee mugs and key chains and T shirts and like
it became like a pop culture icon. Oh yeah, I'm
sure it was on some T shirt design at what's
(02:13):
that terrible store? Spencer's hot topic? That was great? No
urban outfitters. Uh wait, so you're a Spencer's fan. Huh okay,
Spencer's over Urban Outfitters. I guess that is. That's the
great divide, you know, well, Michigan, Ohio state Spencer's Urban Outfitters.
(02:35):
Urban Outfitters is just trendy like stuff that they think
is clever, but it's not Spencer. You could go in
and get a poster of a bikini lady on a ferrari,
some incense and a and a giant rubber penuts right, Like,
that's a great store. I guess it is. You know
everything you need under one roof. I can't remember what
(02:57):
I was in there for the other day, but they
have like most extensive um selection of tasteless shot glasses
I've ever seen in my life. That Spencer. Yeah, which,
it's like there's people collecting that you can tell. I
wont to know who Spencer is. Spencer doesn't want you
to know who he is. That's why he called his
store Spencer. His real name is Jackson McClain. Oh wow,
(03:22):
nice work, Jackson threw me you sniffed me off the case.
Nice that was a good saved, Chuck. Thanks. Speaking of
good saves, I'm gonna bail us out of this intro
Let's do it and take us back way back to
nineteen seventy nine eight A little seven year old, Sorry, Chuck,
we're gonna go back one more year was seven. Oh,
(03:45):
so you knew I got it wrong. Okay. Well, in
in the Chicago Land area, there's a university called Northwestern University.
Go Wildcats. M hmm. I didn't look this one up
at think it is the Wildcats. That's what we're going with. UM.
And there was a security officer named Terry Maker who
(04:07):
opened a suspicious looking package. That's I couldn't find why
Terry Maker opened it. So I should say everybody, I'm
making the assumption here that it was deemed suspicious, and
they're like, gook at the security guard. But Terry Maker
opened this package and it exploded. He got some minor
cuts and burns. I don't see too many people counting
(04:28):
him as a victim of the UNI bomber, although I
think Terry Maker would probably take issue with that. UM.
But he was, by all accounts, the first person to
come into contact with the UNI bomber or one of
the UNI Bomber's bombs. Yeah, he was number one that
(04:50):
would go on to be fifteen more bombs over the
seventeen year killing spree. Well in a way, he killed
three people in the end, when did uh many more? Uh?
And we won't go through all of the targets, but
they ranged from American Airlines Flight forty four to the
(05:10):
president of United Airlines Percy Wood, to Vanderbilt University secretary,
to timber industry lobbyist to an advertising executive. Part of
the reason why it was uh so maddening for so
many years was because the there was no rhyme or
reason seemingly to the victims of the UNI bomber's wrath. No.
(05:35):
The one thing that they all shared in common and
the UNI bomb are also UM wrote letters to newspapers
during this whole time. UM. The thing that they had
in common was that they had something to do with
technology or the advancement of technology UM or the destruction
of nature, one of those two. And so these these
(05:57):
people like that was it. That was all you had
to be doing to be of a target of the
UNI bomber. He was extremely indiscriminate and picking who lived
or died by his hand. Uh. And you have to
understand all of these bombs, None of these bombs were
sent to scare people Every single one of these bombs,
whether they killed somebody or not, were intended to kill somebody.
(06:18):
Who they killed. The UNI bomber didn't much care, and
you can tell by the the kind of institution attitude
he had towards who who was targeted, like he would
get names wrong. His last victim a guy named um
Uh Gilbert Bret Murray. He was a timber industry lobbyist.
(06:39):
He opened the package because he was the president of
the timber industry lobby even though the package was addressed
to his predecessor. The reason it was addressed to his
predecessor was because the UNI bomber had picked the name
out of a directory and it was an out of
date directory. So this guy um died as a result
of the bomb, you know to do. It really was
(07:01):
and I think the unibomber if you talked to the
UNI bomber today, which you could, apparently he's very easy
to get in touch with us and become a pen
pal of UM, he would tell you totally fine, like
I don't care who died, like the head of this
timber lobby died. That was ultimately what I was going for.
So he was killing people who are associated with an idea,
a cause, and the cause that he was opposed to
(07:22):
was the destruction of nature and the the advancement of technology. Right,
So we're talking obviously about Ted Kazinski. It was the
man's real name. And early on in nine right after
these attacks started happening, the Postal Service, the A t F,
and the FBI got together formed a task force and
(07:44):
that's where they came up with the name unibomb You
n A b O M stood for University Airline bombings
because those were the first bombs that were sent. And
I guess the name of the case was by the FBI,
but the name UNI bomber was made up by the
media covering it, right, Yeah, that's usually the case. Yeah. Uh.
In the end, it would become the longest running at
(08:06):
the time, I don't know if it's been outdone yet,
but the longest running in most expensive FBI investigation in history. Uh.
Eventually had a hundred and fifty full time employees on
the case, which is amazing. And he was tough, too
tough to get and you know, he had no forensic
(08:26):
evidence left behind. He was very careful. He used bombs
that were made out of materials that were easy to find.
You couldn't track them. He made all of them by hand, painstakingly. Yeah,
made him all by hand. Like we said, the victims
were chosen seemingly at random, and had it not been
for his manifesto, they may still be on the lookout
for this guy. Yeah. And even still, the way that
(08:48):
they were able to connect these things was because during
the seventeen year campaign, he UM would write letters to U,
to the editors of newspapers around the country, claiming, we're
sponsibility for these these crimes UM. And then I think
half of the bombs had the inscription FC on parts
that were recovered, and FC stood for Freedom Club because
(09:12):
the UNI bomber didn't call himself the UNI bomber. Again,
that was the media. All of these things, including the manifesto,
was signed the Freedom Club Club of one right. But
he he always wrote about we whenever he was referring
to himself. So the whole thing came to a head
uh in when Tank Kaczynski was arrested in his cabin
(09:38):
in Lincoln, Montana. He was known to his neighbors as
the Hermit on the Hill, and he'd lived there for
years and years and years. I think since the early seventies.
I believe, Yeah, I mean it was a little primitive
cabin off grid. Inside they found about forty thousand pages
worth of journals describing all his crimes. They found bomb
(09:58):
parts U, they found a bomb ready to be mailed,
and they knew they had their guy thanks to his
brother David turning him in essentially after reading this manifesto. Uh.
He was eventually reigned in Sacramento, which is where the
final murder took place, and he was sent to jail.
(10:19):
Initially said no, I don't want to. I don't want
to uh be uh, I don't want to plead insanity.
But that's a big, big point, yeah, because I don't.
I don't think he would have admitted something like that.
But he tried to kill himself in early and his
jail cell. That triggered a psychiatric evaluation and he was
(10:39):
diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, which triggered a plea bargain that
basically said, you can avoid the death penalty now if
you take this plea bargain. He did, and in January
of eight he pleaded guilty, accepted the eight life sentences
with no parole, and is now living was quite a
few other famous bombers. Um at the Florence, Colorado Alcatraz
(11:04):
of the Rockies, the X there's that place in and
of itself is crazy. I looked into it. Yeah, I
feel like it's come up in plenty of other episodes
before because it certainly sounds familiar. So I was looking into. Um,
there's this fascinating article called Harvard in the Making of
the UNI Bomber by a guy named Alston Chase, who
I think wrote a book on it. But in this article, um,
(11:27):
he you read it too, so he he really kind
of lays out a pretty great case based on evidence
that he compiled from interviews and things like that, that
it's definitely not a slam dunk diagnosis that the UNI
Bomber has schizophrenia. And he also, I don't know if
he says it outright, but he at the very least
(11:48):
intimates that that it was teg Kazynski's brother David and
his legal team that created the public persona of the
Union Bomber as a as a person with his friend
you to keep him from getting the death penalty. This
is much much, much to the chagrin of the Union
Bomber tak Kaczynski, who eventually did cop to this plea
(12:11):
bargain because it became clear to him that if he
went to trial, his defense team was going to put
in an insanity defense, whether he liked it or not,
and he was denied the ability to represent himself. So
he was presented with a choice either go to trial,
plead insanity, maybe get a lesser defense, but in the
meantime his manifesto would be painted as the ramblings of
(12:36):
a madman because he would be deemed insane or plead
guilty and not insane. Defend insanity and then, in his
hopes um also by by extension, defend his manifesto and
the ideas in it. Yeah, so he is still in
prison in Colorado. Apparently, like you said, he's got a
(12:57):
lot of pen pals because he lived in a tiny,
little primitive cabin for so many years. By all accounts,
he has adapted pretty well to prison life. Being in
a small room is no big deal to him. And
you can actually go to the and I'm gonna totally
check this out. I don't know if I can do
it on this upcoming tour, but you can go see
that original cabin at the Newseum in Washington, d C.
