Julian Dorey Podcast - #231 - Ex-Scientologist on Grant Cardone’s Cult Investments & Danny Masterson | Aaron Smith-Levin

Episode Date: August 27, 2024

Thank you to our Sponsors: ZBiotics: https://zbiotics.com/JULIAN Manscaped: https://manscaped.com (Use Code "DOREY" at Checkout for 20% off) (***TIMESTAMPS in description below) ~ Aaron Smith-Levin is a former Scientologist, Vice President of the Aftermath Foundation, and host of the Growing Up In Scientology YouTube channel. AARON’S LINKS: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GrowingUpInScientology Twitter: https://x.com/GrowingupinSCN?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor EPISODE LINKS: - Julian Dorey PODCAST MERCH: https://juliandorey.myshopify.com/ - Support our Show on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/JulianDorey - Join our DISCORD: https://discord.gg/Ajqn5sN6 JULIAN YT CHANNELS: - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Clips YT: https://www.youtube.com/@juliandoreyclips - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Daily YT: https://www.youtube.com/@JulianDoreyDaily - SUBSCRIBE to Best of JDP: https://www.youtube.com/@bestofJDP ***TIMESTAMPS*** 00:00 - Aaron Smith Levin becoming Scientologist (Story), What Working for Scientology is like 08:03 - Becoming Full-Time Scientologist & Moving to Florida, Becoming Scientology Auditor (E-Meter) 21:01 - Returning to Philly & Working at Building, Why Aaron’s Mom Joined 32:41 - Grant Cardone’s REAL Scientology Journey, Reacting to Grant Cardone’s Newest Scientology Statement 42:25 - Scientology at Lowest vs Highest Levels, Human Trafficking Cult Exposed, What is the Sea Org 59:51 - Scientology’s View on Christianity, L. Ron Hubbard’s Bizarre Personality 01:09:23 - Scientology’s Big Promise (Avoid Prison Planet), Aaron’s Mom Scientology Faith Today 01:12:47 - Moving to Hollywood & then Joining Sea Org, Meeting Wife & Having Family 01:33:07 - Finding the Deepest Secret of Scientology, Leaving Scientology (Emotional) ‘Disconnection’ Policy 01:50:01 - Destroying People’s Lives, David Miscavige's Becoming Leader 02:02:30 - Post-1967 Scientology, Scientology Politicians and Angle, Fake Mega Pastors 02:11:51 - Scientology on Tax Exemption Status, Finding Job After Leaving, Helping People Out 02:28:03 - What Happened to Aaron’s Family, Tom Cruise’s Messy Family & Value 02:40:21 - Danny Masterson Trial 02:51:17 - Why did Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher Defended Danny Masterson & Psychological Breakdown 02:56:27 - True Story of Shelly Miscavige 03:08:07 - Future of Scientology & Finding Aaron CREDITS: - Hosted & Produced by Julian D. Dorey - Intro Editor & Producer: Alessi Allaman: https://www.instagram.com/allaman.docyou/ ~ Get $150 Off The Eight Sleep Pod Pro Mattress / Mattress Cover (USING CODE: “JULIAN DOREY”): https://eight-sleep.ioym.net/trendifier Julian's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey ~ Music via Artlist.io ~ Julian Dorey Podcast Episode 231 - Aaron Smith-Levin Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I don't know if you've seen my other chats, but it's hard to talk about this part of the story without getting emotional. How it went down for me was my mom was the first one to sort of like leave Scientology. But she didn't want to get kicked out of Scientology. She just wanted to sort of fix what was wrong with it. And she eventually got officially kicked out for just running her mouth negatively about David Miscavige to people she should not have been doing that to, right? Now in Scientology, when someone gets kicked out, you have to completely sever all ties with them, right? So that's called disconnection. I know I said my mom and I don't have a great relationship right now, but we were very, very close.

So realize at this point, it's me and my wife. My wife's parents have been in Scientology forever. My wife's two sisters and brother are in Scientology. Their spouses are in Scientology. All their kids are in Scientology. My little brother's in Scientology. Scientology's everywhere. I work for a Scientologist. I work for a Scientologist.

She works for a Scientologist, all that kind of stuff. So Scientology tells me that me and my wife and my kids have to disconnect from my mom completely or we're going to get kicked out. Hey guys, if you're not following me on Spotify, please take a second to hit that button and leave a five-star review. It is a huge, huge help to the show. You can also follow me on Instagram and on X by using the links in my description. Thank you. Hey, Ron, what's going on, my man? How you doing? I'm good. I'm good. Thank you so much for being here. My pleasure. It's actually a long time coming because not only do we have friends in common, who shows have you've been on danny jones matt cox and then you also got on lex friedman who's not a friend of mine but he's got an enormous show really does

a great job but you are also an extremely requested guest on this show i've done two podcasts on scientology with mark bunker and tony ortega and every time people are like you gotta get a run in like i know know. I think it's time. But if you don't mind today, there's plenty of people listening who have not had a chance to hear you on other podcasts, haven't seen your channel growing up in Scientology, which link will be in description below. So for those who are unfamiliar with your background, obviously you were kind of born into Scientology. But would you mind just telling the story from the beginning? Sure. So I was about four years old when my mom got introduced to Scientology at a young age. So my mom had us when she was like 20 years old.

So she was about 24. I was four when she got introduced to Scientology by a friend of hers who was in a similar situation, young single mom in the Philadelphia area. And so some of my earliest memories are just putting around as a young kid in the Philly org. I mean, for the viewers who may not know, the churches of Scientology are called orgs. And there aren't that many of them. There's only about 75 in the US, maybe 150 in the world. And so the one in Philly is in downtown 13th and Race. And some of my earliest memories are just putting around in the org in the nursery with kids of staff members who were just stuck in a nursery while the parents did their Scientology stuff. Scientology nursery? Yeah.

