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Shadows of the Zizians · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So how does a utopian Silicon Valley movement, you know,
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: one that's built on the promise of perfect logic and
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: basically debugging the human brain, end up with a fake
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: obituary about blueberries?
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Right. It sounds completely absurd.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: It really does. And not just that, but also a
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: sprawling manifesto about the sitcom The Office and tragically, a
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: cross-country trail of six dead bodies.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It sounds like a premise designed to just completely
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: test the limits of what you actually believe.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Because we usually associate this kind of extreme lethal radicalization with, say,
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: religious fundamentalism or entrenched political extremism, not with computer scientists
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: trying to optimize human reasoning.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Right. You think of tech pros optimizing their sleep, not this. Exactly.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But the ideological mutation we are looking at today
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: proves that intelligence and analytical thinking are not immunities against radicalization.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: In fact, under the exact right conditions, they act as
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: an accelerant.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Which is really the core mission of our deep dive today.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: We are breaking down this sprawling investigative report from BBC
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: News about a group known as the Zizians.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: And this is an alleged cult-like organization currently linked to
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: multiple murders, violent real estate confrontations, and a nationwide manhunt.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: A manhunt that actually just recently culminated in the arrests
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: of Jack Lasoda, Michelle Zeko, and Daniel Blank.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: Right, in a really rural Maryland town. And that specific
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: police encounter is what blew the lid off a years-long
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: string of violence.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: It did. And to understand the source material properly, we
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: have to treat this as more than just a true
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: crime timeline.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this. What do you mean by that?
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: It's a forensic examination of an ideology that essentially collapsed
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: under its own weight. But I do think it's crucial
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: to note up front that we are analyzing a journalistic
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: report of alleged crimes. Right.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: These are allegations. Yes.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: The individuals involved are currently navigating the legal system. So
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: our objective is just to map out the intellectual and
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: physical journey described in the reporting without jumping to legal
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: conclusions or bypassing the presumption of innocence.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. That's a very important disclaimer. And, you know, when
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: you read through the origins of this group, the analogy
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: that jumps out to me isn't the standard charismatic leader
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: brainwashing their followers.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: What does it remind you of?
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: It's much closer to the concept of overfitting in machine learning.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's interesting.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like if you train an AI model too rigidly
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: on a very specific set of data, it performs perfectly
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: in a lab. But the second you deploy it into
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: the chaotic, unpredictable real world, it fails catastrophically.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Right, because it misinterprets normal inputs as massive errors.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Exactly. The founder of this group essentially tried to rewrite
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: the operating system of the human mind to eliminate all
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: the bugs and biases. But that code became so dangerously
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: overfit that just basic human interaction was processed as a
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: lethal threat.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, overfitting is actually the exact right framework for this.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: You think so?
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: I do, because if an ideology demands absolute, completely frictionless logic...
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: the friction of everyday human life becomes totally intolerable.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: And the paper trail here begins with a very specific
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: individual who had exactly the kind of background you would
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: expect for someone obsessed with systems and code. Her name
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: is Jack Lasoda.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Okay, right.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: She is a 34-year-old transgender woman, and she earned a
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: degree in computer science from the University of Alaska Fairbanks
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: back in 2013.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: And a computer science degree isn't just a piece of paper, right?
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: It genuinely trains your brain to view the world as
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: a series of inputs, outputs, and dependencies.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: It really does wire you to think that way.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And according to the BBC's analysis of her writings,
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: she takes that worldview and moves to the San Francisco
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: area in 2016.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: Right into the heart of the tech boom.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: Exactly. She applies for tech startups and even lands an
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: internship at NASA.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: Which is no small feat.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: Not at all. It establishes a really high baseline of
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: cognitive capability. Just don't get into NASA without being deeply
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: embedded in systems thinking.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: Precisely. So she is operating at a very high level
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: of technical proficiency. And you have to remember the San
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: Francisco tech scene in 2016 was the global epicenter for
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: individuals who believe that engineering principles could just be applied
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: to social and psychological problems. Right.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: Like we can hack our way out of anything.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And this is where Lasoda begins to associate with
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: what's called the rationalist movement.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: Okay, tell me more about that.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: The source material defines this as an intellectual trend popular
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: in Silicon Valley. It's built on the premise that human
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: beings can systematically eliminate cognitive bias, tribalism, and emotional reasoning.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: All to arrive at what they call a clear truth.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: Yes, a clear truth. The ultimate goal is improving society
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: through the sheer, unadulterated power of the human mind.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: But I look at that premise and I have to ask,
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: why does this need to be an entire movement?