(13:22):
And I've looked up pictures and it's kind of all
right there, which is pretty interesting. Yeah, the whole thing
is just right there in the Newseum. Yeah. So he
was a brilliant guy. Uh, like you said, he went
to Harvard. He's a national merit finalist, he was a
math prodigy, started Harvard at sixteen, had an i Q
or has an i Q of one sixty seven. And uh,
(13:43):
it was just a is just a brilliant and brilliant guy.
And I think we should take a break. I'm getting
a tingle, and we'll come back and we'll talk. Uh. Well,
I guess we should talk about the manifesto. Let's all
right right for this? Hyeh all right, chuck him. We're
(14:27):
back and were kind of left it off on. Uh, well,
we promised we're about to talk manifesto, So let's talk manifesto. Yeah.
And after reading the cliffs notes of this thing um
in a few different places, one thing is clear is
it's not the ramblings of a madman a b he
(14:48):
has and I hate saying this, but he has a
lot of very salient points about where society is headed
due to technology or or where it was headed back
in nineties where it fully is now. Yeah, very much
ahead of his time, thinking wise. The way he went
about correcting this was was not was abhorrent obviously, but
(15:14):
when you read parts of this thing, the industrial Revolution
and its consequences, uh, like here, just let me pull
this one for instance. Um, here's here's one pull quote.
Once a technical innovation has been introduced, people usually become
dependent on it so that they can never again do
without it unless it is replaced by some still more
advanced innovation. Not only do people become dependent as individuals
(15:37):
on a new item of technology, but even more the
system as a whole becomes dependent on it. Does it
sound like anything that everyone carries in their pocket every
day exactly? And he also points out that like the
way the way that this happens, this this dependence on technology,
it comes about because new technology seem good and help
(16:00):
full and useful, and then we eventually adapt ourselves to
fit them better. We change our behavior, we change the
way we see things, we change the way we think
and interact with stuff to fit the technology. And his
whole idea was that that that is the the u
inevitable outcome from the Industrial Revolution, and that ever since
(16:22):
the Industrial Revolution, our society has been in a stranglehold
at the service of technology and the people who serve technology,
and society has been restructured and reshuffled to the detriment
of the individual human to local communities as a whole.
And that, um, the only way that this is such,
(16:42):
this is so ingrained now in our world. The only
way to stop this is to violently overthrow the current system.
And he has very las a fair attitude about what
comes after. He said that we have no illusions about
the feasibility of creating a new idea old form of society.
Our goal only is to destroy the existing form of society.
(17:05):
That was it. That was the whole reason for his
campaign was to be the one of the provocateurs of
this revolution that upended technological society. Yeah, here's another summation
of another part of the manifesto about the social infrastructure
that he says is dedicated to modifying our own behaviors. Uh.
(17:27):
This infrastructure includes an array of government agencies with ever
expanding police powers and out of control regulatory system that
encourages the limitless multiplication of laws and education, establishment and
stresses uh conformism, ubiquitous television networks. Who's Fair is essentially
an electronic form of valum and a medical and psychological
(17:47):
establishment that promotes the indiscriminate use of mind altering drugs.
So again, I don't want this to come across that
I like look up to this guy in anyway. But
when you read some of the stuff, you think, Man,
if this guy had only reined it in, he could
have done good. Yeah. I can't remember what the turning
(18:08):
point was, but there was some there was some potential
path that he was on where he could have done
this peacefully, and he pulled back and went a violent way.
And I think, I think quite rightly that if he
were not well locked up for the rest of his life,
he would he would keep sending bombs out. He would
not stop because he's he doesn't he's not a a
(18:31):
moral agent. He is a rational agent, and he sees
this as a rational and to the means. To his means,
which is taking out people who may or may not
be in a position to advance technological society. Well, yeah,
and that's what was That's where the line the delineation occurs,
where he was he's such a smart person, but that's
(18:54):
such a dumb like there's blowing someone up, is gonna
is not gonna haul any innovations or change the course
of where we're headed as a society. It was just uh,
I mean to call it misguided is the understatement of
the year. So and forgive me for armchair psychologalizing here,
(19:16):
But now you start to get into the idea of
whether or not he was fulfilling or indulging his own
desire to kill right, Well, you never know, because if
he is thinking about things like this, and he is
such a rational person, surely there would have been other
ways to to do this that were either more productive
or on the other hand, more destructive, right, Like sending
(19:40):
a bomb that might take out one or two or
three people is not it's and and by making these
bombs painstaking lee by hand over the course of months
and probably years, sometimes that's not a very productive way
of achieving this goal. So it makes you wonder, did
this guy just want to kill people? And and that
that coupled with this this view of technological society to
(20:03):
form what we know as the UNI bomber. Well, I
think that was probably the case. Is he was angry
at where things were headed and he wanted to take
it out on somebody. Yeah, but again I want to
go back to this idea that he is schizophrenic. Um
there is a uh that that is not necessarily the case.
He was given a temporary or provisional or conditional schizophrenic
(20:27):
diagnosis of schizophrenia by a court ordered psychiatrist, forensic psychiatrist,
and that was it. I don't believe she ever went
back and made an official diagnosis. Other people in the media,
other psychiatrists were basically diagnosing them from afar. Some some
psychiatrists met with him, but they didn't officially um examine him.
(20:49):
So basically, just based on his actions and his manifesto
and what was contained within, he was largely given this
diagnosis of schizophrenia. And I couldn't find anything that said
that he's being treated for schizophrenia now, which is kind
of a big deal because it's a two two full
big deal. One it it says it dismisses him as
(21:11):
just a complete madman who who is delusional, but it
also does a tremendous disservice to people with schizophrenia because
it says this is what people with schizophrenia, Do they
send bombs to people They go and live in like
Montana for alone for thirty years and send bombs to
people the whole time. Yeah, So it's it's doing that
(21:33):
same armchair psychologicalizing that I was doing. Is it's it's
it's worse if you're an actual psychiatrist, you know. Yeah. Uh,
all right, Well, I think we should talk a little
bit about how this this manifesto came to be in
public view, because it's a super interesting sub story in itself. Um,
the great, great article from the Washington Post where I
(21:54):
got most of this part, but uh, they make the
point in this article super interesting to me that, um,
the time that this happened in the mid to late nineties,
it was a transitionary time in technology in and of itself,
and that the Internet was around, but it wasn't ubiquitous,
and it's not where everyone went for everything, including news.
(22:16):
So the fact that this publishing of the manifesto in
the Washington Post, which we'll talk about in a second,
it says here it was perhaps the last one, the
last newsworthy document to appear only in print, and it's
very ironic considering what he was railing against was that. Um,
it was before everyone was getting their news from the internet.
(22:37):
So the fact that they actually it was it was
an era that was it was being forgotten the newspaper print,
uh in print. And that's how he got his message
out finally by sending packages containing this manifesto to the
New York Times in the Washington Post in June. Yes,
so they each one got a package one day after
(23:01):
the other, and the one to the Post had a
return name and address Boonlong Hot s O nine Reynaulso Court,
San Jose, California, nine five one three six. And it
turns out that that address and that person it was
he he was a CFO of a tie circuit board
maker whose headquarters were in San Jose. That was the
(23:23):
address for that. So they Um, you can imagine that
Boonlong Hoe was pretty nervous because rather than being like
the recipient of a bomb, he was supposedly the center
of these this manifesto to the Washington Post. But the
FBI investigated and quickly cleared Boonlong ho Um and the
Post and the Time suddenly had a decision to make
(23:46):
because in this in this package with this manifesto was
a letter that said, if you published this, I will
stop killing people. If you don't, I'm gonna start, or
we will start making our next bomb. Yeah. So they
obviously got touch with the FBI. Uh. The FBI took
one look at the letter and said, I think this
is from the Unit Bomber. They went, duh, uh, of
(24:08):
course it is. There is no Well, they actually they
didn't know at the time how many people were sending
these bombs UM, but they met with Uh, they had
three meetings I think with the FBI's director at the time,
Lewis Free, and the task force. And then two out
of those three meetings, Attorney General Janet Reno came, that's
like such a nineties meeting. So nineties Lewis Free and
(24:31):
Jane Arena. Oh yeah, yeah for sure. Uh. So they said, listen,
we're not in the safety business. We're not experts on this.
You tell us what you think we should do, and
then we'll make our mind up what we should do. Basically,
everyone said, you should probably publish this UM because A
we can maybe tag and track newspapers in northern California
(24:51):
where we think he might be be. Maybe someone will
recognize this guy and come forward. Uh. Was there, c No,
it's the saying okay. And so this is a note
to all potential UM manifesto writers. If you are trying
to keep your identity a secret, probably refrain from publishing
(25:14):
your thirty five thousand world word manifesto because you're going
to out yourself. And that's exactly what happened with Ted Kaczynski. UM.