They're doing anything special in there? It's just a room where the kids are locked. You chained to the wall too? Yeah. We literally had to break out of there with a broomstick one time, bust a hole through the door and open it. Stick our little arms through and open it because they locked us in there and someone had to go to the bathroom. Oh, my God. We were just looking for a reason to break that door down. No doubt.

Kids will do as kids do. So I lived a relatively normal life until – aside from the Scientology stuff. A lot of the stories you'll hear from kids who grew up in Scientology, like they were maybe born into the C organization or something like that. They never went to school and things like that. I lived a pretty normal life until about 12 years old. Went to public school. And my mom was on staff for a large number of my childhood years, a staff member in the Philly Org.

And I was just a kid whose mom was on staff. What does that mean to say you're like on staff? So it means that working for Scientology is basically your day job. In some cases, it's your nights and weekend job. But you live in the real world. Like you don't – there's sort of three echelons of involvement in Scientology. There's public, there's staff, and there's Sea weekend job. But you live in the real world. There's sort of three echelons of involvement in Scientology. There's public, there's staff, and there's Sea Org. Public are the people who pay money to do Scientology courses or to get Scientology auditing. Staff

members work for Scientology, but their contracts are like two and a half years or five years. It's either a two and a half year contract or a five year contract. Once that contract is done, you fulfilled your obligation, all fair. You don't owe them anything. The Sea Org is where you sign the billion-year contract and you owe them forever. Convenient. You can't satisfy that contract. If you ever leave the Sea Org, you owe them money no matter how long you are in.

And they'll find you. Well, if you want to – they don't have to find you. If you want to keep being a Scientologist, you've got to pay that money. You don't get to do any more Scientology. So they'll banish you. Oh, yeah. I mean the debt is not legally collectible. It's called a freeloader debt.

But it's a Scientology debt. If you want to do more Scientology, you have to pay the debt first, period. Yeah. So that's what I said. My mom was a staff member. Yeah, so she was one of these people who were working for Scientology basically as your day job. But you still live in the real world. You've still got rent or a mortgage.

You've got car payments. You've got to buy your own groceries. You've got to survive. You've got to support yourself. And so, yeah. So pretty normal childhood. Went to public school, played baseball, played football, all that kind of stuff. Do you remember a moment where you realized your mom was like in a religion so to speak?

I mean obviously you're going there all the time. But did you ever get the concept when you're like 10 like, oh shit, this is like her church. Like this is what she believes in the higher powers of? So even as a kid, I knew that calling it a church was just sort of a wink-wink kind of thing, like, yeah, we call it a church because we got to call it a church. But we don't, we're not like, we're not churchy. Like, it was embarrassing to have to call ourselves a church. And it was also embarrassing to have to explain that my mom worked at the Dianetics Center

or the Church of Scientology or whatever the hell you wanted to call it. I have a very vivid memory of being in third grade. All the kids are sitting on the floor. For some reason, we're going around a circle telling what our parents do for a living. I'm like, you could never get away with that these days in school. Like, what? And I remember thinking, please, I hope the bell rings before it gets to me. I do not know what I'm going to say or how I'm going to explain this.

I remember feeling embarrassed and humiliated at having to explain what it is that my mom did at the U.H. That's so fascinating. At like nine years old, you have that feeling. Yeah, eight or nine. I started school a little early, so it might have been me. And it was embarrassing. But you live in like two separate worlds because it's not like I was embarrassed when I was in the Scientology world. It's not like, oh, I'm so embarrassed to be here.

No. I was just embarrassed to have to explain it or acknowledge it to the outside world. That actually continued to be true throughout all of my involvement in Scientology. And yet you would stay – end up staying committed. That's so fascinating. Oh, yeah. I've got some crazy anecdotes to illustrate that later. We'll get to it, I'm sure. I'll remember. So then something happened. Me being a – so I

was born in 80. Remember that Scientology got its tax exemption back in 1993. I say remember like you – you probably already know these dates because you've – I know you've done a lot of – I know what you mean. Yeah, yeah. So Scientology gets its IRS tax exemption back in 1993. So that coincides with me being about 12 or 13. When that exemption happened, when they got the exemption back, David Miscavige instituted a whole new program for Scientology where he issued an amnesty for anyone who had ever gotten in bad standing with Scientology. If they wanted to come back, all they had to do was come back, admit they did some stuff, and they'd be welcomed back. And it coincided with a recruitment drive where every org in the world had to hire 20 people to go into full-time training to be Scientology auditors. Approximately how big was Scientology at this time?

How many members would you say it had? Maybe by 1993, and I'm just ballparking it because the peak was in the late 80s at about 100,000. And it's been going steadily down since then. So maybe by 93, you're talking about, let's just say maybe 75 to 80,000. Okay. Total ballpark.

Yeah. But within reason. Okay. My mom had always, there was a period here where she was on staff, but then she left staff because there was too many kids to take care of between me and my brother, my little brother, my stepbrother, my stepsister, all this kind of stuff. Oh, you had a big family. And she's like, I've been trying to figure out how I can join staff again. But now I know how I can do it.

We'll get all the kids to join as well. Oh, my god. So the last year of schooling I ever did was the sixth grade. That was it. Okay. Because now you're schooled by Scientology. Yeah. So she took us out of school.

For seventh grade, we did homeschool during the day and early afternoon, and then we would go into the org. And we did that. We did that until we could finish enough courses to qualify to be sent down to Clearwater, Florida, what they call FLAG, to go to FLAG for full-time training. And okay, so that's how I transitioned from being a normal kid going to school to now really entering the Scientology world for real. So are you like out of – because you mentioned like you were playing on the baseball team and stuff. Was that town-affiliated or school-affiliated? Did that stop when you started doing this, that kind of thing? Completely stopped.

