The Unabomber: The Making of an Evil Genius | The UnXplained

Ted Kaczynski is a very interesting case because evidently he was a pretty well adapted kid in elementary school and actually was considered to be something of a leader and then somebody got the bright idea that he should take an IQ test he did and got an IQ score of 167. you have to have 140 to be defined as a genius so what's 167 that's one out of a million people it was recommended by the school that he's Skipper grade when he was only 10 years old so skipped from fifth to seventh grade the problem with it is it was with older kids that he didn't know he became more and more socially isolated David his younger brother reports that at one point Kozinski was being very mean to him and Ted says well sometimes Geniuses can be sadistic he was acknowledging that as a genius he could be bad sadistic and he would work that genius for evil Ted Kaczynski graduated from Harvard in 1962 at the age of 20. he then pursued his PhD at the University of Michigan where he did groundbreaking work in the field of mathematics intelligence was in the late 60s he won an award for his dissertation in fact his PhD and Mathematics at Ann Arbor in Michigan because he solved a theorem that had been thought unsolvable for decades by mathematicians he solved it and published it from Michigan and he went to Berkeley to teach mathematics he was the youngest assistant professor at the mathematics Department had ever had but the students hated him absolutely loathed him didn't have any class hours he wouldn't talk to them I mean he was very disdainful of everybody his genius was in everything but social commerce with other people he wasn't able to negotiate the social world with other people and so he grew convinced that he had to get away from people away from society [Music] Kaczynski suddenly and unexpectedly resigned from his position at Berkeley he then withdrew from society by moving to Lincoln Montana where he lived in a small cabin that did not have running water or electricity the cabin was just this rustic place off the grid 8 by 12 feet that was his getting off the grid and getting so far away from civilization everything he was very happy when he first moved to the woods he wrote rapturously about it about how beautiful it was but then planes started flying overhead he noticed motorcyclists riding through the forest and disturbing the nature that he was glorying in it turned to Bitter hatred of the technological Society he viewed technology as evil as the evolution of Technology as evil and the technical class as perverting the human spirit what he discovers is he can't get away from society even there the society that he's trying to escape is closing in on him anyway and there's nothing he can do about it so he Strikes Back he had taught himself bomb making he ended up creating chemical mixes melting his own components and casting them and putting them into the devices carving wood to make specific trigger switches he was a brilliant criminal in that he was able to expertly exclude anything identifying himself any hairs any fibers any fingerprints he was unlike any bomber that we had seen before in 1978 Kaczynski carried out his first attack by mailing a parcel containing a homemade bomb to Northwestern University it was the beginning of a reign of terror during which he carried out a total of 16 bombings over the course of nearly two decades for kazinski these attacks were not random killings but rather targeted strikes against the institutions he believed represented technological Society purpose was to to wake people up to the dangers of Technology he would not have been able to promote his views if he had not gotten the attention of the media and the government and law enforcement by killing people with his bombs that was his goal in 1995 Kozinski wrote an anonymous 35 000 word anti-technology manifesto that he demanded to be published in major newspapers ironically it was a decision that would lead to his undoing Ted's Brother David had read the manifesto and phrases jumped out at David right away and he had tried to push them down that can't be can't be there were phrases that appeared in the manifesto that were unusual spellings that appeared that were unusual and they recognized him the upshot was that finally David and his wife went to an attorney in DC and said we'd like to approach the FBI on April 3rd 1996 FBI agents finally arrested Kaczynski at his Montana cabin

Channel: HISTORY

Views: 92,223

Keywords: history, history channel, history shows, history channel shows, the history channel, documentary history channel, history documentary, documentary, history channel full episodes, documentaries, history channel documentaries, The Mystery of Genius, season 3, The Unabomber: The Making of an Evil Genius, Unabomber, Evil Genius, the unxplained, william shatner, history william shatner, history unxplained, unxplained, watch the unxplained, unxplained full episodes, evil, genius

Id: Fe9dOn_Yzys

Length: 6min 12sec (372 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 12 2023