Who are the Zizians?

Summary

Detailed Summary of "Who are the Zizians?" Episode on Stuff You Should Know

Podcast Information:

• Title: Stuff You Should Know
• Host/Author: iHeartPodcasts
• Episode: Who are the Zizians?
• Release Date: June 19, 2025

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Introduction

In this gripping true crime episode titled "Who are the Zizians?", hosts Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant delve into the mysterious and sinister group known as the Zizians. The episode navigates through the origins, ideologies, key events, and eventual downfall of this enigmatic cult-like community. With a narrative rich in details and punctuated by notable quotes, the hosts provide an engaging exploration suitable for both true crime aficionados and curious newcomers.

Origins of the Zizians

The story begins with the emergence of the Zizians, a group centered around Ziz, a trans woman recognized as the leader or the most influential member. Ziz, born in 1991 in Fairbanks, Alaska, was a highly intelligent individual with internships at both Oracle and NASA during her time at the University of Fairbanks. Her exceptional academic and professional background attracted like-minded individuals to her cause.

Notable Quote:

Chuck Bryant [02:44]: "And like you said, this is going to be sort of a common thing with everyone who got together with Ziz and the others."

Ziz was deeply influenced by the Rationalist movement, which emphasized logical thinking, questioning biases, and revising beliefs continuously. Central figures in this movement included Eliezer Yudkowski, an AI researcher dedicated to solving the AI alignment problem to prevent potential existential threats posed by artificial intelligence.

Expansion and Ideological Shifts

Ziz's move to the Bay Area marked a significant expansion of her influence. She engaged with organizations like SEFAR and MIRI, focusing on AI safety and effective altruism—using rational thinking to maximize the impact of donations for the greater good.

Notable Quote:

Josh Clark [05:29]: "He dedicated himself to solving the AI alignment problem, which is how do you create an artificial intelligence whose motivations are totally aligned with humans..."

However, Ziz's intense dedication extended beyond rationalist principles to include radical veganism and animal rights. This ideological shift created a rift between her group and the broader rationalist community, laying the groundwork for future conflicts.

Formation of the Rationalist Fleet

Economic pressures in the expensive San Francisco area led Ziz to adopt unconventional living arrangements to minimize costs and maximize time spent on their missions. Initially, Ziz moved in with Gwen Danielson on a sailboat in the Berkeley Marina, but compatibility issues led her to purchase her own sailboat, naming it "Caleb." This vessel became the hub of what was known as the "Rationalist Fleet," which sought to foster a community of highly intelligent, often trans, vegan individuals dedicated to radical causes.

Notable Quote:

Chuck Bryant [07:49]: "And these were the people that she ended up attracting through her blog. There's a really great Guardian article about all of this written by Oliver Conroy..."

Escalation and Isolation from the Rationalist Community

Ziz's group began to diverge significantly from mainstream rationalist principles, adopting more extreme beliefs and behaviors. Their aggressive stance on animal rights and unresolved conflicts within the community, such as accusations against MIRI for handling sexual assault claims improperly, deepened their isolation.

Attempting to voice their grievances, the Zizians disrupted a SEFAR seminar in 2019 by blocking exits with vehicles and presenting their issues, leading to their arrest on charges of false imprisonment and child endangerment. This incident cemented their estrangement from the rationalist community, pushing them further into isolation and extremism.

Notable Quote:

Josh Clark [18:53]: "So now this wedge was a gulf. It was a break in communication between the group that would come to be known as Sizzians and the rationalist community."

Criminal Activities and Key Incidents

The Zizians were implicated in a series of violent acts and mysterious deaths:

1. Curtis Lind's Attack (2022):

   • Curtis Lind, a property owner in Vallejo, California, was brutally attacked by members Alex Letham and Suri Dow, resulting in his severe injuries and the death of Emma Baranian.
   • Lind alleged that Alex Letham stabbed him, whereas the Zizians contended it was an unprovoked attack.

2. Suicides and Disappearances:

   • Following Ziz's sister, Emma Baranian, reporting Ziz missing after a boating accident, Gwen Danielson also died by suicide, further clouding the group's activities.

3. Mass Shootout in Vermont (May 2024):

   • Milo Youngbloot and Maximilian Snyder attempted to assassinate Border Patrol agents, leading to the death of Agent David Malland and Youngbloot's subsequent arrest.

4. Pennsylvania Murders (December 31, 2022):

   • Michelle Zaszko's parents were found murdered in Pennsylvania, leading to suspicions against Michelle and her associate Daniel Blank. Both were later arrested with incriminating evidence found in their possession.

Notable Quotes:

Chuck Bryant [22:30]: "Are there any pictures of you online? I'm not just talking about Google, I'm talking anywhere."

Josh Clark [28:35]: "Now Suri Dow and Alex Letham are in jail in California for the attack on Curtis Lynd and then the murder of Curtis Lind."

Legal Proceedings and Ongoing Investigations

As law enforcement agencies began connecting the dots, the Zizians faced increasing legal challenges. By early 2025:

• Ziz and Michelle Zaszko: Arrested in Maryland for trespassing after being found with illegal firearms. Ziz was later charged with obstruction of justice and disorderly conduct but skipped her trial in December 2023.
• Alex Letham and Suri Dow: Held accountable for the assault on Curtis Lind and the death of Emma Baranian.
• Daniel Blank and Milo Youngbloot: Detained for their roles in violent incidents, with Youngbloot being implicated in an attempted attack on Border Patrol.

Notable Quote:

Chuck Bryant [34:36]: "So the Zizians are still around. Essentially. They still will say, we're not a cult, not even called Zizians."