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: What do you mean?
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: I mean, we all kind of know what it means
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: to be rational. We weigh pros and cons. We try
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: not to text our exes when we're angry.
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: Right, right.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: We all attempt to balance logic and emotion. So branding
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: it as a subculture, it almost feels like putting a
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: sterile academic wrapper around just basic maturity.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: Well, what's fascinating here is the distinction lies in the
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: extremity of the application.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: Everyday rationality, like what you just described, accepts that humans
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: are inherently flawed and emotional creatures.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we mess up.
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: Right. But the Silicon Valley rationalist movement, at least as
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: outlined in the reporting, treats those emotional flaws as literal
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: bugs in the software.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: Bugs that must be eradicated entirely.
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They use concepts like Bayes' theorem to calculate the
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: expected value of mundane social interactions.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: Really? Like running math equations before talking to someone at
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: a party.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: Essentially, yes. They aren't just trying to make better personal choices.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: They believe they are reverse engineering the universe's source code
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: to find an objective mathematical truth to human existence.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: Wow. Which introduces a massive paradox.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: How so?
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: Because there is this widespread assumption that high IQ individuals,
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: you know, people who intern at NASA or write complex code,
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: are somehow less susceptible to ideological capture.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: Right. You'd think they'd be immune.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: Exactly. But history, and certainly this specific case, suggests the
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: exact opposite. Highly intelligent people are often just better at
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: building incredibly complex, sophisticated rationalizations for terrible or absurd ideas.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: That is spot on. It is a well-documented psychological phenomenon
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: within insular, high-IQ communities.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: It breeds a unique kind of intellectual elitism.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: It really does. Think about it. If you believe you
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: possess the mathematical formula for pure truth... then anyone who
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: disagrees with you isn't just holding a different opinion.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: They are fundamentally, objectively wrong.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: Yes, their mental software is buggy. So you transition from thinking,
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: I want to teach people better reasoning skills, to thinking,
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: I am part of a microscopic fraction of humanity that
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: actually perceives reality.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, that is a dangerous leap.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: It creates a very rigid, impenetrable us-versus-them dynamic based entirely
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: on perceived cognitive superiority.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: And for Lasoda... That intense desire for clear truth didn't
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: lead to some thriving tech utopia.
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: Not at all.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: No, it led to intense isolation. She has a complete
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: schism from the very community she sought out.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: Right. She breaks away.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: She does. She creates a new persona called Ziz and
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: begins publishing a blog. And the content of this blog
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: is where the BBC report really starts to paint a
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: picture of a mind spiraling into a closed loop system.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: It gets very dark very fast.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: It does. We are talking about posts that are thousands
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: and thousands of words long. She blends deep theories about
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: artificial intelligence, philosophy, total veganism, meaning absolute avoidance of animal products,
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: and anarchism.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: A lot of heavy topics.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Very heavy. But then woven directly into these massive existential
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: concepts is a sprawling diatribe about the television sitcom The Office.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: I know. It sounds chaotic.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: It's like a dizzying blender of topics. Right. But within
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: the rigid framework of this weaponized rationalism, there is actually
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: a twisted internal consistency connecting these seemingly disparate ideas.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: OK, I need you to draw that line for me.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: Because jumping from the ethics of artificial intelligence to Michael
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: Scott and Jim Halpert feels like a complete non sequitur.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: How on earth does a rationalist connect a workplace comedy
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: to anarchism and total veganism?
