Ted Kaczynski - The Unabomber

Serial Slayers podcast host Brandon discusses the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, and notable bombings in the US. He shares facts about Kaczynski's background, his academic achievements, his diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, and his manifesto. Brandon highlights some excerpts from the manifesto that are relevant to current events. He also mentions the intelligence of Kaczynski and the changing nature of criminal acts due to technological advancements. Brandon concludes by mentioning his plans for future podcast episodes. Hello everybody and thanks for tuning in to Serial Slayers, I'm your host Brandon. Just wanted to come back and say, I hope everybody had a happy Thanksgiving, first of all, starting off. And today we're going to talk about, as depicted there by the eidetic picture, if you will, that was put out, the Bolo, that is Mr. Ted Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber. Now I'll start off by saying that there's actually been some notable bombings in the US. Eight of them that come to mind, in no particular order, you have the Boston bombing in 2013, the Times Square bombing in 2017, the Underwear Bomber in 2009, the Unabomber, right, the guy we're going to talk about, and his bombings actually went from 78 until he was caught, it went a total of 17 years. You have the Oklahoma City bombing, Timothy McVeigh in 95, World Trade Center bombing in 93, Baptist Street bombing in 63, and those are the top eight here in the US, at least. Let's get right into it though about Mr. Ted Kaczynski here, the Unabomber. Some facts. Ted Kaczynski was born May 22nd, 1942. He does not have a date of death, as he is still alive and in prison. Here's some interesting things about him that really makes him stand out from other ... You go so far as to say he was an activist, in a sense. Firstly it should be noted that he was a mathematician, professor at Berkeley, a Harvard alumni, and the cabin that we'll speak about in a little bit was located in Montana. You have infamous iconic remembrance pieces, if you will, from people such as Bonnie and Clyde. Well, the cabin is actually on display in a museum in D.C., and I know that's kind of weird, but it was so riddled with evidence, they actually flew it out in one piece on a helicopter and transposed it onto a flatbed to get it moved over there. You can see that ... I usually have this pulled up. There's a couple movies about Ted Kaczynski that you can actually view, and we usually talk about any movies who may ... There we go. Sorry, I was trying to get that to pull up. The best one that I watched recently, actually, is called Ted K. That one, yes, it was a 22 movie. It was a recent one, and it's actually really good. It goes into depth about pretty much how he snapped, where he was located at, who turned him in, the interesting things like that. Straight to it, it was his brother that turned him in to the FBI, because he realized and recognized the handwriting on the notes that were sent to the police from Ted. Here's something that is rather intriguing. Now, everyone knows that Stephen Hawking is one of the greatest minds of our lifetime. Hawking and Einstein both had an IQ of 160. Ted Kaczynski had an IQ of 167. It makes you wonder, what could have come had he not snapped and gone the way that he did? He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, which they believe he suffered due to the tests that he took at Harvard. I think he said he did 200 hours of the stress-inducing tests, and that developed the paranoid schizophrenia that he made him leave academia and move out into the woods, because he was a naturist, to put it simply. He had an issue with people taking advantage of the land and technology. If you ever get time to read his manifesto, which is a published book, it's called Industrial Society and Its Future. It's been cited by over 185 other academic people in various reports and papers. It's only 34 pages long. It's an interesting read, to say the least. When he was finally arrested, though, and asked why he did what he did, he said it was to fight industrialization and its destruction of nature through terrorism, openly stating it. He was convicted of killing three people. He accumulated eight life sentences. He only killed three people, injured 23 people. Like I said, he had, over the span of 17 years, is the length of his bombings. I'm actually going to read some of the more interesting excerpts from his paper, if you will. Now, he attacks both conservatives and liberals, but he was not a fan of liberals, let's put it that way. And I say that based off of what he's, firstly, one of the things, just, I want you to listen to some of the things he wrote about. And this was written in, was it 95, I believe, that his, I believe it was 95 is when he published his manifesto, because the reason that that's important, let me double check, I'm pretty sure it was, yeah, September 19, 1995, the Unabomber Manifesto. The reason this is so, wow, are you serious, is because if you listen to what he says, it directly correlates to what is occurring today in 2022, and it's astounding that, you know, almost 30 years later, he knew exactly what was going on. So a couple of the excerpts are, you know, there's a good reason to believe that primitive man suffered from less stress and frustration and was better satisfied with his life than modern man is. Now he was against modernization, as depicted in his manifesto, and, I mean, the title alone. Some of the other things, so I'll start in with, you know, going towards the conservatives. The conservatives are fools. They whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth. Apparently, it never occurred to them that you can't make rapid drastic changes in technology and the economy of a society without causing rapid changes in all other aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid changes inevitably break down traditional values. But then you go over here about what he says about the leftists, the liberals, it is obvious that leftists are not cool-headed logicians systematically analyzing the foundations of knowledge. They