Current Status and Conclusion

As of mid-2025, the Zizians remain a fragmented yet dangerous group, with several members incarcerated across different states. The group's assets, such as the sailboat "Caleb," have deteriorated, symbolizing the sinking credibility and operational capacity of the Zizians. Despite their reduced presence, remnants of their ideology continue to influence a subset of disenfranchised individuals online.

The hosts conclude by emphasizing the unresolved nature of the case, highlighting ongoing investigations and the potential for future developments. The episode leaves listeners contemplating the complex interplay between ideological extremism, community isolation, and the perilous path toward criminality.

Notable Quote:

Josh Clark [48:57]: "If you want to know more about this stuff, go look it up. There's a lot of stuff to read. And just keep an eye on the news."

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Key Takeaways:

• The Zizians originated from the Rationalist movement but diverged into extremist ideologies centered around AI safety, veganism, and animal rights.
• Leadership under Ziz was marked by increasing isolation, radical beliefs, and violent actions.
• A series of violent incidents, legal confrontations, and mysterious deaths point to the dangerous trajectory of the group.
• Legal actions have curtailed much of their activities, but the potential for continued influence and future crimes remains.

Additional Notes:

• The episode intersperses advertisements and other podcast segments, which have been omitted from this summary to maintain focus on the core content.
• Listeners are encouraged to follow ongoing news updates for any new developments related to the Zizians.

Transcript

[Chuck Bryant]

This is an I Heart podcast host Nora McInerney returns for season three of the Head Start, Embracing the Journey, a podcast from Ruby Studio and AbbVie. Each episode, Nora shares intimate conversations with real people living with chronic migraine as they try to find the doctor that is right for them, navigate their treatment journey and be present in the moment in spite of it all. Join in the conversation for season three and create more space for empathy and understanding for this invisible chronic disease. Listen to the Head Start Embracing the journey on the iHeartRadio app or where wherever you get your podcasts. With over 200 million drivers, you've done more than make Ford America's all time best selling auto brand. Your purchases have enabled Ford and Ford dealers to donate billions to communities. This June, celebrate Ford and Ford Dealers commitment of an important additional donation to Feeding America, Habitat for Humanity, the American Red Cross and Team Rubicon Ford Motor Company from America for America. Based on Automotive News Almanac, historical data and industry reported Sales data from 1909 through 2024 Cy welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

[Josh Clark]

Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And this is stuff you should know. This is, I guess, a timely topical true crime edition.

[Chuck Bryant]

The three T's COA alert. Yeah, I feel I should sound the klaxon on this one. Yeah, we're issuing a COA on this one, a pretty robust one, because a this is something we don't do a lot, which is tackle true crime in almost real time. As far as the fact that none of this is settled, the alleged crimes, we're probably gonna say alleged a lot because there's not even been court dates a lot of times for some of these cases. You know, we're talking about potentially six murders in three states by a group that may or may not have done it, that may or may not be a cult. So just a big COA there. This is one of the true crimes where like neither one of us are going to be like, well, here's my theory on this because just who knows, this has got to play out first. And the other big COA is a lot of sort of a disproportionate amount of members of the Zizians who we're gonna be talking about are members of the trans community. And it's just one of the sort of facts of the case. There's obviously no suggestion or judgment on our part of the trans community, but it seems to be a big sort of part of this group of people who got together. So just kind of keep all that in mind as we lay all this out there.

[Josh Clark]

Right. Nice work, Chuck. Thanks for that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So like you said, we're talking about the Zizians. How did you hear about this? This is your pick.

[Chuck Bryant]

You know what, I have no idea. And even went to look to see if somebody has suggested it and no one had. I think I might have just seen a news story and been like, wait a minute, this is something that hasn't been a 10 part Netflix series yet, so it must be super, super current, which it is.

[Josh Clark]

My theory is that the Great Gazoo said doing on the Zizians, dum dum, and you were like, I should do it on the Zizians.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, thanks for bringing a joke into this thing.

[Josh Clark]

So the Zizians are called such because they center around Ziz, a trans woman who is often portrayed as the leader of this cult. And I mean, you can make a pretty fair case that at the very least she's the leader or the most influential member because the whole thing's named after her. Although we should say that this group of people do not call themselves the Zizians. That was a name that was given to them by somebody who's critical of them, an anonymous person who's critical of them. But Ziz herself, we know, was born in 1991 in Fairbanks, Alaska. And like the other people that she attracts into her orbit, she was brilliant. I mean, very precocious as far as, like working on computers goes, as far as mathematics goes. I think by the time she was at the University of Fairbanks in Alaska, she had internships at both Oracle, the cloud computing company, and NASA. So I mean, like she had a pretty, pretty great resume, I guess is what you'd say if you're on LinkedIn.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. And like you said, this is going to be sort of a common thing with everyone who got together with Ziz and the others. So in college, Zy started learning about what's called the Rationalist movement or the Rationalist community, which were also very science minded people. They kind of gathered around Silicon Valley. And one of the big things with rationalism is, and a lot of this stuff makes sense, like a lot of the stuff that they're laying down, like, hey, let's use logical tools to just always question ourselves. Let's not get set in our way of thinking about anything, let's always revise what we're thinking about everything. And one of the key people here, one of the names that you'll Hear early. And then later on is a guy named Eliezer Yudkowski who is an AI researcher who is kind of doing something different than what a lot of AI researchers are doing and that he has devoted much of his career to basically saying, hey, warning this, this could really go wrong and I'm going to do everything I can to make sure it goes down in the right way.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. He dedicated himself to solving the AI alignment problem, which is how do you create an artificial intelligence whose motivations are totally aligned with humans and we don't accidentally wipe ourselves out with the AI we create. Yeah. And like you said, it kind of flies in the face of especially what's going on these days, which is like, hurry up and build an AI or else China's going to do it first and we're going to lose out and there's so much money to be made off of AI. And Eliezer Yudkowski is a very, very interesting duties, self taught AI researcher, incredibly brilliant and. And just by happenstance, I got an email yesterday from somebody at a publishing house that mentioned that he has a new book coming out in September with Nate Soares, one of his collaborators. It's called if Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies. And it's about AI. And from what I understand, he's thrown in the towel. He's basically said, it's too late, we are not going to be able to create a friendly AI because not enough people are working on it. And it's about to happen any day now where super intelligent AI is going to come out. And so we have to figure out how to let humanity die off in the most dignified manner is how I saw it described.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. Which doesn't have a whole lot to do with the Zizians, but that just sets up kind of who this guy is. In 2009 he founded a blog called Less Wrong, as in let's do less wrong. And I mean, I assume that's what it means.

