Killer of the Week: The Unabomber Pt. 2

Now, Dr. Tristin Engels is back with me as we follow Ted Kaczynski to his shocking unraveling and ask what it really means to be heard.

By the late 1970s, 36-year-old Ted Kaczynski was living alone in a remote cabin in Lincoln, Montana.

He'd become increasingly isolated and fully convinced that modern technology and powerful institutions were destroying human freedom.

After years of reflection, Ted had decided words were not enough.

In 1978 and again in 1979, he delivered homemade bombs to the campus of Northwestern University, injuring the people who opened them.

To Ted, the attacks weren't personal.

They were a symbolic warning to the systems he rebelled against.

However, the public didn't react the way he hoped, no one picked up on his message, and the world carried on, business as usual.

So in November of 1979, Ted was ready to up the ante.

He needed to find a way to stop the industrial world in its tracks, through utter devastation.

This time, instead of going after a university, he'd target a commercial airline.

To him, airlines represented technological dependence and blind public trust.

They were complex systems that functioned only because people believed they were safe, and it was up to him to break that trust.

So clearly there's an escalation in both thinking and planning.

Like you said, his initial message wasn't received.

The world carried on as if nothing happened.

So in his mind, that likely meant he needed to send a message that couldn't be ignored.

Targeting a larger system would force attention.

Psychologically, that suggests that his dehumanization was worsening, and we talked about that in episode one.

People were no longer individuals.

They became symbols of the problem that he believes he's fighting against.

It also reflects continued moral justification of his actions.

And I also think it signals desperation.

He's rigid in his thinking, and that rigidity intensified the more isolated he became.

When there's no reaction and no validation, someone like him is more likely to double down and go bigger rather than reconsider their actions.