The Washington Posted the New York Times agreed to do this. Actually,
the New York Times. It's like, why don't you do it?
We'll just half the cost of printing and distribution. Yea.
I thought that was pretty interesting. I'm surprised they didn't
(25:35):
both want to. But the Post said will do it
if you go have these, which is adorable, and they did. Uh.
And then they said here's what we'll do, though, we're
not gonna just put it in the newspaper. We're gonna
print it in a special section with its own type face. Uh.
And it became a sensation like people wanted copies of
this thing, like extra copies for themselves, wrote the newspaper,
(25:58):
and they're like, we don't have any other copies. Um.
And like we said, this was the last time that
this was sort of a viable. Like now, anyone can
throw anything on the Internet. So it was a really
interesting time in the the course of humanity that this
thing came out. As far as like mad bombers go.
Having the Washington Post pretty your thirty five thousand word
(26:19):
manifesto is pretty prestigious, especially at that time. I can't
decide whether it be more prestigious today because anybody can
just put it out on the Internet. But yeah, but
I think at the time, I mean, like newspapers were
at still at the height of their influence. You know,
who knows, but at the very you can imagine take
(26:41):
Kazinski's surprise and delight when the Times published this thing.
And like you said, it was a sensation. But it
made its way into the hands of Linda Patrick, who
was actually a childhood friend of David Kazinski and um
now his wife, and she noticed us um or she
read this manifesto and said this sounds an awful lot
(27:04):
like your brother Teddy to David, and he read it
and he said, oh no, should we take a break? Yeah,
all right, that's a man. What a cliffhanger. Nice work,
thanks m h alright, good cliffhanger. Thank you. I feel
(27:45):
like we're dangling by our fingernails. So where we left
off was Linda Patrick, wife of well, sister in law
of the Uni bomber, wife of David, who was the
younger brother, said take a look at this. David read
it and said, this sounds very much like my brother.
In fact, Uh, there was a term what was the
(28:07):
term that he used that was sort of a dead
giveaway cool headed logicians. Yeah, that's a that's not something
here every day. I don't use that very frequently. Yeah,
So he saw that, and I think I can't imagine
just the stomach churning, sinking feeling that he got right
when he saw those three words. Especially Yeah, I like
(28:29):
you said, that was the dead giveaway. I think if
you put the whole thing together. Though, Um, he had
been he and his family had been receiving actually he hadn't.
Leading up to I think nine he had been receiving
letters from his brother about the same stuff. So I
think even without that that term, he probably would have
been pretty convinced. But he was. He was convinced enough
(28:50):
to go. Um. His wife, Linda contacted a family friend
who was an investigator for a lawyer, and this woman
kind of took charge of this and hired like a
criminal profiler who looked at the letters from Ted and
then the UNI bomber manifesto and said, I'm pretty sure
this is the same guy that hired another lawyer who
(29:12):
represented the family, and they went to the FBI and said,
we think we know who the UNI bomber is. Yeah.
I thought that was interesting and that he didn't go
right to the FBI like he took. It seems like
I don't know how much time, but it said weeks. Yeah,
I went through a lot of effort privately to to
suss out whether or not they thought it was legit.
I mean I think he didn't. I mean, by all accounts,
(29:33):
he didn't want to do this, and he was even
worried what his mother would think. Um, And finally the
mother did say, you know, she she took his head
in her hands and kissed him and basically was like,
I know you loved Ted and you had to do this.
Basically she said, I knew it was you, Fredo. So
now we should jump back in time and sort of
(29:54):
explain the relationship with David and Ted and how they
got here because they were estranged for twe years before
this um. Interestingly, you know, we talked about had he
not decided to start sending bombs, he could have led
him more productive life, oh easily. But David was sort
of cut from the same cloth, like they bought this
(30:17):
land together in Montana. Hold on, I want to say
something here, Chuck. You just said that he could have
led a more productive life. I said that he could
have been more productive earlier too. Do you realize what
we're talking about is we're saying that he could have
better fit into the technological system that he was railing well,
or or not, or maybe have been an outspoken advocate
(30:38):
in a productive way on Facebook ship. There go, Sorry
for interrupting. I's had to point that. Now, that's right. Uh.
So they originally had bought this land in Montana together. Uh.
They both had these sort of similar ideals about removing
themselves from society. Uh. For David, though, it was like
back to nature, getting out of the riff, the hustle
(31:00):
and bustle of the world to find himself, to find
himself like a spiritual journey. For Ted, it seems very
much like I don't like people. Yeah. Um, he was
a bit of a missing thrope and they even have
stories dating back to when he was like seven years old,
when David asked mom, like, what's wrong with Teddy? Like
when people come over to visit, he runs to the
(31:21):
attic and hides something's wrong. And his mom said, you
know what, when he was a baby, he was hospitalized
for a few days with a rash, and being separated
from us for those few days is what is caused this.
So and then she says, so, don't ever abandoned Teddy.
That's what he fears the most, right, Yeah, not quite true. Actually,
so she lays that on on this kid, this is
(31:43):
like her his older brother that she's talking to him about,
you know. Um, but he said that as they grew up,
he was kind of like, um, Ted's entree into socialization,
Like David would go to parties, and I get the
impression that Ted would kind of tag along, you though
he was the older brother. But um, that's not to
say that that David didn't. He says that he looked
(32:06):
up to Ted. Um, and Ted was just this whiz kid,
wonder boy, genius when it came to math. You said
he went to Harvard at sixteen, Like, say that again, man,
he went to Harvard at age sixteen. Yeah, I think
he got like in Masters and his PhD in math
by the time he was like twenty or twenty one
(32:27):
or something. Okay, Yeah, so this guy was a mathematical genius.
Who from what the um The Atlantic article by Austin
Chase says, kind of lays a lot of um, a
lot of this at his dad's feet for pushing him
at a very early age to to become like to
go to Harvard, to jump a couple of grades in school,
(32:48):
that kind of stuff. Um. So he was already you
could say, misanthropic, potentially socially maladjusted. Who knows he He
wasn't like the easy going kid on the block, but
supposedly once you got to do him, especially if you
were a grown up and not one of his peers,
he was very easy to be around. Actually, yes, a
(33:10):
little brother. David. He looks up to Ted. He tries
to go to Harvard. Uh, is rejected, and then, like
I said, they bought this land together. Ted builds this cabin.
David later on says, well, I can I build a cabin?
You know, I want to build a cabin on this land.
To Ted was like, no way, dude, this is my
cabin and my land. So David, I'm sure was, you know,
(33:32):
very disappointed. He goes finds his own land in West Texas,
builds his cabin, and they corresponded for many years, a
thousand miles apart about their journeys towards living off grid
and getting back to nature. Yeah. I think he lived
in just like um Ted did for at least eight years,
(33:52):
I believe. And then he said his brother disowned him
when he sent a letter saying that he was moving
out of the forbidden zone into upstate New York to
go marry um Lynda Patrick. Right. Yeah, I think he
thought he was a sellout basically. That's that's what I
get to. He said him like a I think a
blistering twenty page letter saying I'm done with you. We're done. Um.
(34:16):
And that was it. That was the last contact that
he had had aside from one letter after their dad
was diagnosed with lung cancer. Um. That was the only
contact he had. So he he hasn't spoken to his brother,
corresponded really with his brother since. Yeah, they had this
system worked out where, uh, if there was a family emergency,
(34:39):
then David was to put a line, draw a line
under the stamp of the letter. And that's the only
thing that he would open. If you send me any
other letters, I'll burn them. And if you take advantage
of this system and and fool me by putting a
line under it and it's not an emergency, then I'm
never going to open a letter again. So he did
send that one letter with a line under the stamp
about his father. I didn't even reply, uh, except to
(35:02):
say thank you for for sticking to our system. And
he didn't even mention the fact that their father was dying.
So that was that was the last time they corresponded.
That was but that was it for the correspondence from
basically from eighty nine onward, David and Ted were estranged
and so come David's already not spoken with his brother
(35:25):
for six years, and now he suddenly his faced with
this idea of turning his brother in, knowing that he's
probably going to get the death penalty. So when they
finally did go to the FBI, and the FBI had
their own UM linguistic analysis done on these letters, and
they said, yeah, this is the guy um. David started
(35:46):
this campaign two paint his brother as mentally ill in
order to thwart the federal prosecutors from seeking the death
penalty because apparently they told him that they wouldn't and
then they reneged on that, um and he felt extremely betrayed,
so much so that he's apparently a crusader for UM
(36:06):
an anti death penalty activists now based on that that
betrayal from the federal prosecutors. Yeah, this is amazing. He works.