[Josh Clark]

It means. So it's about overcoming your biases, like you want to be less wrong kind of. It's all about thinking clearly and not letting your biases guide your thinking, I think.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So they started gathering as I guess, a de facto sort of community of rationalists. A lot of this again is taking place in and around Silicon Valley in Northern California. And he founded a couple of Berkeley, California based organizations that'll come into play. The Machine Intelligence Research Institute or miri. And again that's about minimizing the risks of AI. And then the center for Applied Rationality or cfar and again, same deal. Clear, unbiased thinking is what they're after. Never getting too set in your ways and always trying to revise how you think about things.

[Josh Clark]

Right. They're also very closely tied with effective altruism, which is essentially using rational thinking to donate your money to the greatest good. We did an episode on that, if I'm not mistaken.

[Chuck Bryant]

We did, my friend.

[Josh Clark]

All of this attracted Ziz to move from Alaska down to the Bay Area in San Francisco. And she got involved with Sefar, got involved with Miri, and dedicated herself also to trying to figure out this AI alignment problem, too. And she. The thing about this rationalist community is they are as open as you can be. You can be a Nazi and show up and be like, I'm a Nazi and here's what I think about everything. And they will engage you in debate because that's just what they do. They like no thought processes off the table. And that attracted a lot of interesting people who were. The average normie would probably not necessarily feel comfortable sitting in a room with just because, you know, of awkwardness, but also because they probably wouldn't have much to converse about, because the people we're talking about in this rationalist community are so brilliant that they probably would not be able to relate to the average person and vice versa.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Or at the very least, on some of the radical fringes of whatever movement that they're in. Ziz is one of those people and started writing on the less wrong site and her own blog and writing about, again, stuff that's on the more radical end of the spectrum. Like, hey, we got a, you know, sort of a 12 monkeys kind of stuff, like, hey, we gotta do whatever it takes. Some people might think, you know, something we're doing is evil, but if it's in the service of what we think has a good end, then that's what we should do. Sometimes she calls herself a Sith, as in, you know, Star Wars. And apparently the name Ziz comes from a speculative fiction story called Worm that a lot of rationalists love, in which Ziz in the story is a villainous entity that if they're listened to for too long, you will go crazy. And so Ziz is all of a sudden hanging around the Bay Area, going to these rationalist hangouts and meetings, wearing black robes and sort of dressed like a Sith.

[Josh Clark]

