Stepping Into the Breach

Independent journalist Andy Ngo joins Jamie Reed, and Cori Cohn to discuss his new book, The Zizians: Inside a Trans Death Cult (Center Street, October 13, 2026). Ngo traces how Jack LaSota, known as “Ziz,” went from a promising engineering career to the Bay Area rationalist scene, and built a group blending rationalism, radical veganism, and trans grievance politics that is now linked to at least eight deaths. We talk about the cult’s recruitment, the families left behind, why Ngo uses legal names and sex-based pronouns throughout, and why no Zizian in custody has yet been convicted. Get the book: Hardcover, ebook, and audiobook here. Follow Andy: Ngo Comment on Substack here. Informed Dissent is produced by the LGB Courage Coalition, a registered US nonprofit fully funded by small donations.

On September 23, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on protecting women’s sports. Former Stanford goalkeeper and professional soccer player Carly Smolak testified alongside Kim Jones of ICONS and attorney William Bock. When it came time for questions, not a single Democratic senator stayed in the room to ask her anything. We think her story deserves to be heard in full. This episode opens with Carly’s testimony, then turns to a conversation with Jamie Reed and Cori Cohn. Carly won four national championships in Australian rules football as a player and coach. In 2023, a man joined her former women’s team. He turned out to be a registered sex offender convicted of abusing multiple children. The club quietly removed him without ever telling the women he had shared hotel rooms with, and the national governing body said there was nothing it could do.

In this episode, Jamie Reed and Cori Cohn sit down with Mia Hughes to discuss REPATH, Genspect’s new campaign to restore a psychological approach to gender distress. The REPATH campaign can be found here. In 2022, WPATH’s Standards of Care 8 finished a long shift in how gender distress is understood. It used to be treated as a psychological symptom to explore. Now it’s treated as an identity to affirm. Mia explains what “re-psychopathologization” means and what it doesn’t mean. REPATH isn’t about gender nonconforming people, who are not disordered. It’s about the drive toward hormonal and surgical body modification, and whether that drive should be assessed with real care, differential diagnosis, and psychological safeguards.

Killed by the In-Laws, Meta’s Body Dysmorphia Reckoning, The Last Ditch This week Jamie Reed and Lauren Leggieri take on two stories that you want more details on. Segment 1: The killing of Jonathan McKinseyJonathan McKinsey, 40, director of engineering for New York Times Games, was shot dead on September 26 in a Dublin, California, park parking lot. Her in-laws, both 77, are charged with murder with a lying-in-wait special circumstance. Behind it was a bitter custody fight, with dueling restraining orders and abuse allegations on both sides. We also dig into McKinsey’s backstory: a female transition in 2010, before the youth gender boom, and a 2011 Texas marriage. Segment 2: Meta’s settlement and the body dysmorphia verdictMeta settled with a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general from nearly every state. The deal is $17.1 billion, about $18 billion counting Texas’s separate agreement. It comes with new defaults for teens: a two-hour daily cap, a nighttime block, and a ban on cosmetic-surgery filters. We walk through the California jury verdict that found Instagram and YouTube contributed to a young woman’s body dysmorphia. We explain why parents’ Facebook feeds are full of law firm ads, and what families of trans-identified teens with co-occurring depression, eating disorders, or self-harm should know before calling one. And we ask the obvious question: if platforms can drive teen distress about the body, why is distress about sex characteristics off-limits? Thanks for listening to Informed Dissent! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Simon LeVay is a British-born neuroscientist who has served on the faculties of Harvard Medical School and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. He achieved international fame with a 1991 Science paper that reported on a difference in the structure of the hypothalamus between gay and straight men, a study that helped trigger an avalanche of new biological research into sexual orientation. Since retiring from laboratory science, LeVay has authored or co-authored 12 books, including Gay, Straight, and the Reason Why, the textbook Discovering Human Sexuality, and the historical novel The Donation of Constantine. His earlier books include The Sexual Brain and Queer Science: The Use and Abuse of Research Into Homosexuality (MIT Press, 1996). He has appeared on numerous TV and radio shows, including The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. April 13 Provost’s Lecture with Simon LeVay - SBU News +3 Referenced in this episode * Simon LeVay, Gay, Straight, and the Reason Why: The Science of Sexual Orientation (2011) * Simon LeVay, The Sexual Brain (1993) * “Gay scientist draws criticism over remarks on trans kids,” Bay Area Reporter (2016): https://www.ebar.com/story/246901/redirect