He's the head of the New Yorkers Against the Death
Penalty group. And get this, I know you know this
talking to everyone else. His closest friend, his bestie is
Gary Wright, who was one of the computer store owners
(36:27):
in Utah who was a victim of Ted. Yeah, they
became good friends. Two hundred pieces of shrapnel lodge in
his body from one of Ted's bombs, and now he
and David Kaczynski are best buds. And one of so
also from that same bomb that was one of Uh
(36:48):
is it Gary right? Gary? U s bonds? No? Gary right? Yeah? Okay, Gary,
writes employee. UM is the woman who saw the UNI
bomber and gave that scription to the sketch artist. Wow,
I know there was a turning point in a bunch
of people's lives, right, there. Yeah, that sketch didn't even
look like I'm really though, I've seen people be like, gosh,
(37:11):
it's the spinning image of them. It's like, no, once
you have oversized aviators on, it doesn't look like anybody. Yeah. So, UM,
David turns on his brother Take Kazinski's arrested in on
April third. He pleads guilty and um and he's been
serving his eight consecutive life sentences ever since. And recently
(37:33):
there was a big few I think a two thousand
twelve or thirteen. When the two twelve, I guess because
it would have been his fiftieth class reunion. Harvard, the
people running his class and publishing the class directory reached
out to him like they did everybody else in the
class and send him a forum to fill out, and
(37:55):
he filled it out and send it back in and
they published it. Yeah. He said his job prisoner and
that he he listed his was at eight life sentences
as awards. Yeah, and um gave his address at the Florence,
Colorado super Max facility and it was a huge Obviously,
(38:15):
it was a huge embarrassment for Harvard because they were
not paying attention and UM a bit of a scandal too.
I think Ted Kaczynski probably thought it was hilarious. Yeah,
should we should we finish with a little Day New
mom about this weird Harvard experiment. Only if you say
day New again? All right? So going back in time
(38:37):
once again to uh follow fifty nine through spring of
nineteen sixty two, there was an experiment at Harvard University
led by psychologist Henry Murray and how they describe it
here in this article as a disturbing and what would
now be seen as ethically indefensible experiment on twenty two undergrads. Uh.
(38:57):
They each undergrad that took part. Ted Kazynski was one
of them, had a had a code name for the
purposes of anonymity, and ironically Ted Kaczynski's was Lawful was
his code name. So basically what would happen is is
they would get it was it was interrogation is what
(39:18):
they would go through. So they would go into a room.
They would go downstairs to this basement room and then
a voice I would say, you know, enter the room.
They would enter the room, they would sit down and
be faced with a spotlight that would blind them in
an otherwise dark room, and then they would sit uh
in front of a board of inquisitors that would order
(39:41):
them to do things kind of start slow and then
eventually um build up to where they're screaming and yelling
at these kids, these in in Ted's case, I guess
like sixteen seventeen years old, and berating them basically. And
this was this was not just like you you dressed
like a slab or um. You know, your mother's meat
(40:04):
loaf is terrible. Like part the step one of all
this was that you're you were supposed to talk about
some of your most deeply held beliefs, the most treasured
beliefs and values and views on things. And then these
these inquisitors, who were actually like like um law student
graduate students, would would harangue you over your beliefs and
(40:27):
and and explain to you why they were so stupid
and why you were such a useless human being for
holding these beliefs. And the whole point of this, the
entire point was to find out the psychological limits for
humiliation and stress brought on by humiliation and when people
would crack. And this is not a one time thing
that he went and did for extra credit. This was
(40:49):
carried out over three years. Again, the kids sixteen at
the time, he's already socially awkward. Um, he's already isolated
from from his peers just by by um the virtue
of his intelligence, let alone his personal choices at being
isolated from everybody, and he's being harangued by like these
(41:10):
people about his most deeply held beliefs. His brother David
said in another article, he doesn't believe that that had
anything to do with creating the unim bomber. Plenty of
other people are like, no, I'm not so sure about that. Well,
here's what I think. And what was the name of
the article from The Atlantic? Um, did Harvard create the unibomber?
Harvard in the making of the unibomber? Yeah, it's It
(41:30):
certainly didn't help, especially when he had this core belief
system that was so firmly entrenched. For to sit in
a room for three years off and on and be
criticized and screamed at and called a liar uh and
detigrated like that, I'm sure it did not help. Yes, supposedly,
wasn't a very relativistic person. It was things were black
(41:50):
and white, and if you believe something was right, it
was right. So to have it assailed like that. Yeah,
I surely it had some effect somewhere. It just couldn't.
I mean Kazynski or Ted Kazynski later said that Harvard
were the worst years of his life. Yeah, so in
some small way, I guess he got him back by
getting that published in the directory and embarrassing the class. Yeah. Yeah,
(42:14):
revenge is a meal best or of cold through a
tiny slot in a metal door, doing eight life sentences. Uh.
If you got anything else, I got nothing else. Man,
that was a good one, It really was. Uh. And
again I think it bears repeating. Nothing about what we've
said that agreed with the UNI bomber and his theories
has anything to do with agreeing with violence of any kind,
(42:37):
especially indiscriminate random killing of people with bombs through the mail.
It's probably the most cowardly way you could injure or
hurt anybody. So we don't agree with that at all.
It's fine to say it one more time. Yeah, for sure.
If you want to know more about um, the UNI bomber,
it's all over the place. You can go type that
(42:58):
word you and a b O b e er in
your favorite search bar and it will bring up lots
of stuff. In the meantime, it's time for listener now.
I'm gonna call this Subway episode. Remember we we released
our selects on Saturdays, and I believe this. I don't
(43:18):
know if it was this one of your picks. I
guess it was mine then on Subways. So it's an
old episode, but a recent re release. Oh Lah, Josh
and Chuck. I'm in Andrea from Mexico. I've been listening
to your podcast for a bit over a year now,
but it's first time I'm writing in I listened to Subways,
and even though it's a rerun, I really wanted to
comment because I have some fun facts. As you mentioned
(43:39):
in the episode, sometimes digging for subways has led to
curious discoveries. In case of Mexico City, the digging of
the metro led to the discovery of a lot of
the remains of the Aztec city. Even though it was
common knowledge at the Spanish city had been built over
the ruins of Oh here we go, uh Tina Titslan.
That was pretty much it close. Uh. It was only
(44:01):
when excavation started in the sixties that they could uncover
the whole underground world. Since then, they have uncovered more
than twenty thousand archaeological objects and continue to find new
things to this day. If you have a chance to
walk around the city center, you may find the Templo
Mayor right beside the Spanish Cathedral. Who else can say
their everyday commute includes walking by the altar of a
(44:26):
god of wind. Anyway, I think he's a very interesting
fun facts that I wanted to share with you and
the fellow listeners. Maybe one day you can do How
Mexico City works episode. The history of the city is
super interesting and I think it's amazing. You can literally
see the layers of time in the city today. Uh.
And she attaches some pictures and this is Andrea Gonzales
and man, we should do a show in Mexico City. Share, man,
(44:48):
I bet you we could get a thousand people. We
will find out into a room. I know what. We
haven't delved outside of English speaking countries before, but Betchet,
of all the cities, we could probably do so in
Mexico City. Yeah. If Morrissey does get in Mexico City,
I'm sure we could too. It's kind of we try
and model our career after mos Um. Did you see
(45:09):
that picture she sent of the altar of the wind. God.
I'm like humans were sacrificed on that. That's insane that
you just walked past that on your way to the
subway every day. It's pretty interesting. Uh well, if you
want to tell us about your interesting commute, we always
want to hear stuff like that. You can tweet to
us at s Y s K podcast or at Josh
(45:31):
M Clark. You can hang out with Chuck on Facebook
at Charles W. Chuck Bryant, or at stuff you Should
Know the Facebook page. You can send us an email
the Stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com and
has always joined us at our home on the web,
Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this
(45:53):
and thousands of other topics, is that how stuff Works
dot com.
Boo boo boo boo dooo boo boo doo. We're coming
to a landown under I get chuck. We're going to
Australia and New Zealand and New Zealand. That's right, oh man,
Like we are really excited. This has been years in
the making. We're finally pulling the trigger. In September. We
are doing shows on September one at the Astro Theater
(00:23):
in Perth, Sunday September two at I c C in Brisbane,
which heads up down there to you guys, that's spring
for you, not fall al right, well all September three,
Monday at Goldfields Theater in Melbourne. We're really getting around Thursday,
the sixth of September at the Inmore Theater in Sydney.
And then man, we are going to wrap it up Friday,
(00:44):
September seven at the Bruce Mason Theater in Auckland, New Zealand.
I cannot wait for that one, yea. You can go
to s y s K Live dot com to get
info and to buy tickets, which are on sale April.