So all this is what, around 2016, 17, that this is all starting, that Ziz is showing up. And again, like I said, this community is very open. So even though Ziz would show up wearing black robes, declaring herself a Sith lord. And that, that's her religion is Sith. But despite the community being open, she still stood out. Not necessarily because she wore black robes and called herself the Sith, but more because she was more intensely devoted and dedicated than even the average rationalist. Right. So she did stand out some. One of the other things that she was radically dedicated to was veganism and animal rights. And this would actually end up separating her from the rationalist community eventually. And that you can kind of make a case, it seems like, is the initial schism that caused this wedge that led to all the events that would follow.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, like basically, hey, you're trying to protect human life. Like, what about the animals? Like every sentient animal is a person. And these are Ziz's words. And, you know, so we gotta kick up the intensity on the animal front as well. The problem with all of this is that this was around San Francisco in Silicon Valley, where it's really, really expensive to live. And if you're someone like Ziz, you're not, you know, going out and getting some big tech job where you're making tons of money to afford that condo downtown. So you gotta live somewhere. And this is when ZYZ meets up with somebody named Gwen Danielson had a lot in common. Another rationalist, another trans woman, another person who was very much into animal rights. And Gwen happened to live on a sailboat in Berkeley Marina and said, hey, this is much cheaper rent here. Why don't you just come and live on this boat with me? I'm also into math, I'm also into science, and I'm also have some pretty radical ideas about stuff.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And so the point of this was if you, and this is Ziz's belief, if you could free yourself from things like paying rent, especially the high rent of San Francisco, and keep your costs down to as minimal as possible, you could devote that much more time to figuring out the AI alignment problem, figuring out how to push Seafar and Miri into protecting animal rights too. Like just thinking and learning to think better. That was kind of the point. And so I think Ziz initially moved into the sailboat with Gwen Danielson, found that they were not quite exactly compatible, roommate wise, but still friends. And so Ziz bought her own sailboat and docked it at the same marina in Berkeley. And they became what was called the rationalist fleet. They invited more and more people to come join them at the marina. And they actually went so far as to buy an old tugboat that by this time was in its 70s or 80s maybe. Not like not a good age for a tugboat. And they actually bought it from Alaska and tugged it down or sailed it down all the way to San Francisco.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. The name of this boat was Caleb. So now it's in Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco. And Caleb was a problem, though Cable, like you said, was an old boat, an old World War II era tugboat. So it wasn't like, you know, even like a mid-70s houseboat would have been a better option probably. This thing they couldn't, they had a hard time anchoring was too expensive to maintain. It would drift out of control and hit other boats. So it was not everything they thought it was gonna be. So just sort of park that for now. I'm gonna say that a lot for me. Parking a lot of things as this jump. At this point we have to introduce some new characters to the scene. Again, had a lot in common with Ziz and Gwen in that they were very smart, very much into math and science. Some were trans and some were non binary. And the first player here is someone named Emma Baranian, a programmer, worked at Google but left Google because they thought the company was corrupt.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. And we should say these people fell into Ziz's orbit because Zyzz was a prolific blogger and blogged in a way that like a lot of the language and thoughts and ideas were impenetrable to all but a certain group of people. And these were the people that she ended up attracting through her blog. There's a really great Guardian article about all of this written by Oliver Conroy, and Conroy says that there was a glossary that somebody gave him that one of Zig's blog followers created of Zig's words, and that when he printed it out, it was 48 pages long. So, like she had a certain thing going on that attracted a certain kind of person. And these were the people who were falling into their, into her orbit at this time. And we should also say all of these people were in their early to mid-20s. I think Ziz was the oldest maybe at the time, at 26. So they were all disaffected, brilliant, often trans, vegan 20 somethings who were living very close to homelessness in San Francisco in the late 2000 teens.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, so the second person was Alex Leatham, occasionally known as Somni, a mathematician. In this case went to ucla, studied at UC Berkeley as well. Then we have Michelle Zaszko, a biometrics researcher, another smarty pants, and then someone named Alice Munday, who was Zasko's girlfriend and a bit of a mentor, apparently, according to zyz. To zyz. And they started sort of just getting together, talking about their ideas. They came up with a name for one of their theories or sort of their overarching theory called vegan anarcho transhumanism. And Gwen Danielson developed this idea that the hemispheres of the brain were basically separate and they could operate independently from one another. You can be different genders at the same time. You can be good and evil or good or evil at the same time. And they started these experiments called unihemispheric sleep, where they were saying, you can be asleep and awake at the same time. One can be asleep and then one can be active and awake. And we say this because there are people that have accused Ziz and others in the group of basically keeping you sleep deprived through these experiments, potentially leading to a couple of suicides that we'll talk about. And again, I have no judgment on whether or not they are a cult or not at this point, but if you're making a case for cult, sleep deprivation is a very big hallmark of something that oftentimes happens.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that's like chapter two in the cult leaders playbook.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

We should say also that unihemispheric sleep theoretically is possible. Humans don't do it, but dolphins do, whales do, migratory birds do. So it's not like it just doesn't exist. It's humans trying to figure out how to do it themselves. So they could think longer, more hours in a day, essentially.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So this group is getting a little more upset and aggressive toward the official rationalist movement and community. They think again that Mirri and Sifar, you're not doing enough for the animals. You need to expand your, I guess, viewpoint on sentient beings and what that means. And you're also biased against trans people.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And there was another thing too, that Ziz got really upset about. She came to believe that Miri paid off a blackmailer. Another way to put it is that somebody accused people at Miri of sexual assault or statutory rape, I think it was, and that they paid the person to go away. Some people would call it a settlement. To Ziz, it was blackmail, paying off a blackmailer, and that you just did not do that. That violated some of the basic tenets of the rationalist community in the way of solving problems that they use. So that with the ethical veganism combined, really separated her from this rationalist community. And with this growing group around her they decided that they were going to show up, go to the CFAR seminar conference that was being held in 2019, and they were going to present their problems and their issues in a very rational way, just like SEFAR would want them to. And the people who organized SEFAR were like, you guys are way too aggressive for our tastes. You can't come to this SEFAR retreat.

[Chuck Bryant]

And one of them said, you've got a Nazi in there. So four of them, Zyz, Gwen Danielson, Emma Baranian. And it gets a little confusing with all names and Alex Leatham. They went anyway, and they had their Guy Fawkes masks on and they had their black hooded robes on. They blocked the exits with their vehicles. And they were like, here, you're gonna listen to us. Here's our flyers, here's our problems and our issues. And the staff didn't know what was going on. They called in a report of a possible active shooter and the cops came. They did not have arms on them or anything like that, but they were arrested on charges of false imprisonment and child endangerment because there were kids there. It was a campground where they met north of San Francisco. And the defendants, we should point out, the four of them did end up filing a suit against the police, alleging mistreatment.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So the rationalist community is like, that's it. Not only can you not come to Seafar retreats, you can't even hang out on the less wrong blog. You can't come to our cocktail meetups that we have, which are a lot of fun. So you're probably going to be upset. They've just got booted out. So now this wedge was a gulf. It was a break in communication between the group that would come to be known as Sizzians and the rationalist community. And with that, that group became more and more isolated and their ideas got a little weirder and a little more far out and a little more aggressive because they were all similar people who were feeding off one another. And in this isolated situation, there weren't people on the outside coming and be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's rethink what you're saying. It was like, yeah, that's a really good idea. And it just kept going from there.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, I think that's a good. You can kind of park all that stuff for now because this story kind of jumps around the country a bit. And when we come back, we're going to pick up with part two. A little north of San Francisco in Vallejo, California.

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[Chuck Bryant]

50 years after jaws scared an entire.