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: Well, you have to view the world strictly through the
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: lens of power dynamics, systemic violence, and rational optimization. If
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: you do that, a show like The Office isn't a comedy.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: What is it, then?
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: It is a documentary about the banal acceptance of broken
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: societal algorithms.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: Oh my god.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah. To a radical rationalist leaning into anarchism, the hierarchy
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: of Dunder Mifflin represents the arbitrary, irrational enforcement of authority.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: So characters who just accept this hierarchy and find joy
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: in the mundane are seen as complicit?
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They are complicit enablers of a corrupt system.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: That is wild.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: And then you combine that with total veganism. In its
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: most extreme rationalist interpretation, any participation in the animal food
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: chain is viewed as a mathematically quantifiable moral atrocity.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: So suddenly the average meat-eating office-working citizen is no longer
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: just a regular person trying to get by.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: They are an active participant in global systemic evil. That
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: makes a terrifying kind of sense. It's like she's constructing
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: a digital echo chamber. But instead of bringing people in
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: to agree with her, she's using the ideology to build
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: walls that actively close in on her.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: She isolates herself entirely.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: Yes. The blog functions as a solitary confinement cell of
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: her own design. And the BBC highlights a specific quote
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: from this era that perfectly encapsulates that isolation.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: It's a very striking quote.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: It really is. She wrote, I realized that I was
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: no longer able to stand people, not even rationalists anymore.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: And I would live the rest of my life completely alone,
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: hiding my reaction to anyone it was useful to interact with.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: And the end of that quote is really the key.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she finishes it by saying, I'd given up my
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: ability to see beauty so I could see evil.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: That quote is honestly the ideological Rosetta Stone for the
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: violence that follows.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: I hope so.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: Notice the progression. First, she excommunicates the general public. Then
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: she excommunicates the mainstream rationalists.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: The very subculture she initially aligned with. Exactly.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: She has determined that their logic isn't pure enough, leaving
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: her entirely alone at the apex of her own intellectual pyramid.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: And then she says she will be hiding her reaction
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: to anyone it was useful to interact with.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: Which strips all the humanity out of socialization. Right.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: Other people are no longer peers or friends. They are
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: either tools to be utilized or obstacles to be navigated.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: It reduces human interaction to a purely transactional, almost sociopathic utility.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: But that final sentence is the most alarming psychological shift.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: The part about giving up beauty to see evil?
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: Yes. The original goal of the rationalist movement was positive, right?
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: Improve society, find truth. Right. But Lasoda is openly declaring
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: an inversion of that objective function. She has intentionally optimized
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: her brain's algorithm entirely for threat detection. Wow.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: So when your only lens for viewing the world is
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: a hypervigilant scan for evil or systemic flaws, you will
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: literally find it everywhere.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: Everywhere. The world ceases to be a flawed place requiring fixing.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: It becomes an entirely hostile environment that you are actively
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: at war with.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: You essentially prime your own brain for conflict.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: But ideas published on a blog eventually demand to be
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: tested in the physical world.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: They always do.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah. In 2019, Lasoda and three others are arrested for
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: protesting outside an event held by a mainstream rationalist organization.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: She is actively protesting the very people she used to
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: associate with. Right.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: The digital manifesto era effectively ends right there. And the
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: real world action era begins. The group adopts this really
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: nomadic lifestyle.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: Moving around a lot.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, moving all around the U.S. They live on a
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: boat for a while, staying on properties in California and
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: North Carolina. They basically physically unmoor themselves from traditional societal infrastructure.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: And that physical unmooring is a completely necessary step for
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: a group like this.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: Why is that?
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: You cannot maintain a belief that you are operating on
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: a superior plane of existence while simultaneously paying a mortgage,
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: attending HOA meetings, and participating in the mundane rhythms of
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: the society you despise.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: That makes sense.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: They had to physically separate to maintain the illusion.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to 2022. Lasoda has a relatively minor
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: court hearing related to that 2019 protest arrest.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: A misdemeanor, right?