Yeah. So you're just away from kids. You're on an island kind of. Well, I mean in Clearwater, Florida, there was actually a lot of kids. But Scientology-related, right? Oh, yeah. Once we did that year of homeschool, yeah. Aside from playing roller hockey with the kids in the neighborhood.

Whoa. But no more – didn't do baseball that year, didn't do football that year. I mean still had friends, but it was like gradually declining. Did you – I mean how did that make you feel that like you had to turn your life off? Like that's – those are prime ages. That's like when you're supposed to start having like the most fun. I know. I know.

I remember – you'd be surprised. I remember actually getting really excited about how – because remember, the parents now have to convince the kids that what they're about to do is like super exciting, super important. We're lucky and privileged to be doing it. And I remember several moments where I really bought in and actually really got excited at the idea. How did that happen? Like what was one of those times? One of those times is when we were in the org, in the course room, having to study these damn courses and look up the definitions of the words in all the dictionaries.

And in a funny way, just something happened where it dawned on me. Wait a second. Every time I look up the definition in one of these words, I'm actually getting smarter. So this isn't a chore. This is actually kind of cool. Because up until then, it was like just a chore. Oh, my God, I can't believe we have to do this. Oh, my God. And I was like, hold on a second. I'm getting some out of this. Yeah. And I was like, I don't know. I just, I very vividly remember this moment. And there wasn't even anything special about what I was doing at that time. It was just one of the moments where it clicked.

And I remember when we did finally get word that we had received approval to go down to Clearwater. I was actually in the middle of playing roller hockey. And somehow we had just found out, you know, like street hockey. Yeah, yeah. And I remember I was actually super excited. I literally dropped left in the middle of the game. See you fuckers, I'm out. That's exactly what it was like.

There wasn't anything like, oh, I remember. There wasn't even a little bit of, oh, I really regret that I'm not going to. I have no idea when I'm going to see you guys again. It was almost like, yeah, you guys are kind of shit friends anyway. I'm out. That's crazy, though, because something had to you know you you're at least around it since you're four so something psychologically it's like that's it's like boiling a frog in water slowly and eventually you're just kind you don't even realize it but you're there and you're like all in on this that's really fascinating it is i mean imagine you're being told that you're going to go into full-time training to

be a professional Scientology auditor, and we don't even know what auditing means. Yeah. Well, also imagine thinking that that's your recruitment pool. That's who Scientology is recruiting to be their professional auditors is 13-year-olds who have no idea what it is. Tell everyone everything that's wrong with them. That's it. You're qualified. Oh, my God.

And if that was true back then, it's even more true now because Scientology is much smaller now than it was back then. Not to cut you off, but for people who aren't familiar with Scientology and are hearing stuff for the first time, can you just briefly explain what auditing is? It's essentially – it's Scientology's version of one-on-one counseling. It's talk therapy except Scientologists would spit on you if you said the word therapy because they're against any form of mental health therapy, psychiatry, psychology. You're acting glib. Yeah, you're glib. You're glib, man. You're glib. You're glib, man. You're glib.

You're glib. Do you even know what Ritalin is, man? Yeah. So they're getting 13-year-old you to go do this. That's right. And so it's talk therapy, but you're like, okay, so therapy, what do you talk about? What do you talk about? L. Ron Hubbard's got all sorts of subjects and forms.

Like L. Ron Hubbard tells you what you're going to talk about. Your auditor tells you what you're going to talk about. You don't go into an auditing session and it's like, so tell me what's bothering you lately. That's not what an auditing session is like. But it is one-on-one, private, locked room. It's no interference, no interruptions. You have to be able to focus and concentrate. And it's just Scient no inner no interference no interruptions like it's you have to be able to focus and concentrate and it's just scientology's version of talk therapy l run hubbard's version

of talk therapy counseling if you will so you're getting trained for this at like 13 yeah whoa yeah your balls haven't even dropped or in the process yeah In the vicinity. Yeah. Yeah, there was something else I was going to say there. I just lost it. But at this time, it was me. It was my twin brother. It was my stepbrother. It was my stepsister.

It was my mom's two kids that were also our age. So between my mom, my stepdad, her friend, her friend's husband, me, my brother, stepbrother, stepsister, and her friend's two kids. Philly got 10 staff members. Bro, they hit the jackpot with you guys. That's right. They got you rolling in deep to clear water. Yeah.

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I might have already turned 13 by the time I got down there. And I was down there for about three years full time. Full time. Full time. And that's no more homeschool, by the way. Homeschool was over. So you're not even getting any kind of education. You're just learning how to audit.

Doing courses that are essentially the prerequisites for doing the courses where you learn how to audit. What does that look like when you say like the courses? I mean we hear about the courses they try to have you fill out to try out for Scientology. But like once you're in and you're trained to be the auditor, like what does that even look like? Are you going into a classroom setting to do that? A course room, a big giant course room. Everyone pretty much does their own self-study programs.

Like in Scientology course room, everyone can be doing different courses, but they're all studying in the same space because they're basically doing self-study. There's no teacher. So it feels educational. Oh, it feels very educational. You're studying. So like one of the first major courses is called The Student Hat. It's basically just studying everything L. Ron Hubbard ever said about how you're supposed to study in Scientology.