[Dexter Thomas]

Generation out of the water, I looked down.

[Josh Clark]

There was this great big head, these big white teeth.

[Chuck Bryant]

Radiolab is pulling you back in. It was just like so much fear building of what's going to come out of that blue. Listen to Swimming with Shadows, a Radiolab week of sharks.

[Josh Clark]

Anything you dig down on is fascinating.

[Chuck Bryant]

These creatures. Wherever you get podcasts.

[Emma Baranian]

Are there any pictures of you online? I'm not just talking about Google, I'm talking anywhere.

[Dexter Thomas]

Clearview scrapes together images from Facebook, from LinkedIn, from Venmo accounts.

[Emma Baranian]

That database is now being used by police departments all across the country to match criminal suspect photos. And sometimes it makes mistakes.

[Dexter Thomas]

So in this one case, two of the search results that I think were in the top 10 of the search results were Michael Jordan. Just a picture of Michael Jordan.

[Emma Baranian]

But cops are still using it to make arrests.

[Dexter Thomas]

Police, they are trusting this software to lead them to the right suspect. But you're not even being told that it was used, let alone given any of the details about about how it works.

[Emma Baranian]

This is not Minority Report. This is happening right now. People are getting arrested and doing actual time in jail after being picked out by a computer. I'm Dexter Thomas, host of Kill Switch, where every Wednesday we explain the right now of living in the future. You can turn off the computer, but do not let the computer turn you off. Listen to Kill Switch in the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.

[Chuck Bryant]

Stop you you know, stop, stop.

[Josh Clark]

You should know.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, stop.

[Josh Clark]

So, Chuck, one of the outcomes of being like, pushed out of the rationalist community, somebody launched a website called zizians.info it's still around today. And they basically chronicled all the things that they accused the Zizians of being a cult or that backs up their accusation of the Zizians being a cult. And two of the things are something you referenced earlier. There were two suicides by people who were said to have gone through this unihemispheric sleep, I guess, boot camp, and it resulted in their suicides, allegedly. So the Zizians just have a really bad name at this point. The marina thing is not working out. The rationalist fleet is kind of sinking, as it were. And they just happened to meet somebody at the marina named Curtis Lind, who was a 70 something guy who loved people, loved artists, and had a bunch of land down in Vallejo and said, hey, I want artists to come live down there. You guys seem kind of artsy and odd. Why don't you come live there for really cheap rent?

[Emma Baranian]

And.

[Josh Clark]

And the Zizians were like, heck, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right. So Curtis Lynn offers, you know, them the chance to go live. You know, they paid rent, but I don't imagine it was very much. And in this, you know, we're going to be introduced to some more players at this point. One of the members of the group that had joined up at this time, her name was Suri Dao and she was fresh out of high school and a leftist blogger and just sort of put a pin in this. At one point in a discord chat, she said that she had had very dramatic fantasies about becoming a knife murderer. And there's, you know, up to 20 people at this time on Curtis Lynn's property. The neighbors get a little freaked out. They're like, hey, they're walking around naked sometimes they're wearing gas masks. Lind eventually is like, you guys aren't even paying rent anymore. And they said, yeah, well, there's a Covid eviction moratorium. So what are you gonna do about it? So everything just starts going really pear shaped, as you say, in like 2022.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Also, Chuck, I saw that they would carry katanas around like samurai swords. So imagine seeing your neighbor walking around naked wearing a gas mask and carrying a samurai sword and there's 20 of them. It would be hard, especially in the context of California, to not be like, I think they might be a cult.

[Chuck Bryant]

Good point.

[Josh Clark]

So in 2022, like you said, things just really start to take a terrible shape. In August, Zyz's sister, an Emma Boranian, went to the police and said, our friend Ziz fell over while boating. So Zyzz died during. In a boating accident. The Coast Guard launched a huge search, and I guess after 18 hours, they said there's no way that she could have survived. And she was. Although they didn't have the body, they still declared her legally dead. And her sister was given a death certificate. And around the same time, Gwen Danielson, who was one of the OG members of this whole group, she died by suicide, too. So this group is just rocked by these two deaths in 2022.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. So while this is happening, it's kind of at the same time this Covid eviction moratorium runs out. So Curtis Lind is like, all right, now I can actually get these people off my property finally, probably like this November, two days before he was able to do that and sort of drop the news that they were out of there. Suri Dao called him in and said, hey, there's a water leak on my property here or in my trailer. You gotta come and check this out. Curtis Lynn says, I went to address the issue with the water, and I was assaulted. They hit me over the head. They stabbed me with knives. They stabbed me with a katana, the samurai sword. He ended up losing an eye. He was stabbed through the chest. Apparently, he alleges that Alex Letham was the one who stabbed him through the chest. And so he shot Letham and Emma Baranian and killed her dead. If you ask the Zizians that were there, they said, no, that's not what happened. He'd been harassing us, and he just opened fire on us one day.

[Josh Clark]

So the authorities tended to agree or believe Curtis Lynde. And in fact, Letham and Dow were arrested, charged with attempted murder, and then also charged with the death of Emma Baranian. Because apparently in California law, if you do something that causes the death of somebody else, even incidentally, you are responsible or you can be held responsible for that death. And the thinking was that Curtis Lynne had to kill Emma Baranian because of the actions of Dow and Letham.