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a misdemeanor. But she fails to appear. So a
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: warrant is issued. But then her lawyer at the time
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: informs the court that Lasota is, quote, now deceased after
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: a boating accident in the San Francisco Bay Area.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: And it wasn't just a verbal claim made in court. No.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: An actual obituary is published in an Alaska newspaper. The
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: BBC includes details from this obituary, noting she loved adventure,
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: friends and family, music, blueberries, biking, computer games and animals.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: Such specific details.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: But she was in reality. completely alive.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: The inclusion of details like blueberries and computer games is
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: a master class in camouflage. Right.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: It disarms the reader by painting a picture of a gentle, harmless,
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: folksy individual. But beneath that camouflage is an astonishing escalation
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: in their ideological war against the system.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: See, my initial thought was, why go through this elaborate
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: theatrical production over a minor protest charge?
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: It seems like overkill.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: Massive overkill. People miss court dates constantly. They skip town.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: They don't usually fabricate a maritime disaster.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: True.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: But did they actually execute some mastermind-level hack of the system?
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: Or did they just exploit a bureaucracy that relies heavily
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: on the honor system?
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: That is the critical distinction here. Society operates largely on
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: a high-trust social contract. When an obituary is published and
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: a lawyer relays information to a court, the bureaucratic machine
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: generally accepts it because the friction of verifying every single
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: death would crash the system.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: They didn't outsmart a highly secure network at all.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: No, they exploited a vulnerability in societal trust. But inside
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: the echo chamber of the Zizians, that context is completely lost.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: Oh, I see.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: To them, successfully fabricating her death was ultimate proof of
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: their intellectual supremacy.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: That is terrifying. If your leader can literally erase her
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: existence from the legal record, if she can declare herself
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: dead and the government just believes it, you would feel
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: utterly untouchable.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: You'd feel like a god.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: It validates their core thesis. We are smarter than the system.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: The system is irrational and blind. Therefore, the rules of
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: the system do not apply to us.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: And once you believe that, the guardrails completely evaporate. Right.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: Faking a death is technically a nonviolent crime, but psychologically
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: it represents an absolute definitive severing of the social contract.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: And once you believe you operate completely outside the boundaries
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: of societal law, it is only a matter of time
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: before that ideology clashes violently with reality.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: And that clash is exactly what happens next.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: It happens in Vallejo, California, just north of San Francisco. Post-obituary,
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: the group surfaces there, living in vans and trucks on
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: land owned by a man named Curtis Lind. Right. They
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: are essentially operating this precarious ad hoc encampment on his property.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: And eventually, the Zizians allegedly stop paying rent.
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: So Lind does what any property owner would naturally do.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he initiates a standard legal process to evict them.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: A dispute over property rights and contracts. It is the
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: absolute bedrock of municipal law. It is the system functioning
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: exactly as designed.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: But the Zizians do not process reality normally anymore. So
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: in November 2022, this dispute escalates into horrific violence.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: It gets incredibly brutal.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: Curtis Lind is attacked. He is stabbed 50 times and
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: he is blinded in one eye. Awful. During the attack,
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: Lind actually manages to fire a gun in self-defense, and
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: he kills one of his attackers, a woman named Emma Borhanian.
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: And the BBC report notes that Borhanian was a former
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: Google employee. She was one of the Zizians arrested at
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: that 2019 protest.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: Following this, two other members, Suri Dao and Somni Lajentia,
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: are arrested and charged with attempted murder. Lasoda is present
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: at the scene but is uncharged.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: But that detail regarding Emma Borhanian is vital. A former
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: Google employee. This brings us right back to the Silicon
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: Valley origins of the group.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: You know, this is the part that is so deeply
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: jarring for me.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: You have a person who ostensibly had a highly lucrative career.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: Someone who operated in the center of the global tech industry.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: Dying in a violent shootout in a dirt lot over
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: an ideological rent strike.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: It's hard to reconcile.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: It defies basic self-preservation. If you optimize for survival, Getting
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: into a lethal fight with an armed landlord over a
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: parking spot for a van is a massively negative expected
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: value play.
