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  • Chapter 2: The Landlord

    Chapter 2: The Landlord
    2026/07/03
    In Chapter 2, we follow the Zizians from a rusted-out tugboat to an even stranger address: an 82-year-old landlord's trailer yard in Vallejo, California. Curtis Lind was a retired crane operator with a soft spot for outcasts. He didn't seem to mind that most of his new tenants were transgender women. But once COVID hit and the rent stopped coming, in Lind's eyes, they weren't tenants anymore - they were squatters. When California's eviction moratorium finally lifted and Lind moved to reclaim his property, the arrangement collapsed into something out of a horror movie: a pre-dawn ambush, a samurai sword, and a landlord who lost an eye but somehow lived to tell about it. We untangle two irreconcilable versions of that November morning, trace Ziz LaSota's audacious reappearance under a new alias, and follow two Zizians into a legal system unprepared for gender-identity disputes, faked seizures, and jailhouse escape attempts. Then, more than two years later, Curtis Lind is targeted again - this time by a stranger with no apparent ties to the group, in an attack investigators say was designed to silence him for good. Curtis Lind survived the first attack. He didn't survive the second. This episode asks who's willing to do the dirty work for the Zizians, and why. Sources: Danielson v. Sonoma County‘Rationalist Fleet’: Before killings linked to fringe group, ‘Ziz’ led fateful tugboat voyage to CaliforniaWho is ‘Ziz’? How a mysterious group with roots in the Bay Area is linked to six deathsA person linked to the cultlike ‘Zizians’ stands accused of murder. Their identity remains a mysteryWitnesses describe shocking stabbing of Bay Area landlord now linked to five other deaths‘Death upon death’: Defendant in killing tied to cult-like ‘Zizian’ group dictates 1,500-word letter over jail phoneAssociate of cultlike ‘Zizians’ hums song as he enters plea in Vallejo slaying‘He was bleeding like a stuck pig’: Key witness testifies in Zizian murder caseThe Delirious, Violent, Impossible True Story of the ZiziansWashington students named National Merit Scholarship semifinalists; Seattle’s Lakeside once again tops listVegan computer savants with Bay Area ties linked to deaths across U.S., authorities sayZizian cult defector believed to have died in 2022 has been in hiding, fearing maniac vegan group’s revengeMan killed in Vallejo was main witness in upcoming murder trialSuspects in killings of Vallejo witness, Vermont border patrol agent connected by marriage license, extreme ideologyDefendant linked to ‘Zizians’ pleads not guilty to capital murderSuspect In Vallejo Murder Distances Himself From 'Zizian' Cult, Suggests He Is Primarily Motivated By VeganismEx-Vallejo tenant testifies in detail about sword stabbing incidentThe Zizians’ murder trial is as turbulent as you’d expect
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    42 分
  • Chapter 1: Origin Story

    Chapter 1: Origin Story
    2026/06/24

    In the premiere episode of this limited series, host Andrew Westlund follows the digital breadcrumbs back to the very beginning of the "Zizians", a fringe network of militant vegan computer whizzes.

    We trace the early life of their de facto leader, Jack "Ziz" LaSota, from a gifted but troubled childhood in Alaska to her disillusionment with the Bay Area tech scene. After walking away from conventional startups, Ziz embedded herself within elite artificial intelligence safety circles, where she and a brilliant collaborator envisioned a radical new path to save humanity from technological extinction.

    Step onboard the Caleb, a rust-streaked, 94-foot World War II-era Navy tugboat. We investigate how a 1,500-mile voyage from Alaska to San Francisco became a closed-loop psychological experiment. Isolated at sea without a working bathroom, the fledgling "Rat Fleet" began rewiring their brains with esoteric hemispheric sleep tech, drawing a dangerous binary line between the enlightened "doublegoods" and a corrupt outside world.

    From illegal harborside box trucks to a masked, tactical blockade at a Sonoma County academic retreat, Episode 1 uncovers the exact moment an intellectual movement began to curdle into something far more militant.

    Sources:

    • ‘Rationalist Fleet’: Before killings linked to fringe group, ‘Ziz’ led fateful tugboat voyage to California
    • Before killings linked to cultlike ‘Zizians,’ a string of psychiatric crises befell AI doomsdayers
    • Who is ‘Ziz’? How a mysterious group with roots in the Bay Area is linked to six deaths
    • The Delirious, Violent, Impossible True Story of the Zizians
    • Inside the Zizians, a radical California-based vegan cult now linked to 6 violent deaths
    • Blog Post From `Ziz`: Rationalist Fleet
    • Zizians: What we know about the 'cult' linked to six deaths
    • The Zizians by Apollo Mojave
    • Protest Sign/Flier
    • Everything To Save It - Case Study: CFAR
    • 6 Deaths, 3 States and the Radical Breakaway ‘Rationalists’ at the Center of the Nightmare
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    45 分