Oh, boy. And then there's something called the Method One Co-Audit Course, the Method One Word Clearing Co-Audit Course. And that's just a specialized – to even explain it, I won't even try to explain it, but it's a specialized kind of rigorous, intense procedure of looking up the definitions of words that you can remember from this lifetime and earlier in this lifetime that maybe have bogged you down on certain subjects. And then there's a course, for example, called the professional training routines course. And that's where you start doing the communication drills that auditors do. And that's where you hear about like people sitting across from each other and just staring at each other. I know you've probably heard some people describe some Scientology communication drills

where you just sit in chairs and stare at each other. Tony was talking about that, right? Yeah. So there's different gradients of those communication drills, and those drills are called TRs or training routines. So the course called the Pro TRs course is an example of it's on the auditor training lineup, but technically doing the Pro TRs course isn't teaching you how to audit. It's just doing you prerequisites. And then there's other courses where you start doing some staff training courses, like Scientology has these massive volumes of policies and technical

bulletins. And the red bulletins are about how to do auditing and administer courses. And the green bulletins or policy letters are about how to administer the organization. So have you ever seen pictures of these things? I don't think so. They're the fattest. You'll be able to find them. They're called the OEC volumes or the Organization Executive Course volumes or Scientology Policy volumes. I'm only mentioning those because there's like a big fat volume for each division of Scientology's organizing board. And then there's a big fat volume that's just applicable

to all staff members. But when I say it's like a thousand pages, I'm mentioning that because even though I was training to be an auditor, that's still one of the courses that I did on the training lineup. And these courses take months and months and months. Each one of the courses I just told you takes a long time. Yeah's like very very rigorous in a way if you could say that but it's very rigorous and you're studying yeah wait so it looks like this the top left the color-coded ones there oh my god that looks like the fucking greek odyssey jesus yes I'm getting flashbacks now both the technical volumes if you use

Scientology technical volumes those are those but that's a much older oh there you go the one five over from the

left on the top row yeah that's like the Christmas catalog look at it those are the red volumes how many pages are each of those

things like 500 more than 500. 800 to 1,000 pages per. And you wanted to do this? Didn't want to. We were basically... You said you were so excited to go to Clearwater. And don't get me wrong. I did not study all those red volumes.

But what happens is the auditor training course packs are basically distilled from those volumes. There is an auditor training course called the Class 6 course where you study every page of every one of those red volumes. But the auditor training courses below that level, they're basically taking sections out of those volumes, putting it into a course pack and saying, learn this. Got it. So they make it a little more digestible. They do.

And then one of the biggest courses at that time is actually just learning how to use the E-meter to the standard David Miscavige decided you were supposed to learn how to use the e-meter. That course was not taking less than a year at that time, which is insane. And for people out there on the e-meter, just a refresher for those who don't know. The e-meter is this tool that is used in Scientology auditing that is, it really just measures the electric resistance in your skin or your body. Like it's a galvanometer. Yeah.

A galvanometer or a potentiometer. These words kind of mean the same thing I think. There you go. The blue one right there is what it looked like when I was doing it. The one next to it is what it looks like now. Yeah. It looks like a weight scale took mushrooms. You know what else it looks like?

Yeah. An Easy-Bake Oven. Oh my god. I can't unsee that. Oh my god. I might refer to that as the EasyBake oven from now on. So in 1996, David Miscavige decided nobody had ever learned how to properly operate that e-meter before, and he created a new training program to make sure once and for all people finally learned how to do this thing. And that's why the course literally took not less than a year. People were not finishing this course in

less than a year. So those are some examples of the courses that I was doing in Clearwater at that time. And you said it was like three years of rigorous courses when you got down there. So what happens at the end of that? Now you're like 16 years old. 15 when I finished. So what happened at the very end of that, we were all down there to train to be auditors. But Miscavige decided that not only had nobody ever learned how to use the e-meter correctly before, nobody had ever learned how to correctly audit before. Not even under L. Ron Hubbard. They were all mistaken. Miscavige was going to fix this. So he created this whole new training program, but he needed core supervisors who knew how to properly administer this training program.

So like pretty much everyone, like at least half the people who were there at that time that were supposed to be training for auditors now switched over to becoming course supervisors for this new training program. So pretty much the last, I would say, six months I was there. Everything we thought we were there to do was thrown in the trash. And we were told, you guys are going to be core supervisors in this new training lineup on how to be a core supervisor for this new program. And then that's what me and a lot of other people did at that time. And that's how my training finished. So I didn't even end up doing the auditor training. Now, in a weird way, in Scientology, you don't have to be an auditor to train other auditors. In fact, I know it sounds ridiculous. He says it's actually better if the person doing the auditor training, supervising the auditor training is not themselves a trained auditor.

Under what logic does that make sense? Because here's the logic. It doesn't make a lot of sense, but here's the logic. Alvin Hubbard says, I'm basically the one who's supposed to teach them how to do this, not you. I'll teach them. Yeah. And they learn it from me by reading these materials. Your job is to make sure they understand all the words in the materials. So if they come to you with a question on what does this mean, what does that mean, you're not supposed to explain it to them. In fact, if you do, you can get in a lot of trouble. You're supposed to help them find what word they don't understand in the materials that's preventing them from understanding it.

So actually, now in practice, this does not work. In practice, this does not work. I can tell you from experience. Not even a little bit. I can tell you from experience, being a course supervisor before I did the auditor training, and then later in my Scientology career, I did the auditor training. Yes, it helps to be a trained auditor to know how to answer people's questions. Yeah.

But so that's why my training finished at that time and then me – pretty much new teams to run the course rooms for all the Scientology orgs fired out to all Scientology orgs in the world in like May 1996. And that was called the Golden Age of Tech. I don't know. In your conversations, has this come up at all? Yeah, yeah. I mean you're talking about in the real world like with what ended up being the tech bubble after that.