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: So why did they think this was rational?
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, we have
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: to look at the insight provided by Jessica Taylor. She's
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: an AI researcher quoted in the BBC article who actually
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: knew several group members.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: What did she say?
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: Taylor's assessment is chilling. She stated that Lasoda and the
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: Zizians stretched their rationalist beliefs to justify breaking laws. She
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: specifically said they thought it was, quote, reasonable to avoid
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: paying rent and defend oneself from being evicted.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: Okay, stabbing someone 50 times is categorized as defending oneself
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: from being evicted. Yes.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: And this requires deconstructing their weaponized internal logic.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: Walk me through that.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: Remember, they have already decided they possess the sole claim
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: to objective truth. and they have optimized their brains to
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: see evil everywhere. So they analyze the concept of rent
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: and land ownership.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: Through their specific anarcho-rationalist lens, they deduce that the very
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: concept of private property is an inherently irrational, oppressive construct.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: So the landlord isn't a human being asking for the
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: money agreed upon in a contract.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: Exactly. To them, the landlord is an active agent of
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: an illegitimate, violent system.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: I see. So if property is theft... then eviction is violence.
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: And if eviction is violence, lethal force is simply logical self-defense.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: They aren't committing a crime in their minds. They are
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: executing a necessary defensive protocol.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Once you logically define the system itself as an
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: aggressive force, extreme violence is easily categorized in your brain
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: as a rational necessity.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: That is so twisted.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: They didn't view themselves as attacking Curtis Lind. They viewed
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: themselves as neutralizing an irrational threat died because of it. Right.
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: The tragedy of her death is that it represents the
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: fatal failure of their so-called logic. They believed their superior
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: cognitive models would protect them, that they could outthink the
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: consequences of physical violence.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: Instead, an abstract ideology met the physical reality of a bullet.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: And a former tech worker bled out in Vallejo.
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: That's devastating.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: And you would think that watching a peer die in
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: a dirt lot would shatter the illusion, right? You would
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: expect the group to look at Emma's death and realize
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: the code is broken.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: But they don't recalibrate.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: No, they don't recalibrate at all. They escalate. The violence
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: in Vallejo is merely the opening chapter of a much wider,
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: darker web of bloodshed. We start to trace a geographic
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: timeline that moves from California to Pennsylvania to Vermont.
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: And as we trace that geography, we really have to
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: analyze the fundamental shift in the nature of the violence.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's look at December 2022. Right. This is just
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: a month after the Vallejo attack.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: Richard Zatko, who's 71, and his wife Rita, who's 69,
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: are found murdered in their Pennsylvania home. Both are shot
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: in the head.
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: It's horrific.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: They are the parents of Zizian member Michelle Zatko. Michelle
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: is briefly held but not charged at the time. Lasota, however,
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: is arrested and charged with obstructing law enforcement and disorderly
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: conduct in connection with this specific incident.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: And this is a massive deviation from what we saw earlier.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: How so?
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: Well, the Vallejo incident, while horrific, was reactionary. It was
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: a spontaneous, violent response to an immediate localized stressor, an eviction. Right.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: The landlord was right there.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: But the murder of the Zatkos, an elderly couple executed
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: in their own home on the completely other side of
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: the country, that suggests a completely different operational mindset.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: It feels incredibly premeditated.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: And then it goes quiet for a couple of years,
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: only to explode again in January 2025.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: Back in California?
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: Yes, back in California. Curtis Lind, the landlord who survived
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: the 50 stab wounds back in 2022, is murdered. Wow.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: The Vallejo Police Department states he was stabbed to death
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: by an assailant wearing a mask and a black beanie.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: A man named Maximilian Snyder is charged with the murder,
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: and the allegation is that Snyder killed Lind specifically to
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: stop him from testifying at the upcoming attempted murder trial
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: for the 2022 attack.
