the take
this is us repeating a theory we saw online, and the netflix movie leans into it hard, so we're not alone. what's real: as a teenager at harvard, Ted was in a psychology study run by Henry Murray, which was famously intense. what's not proven: that the study was part of MKUltra. nobody has found a document tying the cia to it. so our question is half true crime, half film gossip. did the filmmakers know all this going in, or find out halfway and edit it in? one of us says it was always known, just not famous. the other says the government denied MKUltra for years, so who knows.
this is the hosts' commentary and speculation for entertainment, not a statement of fact about anyone in it.
the backstory
From 1959 to 1962, Ted Kaczynski was one of 22 Harvard undergraduates in a psychology study run by Henry Murray. Each student wrote an essay about their personal philosophy and was then attacked over it in a filmed session that Murray himself later called vehement and personally abusive. Kaczynski's code name in the study was Lawful. That part is documented.
The MKUltra part is a theory. MKUltra was a real CIA program that secretly funded behavior research at universities, and Murray had worked for the CIA's wartime predecessor, which is why people connect the dots. But no document has been found showing the CIA paid for or directed this study, and researchers who have looked at the transcripts dispute that it traumatized him. Harvard sealed his study file in 2000.
The 2026 Netflix film Unabomber, with Russell Crowe as Murray, puts the experiment front and center and nods at government links. It's a dramatization, so treat it as one version of the story.
where it's from
more movies, tv & fandoms 🍿more unabomber🎙️ full episode: ep 4
where to watch 👀
transcript
auto-transcribed from the clip audio. speakers aren't labeled and there may be small errors.
- 0:00Was the Unabomber in MKUltra?
- 0:04That's my understanding. Yeah, this came out recently as far as I know.
- 0:09Maybe this was known,
- 0:10but I remember hearing on the internet this year that Ted Kaczynski was in the
- 0:16MKUltra program when he was like a youth in some form and that's kind of
- 0:22wild because it's like, okay, did that affect him at all?
- 0:26Did that end up affecting any of this?
- 0:28I mean, obviously. I mean, the new movie Unabomber,
- 0:31is that basically what they're implying that Russell Crowe's character was
- 0:36doing?
- 0:36Cause like they did make references that he was doing studies for the CIA.
- 0:41So I'm assuming that was like the MKUltra link.
- 0:44And then did they know that before or were they making the Unabomber movie?
- 0:48And then they were like, OMG, OMG, edit, edit, edit, edit and like added that
- 0:53all in.
- 0:54No, I think it probably was known. I don't,
- 0:58I just don't think it was like a well-popularized fact.
- 1:01Well, no, because they denied MKUltra for so long.
- 1:04Right.