are deeply involved emotionally in their attack on truth and reality. The leftist is anti-individualistic. He is not the sort of person who has an inner sense of confidence in his own ability to solve his own problems and satisfy his own needs. Those who are most sensitive about politically incorrect terminology and are not the average black ghetto dweller, Asian immigrant, abused woman, or disabled person, but a minority of activists, many of whom do not even belong to any oppressed group, come, but come from privileged strata of society. And then the last one is, our society tends to regard as a sickness any mode of thought or behavior that is inconvenient for the system, and this is plausible because when an individual does not fit into the system, it causes pain to the individual as well as the problems for the system. Thus, the manipulation of the individual to adjust him to the system is seen as a cure for his sickness and therefore as good. Those last two that I just read, think about everything that went on with COVID and then think about all the woke people who think that they're oppressed or something, he straight up talks about it. From 1995, and here we are in 2022, this guy was talking about things that nobody had any idea about, but everything he said has come to fruition. It blows my mind, and I don't know, what more do you think that he could have done if he had stayed on the straight and narrow as opposed to, I'm going to blow people up. Now granted, the three victims he went after were all people directly in the, in a field that was doing something that had to do with industrial society and how it was taking away from the natural order of nature and stuff like that. It's actually funny, in my work, I've worked down in Guantanamo Bay when I was in the military and I worked with some, or alongside, not only some other bomb makers, and you can tell they're bomb makers because they're usually like missing digits and stuff, but I believe one of the ones down there was, had some correlation to the coal bombing, which was a US military vessel that was bombed. So it's, they're an interesting group of people, but you don't see a lot of bombers anymore. Bombings take a, in my opinion, take a degree of intelligence that not a lot of society can, they don't have it anymore. Now I say that, but I also play devil's advocate to myself because if you remember Harris and Klebold from Columbine, they had pipe bombs ready to go. The thing is, when Kaczynski was doing his, or McVeigh was doing his, it was at a time that it wasn't as easily accessible on a tablet, a phone, a computer, like it took, you actually had to know what you were doing. So, I don't know, I think it's, it's funny and interesting to say the least, that with the ease of and accessibility of technology, that criminal element, if you will, has gone the wayside. Now I'm not saying it's, you know, gone forever, but, and without getting into too much stuff, people want to talk about gun rights and taking away guns, and I'm just like, you don't comprehend that you take away an item that makes it easy to do X, Y, Z, they're just not going to find another way to do something more catastrophic. Like people, they just think that that's the answer and then everything will be fine, and it's not. I'm like, you take away, you take away one thing, something else is going to fill that void. So, not a lot to talk about with Ted Kaczynski. He was one of the most intelligent criminal, I don't want to say elements, but one of the most intelligent criminals that there was. Like I said, higher IQ than Einstein and Hawkins, which that speaks to itself with how revered they are in science and everything like that. But, to get a PhD in mathematics, it's not easy, let's put it that way. But, just want to come on here and do a quick bit, say hi to you guys. It's been, this last week I was gone, but you know, it was Thanksgiving and Doc Chris was coming up here a little bit, but I still try and get on here at least once or twice. I think I'm going to start rolling in, we're going to start categorizing like-minded individuals and criminals and we can prolong the segments a little bit. And then, I think for my next one, either Friday or next Monday, we're going to dive in to a current event that is going on right now and see what we can come up with, see if we can follow the paper trail, if you will. You know, there's stuff, there's shakers and movers going on out there that aren't really being talked about right now. Some say you shouldn't talk about them because you don't want to glorify them, and we don't, that's not what we're here to do. But, at the same time, you know, inquisitive minds like you and me might like to know what's going on with them and the media won't report on it because it doesn't sell. So, we're going to talk about it here. Another, you know, I talk about serial killer shows and movies and stuff like that. You should go watch one on Netflix, it's called Don't Fuck With Cats. Now, I thought this was dumb at first and then I watched it and I was like, oh wow, an entire network of armchair quarterback investigators, if you will, assisted in taking down this guy who, for all intents and purposes, was a serial killer. So, it's interesting and it was recent, it wasn't that long ago because Justin Trudeau was part of it and all that stuff. So, it's interesting to say the least, but we don't have much more to say as Ted Kaczynski is an open and shut case in the aspects of what he did and who he was. Again, he only killed three. What's funny is there are such things as serial rapists, serial bombers, but everyone only fixates on serial killers. So, it's interesting because he did kill three people, same MO, cooling off period in between. So, yeah, you could say he's a serial killer, but he's a bomber. He's a serial bomber, but it's still interesting to say the least. Anyways, I'm Brandon, as always from Serial Slayers. I want to thank you for stopping in and, like always, jump on to any of the socials and let me know some stuff you guys would like to talk about and we can get it going from there. But, I want to thank you for tuning in and I hope you guys...