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: That is a targeted assassination to silence a witness and
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: pervert the judicial process. This is offensive threat elimination.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: It's completely calculated. And then literally days later, in that
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: same month, The violence surfaces on the Canadian border in Vermont.
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: Another massive jump.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah. A U.S. Border Patrol agent, David Maland, pulls over
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: a vehicle. Inside are two Zijians. Teresa Youngblood, who went
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: by Milo, and Felix Baukolt, a German citizen who went
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: by Ophelia.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: A firefight breaks out during the traffic stop. Baukolt and
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Agent Maland are both killed. Youngblood is wounded and arrested
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: on firearms charges.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: And there is a specific detail that connects all of this.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: Yes. The detail that acts as the connective tissue for
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: this entire nightmare. Police state that the gun used to
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: kill the federal agent was purchased by Michelle Zayko.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: The daughter of the couple murdered in Pennsylvania.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: Exactly. So I look at all this. California. Pennsylvania. Vermont.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: It's like a virus that started in an isolated Silicon
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: Valley lab, meaning the blog, and is now Mutated and
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: spreading across the country and indiscriminately destroying lives from an
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: elderly couple to a Border Patrol agent.
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: If we synthesize the logistics here, the picture becomes incredibly grim.
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: You have Michelle Zyko allegedly purchasing firearms legally, which are
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: then distributed to other members. Right. You have international members
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: like the German citizen Bockholt integrated into the operations group.
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: You have members moving stealthily across state lines and attempting
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: to navigate international borders.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: And the premeditated assassination of a witness.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: Exactly. This shows a highly organized network.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: They are operating like a decentralized transnational criminal syndicate, but
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: they are bonded by esoteric Internet philosophy rather than profit.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: They've moved from wayward bloggers to a mobilized enterprise capable
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: of executing complex logistical operations.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: Which naturally forces authorities and the public to ask, what
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: exactly do we call this group? With this level of
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: organization and violence, do we call this a cult?
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: Well, following the Vermont shootout and the discovery of new
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: evidence linking the group back to the Pennsylvania murders, a
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: nationwide manhunt really intensified for Lasota and Zyko.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: They were feeling the pressure.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: The pressure mounted and their nomadic evasion tactics finally failed
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: in February 2025. Right.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: A resident in Frostburg, Maryland, a small town about 160
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: miles northwest of Washington, D.C., calls the police. He reports
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: three suspicious people on his property asking to camp on
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: his land for a month.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: Asking a stranger to camp on their land for a
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: month really speaks to the absolute desperation of a group
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: whose infrastructure has totally collapsed.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: It does. So police arrive, and it's Lasota, Michelle Zayko,
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: and a 26-year-old named Daniel Blank. Maryland State Police arrest them.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: charging all three with trespassing and obstruction, and adding weapons
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: violations for Lasota and Zego. They are denied bail.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: The immediate physical threat is neutralized, yes, but the sociological
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: autopsy begins right then.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? When you hear a
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: story like this, cult is the first word that jumps
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: to your mind, right? But what does that actually mean
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: in this context?
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: The BBC report brings in Palomi Saha, an associate professor
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: at UC Berkeley who studies cults, to provide an analytical
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: framework for how we label the Zizians. Her insights are
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: crucial because they challenge our preconceived notions of radicalization. Right.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: Professor Saha points out there is no strict legal definition
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: of a cult. But she notes that the Zizians align
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: with popular cultural conceptions.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: What did she specifically say?
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: She said, quote, this is a group of individuals that
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: seem to share some unorthodox viewpoints. That in and of
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: itself wouldn't open them up to the cult label. But
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: then there is this leadership figure, Ziz.
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: But she also strongly cautions that significant uncertainty remains regarding
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: the internal dynamics and exact motivations for the violence.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: Which is a very fair point.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: It is. And this caution mirrors the statement from LaSada's lawyer,
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: Daniel McGarrigle. He urged the press and public to refrain
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: from speculation. and premature conclusions.
