In this episode of The Modern Tapes, Evan Secor explores the chilling story of Ted Kaczynski—the Unabomber—a Harvard-educated mathematician turned domestic terrorist who waged a seventeen-year mail-bomb campaign against universities, airlines, and technologists. Through archival audio, psychological insight, and analysis of his infamous manifesto Industrial Society and Its Future, this episode asks: what drives a man of brilliance to war against modernity itself?

From his reclusive life in a Montana cabin to the FBI’s largest manhunt and his brother’s heartbreaking decision to turn him in, The Unabomber: Genius, Madness, and the Machine examines how technology, alienation, and ideology collided to create one of the most haunting figures of the late 20th century—and how his warnings about modern society still echo in the digital age.

Tags: Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, Domestic Terrorism, FBI, Industrial Society, Technology, Anarchism, True Crime, Psychology, American History