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Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Behind the Bastards

Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts

History, News, Society & Culture

4.4 • 17K Ratings

🗓️ 11 March 2025

⏱️ 85 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Earlier this year a Border Patrol officer was killed in a shoot-out with people who have been described as members of a trans vegan AI death cult. But who are the Zizians, really? Robert sits down with David Gborie to trace their development, from part of the Bay Area Rationalist subculture to killers.

(4 Part series)

Sources: 

  1. https://medium.com/@sefashapiro/a-community-warning-about-ziz-76c100180509
  2. https://web.archive.org/web/20230201130318/https://sinceriously.fyi/rationalist-fleet/
  3. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/infohazard
  4. https://web.archive.org/web/20230201130316/https://sinceriously.fyi/net-negative/
  5. Wayback Machine
  6. The Zizians
  7. Spectral Sight
  8. True Hero Contract
  9. Schelling Orders – Sinceriously
  10. Glossary – Sinceriously
  11.  https://web.archive.org/web/20230201130330/https://sinceriously.fyi/my-journey-to-the-dark-side/
  12. https://web.archive.org/web/20230201130302/https://sinceriously.fyi/glossary/#zentraidon
  13. https://web.archive.org/web/20230201130259/https://sinceriously.fyi/vampires-and-more-undeath/
  14. https://web.archive.org/web/20230201130316/https://sinceriously.fyi/net-negative/
  15. https://web.archive.org/web/20230201130318/https://sinceriously.fyi/rationalist-fleet/
  16. https://x.com/orellanin?s=21&t=F-n6cTZFsKgvr1yQ7oHXRg
  17. https://zizians.info/
  18. according to The Boston Globe
  19. Inside the ‘Zizians’: How a cultish crew of radical vegans became linked to killings across the United States | The Independent
  20. Silicon Valley ‘Rationalists’ Linked to 6 Deaths
  21. The Delirious, Violent, Impossible True Story of the Zizians | WIRED
  22. Good Group and Pasek’s Doom – Sinceriously
  23. Glossary – Sinceriously
  24. Mana – Sinceriously
  25. Effective Altruism’s Problems Go Beyond Sam Bankman-Fried - Bloomberg
  26. The Zizian Facts - Google Docs
  27. Several free CFAR summer programs on rationality and AI safety - LessWrong 2.0 viewer
  28. This guy thinks killing video game characters is immoral | Vox
  29. Inadequate Equilibria: Where and How Civilizations Get Stuck
  30. Eliezer Yudkowsky comments on On Terminal Goals and Virtue Ethics - LessWrong 2.0 viewer                                                                                                   
  31. Effective Altruism’s Problems Go Beyond Sam Bankman-Fried - Bloomberg
  32. SquirrelInHell: Happiness Is a Chore
  33. PLUM OF DISCORD — I Became a Full-time Internet Pest and May Not...
  34. Roko Harassment of PlumOfDiscord Composited – Sinceriously
  35. Intersex Brains And Conceptual Warfare – Sinceriously
  36. Infohazardous Glossary – Sinceriously
  37. SquirrelInHell-Decision-Theory-and-Suicide.pdf - Google Drive
  38. The Matrix is a System – Sinceriously
  39. A community alert about Ziz. Police investigations, violence, and… | by SefaShapiro | Medium
  40. Intersex Brains And Conceptual Warfare – Sinceriously
  41. A community alert about Ziz. Police investigations, violence, and… | by SefaShapiro | Medium
  42. PLUM OF DISCORD (Posts tagged cw-abuse)
  43. Timeline: Violence surrounding the Zizians leading to Border Patrol agent shooting

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Callsor Media

0:02.8

Welcome back to Behind the Bastards.

0:09.9

That's how this podcast would open if I was a game show host.

0:14.5

But I'm not.

0:15.6

Instead of my guy who spent...

0:17.0

You would be good at it, though.

0:18.6

I don't think I would be, Sophie.

0:20.7

I do. But I think... But I'm like bias because I think you'd be good at most things.

0:25.3

No, my only marketable skill is spending 30 hours reading the deranged writings of a quasi-cult leader who was somewhat involved in the murders of multiple people very recently,

0:39.5

largely because she read a piece of Harry Potter fan fiction at the wrong time.

0:44.2

Oh, yes.

0:46.8

We have a fun one for you this week, and by a fun one,

0:51.6

we have a not at all fun one for you this week.

0:54.7

And to have just a terrible time with me, we are bringing on a guest, the great David Boree, co-host of My Mama Told Me with our friend of the pod, Langston Kerman.

1:08.3

David, how you doing?

1:10.0

Oh, man, I cannot complain. How are you doing? Oh, man, I can not complain. How are you doing?

1:12.1

There's nothing going on in the world. Everything's fun. Oh, yeah. No, I got up today and read that

1:19.5

great new article by Francis Fukuyama. History is still stopped, so everything's good.

1:25.3

We're done. I haven't looked at any news yet purposefully, so I'm, you know, it could be awesome.

1:31.8

It could be going great out there.

1:33.2

It's great.

1:34.1

The whole Trump administration got together and said, psych, it was all a bit.

...

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