Or are you talking about in Scientology? In Scientology. That was just called the golden age of tech. Please do expand. Well, it was just called the golden age of tech. David Miscavige decided no one had ever learned how to properly apply Scientology tech before, but he figured out the answer. He figured it out. Yeah.

And then 14 years later, he did it again. Oh. He said no one's ever done it correctly. We're doing it again fresh. He's the Michael Jordan of tech. Yeah. I got you. So that was the answer to your question of like how did that training end?

What did it look like when that ended? So that ended – I was still 15 years old when I finished that training and went back to Philadelphia. My mom stayed. Oh, you went back. I went back to Philly. Did you go to school again? No. No.

From then on. No school. No school. And when I say I was working full time as a 15-year-old, I mean 8 o'clock in the morning to 10.30 at night. As a staff member in Philly. Yes. Whoa.

Living in South Jersey. Living in Washington Township. You were living in Township doing that? Yeah. I was living in Sewell. No shit. Yeah. I'm from Washington Township. You were living in Township doing that? Yeah, I was living in Sewell. I'm from right around there. Because I was so... I was not ever getting enough sleep.

Every night I would miss my bus stop. I would end up in Deptford. Oh, you were taking the bus back and forth? Yes, by myself. As a 15-year-old kid. From downtown Philly to South Jersey for years. Is that legal?

No. Not in any way is that legal. So how did they get away with this? Well, because once we moved to Clearwater, it's like no one in Pennsylvania knew we were in Florida and no one in Florida knew we were in – like authorities-wise. Like no one who would oversee – no one in the Department of Education or whatever knew where we were and no one in Florida knew where we were. It's not like – we were kids. It's not like you go and update your driver's license or something.

That's nuts. Yeah. Like the fact that it's that easy to slip through the cracks of the system and then every day you're getting on a public bus and the bus driver is never like, what the fuck is this? I didn't really look 15. I mean I'm wearing like a suit and a tie and, you know. Oh, so you were playing it up a little bit. That's kind of how it was. But on staff there, you're working these 8 to 1030 type days, long days.

Was there anything like a normal day there or was it just always different? Like what kinds of things? No, they're definitely a normal day. Pretty much every day is more or less the same. You're just running the course room that's it yeah so you have new potential members coming through yeah and they're trying to train and you're the one in charge of that that's right at 15 yeah so sometimes you're getting like a 40 year old to walk in there and you're in charge of them oh yeah you're talking doctors dentists chiropractors. But you see, you're training them on Scientology. I know, but you're 15. I know.

What the fuck do you know? Yeah. I know. That's wild that that was the system. Yeah. And so your mom stays in Clearwater and she's on staff down there? Well, no, she's still a Philadelphia staff member. Realize, oh, when I said we all went to Clearwater, we went to Clearwater just to train for the jobs that we were going to do back in the Philly

org. So, she was still, the whole time we were in Clearwater, we're technically Philly staff members. Got it. So they call us outer org trainees because we're from one of the outer orgs training in Clearwater. So she just continued to be an outer org trainee for almost another, God, I want to say six,

six years? Four or five years. So you're living alone up in Sewell. We were living with the woman who got her into Scientology. Oh, so she was still around there. Yeah. She's still a Scientologist to this day, to the best of my knowledge. Oh, my God.

Hi, Cheryl. Oof. That's tough. Yeah. And she had a son just like 20 days older than me and my brother. And he never went the staff route. He went the normal route, went to high school. I think he went to college.

He does something or other. Good for him. Yeah, so we were doing stuff that was totally different. So I come home at the end of the day having worked 15 hours and he's watching. I'm kind of just like, look at this bum watching TV. What a loser. We're out here clearing the planet this dude's just fucking off-purpose out ethics piece of shit you're never gonna find

xenu you son of a bitch wow that's i i'm trying to like imagine that but again you're you are you're groomed into it in a way oh and and fairness, like your mom was too. Like someone came and got her, tapped her on the shoulder. By the way, I didn't ask this at the beginning. Was your mom, outside of the difficulties of being a single mom at that time and everything, was there like a specific pain point besides that that made her want to explore this? I don't know if she would describe it as a pain point. We've spoken about this some. The way she describes it is she just always felt like she was looking for something, that she always felt like she was meant for something, some higher purpose meant to,

you know, something greater, and she could never quite put her finger on it or articulate what it would be. And that when she was first brought into the Scientology org, and, you know, I guess there was Scientology's bridge on the wall and someone pointed to her the state of Claire, she was like, oh, that's me. I'm Claire. And I think this later translated into her convincing herself that she was a past life Claire, which is the thing in Scientology. I'm speaking about it very derogatorily.

I know my mom would take issue with this. But it's sort of a status thing in Scientology to have been a past life member. Past life member? Yeah. Past life. Your past life. Oh, like they think you were in Scientology then. Yeah, you reincarnated. Because Scientology –

That fast? It's not that old. Oh, well, I mean when you die, you come back tomorrow. Like Scientologists believe that when you drop your body, which is what they call dying, you drop your body. Drop your body, right. I mean tomorrow you're in another body at the hospital picking up a new baby body. So Scientology has been around since – Dianetics has been around since 1950. Scientology maybe 1952.

So my mom was born in 59 so you know plenty of time to be in scientology go clear die and um there you go grow up wow that's that's some logic behind that that's right sizzle alert get ready for the ultimate cookout season with manscaped whether you're flipping burgers or cannonballing into the pool make sure your meat looks neat with the Performance Package 5.0 Ultra. You can do this by firing up your grooming routine and keeping your meat cool with Manscaped. Head to manscaped.com and use code DORY at checkout to get 20% off your order and free shipping. Now, I'm not going to lie. I used to groom my balls with the electric razor you get at CVS. But, you know, you get the rug burn. You're trying to pull around and get into nooks and crannies. Inevitably, you scratch yourself, and that's a terrible feeling.