We will see you in September. Australia and New Zealand.
Welcome to stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works
(01:07):
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant with Jerry Rowland. Three
of us put together, put us in some gray band aviators,
put a gray hoodie sweatshirt on us. You got stuff
(01:27):
you should know? I know, I like your costume. Today.
I thought I would dress up to really kind of
drive home the idea that I have. I know what
we're going to be talking about. Yeah, you know what's
funny is that today, all these years later, when you
see someone in aviators in a hoodie with the hood up,
you say, jeez, you know what's up? You in a barmber?
It's it's part of the social fabric these days. Like
(01:52):
I've ran across some some I guess an article from
the late nineties or whatever that was talking about that
famous sketch and how it made its way under like
coffee mugs and key chains and T shirts and like
it became like a pop culture icon. Oh yeah, I'm
sure it was on some T shirt design at what's
(02:13):
that terrible store? Spencer's hot topic? That was great? No
urban outfitters. Uh wait, so you're a Spencer's fan. Huh okay,
Spencer's over Urban Outfitters. I guess that is. That's the
great divide, you know, well, Michigan, Ohio state Spencer's Urban Outfitters.
(02:35):
Urban Outfitters is just trendy like stuff that they think
is clever, but it's not Spencer. You could go in
and get a poster of a bikini lady on a ferrari,
some incense and a and a giant rubber penuts right, Like,
that's a great store. I guess it is. You know
everything you need under one roof. I can't remember what
(02:57):
I was in there for the other day, but they
have like most extensive um selection of tasteless shot glasses
I've ever seen in my life. That Spencer. Yeah, which,
it's like there's people collecting that you can tell. I
wont to know who Spencer is. Spencer doesn't want you
to know who he is. That's why he called his
store Spencer. His real name is Jackson McClain. Oh wow,
(03:22):
nice work, Jackson threw me you sniffed me off the case.
Nice that was a good saved, Chuck. Thanks. Speaking of
good saves, I'm gonna bail us out of this intro
Let's do it and take us back way back to
nineteen seventy nine eight A little seven year old, Sorry, Chuck,
we're gonna go back one more year was seven. Oh,
(03:45):
so you knew I got it wrong. Okay. Well, in
in the Chicago Land area, there's a university called Northwestern University.
Go Wildcats. M hmm. I didn't look this one up
at think it is the Wildcats. That's what we're going with. UM.
And there was a security officer named Terry Maker who
(04:07):
opened a suspicious looking package. That's I couldn't find why
Terry Maker opened it. So I should say everybody, I'm
making the assumption here that it was deemed suspicious, and
they're like, gook at the security guard. But Terry Maker
opened this package and it exploded. He got some minor
cuts and burns. I don't see too many people counting
(04:28):
him as a victim of the UNI bomber, although I
think Terry Maker would probably take issue with that. UM.
But he was, by all accounts, the first person to
come into contact with the UNI bomber or one of
the UNI Bomber's bombs. Yeah, he was number one that
(04:50):
would go on to be fifteen more bombs over the
seventeen year killing spree. Well in a way, he killed
three people in the end, when did uh many more? Uh?
And we won't go through all of the targets, but
they ranged from American Airlines Flight forty four to the
(05:10):
president of United Airlines Percy Wood, to Vanderbilt University secretary,
to timber industry lobbyist to an advertising executive. Part of
the reason why it was uh so maddening for so
many years was because the there was no rhyme or
reason seemingly to the victims of the UNI bomber's wrath. No.
(05:35):
The one thing that they all shared in common and
the UNI bomb are also UM wrote letters to newspapers
during this whole time. UM. The thing that they had
in common was that they had something to do with
technology or the advancement of technology UM or the destruction
of nature, one of those two. And so these these
(05:57):
people like that was it. That was all you had
to be doing to be of a target of the
UNI bomber. He was extremely indiscriminate and picking who lived
or died by his hand. Uh. And you have to
understand all of these bombs, None of these bombs were
sent to scare people Every single one of these bombs,
whether they killed somebody or not, were intended to kill somebody.
(06:18):
Who they killed. The UNI bomber didn't much care, and
you can tell by the the kind of institution attitude
he had towards who who was targeted, like he would
get names wrong. His last victim a guy named um
Uh Gilbert Bret Murray. He was a timber industry lobbyist.
(06:39):
He opened the package because he was the president of
the timber industry lobby even though the package was addressed
to his predecessor. The reason it was addressed to his
predecessor was because the UNI bomber had picked the name
out of a directory and it was an out of
date directory. So this guy um died as a result
of the bomb, you know to do. It really was
(07:01):
and I think the unibomber if you talked to the
UNI bomber today, which you could, apparently he's very easy
to get in touch with us and become a pen
pal of UM, he would tell you totally fine, like
I don't care who died, like the head of this
timber lobby died. That was ultimately what I was going for.
So he was killing people who are associated with an idea,
a cause, and the cause that he was opposed to
(07:22):
was the destruction of nature and the the advancement of technology. Right,
So we're talking obviously about Ted Kazinski. It was the
man's real name. And early on in nine right after
these attacks started happening, the Postal Service, the A t F,
and the FBI got together formed a task force and
(07:44):
that's where they came up with the name unibomb You
n A b O M stood for University Airline bombings
because those were the first bombs that were sent. And
I guess the name of the case was by the FBI,
but the name UNI bomber was made up by the
media covering it, right, Yeah, that's usually the case. Yeah. Uh.
In the end, it would become the longest running at
(08:06):
the time, I don't know if it's been outdone yet,
but the longest running in most expensive FBI investigation in history. Uh.
Eventually had a hundred and fifty full time employees on
the case, which is amazing. And he was tough, too
tough to get and you know, he had no forensic
(08:26):
evidence left behind. He was very careful. He used bombs
that were made out of materials that were easy to find.
You couldn't track them. He made all of them by hand, painstakingly. Yeah,
made him all by hand. Like we said, the victims
were chosen seemingly at random, and had it not been
for his manifesto, they may still be on the lookout
for this guy. Yeah. And even still, the way that
(08:48):
they were able to connect these things was because during
the seventeen year campaign, he UM would write letters to U,
to the editors of newspapers around the country, claiming, we're
sponsibility for these these crimes UM. And then I think
half of the bombs had the inscription FC on parts
that were recovered, and FC stood for Freedom Club because
(09:12):
the UNI bomber didn't call himself the UNI bomber. Again,
that was the media. All of these things, including the manifesto,
was signed the Freedom Club Club of one right. But
he he always wrote about we whenever he was referring
to himself. So the whole thing came to a head
uh in when Tank Kaczynski was arrested in his cabin
(09:38):
in Lincoln, Montana. He was known to his neighbors as
the Hermit on the Hill, and he'd lived there for
years and years and years. I think since the early seventies.
I believe, Yeah, I mean it was a little primitive
cabin off grid. Inside they found about forty thousand pages
worth of journals describing all his crimes. They found bomb
(09:58):
parts U, they found a bomb ready to be mailed,
and they knew they had their guy thanks to his
brother David turning him in essentially after reading this manifesto. Uh.
He was eventually reigned in Sacramento, which is where the
final murder took place, and he was sent to jail.
(10:19):
Initially said no, I don't want to. I don't want
to uh be uh, I don't want to plead insanity.
But that's a big, big point, yeah, because I don't.
I don't think he would have admitted something like that.
But he tried to kill himself in early and his
jail cell. That triggered a psychiatric evaluation and he was
(10:39):
diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, which triggered a plea bargain that
basically said, you can avoid the death penalty now if
you take this plea bargain. He did, and in January
of eight he pleaded guilty, accepted the eight life sentences
with no parole, and is now living was quite a
few other famous bombers. Um at the Florence, Colorado Alcatraz
(11:04):
of the Rockies, the X there's that place in and
of itself is crazy. I looked into it. Yeah, I
feel like it's come up in plenty of other episodes
before because it certainly sounds familiar. So I was looking into. Um,
there's this fascinating article called Harvard in the Making of
the UNI Bomber by a guy named Alston Chase, who
I think wrote a book on it. But in this article, um,
(11:27):
he you read it too, so he he really kind
of lays out a pretty great case based on evidence
that he compiled from interviews and things like that, that
it's definitely not a slam dunk diagnosis that the UNI
Bomber has schizophrenia. And he also, I don't know if
he says it outright, but he at the very least
(11:48):
intimates that that it was teg Kazynski's brother David and
his legal team that created the public persona of the
Union Bomber as a as a person with his friend
you to keep him from getting the death penalty. This
is much much, much to the chagrin of the Union
Bomber tak Kaczynski, who eventually did cop to this plea
(12:11):
bargain because it became clear to him that if he
went to trial, his defense team was going to put
in an insanity defense, whether he liked it or not,
and he was denied the ability to represent himself. So
he was presented with a choice either go to trial,
plead insanity, maybe get a lesser defense, but in the
meantime his manifesto would be painted as the ramblings of
(12:36):
a madman because he would be deemed insane or plead
guilty and not insane. Defend insanity and then, in his
hopes um also by by extension, defend his manifesto and
the ideas in it. Yeah, so he is still in
prison in Colorado. Apparently, like you said, he's got a
(12:57):
lot of pen pals because he lived in a tiny,
little primitive cabin for so many years. By all accounts,
he has adapted pretty well to prison life. Being in
a small room is no big deal to him. And
you can actually go to the and I'm gonna totally
check this out. I don't know if I can do
it on this upcoming tour, but you can go see
that original cabin at the Newseum in Washington, d C.
