The Unabomber: Misguided to say the least

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, 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

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 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 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 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. 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 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, 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,

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 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 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 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 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. 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 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. 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. 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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,

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. 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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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.

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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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,

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 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 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 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

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 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 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

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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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, 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 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,

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, 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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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

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, 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 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 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, 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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

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 and thousands of other topics, is that how stuff Works dot com.