On last week's podcast Extra, we shared part one of a series from our friends at The Stakes.

It's a deep dive into Cold War brainwashing, military sciops, and the technological fears that stay with us today.

If you haven't heard it yet, listen now.

And if you have, here's part two.

Thank you. Listen now. And if you have, here's part two.

I'm Kairite, and these are the stakes.

In this episode, Pigeon Pingpong.

Hey, Stakes listeners.

In this series, what we're trying to do is bring some historical context to the intense anxieties so many of us feel right now about digital culture and the feeling that we're being

manipulated by unaccountable powers. That feeling is actually not new. It's got a long history.

And so do the technique Silicon Valley uses to keep us tethered to these products.

So reporter Amanda Orancic is walking us back through that history.

In our last episode, James McConnell, a psychologist whose ideas once sparked almost as much

anxiety as Facebook does today, he became a target of the Unabomber.

And I kept saying, who hates me?

Who can hate me this much to send me a bomb?

But given Ted Kaczynski's explicit concerns about technology,

why did he try to kill a psychologist?

That's the question we're going to try to answer.

In the summer of 1993, FBI agent Max Noll was assigned to a case that nobody wanted.

Oh, this case is just unlike any case anyone ever had.

You weren't thrilled to be put on this?

...