(13:22):
And I've looked up pictures and it's kind of all
right there, which is pretty interesting. Yeah, the whole thing
is just right there in the Newseum. Yeah. So he
was a brilliant guy. Uh, like you said, he went
to Harvard. He's a national merit finalist, he was a
math prodigy, started Harvard at sixteen, had an i Q
or has an i Q of one sixty seven. And uh,
(13:43):
it was just a is just a brilliant and brilliant guy.
And I think we should take a break. I'm getting
a tingle, and we'll come back and we'll talk. Uh. Well,
I guess we should talk about the manifesto. Let's all
right right for this? Hyeh all right, chuck him. We're
(14:27):
back and were kind of left it off on. Uh, well,
we promised we're about to talk manifesto, So let's talk manifesto. Yeah.
And after reading the cliffs notes of this thing um
in a few different places, one thing is clear is
it's not the ramblings of a madman a b he
(14:48):
has and I hate saying this, but he has a
lot of very salient points about where society is headed
due to technology or or where it was headed back
in nineties where it fully is now. Yeah, very much
ahead of his time, thinking wise. The way he went
about correcting this was was not was abhorrent obviously, but
(15:14):
when you read parts of this thing, the industrial Revolution
and its consequences, uh, like here, just let me pull
this one for instance. Um, here's here's one pull quote.
Once a technical innovation has been introduced, people usually become
dependent on it so that they can never again do
without it unless it is replaced by some still more
advanced innovation. Not only do people become dependent as individuals
(15:37):
on a new item of technology, but even more the
system as a whole becomes dependent on it. Does it
sound like anything that everyone carries in their pocket every
day exactly? And he also points out that like the
way the way that this happens, this this dependence on technology,
it comes about because new technology seem good and help
(16:00):
full and useful, and then we eventually adapt ourselves to
fit them better. We change our behavior, we change the
way we see things, we change the way we think
and interact with stuff to fit the technology. And his
whole idea was that that that is the the u
inevitable outcome from the Industrial Revolution, and that ever since
(16:22):
the Industrial Revolution, our society has been in a stranglehold
at the service of technology and the people who serve technology,
and society has been restructured and reshuffled to the detriment
of the individual human to local communities as a whole.
And that, um, the only way that this is such,
(16:42):
this is so ingrained now in our world. The only
way to stop this is to violently overthrow the current system.
And he has very las a fair attitude about what
comes after. He said that we have no illusions about
the feasibility of creating a new idea old form of society.
Our goal only is to destroy the existing form of society.
(17:05):
That was it. That was the whole reason for his
campaign was to be the one of the provocateurs of
this revolution that upended technological society. Yeah, here's another summation
of another part of the manifesto about the social infrastructure
that he says is dedicated to modifying our own behaviors. Uh.
(17:27):
This infrastructure includes an array of government agencies with ever
expanding police powers and out of control regulatory system that
encourages the limitless multiplication of laws and education, establishment and
stresses uh conformism, ubiquitous television networks. Who's Fair is essentially
an electronic form of valum and a medical and psychological
(17:47):
establishment that promotes the indiscriminate use of mind altering drugs.
So again, I don't want this to come across that
I like look up to this guy in anyway. But
when you read some of the stuff, you think, Man,
if this guy had only reined it in, he could
have done good. Yeah. I can't remember what the turning
(18:08):
point was, but there was some there was some potential
path that he was on where he could have done
this peacefully, and he pulled back and went a violent way.
And I think, I think quite rightly that if he
were not well locked up for the rest of his life,
he would he would keep sending bombs out. He would
not stop because he's he doesn't he's not a a
(18:31):
moral agent. He is a rational agent, and he sees
this as a rational and to the means. To his means,
which is taking out people who may or may not
be in a position to advance technological society. Well, yeah,
and that's what was That's where the line the delineation occurs,
where he was he's such a smart person, but that's
(18:54):
such a dumb like there's blowing someone up, is gonna
is not gonna haul any innovations or change the course
of where we're headed as a society. It was just uh,
I mean to call it misguided is the understatement of
the year. So and forgive me for armchair psychologalizing here,
(19:16):
But now you start to get into the idea of
whether or not he was fulfilling or indulging his own
desire to kill right, Well, you never know, because if
he is thinking about things like this, and he is
such a rational person, surely there would have been other
ways to to do this that were either more productive
or on the other hand, more destructive, right, Like sending
(19:40):
a bomb that might take out one or two or
three people is not it's and and by making these
bombs painstaking lee by hand over the course of months
and probably years, sometimes that's not a very productive way
of achieving this goal. So it makes you wonder, did
this guy just want to kill people? And and that
that coupled with this this view of technological society to
(20:03):
form what we know as the UNI bomber. Well, I
think that was probably the case. Is he was angry
at where things were headed and he wanted to take
it out on somebody. Yeah, but again I want to
go back to this idea that he is schizophrenic. Um
there is a uh that that is not necessarily the case.
He was given a temporary or provisional or conditional schizophrenic
(20:27):
diagnosis of schizophrenia by a court ordered psychiatrist, forensic psychiatrist,
and that was it. I don't believe she ever went
back and made an official diagnosis. Other people in the media,
other psychiatrists were basically diagnosing them from afar. Some some
psychiatrists met with him, but they didn't officially um examine him.
(20:49):
So basically, just based on his actions and his manifesto
and what was contained within, he was largely given this
diagnosis of schizophrenia. And I couldn't find anything that said
that he's being treated for schizophrenia now, which is kind
of a big deal because it's a two two full
big deal. One it it says it dismisses him as
(21:11):
just a complete madman who who is delusional, but it
also does a tremendous disservice to people with schizophrenia because
it says this is what people with schizophrenia, Do they
send bombs to people They go and live in like
Montana for alone for thirty years and send bombs to
people the whole time. Yeah, So it's it's doing that
(21:33):
same armchair psychologicalizing that I was doing. Is it's it's
it's worse if you're an actual psychiatrist, you know. Yeah. Uh,
all right, Well, I think we should talk a little
bit about how this this manifesto came to be in
public view, because it's a super interesting sub story in itself. Um,
the great, great article from the Washington Post where I
(21:54):
got most of this part, but uh, they make the
point in this article super interesting to me that, um,
the time that this happened in the mid to late nineties,
it was a transitionary time in technology in and of itself,
and that the Internet was around, but it wasn't ubiquitous,
and it's not where everyone went for everything, including news.
(22:16):
So the fact that this publishing of the manifesto in
the Washington Post, which we'll talk about in a second,
it says here it was perhaps the last one, the
last newsworthy document to appear only in print, and it's
very ironic considering what he was railing against was that. Um,
it was before everyone was getting their news from the internet.
(22:37):
So the fact that they actually it was it was
an era that was it was being forgotten the newspaper print,
uh in print. And that's how he got his message
out finally by sending packages containing this manifesto to the
New York Times in the Washington Post in June. Yes,
so they each one got a package one day after
(23:01):
the other, and the one to the Post had a
return name and address Boonlong Hot s O nine Reynaulso Court,
San Jose, California, nine five one three six. And it
turns out that that address and that person it was
he he was a CFO of a tie circuit board
maker whose headquarters were in San Jose. That was the
(23:23):
address for that. So they Um, you can imagine that
Boonlong Hoe was pretty nervous because rather than being like
the recipient of a bomb, he was supposedly the center
of these this manifesto to the Washington Post. But the
FBI investigated and quickly cleared Boonlong ho Um and the
Post and the Time suddenly had a decision to make
(23:46):
because in this in this package with this manifesto was
a letter that said, if you published this, I will
stop killing people. If you don't, I'm gonna start, or
we will start making our next bomb. Yeah. So they
obviously got touch with the FBI. Uh. The FBI took
one look at the letter and said, I think this
is from the Unit Bomber. They went, duh, uh, of
(24:08):
course it is. There is no Well, they actually they
didn't know at the time how many people were sending
these bombs UM, but they met with Uh, they had
three meetings I think with the FBI's director at the time,
Lewis Free, and the task force. And then two out
of those three meetings, Attorney General Janet Reno came, that's
like such a nineties meeting. So nineties Lewis Free and
(24:31):
Jane Arena. Oh yeah, yeah for sure. Uh. So they said, listen,
we're not in the safety business. We're not experts on this.