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So you would think, why would someone want a 13-year-old to become a professional Scientology auditor and interrogate people about their deepest, darkest secrets and perversions. Because they already know all about it. Well, yeah. And they go, that's just the age of their body. That's not the age of them as a being. We're all the same age as beings. It's actually derogatory to try to say you're only this many years old. Like that would be an insult in Scientology.

So there's no aspect of maybe Scientology auditing isn't age appropriate. Age appropriate is a concept that does not exist in Scientology. Whoa. Yeah. Now your mom also, if I'm doing math right, she got in in 1984? Yeah. So she gets in before L. Ron Hubbard passes away yeah he died in 86 okay and that's when Miscavige takes over yeah I think Miscavige doesn't actually fully take over for like until 87 or 88 there's there's a because you know I know you heard about the brokers Pat Broker and

Annie Broker I I know you heard in your in your in your talk with Tony he mentioned that refresh me on that who that was uh these were the two Searig members who went off with L. Ron Hubbard for the last six years that he was in seclusion at the end of his life. Yes, yes. Yeah. So when L. Ron Hubbard dies immediately, remember, he did not select David Miscavige to take over. He didn't. So there was a power struggle for a while. So I know that wasn't your point.

Miscavige might have taken over. And by 88, I'm pretty sure he'd completed his takeover. Either way though, the – like that's an existential moment potentially for the religion because you have the founder of it now dropping his body, right? And so at least here on the earth, someone else is going to have to take over and your mom is like two years into it, something like that, when he dies. Did that give her any pause about like, oh, shit, like the guy's gone now or? Not at all. And to the best of my knowledge, you won't find a lot of people who say that was like – there wasn't some kind of an exodus because L. Ron Hubbard died. Really?

Yeah. I would have thought there would be. But the idea – but you have to understand, Scientologists don't believe that Scientology is going to allow you to keep your body alive forever. So the fact that L. Ron Hubbard's body died, not necessarily a contradiction with whatever Scientologists would expect. Because also they didn't say he died of a stroke. They didn't say he was loaded up with drugs and stuff. They said he causatively dropped his body so that he could continue his upper-level OT research.

And the upper-level OT research is is those upper levels are so powerful. Convenient. That the body actually serves as a hindrance to researching in a full OT state. Like to a Scientologist that really does believe it actually makes sense. Yeah. And you know what?

I keep it. It's fun. The shit is funny and whatever. But like, you know, of all the people who are in Scientology, it's like any other population of humans. If I pick a hundred people off the street, some of us are going to be stupid.

But as you can tell, listening to you talk like you're not a dumb guy. You're very, very smart guy. And there's a lot of people like you in Scientology who just from the psychosis of it for that subject matter, Scientology itself, it's like they can hold on sometimes for their whole lives and actually think it's real. And to the outside person,

the person that is clear out here, if you will, pun intended, right? Like we might look at it like, how the fuck could you be so stupid? But at the same time, like you look throughout human history, we are all capable of being sucked into some sort of cult-like situation. And this is kind of primarily that. Yeah. And it's also, to be fair, totally different when someone's born into one of these things. Oh, yeah. You can make a child believe anything.

Yes. You're four years old when you start thinking about this. Like the empathy I have for that is insane. And I also want to mention your girlfriend is here as well. And we are going to be doing a podcast tomorrow. And Jenna, you are David Miscavige's niece. So you were also born into it as well. I'm really looking forward to talking with you about that.

But for people seeing on camera three there, this is coming tomorrow. Yeah, we were maybe going to do a three-way chat, but figured it might be better to break it up. Yeah, I really want to dig into your story separately. I'm glad we did it this way. Yeah. But anyway, so yeah, you're basically like born into it. Like what the hell else are you? That's your compass.

Yeah, but it is wild to think of how many otherwise seemingly intelligent people actually joined this ship because they chose to. Yep. Like Grant Cardone. Yeah. Listen, you got to get out there. You got to sell the shit out of that stuff. You. Yeah. Listen, you gotta get out there, you gotta sell the shit out of that stuff, you understand me? Hey, you gotta get your money right.

That's what Scientology's gonna teach you. You gotta get your money right. You're a loser if you're not making at least $400,000. You should be embarrassed to be, you're not even a man. Oh, that was the best, when he said that. Oh my God, he has such a punchable face.

My jet burns more than $400,000 of fuel a week. Have you ever seen him with Jordan Belfort? Yes. It's glorious. I did a reaction video to that. It was one of my favorite things. Oh my god, it's glorious. Jordan's obviously a fraud, but he was a great salesman.

You can't argue that. You don't know sales at all, do you? You don't know shit about anything. You're more of a marketing guy. You're more of a marketing guy. He's like, how did you sell your fish? How did you sell your fish that you already said was going bad? You're like, you want some fish?

You know, the irony is that Grant Cardone is considered basically one of the world's number one sales trainers for the automotive industry. If you talk to anyone who's done car sales in the last 20 years, they have had to watch Grant Cardone videos as part of their sales training, and they will tell you it worked. And I go, then why does he not seem to know anything about sales? I don't get it. Why did he fail so hard in that interview with Jordan? I don't get it. It must just be like the charisma of him, because he has massive charisma. I gotta give him that, right? It almost like bleeds off into confidence and enough people that then they make a sale or something they're like oh shit that's because of grant i mean that's a natural human thing i i could get that but yeah he seemed to get pretty exposed on that but he was a guy who joined when

he was an adult right he was like 30 something he was more than 30 something 40 something yeah uh and and his twin brother, Gary. Oh, he joined with him. Yeah. Well, actually, I think Gary might have gotten Grant in. But it's funny because if you look at them side by side, you would never think that they're twins. But they are identical twins. It's just that one of them doesn't do tons of steroids.