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: This raises an important question about how we define these
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: groups today.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And to be clear to you, the listener, we
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: have to honor that request. These are allegations. We are
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: not endorsing or validating any of the anarchistic or radical
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: viewpoints of the group. We're merely reporting the facts as
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: provided by the sources.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. But the hesitation from both the academic expert and
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: the legal defense is completely warranted. Okay. Because when the
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: public hears the word cult, they instantly rely on a
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: very rigid 1970s template.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: Oh, like Charles Manson or Jim Jones.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: Right. They picture charismatic religious preachers, physical compounds in the desert,
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: matching robes and doomsday prophecies.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: People surrendering their agency to a higher spiritual power.
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But the Zizians require us to update our threat models.
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: We have to dismantle that 1970s stereotype.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: Because this is a modern digital first iteration.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: It is. This is an algorithmic cult. They didn't form
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: around a charismatic preacher. They formed around a blogger offering
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: a twisted, hyper-optimized system of logic.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: Their deity wasn't a god. Their deity was their own
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: perceived cognitive superiority.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: Well said. And they didn't need a physical fence to
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: keep people inside. An algorithmic echo chamber that tells you
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: everyone outside the group is an irrational, hostile agent is
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: far more effective at isolating an individual than barbed wire
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: ever could be.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: That makes total sense. The control mechanism isn't the threat
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: of eternal damnation. It's the threat of being labeled irrational
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: or having buggy software.
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: An intellectual cult worships its own capacity for deduction. And
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: the profound, dark irony of the Zizian saga is that
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: they were founded on the explicit premise of eliminating bias.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: They set out to eradicate bad thinking.
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: They wanted to fix emotional blindness. Yet they ended up
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: so fatally blinded by their own ideological biases. that they
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: could logically justify the murder of an elderly couple, a landlord,
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: and a federal agent.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: Because they believed they were simply executing a necessary logical function. Right.
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: But they became the ultimate lethal expression of the very
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: flawed thinking they originally sought to destroy.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: It is a devastating irony. As we look at the
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: entire arc of this deep dive, we see a trajectory
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: that begins in the optimistic, solution-oriented culture of Silicon Valley,
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: a Genuine desire for human optimization.
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: Yes. The initial goals were utopian.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: And we watched as that desire curdled into intense intellectual elitism,
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: breeding isolation and the creation of a massive, hostile digital manifesto.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: Then the physical isolation began.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: We traced the total severing of the social contract, marked
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: by a faked boating accident and an obituary designed as camouflage.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: And then we witnessed the horrifying escalation into the real world.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: A dispute over rent that ended in a fatal shooting. Right.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: Mutating into a premeditated cross-country trail of violence that claims
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: six lives. An elderly couple in their living room, a
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: property owner trying to navigate the legal system. A fellow
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: group member in a dirt lot. A federal agent conducting
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: a traffic stop.
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: It serves as a profound psychological study of what occurs
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: when human reasoning is entirely divorced from human connection and empathy.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: It proves that intelligence without grounded morality is not just
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: useless but It is actively dangerous.
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: Because when a theoretical framework for logic is elevated above
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: the value of human life, the results are invariably catastrophic.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: And that reality is highly relevant to how we all
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: navigate the modern world. I mean, we all naturally want
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: to be rational, right? We want to make good decisions,
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: eliminate our bad habits, and see the truth clearly.
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: Of course. That is a completely healthy objective.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: But the story of the Azizians is the ultimate extreme
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: warning against of what happens when intellectual arrogance completely replaces
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: basic human empathy.
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: It's a cautionary tale for the digital age.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: It truly is. Which leaves one final lingering thought for
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: you to mull over as you step back into your day.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: We started by discussing the analogy of treating the human
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: mind like a machine, like an AI model that just
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: needed to be trained perfectly to remove all the bugs.
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: But at what point in their relentless quest for optimization
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: did this group forget that a machine inherently.
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: Lacks That's the million-dollar question.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: If an absolute, unyielding commitment to logic can be so
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: easily twisted to justify the systematic taking of human life,
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: is pure, unfeeling rationality actually the most dangerous bias of all?