#252 The Most Suspicious Delivery We've Ever Sent

A friend of the newsletter recently started getting random Amazon deliveries in the mail. The contents of these deliveries were harmless – a sequins Nicolas Cage pillow, a box of Cheez-Its, a kitschy neon light – but there was still a reason to be unsettled by what is clearly a prank orchestrated by a friend.

What would you do if you received a suspicious package? What if that unexpected delivery came to you anytime between the late 70s and 90s when the Unabomber held a tight grip on most of America thanks to his homemade explosive devices and incredibly detailed manifesto "Industrial Society and Its Future"? In case you were wondering, yes – that's the same manifesto he put in the hands of The Washington Post and New York Times in 1995 and dared them to publish it.

Project Unabom revisits the chilling effect created by Ted Kaczynski and delves into some of the lesser-considered aspects of the longest investigation in FBI history up to that point.

You might think that by now, we know everything we need to know about Theodore Kaczynski. Parts of that may be true, but there is an odd and appealing aspect to his staunchly held anti-technology, return-to-the-earth ideology. That is especially the case as we consider the compounding effects technology has had since Kaczynski's first terrorist campaign in 1978.

Host Eric Benson explores the origins of Kaczynski's views, the incredible milestones of the investigation, and the lives of those in the Unabomber's blast radius – both literally and figuratively.

Despite his eight life sentences without the possibility of parole, the Unabomber continues to expand upon the themes and theses of his manifesto to this day; all the while corresponding with over 400 people from his prison cell. The reality here is that there are two sides to who Kaczynski is, and the media has done a bang-up job rightly portraying him as a terrorist. Somehow in Kaczynski's case, you can be a terrorist and a revered-but-imprisoned intellectual all at once.

Have a listen and let us know what you think. 

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