This episode details Andy Ngo’s investigation into the Zizians, a violent cult originating from Silicon Valley’s rationalist and effective altruism communities that allegedly carried out eight murders across multiple states while exploiting legal protections for transgender identity to evade accountability.
The Zizians: origins, ideology, and leadership
The Zizians emerged from the Bay Area rationalist and effective altruism (EA) scenes — atheist, highly educated, STEM-focused communities that use logic and mathematical modeling to maximize good, often debating fringe topics like shrimp welfare while rejecting traditional morality.
Jack LaSota (known as Ziz), born in Fairbanks, Alaska, graduated magna cum laude in computer science, dropped out of a prestigious engineering PhD at UIUC, and moved to the Bay Area around 2015 to join the rationalist community.
Ziz transitioned, took cross-sex hormones and testosterone suppressors, and developed a splinter ideology blending rationalism, transhumanism, trans ideology, and leftist anarchism — believing trans women possess special cognitive abilities to save humanity from AI existential risk.
Ziz’s core doctrine: the brain’s two hemispheres hold separate identities (male/female, good/evil); he claimed both his hemispheres were “double good” and sought recruits with at least one “good core.”
The cult practiced “debucketing” — separating brain hemispheres through deliberate sleep deprivation and induced psychosis to manipulate members, a method Ziz kept deliberately vague to lure curiosity.
Members lived in isolated communes: first on boats (a “rationalist fleet” including a WWII tugboat), then in box trucks on an elderly man’s property in Vallejo, California, refusing to pay rent under pandemic eviction moratoriums.
Recruitment and membership profile
The group recruited almost exclusively from the rationalist/EA pipeline: brilliant STEM professionals — NASA engineers, Google employees, quantitative traders making hundreds of thousands annually — many autistic or with Asperger’s.
Recruitment combined world-saving mission rhetoric (stopping AI apocalypse) with personal grievance politics: reframing normal childhoods as abuse, casting families as evil, and justifying “parricide” as justice.
Members self-administered hormones in makeshift labs at hideouts; Ngo describes a “social contagion” of simultaneous transitions within the Bay Area rationalist scene.
Timeline of alleged violence (eight known deaths)
Two suicides of former members: One jumped from a building in Poland; another died by shotgun in Colorado — both had undergone “debucketing” experiments.
November 2022: Attack on Curtis Lind (79): Lind, who had allowed the group to live on his land, was lured to a trailer, bludgeoned, repeatedly stabbed with swords (impaled through the chest, eye gouged out), and shot one attacker dead (Amir Bohanian/Emma) before escaping. The case was framed by media and trans groups as anti-trans violence; Bohanian was eulogized as a victim, honored by Senate Democrats, and a GoFundMe raised tens of thousands.
New Year’s Eve 2022: Double murder of Richard and Rita Zajko in Pennsylvania — parents of member Michelle Zajko (Jamie/Alex), shot execution-style in their home. Michelle was charged only in 2025; prosecutors say she had an accomplice (unnamed).
January 2025: Second attack on Curtis Lind (82): After returning to his property, Lind was ambushed, stabbed repeatedly, and throat-slit. He bled out on the spot.
January 2025 (Inauguration Day): Murder of Border Patrol Agent David Christopher Mullen in Vermont. Two Zizians (Felix Balult/Oilia, German national; Teresa Youngblut, 20, from Seattle) in tactical gear were pulled over; Mullen was shot dead. Balult was killed in the shootout; Youngblut survived and faces federal murder charges.
Total: Eight deaths linked to the group as of the interview; zero convictions on any murder charges after years of delays.
Legal evasion, media complicity, and institutional failure
Ziz faked his own death (staged drowning, massive search effort), then faked unconsciousness in a police lobby after the 2022 Lind attack — was sent to hospital without escort or warrant check, and vanished for years.
Law enforcement repeatedly failed: missed active warrants, didn’t run records, allowed suspects to go free after suspicious encounters (e.g., Vermont motel incident before the shooting).
Media and institutions consistently used preferred names/pronouns/aliases, obscuring sex and criminal history; Oregon banned mugshot releases after Ngo’s Antifa reporting, shielding suspects.
Trans activist groups and leftist attorneys backed Zizians legally, framing violence as self-defense against “trans genocide”; donors funded legal defense.
Ziz currently faces only federal firearm possession charges as a fugitive; Maryland state case suspended; Daniel Blank (Zizian) is free; Michelle Zajko charged but trial pending.
Broader pattern: rising trans violence and ideological drivers
Ngo documents a wave of trans-identified perpetrators in mass shootings and murders (Nashville/Covenant School, Tumblr Ridge Canada, Utah, Alabama, Washington State) — routinely misreported or obscured by authorities (e.g., Canadian police described Tumblr Ridge shooter as “a female in a dress”; trans pride symbols on guns omitted).
AP style guides now mandate preferred pronouns, prohibit “biological male/female,” and discourage noting transgender status unless “relevant” — systematically misleading the public.
Ideological framework: effective altruist calculus (one life vs. billions of shrimp/animals) + wound-collecting grievance politics + narcissistic victimhood = violence as rational, moral duty.
Trans activists (Ngo terms “Trifa”) openly celebrate convicted killers (e.g., Mia Bailey in Utah) and justify parricide for insufficient transition support.
Silicon Valley context and the EA/rationalist community
Ziz split from Eliezer Yudkowsky (MIRI/CFAR founder, leading AI doomer), believing Yudkowsky wasn’t doing enough to prevent AI apocalypse.
The EA/rationalist community is ideologically diverse (libertarian to radical left) but has not meaningfully reckoned with what its environment produced; mainstream trans groups refuse to distance from violent actors.
Members’ brilliance and systematic thinking made them susceptible to Ziz’s mathematical grooming: killing becomes a utilitarian optimization.
Cross-sex hormones, physiology, and violence
Ngo devotes a chapter to academic literature: limited research shows testosterone suppression and cross-sex hormones correlate with increased aggression and mood destabilization; transgender identity is a predictor of violent radicalization in some studies.
Research is suppressed: academics who investigate face professional destruction; funding is nonexistent; departments are ideologically captured.
Physiological reality: chemical castration (prostate cancer treatment) profoundly alters cognition and behavior; massive exogenous hormone doses in healthy bodies have unknown effects — especially combined with sleep deprivation, isolation, and apocalyptic ideology.
Antifa, left-wing violence, and federal response
Zizians adopted Antifa black bloc aesthetics and tactics; overlap in personnel (three of six identified in Ngo’s civil suit for his 2019 beating are trans-identified).
Federal progress: first-ever Antifa federal convictions (Texas, 2024 — 16 defendants, 500+ combined years, ringleader 100 years, material support to terrorism charges); State Department designated European Antifa groups as foreign terrorist organizations; White House roundtable and international summit on left-wing terrorism.
Structural obstacle: Antifa is a decentralized domestic movement, not a foreign organization — harder to prosecute under material support statutes; new cells form rapidly with ideological legitimacy and funding from Democratic-aligned donors and “mutual aid” networks.
Ngo’s conclusion after 10 years: Democratic politicians and institutions are “completely fine with using these militants as their foot soldiers.”