You tell us what you think we should do, and
then we'll make our mind up what we should do. Basically,
everyone said, you should probably publish this UM because A
we can maybe tag and track newspapers in northern California
(24:51):
where we think he might be be. Maybe someone will
recognize this guy and come forward. Uh. Was there, c No,
it's the saying okay. And so this is a note
to all potential UM manifesto writers. If you are trying
to keep your identity a secret, probably refrain from publishing
(25:14):
your thirty five thousand world word manifesto because you're going
to out yourself. And that's exactly what happened with Ted Kaczynski. UM.
The Washington Posted the New York Times agreed to do this. Actually,
the New York Times. It's like, why don't you do it?
We'll just half the cost of printing and distribution. Yea.
I thought that was pretty interesting. I'm surprised they didn't
(25:35):
both want to. But the Post said will do it
if you go have these, which is adorable, and they did. Uh.
And then they said here's what we'll do, though, we're
not gonna just put it in the newspaper. We're gonna
print it in a special section with its own type face. Uh.
And it became a sensation like people wanted copies of
this thing, like extra copies for themselves, wrote the newspaper,
(25:58):
and they're like, we don't have any other copies. Um.
And like we said, this was the last time that
this was sort of a viable. Like now, anyone can
throw anything on the Internet. So it was a really
interesting time in the the course of humanity that this
thing came out. As far as like mad bombers go.
Having the Washington Post pretty your thirty five thousand word
(26:19):
manifesto is pretty prestigious, especially at that time. I can't
decide whether it be more prestigious today because anybody can
just put it out on the Internet. But yeah, but
I think at the time, I mean, like newspapers were
at still at the height of their influence. You know,
who knows, but at the very you can imagine take
(26:41):
Kazinski's surprise and delight when the Times published this thing.
And like you said, it was a sensation. But it
made its way into the hands of Linda Patrick, who
was actually a childhood friend of David Kazinski and um
now his wife, and she noticed us um or she
read this manifesto and said this sounds an awful lot
(27:04):
like your brother Teddy to David, and he read it
and he said, oh no, should we take a break? Yeah,
all right, that's a man. What a cliffhanger. Nice work,
thanks m h alright, good cliffhanger. Thank you. I feel
(27:45):
like we're dangling by our fingernails. So where we left
off was Linda Patrick, wife of well, sister in law
of the Uni bomber, wife of David, who was the
younger brother, said take a look at this. David read
it and said, this sounds very much like my brother.
In fact, Uh, there was a term what was the
(28:07):
term that he used that was sort of a dead
giveaway cool headed logicians. Yeah, that's a that's not something
here every day. I don't use that very frequently. Yeah,
So he saw that, and I think I can't imagine
just the stomach churning, sinking feeling that he got right
when he saw those three words. Especially Yeah, I like
(28:29):
you said, that was the dead giveaway. I think if
you put the whole thing together. Though, Um, he had
been he and his family had been receiving actually he hadn't.
Leading up to I think nine he had been receiving
letters from his brother about the same stuff. So I
think even without that that term, he probably would have
been pretty convinced. But he was. He was convinced enough
(28:50):
to go. Um. His wife, Linda contacted a family friend
who was an investigator for a lawyer, and this woman
kind of took charge of this and hired like a
criminal profiler who looked at the letters from Ted and
then the UNI bomber manifesto and said, I'm pretty sure
this is the same guy that hired another lawyer who
(29:12):
represented the family, and they went to the FBI and said,
we think we know who the UNI bomber is. Yeah.
I thought that was interesting and that he didn't go
right to the FBI like he took. It seems like
I don't know how much time, but it said weeks. Yeah,
I went through a lot of effort privately to to
suss out whether or not they thought it was legit.
I mean I think he didn't. I mean, by all accounts,
(29:33):
he didn't want to do this, and he was even
worried what his mother would think. Um, And finally the
mother did say, you know, she she took his head
in her hands and kissed him and basically was like,
I know you loved Ted and you had to do this.
Basically she said, I knew it was you, Fredo. So
now we should jump back in time and sort of
(29:54):
explain the relationship with David and Ted and how they
got here because they were estranged for twe years before
this um. Interestingly, you know, we talked about had he
not decided to start sending bombs, he could have led
him more productive life, oh easily. But David was sort
of cut from the same cloth, like they bought this
(30:17):
land together in Montana. Hold on, I want to say
something here, Chuck. You just said that he could have
led a more productive life. I said that he could
have been more productive earlier too. Do you realize what
we're talking about is we're saying that he could have
better fit into the technological system that he was railing well,
or or not, or maybe have been an outspoken advocate
(30:38):
in a productive way on Facebook ship. There go, Sorry
for interrupting. I's had to point that. Now, that's right. Uh.
So they originally had bought this land in Montana together. Uh.
They both had these sort of similar ideals about removing
themselves from society. Uh. For David, though, it was like
back to nature, getting out of the riff, the hustle
(31:00):
and bustle of the world to find himself, to find
himself like a spiritual journey. For Ted, it seems very
much like I don't like people. Yeah. Um, he was
a bit of a missing thrope and they even have
stories dating back to when he was like seven years old,
when David asked mom, like, what's wrong with Teddy? Like
when people come over to visit, he runs to the
(31:21):
attic and hides something's wrong. And his mom said, you
know what, when he was a baby, he was hospitalized
for a few days with a rash, and being separated
from us for those few days is what is caused this.
So and then she says, so, don't ever abandoned Teddy.
That's what he fears the most, right, Yeah, not quite true. Actually,
so she lays that on on this kid, this is
(31:43):
like her his older brother that she's talking to him about,
you know. Um, but he said that as they grew up,
he was kind of like, um, Ted's entree into socialization,
Like David would go to parties, and I get the
impression that Ted would kind of tag along, you though
he was the older brother. But um, that's not to
say that that David didn't. He says that he looked
(32:06):
up to Ted. Um, and Ted was just this whiz kid,
wonder boy, genius when it came to math. You said
he went to Harvard at sixteen, Like, say that again, man,
he went to Harvard at age sixteen. Yeah, I think
he got like in Masters and his PhD in math
by the time he was like twenty or twenty one
(32:27):
or something. Okay, Yeah, so this guy was a mathematical genius.
Who from what the um The Atlantic article by Austin
Chase says, kind of lays a lot of um, a
lot of this at his dad's feet for pushing him
at a very early age to to become like to
go to Harvard, to jump a couple of grades in school,
(32:48):
that kind of stuff. Um. So he was already you
could say, misanthropic, potentially socially maladjusted. Who knows he He
wasn't like the easy going kid on the block, but
supposedly once you got to do him, especially if you
were a grown up and not one of his peers,
he was very easy to be around. Actually, yes, a
(33:10):
little brother. David. He looks up to Ted. He tries
to go to Harvard. Uh, is rejected, and then, like
I said, they bought this land together. Ted builds this cabin.
David later on says, well, I can I build a cabin?
You know, I want to build a cabin on this land.
To Ted was like, no way, dude, this is my
cabin and my land. So David, I'm sure was, you know,
(33:32):
very disappointed. He goes finds his own land in West Texas,
builds his cabin, and they corresponded for many years, a
thousand miles apart about their journeys towards living off grid
and getting back to nature. Yeah. I think he lived
in just like um Ted did for at least eight years,
(33:52):
I believe. And then he said his brother disowned him
when he sent a letter saying that he was moving
out of the forbidden zone into upstate New York to
go marry um Lynda Patrick. Right. Yeah, I think he
thought he was a sellout basically. That's that's what I
get to. He said him like a I think a
blistering twenty page letter saying I'm done with you. We're done. Um.
(34:16):
And that was it. That was the last contact that
he had had aside from one letter after their dad
was diagnosed with lung cancer. Um. That was the only
contact he had. So he he hasn't spoken to his brother,
corresponded really with his brother since. Yeah, they had this
system worked out where, uh, if there was a family emergency,
(34:39):
then David was to put a line, draw a line
under the stamp of the letter. And that's the only
thing that he would open. If you send me any
other letters, I'll burn them. And if you take advantage
of this system and and fool me by putting a
line under it and it's not an emergency, then I'm
never going to open a letter again. So he did
send that one letter with a line under the stamp
about his father. I didn't even reply, uh, except to
(35:02):
say thank you for for sticking to our system. And
he didn't even mention the fact that their father was dying.