[Dexter Thomas]

Right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

So now Suri Dow and Alex Letham are in jail in California. That's where they are. So just park that like you said.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. So police took another member of the group at the time she gave her name as Julia Dawson. They said, come down to the station with us. We gotta question you. At the station. She seemed like she Was having a medical emergency, so, like, well, we gotta get her to the hospital. Station took her to the hospital and she disappeared from the hospital. Detectives started investigating what happened there, and they said, oh, you know who that was? That was Ziz. Ziz is not dead at all. And they also determined. Guess who else was there? Gwen Danielson. She's actually alive as well.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So if you've heard our faking your death episode, this is a. It's a big deal to fake your death, especially successfully. So the Zizians never thought they were dead, or if they did, it was for a very short time. It was to protect themselves from the authorities. One of the other things that was really an unsettling find. After Curtis Lind was attacked, they found a vat of lye that suggested that they intended to kill him and that they were going to dissolve his body in it. So it's starting to become clear, like, these people are no joke. But at the time, this was like an isolated incident. It wasn't related to anything else. The authorities did not know that this was a group known as the Zizians or anything like that. There were pieces that were starting to lay out on the table, but no one had put them together yet.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, exactly. All right, so now you can park all of that because we're gonna move once again across the country this time. Pennsylvania is gonna come into the picture in 2021. So this is, you know, a little bit before these events. Michelle Zaszko that we mentioned and Alice Munday, who were girlfriends with each other. They moved from California to Vermont to northern Vermont, pretty rural area. And they were joined by a guy named Daniel Blank, another like minded person. He went to UC Berkeley, bioengineering and electrical engineering, co degree, and then worked at startups. And he was also a vegan and started to sort of get a little more radical about it. Got distance from his parents, started judging them for eating meat. And he hooks up with Monday and Zaszko in Vermont.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And so by this time, I think. I don't know if you said it or not. I think he did. Ziz had credited Alice Munday as being like her mentor. She modeled herself largely after Alice Munday too. Like, she was apparently really assertive with her beliefs and ideas. And Ziz became more and more like that after meeting Alice Monday. By this time, though, she considered Alice Munday an enemy, what she called a vampire. And I guess Zaziko was, by association, guilty by association. And from what I could tell, Alice Mundi became Her enemy, because she and maybe Zazka were warning people away from Ziz, saying, like, you need to steer clear of this person. So Ziz considered them enemies, and she contacted Zazko and said, hey, if you want to earn my trust back, you need to murder Alice, and if you don't, I'm going to come to Vermont and murder you. And this was the kind of a precarious situation as. As far as Zazko was concerned. Michelle Zazko was concerned because. And this really, I think, kind of gets a lot across. She was like, I really had to kind of decide, you know, did I want to murder Alice to make Ziz happy or should I kill Ziz? This is the position that Ziz was putting people in by this time. Allegedly.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Should we just have Jerry drop in the word allegedly, like, just every 40 seconds?

[Josh Clark]

Allegedly?

[Chuck Bryant]

Beijing. Mr. Herman, I know I promised Pennsylvania, and we've been in Vermont for a second here, but here's where Pennsylvania comes into play. On December 31, last day of the year, according to. According to many, in 2022, this is about a month and a half after Curtis Lind was stabbed. And after that all occurred in Viejo. So Michelle Zasko's parents, Richard and Rita, were murdered in Pennsylvania. They have ring camera footage from a neighbor that shows two people arriving at the house a little before midnight. And on the camera footage, you can hear what sounds like mom. And then a few seconds later. Oh, my God. Oh, God. God. And the parents of Michelle Zazzko were found shot in the head kind of execution style in their bedroom.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So the Pennsylvania state troopers went to go visit Michelle Zazko in Vermont, and she's like, I haven't been to Pennsylvania in almost 20 years or more than 20 years. And I haven't talked to my parents in a year. So it's not me. I don't know who killed them. And in fact, she showed up to a graveside service couple weeks later and I believe was the sole beneficiary maybe of her parents estate. While she was there for the service, she was accompanied by Daniel Blank. And I guess they had drawn some attention at the hotel because they were both wearing black, and one of them was said to have been carrying a gun around the hotel grounds. So the hotel called the police, and the police started surveilling them. And after a very short time, they went into Michelle Zazzko's hotel room and searched it. And I think they searched her car. Found something like $40,000 in cash. And they were like, we're just going to take you down to jail. So all this stuff is kind of mounting. We still think you might have killed your parents. We're going to take you in for questioning. And she said something to the hotel person that was there, said, can you contact Daniel Blank, he's in another room here. And tell him what's going on. And the police were like, I think we'd like to talk to him too. Went and got a warrant. And then they went to Daniel Blank's room shortly after that.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right, they detained him. They did not. Were not able to keep them for very long. They were released pretty quickly. But we should mention too, in addition to that 40 grand in cash, they also found several prepaid cell phones, which is a bit of a potential red flag as well, in Michelle Zasko's car. And while they were arresting Blank, there was someone else in the room. They were lying on the floor, they wouldn't move, they wouldn't speak. And that was. Drumroll Ziz. So ZYZ is getting around at this point. Police arrested Zyz on obstruction of justice, disorderly conduct, I guess, just for not, you know, complying, I guess, and getting off the floor and stuff like that. It was a misdemeanor charge. But they did hold her in jail for five months instead of, or I guess in lieu of a $500,000 bail, which Ziz could not afford, obviously. And the judge said, all right, we're gonna release you. You gotta promise to pay ten grand if you miss court. She did return to court for that August hearing in a wheelchair, pushed by her mom. But when the trial date came up of December of 2023, she did not show up. So I think that's probably a great place for our second break. Cause the story is really heating up.

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[Chuck Bryant]

50 years after Jaws scared an entire.

[Dexter Thomas]

Generation out of the water, I look.

[Josh Clark]

Down, there is this great big head.