Can we pull them up? Can we pull up Grant Cardone and his twins? Someone sent me a video last week and actually said, do you think Grant Cardone is sick? Does he have cancer? I go, no, that's his brother, Gary. That's what Grant would look like without the steroids. Gary, come over here and put this shit in my ass.

Do we got it? Oh, there it is. Oh, shit. Yeah, he does look like he's on chemo compared to him. Well, and look, those are thumbnails, so those are the best photos you're going to get. I mean, that's best. Well, that one looks okay.

Oh, look at my secret twin brother. There you go. And if you actually just pull up a recent video thumbnail of just Gary. All right, so just type in Gary Cardone. Let's try that. Take off the N, brother. Tampa Bay. Is that him right?

Yeah, yeah. You can see. Yeah, yeah. He does look a lot smaller. And look at the one right there, the Grit Daily. You can see his facial features. Yeah. It looks like his older brother. They're identical twins.

It does. Crazy. So he may have gotten Grant in. They're both Scientologists. I'm pretty sure Gary got Grant in, but you can fact check me on that. Here's what I can tell you. When Grant tells his story of how he got into Scientology, I think he told it on Vlad. He told Vlad.

Yes. He does not tell the honest story. He also doesn't tell the honest story of how he got into Scientology. I think he told it on Vlad. He told Vlad. Yes. He does not tell the honest story. He also doesn't tell the honest story of how he met his wife. He met his wife shooting a Dianetics commercial. Yeah. Like an internal commercial? Yeah, yeah. Like a Dianetics infomercial.

Like an internal thing. We gotta get that. I know. We gotta get that. I'll bring the ski mask. Let's go. And so they both – not only are they both in Scientology, but Grant is like as high level in Scientology as Tom Cruise. Really? I didn't know that. When I say high level, it depends on how you define that.

Grant Cardone is not friends with David Miscavige the way Tom Cruise is. OK. But they're both OT8. Like they've done the entire bridge that exists. That Vlad video that you mentioned, we've played some of that before. I think we had to do it off camera because Vlad has the IP there. But like his body language in that, like when Vlad – because Vlad is like so calm about any topic.

He's like, yeah, so you joined Scientology a while back and you just see Grant lean back and his arms crossing his shirt. Yep, yep. Like licking his little soul patch down there yep yep no listen it was it's been a huge help to and he's so uncomfortable talking about it so i'm like in his head maybe that's just because he gets bullied about it by people who aren't scientologists that's possible but like i'm wondering if in his head there's already like a subconscious like yeah this shit's kind of crazy but works for me so don't ruin my fucking flow i'm on a roll i'll tell you what triggers the nervousness scientologists who have done the confidential levels the ot levels where you learn about zinu

and the volcanoes and the body thetans you are not allowed to publicly acknowledge that that information is true or exists and yet you sort of look like a fool if you deny it because so many people know that it's true. That's what triggers the nervousness. If it wasn't for this weird confidentiality, like you will never hear a Scientologist who's done the OT levels acknowledge that Scientologists believe in Xenu or body thetans. That's so strange. They're not allowed. Here's how crazy the confidentiality gets. If you have two Scientologists, they're married.

They've both done all the OT levels. They are not allowed in the privacy of their own home to discuss the material of the OT levels with each other. And if they do,

and it's almost like whoever rats on the other one first will be given the lesser penalty. Oh my God. Like, it's for real. So you're not even allowed to talk about it with Scientologists.

You're not allowed to talk about it with family members or friends, even people who already know the information. So when you have someone like Grant, who's so publicly a Scientologist, and he's publicly an OT-8, and he's sitting down with a guy like Vlad, who absolutely starts asking him about Xenu, right? Grant shuts the conversation down right there. He goes, okay, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm here about my family.

I don't care about all that. I don't care about space aliens. I care about my family. I care about me. I care about getting my money right. And I'm like, yeah, he's, Grant is the master of controlling a conversation. That is one thing.

He's excellent at it. Yes, I would agree with that. And the point, but that's where the nervousness kicks in. He's not allowed to even be on a platform where Xenu is being mentioned. That's very dicey for a guy like Grant with Scientology. So they could call him in for like a hardcore audit just for being there. Well, the next time he goes in, he's going to have to answer up for that. Like this guy is getting clicks on a video with your name and your image and your likeness.

Did you see this? This is – you got to watch this. OK. What is it? This is, you gotta watch this. Okay. What is it? This is him responding. This was like July 2nd recently. And what he was doing is he was responding to an article because they called him Scientologist.

And he was saying, how dare you call me a Scientologist. This is the video. It's so cringy. I did a reaction video to this. Okay, let's see this real quick. Let's get a live reaction. That's over at Miami New Times. Alex DeLuca and the owners of your company, Village Voice Media or something like that,

Village Media Group, want to thank you for the coverage on the listing of our house in Golden Beach for $42 million in Bitcoin. Absolutely true. Thank you for that free coverage. Oh, look, I've never heard of any of you people, but I do want to make you famous. I want to make you famous for religious hate, religious bias, and religious prejudice. And hopefully somebody will hold you guys accountable.

Nope. If I was Jewish, Muslim, Protestant, Catholic, if I was a gay man, Gay? But because you're hacks and you're lazy and you don't know what you're talking about, you use my religion to clickbait. And that's because you're lazy and you're a hack, okay? But what it did show was that you have religious hate and prejudice in your heart.

