Chapter 1: Origin Story

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