[Dexter Thomas]

These big white teeth.

[Chuck Bryant]

Radiolab is pulling you back in. There's just like so much fear building of what's gonna come out of that blue. Listen to Swimming with Shadows, a Radiolab week of sharks.

[Josh Clark]

Anything you dig down on is fascinating.

[Chuck Bryant]

These creatures. Wherever you get podcasts.

[Emma Baranian]

Are there any pictures of you online? I'm not just talking about Google. I'm talking anywhere.

[Dexter Thomas]

Clearview scrapes together images From Facebook, from LinkedIn, from Venmo account.

[Emma Baranian]

That database is now being used by police departments all across the country to match criminal suspect photos. And sometimes it makes mistakes.

[Dexter Thomas]

So in this one case, two of their search results that I think were in the top 10 of the search results were Michael Jordan, just a picture of Michael Jordan.

[Emma Baranian]

But cops are still using it to make arrests.

[Dexter Thomas]

Police, they are trusting this software to lead them to the right suspect. But you're not even being told that it was used, let alone guess, given any of the details about how it works.

[Emma Baranian]

This is not Minority Report. This is happening right now. People are getting arrested and doing actual time in jail after being picked out by a computer. I'm Dexter Thomas, host of Kill Switch, where every Wednesday we explain the right now of living in the future. You can turn off the computer, but do not let the computer turn you off. Listen to Kill switch in the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Chuck Bryant]

Stop, you, you, you know. Stop, stop, you should know, know. Stop, you, you, you know. All right, so now we're gonna find ourselves partially in North Carolina and back in Viejo and also back in Vermont. And we're gonna introduce what, I guess three more people. Olivia Bakholt, Maximilian Snyder, and Milo Youngbloot.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So Ophelia Bockholt was German by birth, and she was described as naive, altruistic, and trusting by friends. She fell into Ziza's orbit, I think, by starting out reading her blog. She was trans, she was a math genius, and she was really, really interested in effective altruism. I think she made a couple hundred grand a year as a quant trader in New York and donated all but 10% of it to effective altruism causes. So she was very dedicated to this. But something about Ziz's philosophy grabbed her, and she ended up leaving New York one day, cutting off all contact with everyone else in her former life and moving to North Carolina and essentially starting a new life in this orbit of Ziz.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So Maximilian Snyder was a data scientist, another super, super smart person. And Milo Yungblut went to an elite private school in Seattle with Maximilian Snyder. And they got together later on after that. And In May of 2024, Youngblood's parents said they're missing. I don't know where they went. They and Snyder applied for a marriage license together in November of 2024, which is November 5th, specifically, which is Guy Fawkes Night. And apparently they all got attracted to the Zizians just through online. They never met Ziz. They never met Gwen Danielson. They never met any of the other Rationalist Fleet Zizians at all in person.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. That seems to be contested, from what I can tell, Chuck, that there's. It's possible that there's evidence that they did meet them, but I don't know who said what or why, but that's. Yeah, that's a contested issue. So In January of 2025, Yungblut, Bockholt, they're in Vermont. They're a short distance away from Michelle Zazko's house. So shortly after the move, where everybody was in Chapel Hill, Youngblood and Bockholt traveled to Vermont and they stayed. They checked into a hotel that was not too far from Michelle Zazko's house. And I thought initially that they were there to kill Michelle Zazko, but I found that they had made contact with her enough that the police think that she bought them some guns or gave them some guns that she bought. I'm not exactly sure what they were doing in Vermont, but they were. Eventually they fell under the radar of the Border Patrol, who pulled them over near the Canadian border. And when that happened, they were pulled over. At the very least, Youngblood allegedly got out and just opened fire on the Border Patrol agents.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, the Border Patrol said that Backhold attempted to draw a gun. They fired back. It's basically a firefight at this point. And Backhold and a Border Patrol agent named David Malland were both killed. Youngbloot was injured, arrested, obviously on assault charges. Police found hollow point ammunition in their car. Found those burner phones wrapped in foil. They found full face respirator mask. They found a night vision monocular. So it's sort of the mayhem starter kit in the car.

[Josh Clark]

Sure sounds like it for sure. So, yeah, again, I'm not sure what they were doing in traveling from North Carolina to Vermont, but this was. This was a big deal. And they killed a Border Patrol agent. Especially when a pair of trans people dressed in all black just opened fire on a Border Patrol agent. It made national news. And this is when people started to connect the dots. Not only did you have the attack of Curtis Lind a couple years later, as everybody's starting to go to trial, Surrey Dow and Alex Letham are moving toward trial. Curtis Lind is a star witness, I guess, allegedly to shut him up. Maximilian Schneider shows up in Vallejo and murdered Curtis Lynn before he could testify.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And this was just three days before this shootout in Vermont. So it's all really coming to a head very quickly and almost real time to where we are today. So on February 16th of this year, three people dressed in all black driving a couple of white box trucks. All of a sudden, we're in Maryland. They went to Maryland to a property owner and said, hey, can we camp out here for a month? He did not take kindly to that. So he called the cops. And it turns out that was Daniel Blank, Ziz and Michelle Zazzko. And they arrested them initially on trespassing charges, but they found a bunch of guns in the trucks and said, oh, wait, these are the three people. Like you said, they started really connecting the dots at this point in February.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And I couldn't find out what Michelle Zazko or Daniel Blankro wanted for, but ZYZ was wanted for jumping bail for that court case in Pennsylvania.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, they're arrested for trespassing.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, but I don't know what they were wanted for already, is what I'm saying. So that was February, as of May, late May, last month, couple weeks ago. Couple days ago, even you could say Ziz, Michelle Zazko and Daniel Blank are all in jail in Maryland for trespassing. Latham Dow and Snyder are all in jail in California for the attack on Curtis Lynd and then the murder of Curtis Lind. And then youngbloot is in Vermont for allegedly trying to draw a gun on the Border Patrol agents during a firefight where a Border Patrol agent was killed. So the Zizians are still around. Essentially. They still will say, we're not a cult, not even called Zizians. But now there's more and more journalists who are starting to dig into it and putting together deeper and deeper profiles of this group and what was going on. But like you said, this is real time and this is. There's no resolution to this. This is where it stops. Because this is as far as it's gotten so far.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, they're still writing. Apparently, Daniel Schneider, in jail, is writing stuff to the rationalist group, saying, hey, like, you still need to focus on animal rights. And Michelle Zazzko is writing. She wrote a open letter to the world that's in quotes dated March 9th of this year. And where she was like, hey, I didn't kill my parents. Ziz hasn't done anything wrong. A lot of these people, like, I don't even know those other people. I'm not with Maximilian Schneider. Like, I've never met these people. They're not. Zizians aren't a group, like Josh said. Well, she didn't say like Josh said. That'd be kind of fun, though. But they're not even associated with us as a group, that we don't refer to ourselves as Izzians.

