On April 3, 1996, Ted Kaczynski was arrested in his 10-by-12-foot cabin in Lincoln, Montana. For 17 years, he had been living in a small cabin with no electricity or running water and building bombs. From 1978 to 1995, he mailed or hand-delivered 16 bombs that killed three people and injured 23. He also wrote a 35,000-word essay on the problems of modern society, titled Industrial Society and Its Future, the publication of which led to his arrest.

But why was the domestic terrorist, also known as the Unabomber, carrying out this mail bombing campaign?

As it turns out, it might all be traced back to an ethically dubious academic, and perhaps even further, to the covert actions of the United States government. Kaczynski’s participation in a psychology study at Harvard inspired the central story of Netflix’s new Unabomber movie.…