So that was that was the last time they corresponded.
That was but that was it for the correspondence from
basically from eighty nine onward, David and Ted were estranged
and so come David's already not spoken with his brother
(35:25):
for six years, and now he suddenly his faced with
this idea of turning his brother in, knowing that he's
probably going to get the death penalty. So when they
finally did go to the FBI, and the FBI had
their own UM linguistic analysis done on these letters, and
they said, yeah, this is the guy um. David started
(35:46):
this campaign two paint his brother as mentally ill in
order to thwart the federal prosecutors from seeking the death
penalty because apparently they told him that they wouldn't and
then they reneged on that, um and he felt extremely betrayed,
so much so that he's apparently a crusader for UM
(36:06):
an anti death penalty activists now based on that that
betrayal from the federal prosecutors. Yeah, this is amazing. He works.
He's the head of the New Yorkers Against the Death
Penalty group. And get this, I know you know this
talking to everyone else. His closest friend, his bestie is
Gary Wright, who was one of the computer store owners
(36:27):
in Utah who was a victim of Ted. Yeah, they
became good friends. Two hundred pieces of shrapnel lodge in
his body from one of Ted's bombs, and now he
and David Kaczynski are best buds. And one of so
also from that same bomb that was one of Uh
(36:48):
is it Gary right? Gary? U s bonds? No? Gary right? Yeah? Okay, Gary,
writes employee. UM is the woman who saw the UNI
bomber and gave that scription to the sketch artist. Wow,
I know there was a turning point in a bunch
of people's lives, right, there. Yeah, that sketch didn't even
look like I'm really though, I've seen people be like, gosh,
(37:11):
it's the spinning image of them. It's like, no, once
you have oversized aviators on, it doesn't look like anybody. Yeah. So, UM,
David turns on his brother Take Kazinski's arrested in on
April third. He pleads guilty and um and he's been
serving his eight consecutive life sentences ever since. And recently
(37:33):
there was a big few I think a two thousand
twelve or thirteen. When the two twelve, I guess because
it would have been his fiftieth class reunion. Harvard, the
people running his class and publishing the class directory reached
out to him like they did everybody else in the
class and send him a forum to fill out, and
(37:55):
he filled it out and send it back in and
they published it. Yeah. He said his job prisoner and
that he he listed his was at eight life sentences
as awards. Yeah, and um gave his address at the Florence,
Colorado super Max facility and it was a huge Obviously,
(38:15):
it was a huge embarrassment for Harvard because they were
not paying attention and UM a bit of a scandal too.
I think Ted Kaczynski probably thought it was hilarious. Yeah,
should we should we finish with a little Day New
mom about this weird Harvard experiment. Only if you say
day New again? All right? So going back in time
(38:37):
once again to uh follow fifty nine through spring of
nineteen sixty two, there was an experiment at Harvard University
led by psychologist Henry Murray and how they describe it
here in this article as a disturbing and what would
now be seen as ethically indefensible experiment on twenty two undergrads. Uh.
(38:57):
They each undergrad that took part. Ted Kazynski was one
of them, had a had a code name for the
purposes of anonymity, and ironically Ted Kaczynski's was Lawful was
his code name. So basically what would happen is is
they would get it was it was interrogation is what
(39:18):
they would go through. So they would go into a room.
They would go downstairs to this basement room and then
a voice I would say, you know, enter the room.
They would enter the room, they would sit down and
be faced with a spotlight that would blind them in
an otherwise dark room, and then they would sit uh
in front of a board of inquisitors that would order
(39:41):
them to do things kind of start slow and then
eventually um build up to where they're screaming and yelling
at these kids, these in in Ted's case, I guess
like sixteen seventeen years old, and berating them basically. And
this was this was not just like you you dressed
like a slab or um. You know, your mother's meat
(40:04):
loaf is terrible. Like part the step one of all
this was that you're you were supposed to talk about
some of your most deeply held beliefs, the most treasured
beliefs and values and views on things. And then these
these inquisitors, who were actually like like um law student
graduate students, would would harangue you over your beliefs and
(40:27):
and and explain to you why they were so stupid
and why you were such a useless human being for
holding these beliefs. And the whole point of this, the
entire point was to find out the psychological limits for
humiliation and stress brought on by humiliation and when people
would crack. And this is not a one time thing
that he went and did for extra credit. This was
(40:49):
carried out over three years. Again, the kids sixteen at
the time, he's already socially awkward. Um, he's already isolated
from from his peers just by by um the virtue
of his intelligence, let alone his personal choices at being
isolated from everybody, and he's being harangued by like these
(41:10):
people about his most deeply held beliefs. His brother David
said in another article, he doesn't believe that that had
anything to do with creating the unim bomber. Plenty of
other people are like, no, I'm not so sure about that. Well,
here's what I think. And what was the name of
the article from The Atlantic? Um, did Harvard create the unibomber?
Harvard in the making of the unibomber? Yeah, it's It
(41:30):
certainly didn't help, especially when he had this core belief
system that was so firmly entrenched. For to sit in
a room for three years off and on and be
criticized and screamed at and called a liar uh and
detigrated like that, I'm sure it did not help. Yes, supposedly,
wasn't a very relativistic person. It was things were black
(41:50):
and white, and if you believe something was right, it
was right. So to have it assailed like that. Yeah,
I surely it had some effect somewhere. It just couldn't.
I mean Kazynski or Ted Kazynski later said that Harvard
were the worst years of his life. Yeah, so in
some small way, I guess he got him back by
getting that published in the directory and embarrassing the class. Yeah. Yeah,
(42:14):
revenge is a meal best or of cold through a
tiny slot in a metal door, doing eight life sentences. Uh.
If you got anything else, I got nothing else. Man,
that was a good one, It really was. Uh. And
again I think it bears repeating. Nothing about what we've
said that agreed with the UNI bomber and his theories
has anything to do with agreeing with violence of any kind,
(42:37):
especially indiscriminate random killing of people with bombs through the mail.
It's probably the most cowardly way you could injure or
hurt anybody. So we don't agree with that at all.
It's fine to say it one more time. Yeah, for sure.
If you want to know more about um, the UNI bomber,
it's all over the place. You can go type that
(42:58):
word you and a b O b e er in
your favorite search bar and it will bring up lots
of stuff. In the meantime, it's time for listener now.
I'm gonna call this Subway episode. Remember we we released
our selects on Saturdays, and I believe this. I don't
(43:18):
know if it was this one of your picks. I
guess it was mine then on Subways. So it's an
old episode, but a recent re release. Oh Lah, Josh
and Chuck. I'm in Andrea from Mexico. I've been listening
to your podcast for a bit over a year now,
but it's first time I'm writing in I listened to Subways,
and even though it's a rerun, I really wanted to
comment because I have some fun facts. As you mentioned
(43:39):
in the episode, sometimes digging for subways has led to
curious discoveries. In case of Mexico City, the digging of
the metro led to the discovery of a lot of
the remains of the Aztec city. Even though it was
common knowledge at the Spanish city had been built over
the ruins of Oh here we go, uh Tina Titslan.
That was pretty much it close. Uh. It was only
(44:01):
when excavation started in the sixties that they could uncover
the whole underground world. Since then, they have uncovered more
than twenty thousand archaeological objects and continue to find new
things to this day. If you have a chance to
walk around the city center, you may find the Templo
Mayor right beside the Spanish Cathedral. Who else can say
their everyday commute includes walking by the altar of a
(44:26):
god of wind. Anyway, I think he's a very interesting
fun facts that I wanted to share with you and
the fellow listeners. Maybe one day you can do How
Mexico City works episode. The history of the city is
super interesting and I think it's amazing. You can literally
see the layers of time in the city today. Uh.
And she attaches some pictures and this is Andrea Gonzales
and man, we should do a show in Mexico City. Share, man,
(44:48):
I bet you we could get a thousand people. We
will find out into a room. I know what. We
haven't delved outside of English speaking countries before, but Betchet,
of all the cities, we could probably do so in
Mexico City. Yeah. If Morrissey does get in Mexico City,
I'm sure we could too. It's kind of we try
and model our career after mos Um. Did you see
(45:09):
that picture she sent of the altar of the wind. God.
I'm like humans were sacrificed on that. That's insane that
you just walked past that on your way to the
subway every day. It's pretty interesting. Uh well, if you
want to tell us about your interesting commute, we always
want to hear stuff like that. You can tweet to
us at s Y s K podcast or at Josh
(45:31):
M Clark. You can hang out with Chuck on Facebook
at Charles W. Chuck Bryant, or at stuff you Should
Know the Facebook page. You can send us an email
the Stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com and
has always joined us at our home on the web,
Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this
(45:53):
and thousands of other topics, is that how stuff Works
dot com.
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