[Josh Clark]

Right. So Alice Munday and Gwen Danielson are thought to be alive still. Alice Munday, I saw, is thought to be in hiding, that she's very scared of Ziz and the Zizians, especially now and then there's other people. There's people in the Rationalist community who were willing to speak to journalists about this, but not. Not, like, anonymously, because they're scared of the zines, too. So it's still a thing, even though Ziz is in jail. And it's just a question of where it goes from here. But just to kind of wrap everything up, we'll go back to Half Moon Bay, where the Caleb was docked in the Berkeley Marina. And since the Zissians abandoned it, it has sunk in the marina, half sunk, and is a nuisance that you have to get around now.

[Chuck Bryant]

Poor Caleb.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Caleb's like, what did I ever do? Yeah, I just wanted to help people. I'm a born tugboat.

[Chuck Bryant]

I know.

[Josh Clark]

If you want to know more about this stuff, go look it up. There's a lot of stuff to read. And just keep an eye on the news. We definitely will be, too. And since I said that, I think it's time for listener mail. Chuck.

[Chuck Bryant]

This is from James. Hey, guys. I'm fascinated that terms we take for granted often come from slurs meant to suppress, and in some cases, similar slurs. I love knowing that pagan came from a word that, as Chuck puts it, means bumpkin. It was meant to belittle and diminish, and now it covers a huge chunk of the faith pie. I was reminded of the word jaywalking. I feel like we've talked about this in something. Maybe the origins of jaywalking. Maybe. Maybe as cars became a thing and started driving with some velocity in the places where people were used to walking, Big car had to make sure they weren't the bad guy. They had to rewrite convention and get people, pedestrians specifically off the road. So what did they do? Slurs obviously. If I remember correctly, J like Paganis meant an uneducated country folk too stupid not to walk in the road like a dingus. This word must have worked because now it is a legal term to describe the act of crossing a street at a non crosswalk. Big car won. Constantine won. Thanks for the potting guys and for filling my brain with stuff that is James.

[Josh Clark]

Thanks a lot James. That's a good one. And I think you jogged my memory to an episode about like how cars became the dominant mode of transportation in.

[Chuck Bryant]

The U.S. sounds like that might have been the one.

[Josh Clark]

I think that was. That was a good one. That was a sleeper episode.

[Chuck Bryant]

Agreed.

[Josh Clark]

If you want to be like James and send us an interesting email that we may or may not read on the air, but we'd still like to receive anyway, you can send it off to stuffpodcastheartradio.com.

[Chuck Bryant]

Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[Nora McInerney]

At Energy Trust of Oregon, we understand that energy isn't just what happens when you flip a switch. It's what happens afterwards. It's a home that can provide both shelter and peace of mind. It's a business that can run more efficiently and keep their dream alive. And it's communities that can thrive today in the flourish tomorrow. That's energy. And that's why we partner with local utility companies to help you save energy and lower costs. For cash incentives and resources that can help power your life, visit energytrust.org OpenAI.

[Chuck Bryant]

Is a financial abomination, a thing that should not be an aberration, a symbol of rot at the heart of Silicon Valley. And I'm going to tell you why on my show, Better Offline, the rudest show in the tech industry where we're breaking the down. Why OpenAI, along with other AI companies, are dead set on lying to your boss that they can take your job. I'm also going to be talking with the greatest minds in the industry about all the other ways the rich and powerful are ruining the computer. Listen to Better offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts. Wherever you happen to get your podcasts.

[Emma Baranian]

Are there any pictures of you online? Then you could already be in a massive police database without even knowing it.

[Dexter Thomas]

Clearview scrapes together images from Facebook, from LinkedIn, from Venmo accounts.

[Emma Baranian]

I'm Dexter Thomas, host of Kill Switch, a podcast about how living in the future is affecting us right now.

[Dexter Thomas]

Police, they are trusting the software with this magical ability to lead them to the right suspect.

[Emma Baranian]

In this episode, we dive into how cops are using AI and facial recognition and sometimes getting it wrong and putting innocent people behind bars.

[Dexter Thomas]

So if your accuser is this algorithm, but you're not even being told that it was used, let alone given any of the details about how it works.

[Emma Baranian]

Listen to Kill Switch on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Chuck Bryant]

This is an iHeart podcast.