Apple adds Unabomber audio series to its growing roster of original podcasts

A new audio series called Project Unabom is joining Apple’s growing list of original podcasts. The true-crime podcast is based on new original reporting on serial bomber Ted Kaczynski. Listeners can look for the Apple Unabomber podcast to drop next week.

Background

Kaczynski, better recognized as the Unabomber, spent 18 years targeting people he believed were harming society and the planet through technology before being caught by the FBI in 1996. Deadline, which was the first to report on the new Project Unabom series coming to Apple, has more:

Based on new original reporting, the podcast takes a look at what actually happened during those 18 years – what drove Kaczynski to his dystopian vision of people overrun by technology and why does it feel so familiar? And why did it take nearly two decades to catch him?

Kaczynski, a former maths professor, killed three people and injured 23 others in a nationwide bombing campaign against people he believed to be advancing modern technology and the destruction of the environment. He was the subject of the longest and most expensive investigation by the FBI up to that point. He was arrested in 1996 after his brother, David, recognized the writing in his manifesto and was given eight consecutive life terms in prison without the possibility of parole in 1998.

At the time of his capture, Kaczynski’s case was the most expensive FBI investigation. Here’s how the agency explained it:

The man that the world would eventually know as Theodore Kaczynski came to our attention in 1978 with the explosion of his first, primitive homemade bomb at a Chicago university. Over the next 17 years, he mailed or hand delivered a series of increasingly sophisticated bombs that killed three Americans and injured nearly two dozen more. Along the way, he sowed fear and panic, even threatening to blow up airliners in flight.

In 1979, an FBI-led task force that included the ATF and U.S. Postal Inspection Service was formed to investigate the “UNABOM” case, code-named for the UNiversity and Airline BOMbing targets involved. The task force would grow to more than 150 full-time investigators, analysts, and others. 

Project Unabom

Journalist Eric Benson will host the eight-part Project Unabom series that will be available on Apple Podcasts starting June 27. Apple has also upped its original podcast play against Spotify and Amazon’s Audible with more shows including Run, Bambi, Run and Wild Things: Siegfried & Roy.

Will you be tuning in to the Apple Unabomber podcast? Share your thoughts below.