Hopefully somebody holds you guys accountable. You owe an apology to me and my family for headlining with this. I am a proud Scientologist. I have practiced Scientology for 25 years. It's been unbelievable and wonderful for my family, for me as a husband, a father, as a father, a husband, as a friend, as a business owner of over a thousand employees.

You guys, you guys should be ashamed of yourself. Whoa. So now hold on. Is he listing his Miami property or his Malibu property? It says Miami. That one says Miami. It doesn't really say, but it does seem like it's Miami, isn't it? Yeah.

So he's selling his Miami place and he's selling his Malibu place. I don't know. Interesting. Interesting. That's recent. That's July 2nd, 2024. Who told all of these motivational guys that they should always film themselves while walking or driving? I don't know.

They never seen a table that they liked. It's because he's on the move. He's hustling. Get that grind. I'm hustling. I never sleep. I don'tling. I never sleep. I don't sit.

Yeah. So it's like he should be thanking these guys for promoting his listing. He's the one who calls himself a Scientologist. How can it be bigoted to call him a Scientologist? Even if they're click baiting, they don't say a single negative word about Scientology in this article. Not a single negative word. I need the next article to be Potentially Closeted Gay Man Scientologist Grant Cardone

Just for the video. He's not gay. He's deeply closeted. Oh my god. But yeah, I mean, obviously, like, he's got a brain up there, and his brother potentially gets him in, and he joins. He's been in there for 25 years. He's bringing his family into it into it now too it sounds like his kids are in it oh for sure yeah so the thing is scientology it's not the same thing at the lower levels as it is at the upper

levels scientology at the lower levels is like pure self-help it's actually like it's very much the kind of stuff you'd expect from grant cardone or like a Tony Robbins or Gary Vee. It's all self-help. And it's like the most purest kind of self-help, which is you can accomplish anything because you are like natively godlike in your powers. And you just don't know it yet. And Scientology can help you realize that it's it's it's weird because it's it's kind of a double-edged sword where on the one thing you can accomplish anything and but on the other thing everything that ever happens to you is your fault because you can't accomplish anything like in some weird spiritual way you're

so powerful that anything that happens in your life is attributable to something you've you've said or done at some point it's always struck me me that there is a bastardized element of manifestation that seems to be at the basis of Scientology. And that sounds exactly like what you're describing right there. So this thing came out called The Secret? Yep. When that thing came out, it was so similar to what Scientology teaches that Scientologists would get in trouble for watching it or having anything to do with it. Yeah. Oh, because I threatened at home. Exactly.

So what do they call that? Positive – Scientology calls it positive postulating. But there's some phrase. Well, you called it manifesting. That's not exactly the phrase I'm looking for. But I think all these things mean the same thing anyway. Where in Scientology, you're eventually supposed to get to a frame of mind. They call it tone 40 in Scientology, you're eventually supposed to get to a frame of mind. They call it Tone 40 in Scientology, where Tone 40 has a few different definitions in Scientology,

but it's essentially an idea that the concept that what you're trying to accomplish might not be attainable doesn't even enter your mind as a possibility. If you're even thinking that what you're trying to accomplish might in some way not be possible, then you're not at tone 40. So it's almost like getting rid of all negativity, all counterthought, all counter expectations, anything. And... I could see getting hooked with that.

It can be like a bit addicting. Yeah. Because it is self-empowering. Yes. And that is the message that Scientology is giving you from the beginning. They're not talking about Xenu. They're not talking about past lives. They're not in the beginning anyway.

Right. You hang out with Scientologists long enough, the past lives are going to come up. Aliens are going to come up. A prison planet is going to come up. But it's – of course it's going to come up. That's not even the confidential stuff. Like even Scientologists that don't know about Xenu still know about the fifth invader force and the prison planet and the between lives implant stations run by the alien psychiatrists on the far side of the moon. Like that is non-confidential information in Scientology.

But that's not what they're hitting you with. They'd rather you didn't hear about that right away. Yeah, but that's not what they're hitting you with. No. They'd rather you didn't hear about that right away. Yeah, but that's how they – it's the hook point. They suck you in and then you start having success in your life or you're more confident on stuff and we know how we think. Confidence, money in the bank account, stuff like that, opportunities that are coming up that have been opened, the doors have been opened by this, that those are very easily not only addictive things, but they're things that you will start to make excuses for.

Meaning like, oh, no, I could – I'm starting to see some crazy shit, but it's getting me this. So therefore it's still – the good outweighs the bad. And then I guess eventually someone gets far and far enough up into the OTs that some people finally go, holy shit. Like, all right. This is crazy. I've had enough success. I'm going to be able to sustain on my own. I need to get the fuck out of here.

Absolutely. And because people aren't allowed to talk about those levels with each other, as you go up those levels, if you start to have doubts, you are really made to believe that it's – there's something wrong with you that's causing you to have those doubts because it's working great for everyone else. But you're not allowed to go talk to those people and ask them if that's actually true. Right. It's almost like – They keep you away. Yeah. It's almost like every single person is like, oh, I'm the only one having these doubts.

I'm the only one who maybe this is – maybe there's something wrong with me. I'll just keep going. I'll just do my next level. It's like the dark side of the prisoner's dilemma in a way, like where they can't go talk – you know, a psychological experiment. I haven't heard of the prisoner's dilemma. Where they can't, I think I'm I hope I'm saying the right one. Am I saying the right one? It's like where they can't, where they

have each of, they have each of the interregees in a separate room for like a crime and they're telling them each that they can't talk with each other and that the other person is telling on them or whatever. And then they see who drops first. Your friends have already ratted you out. Yes. Yes. I think that's if I I got that wrong, give it in the comments.

It's almost like the reverse prisoner's dilemma. Yeah. And that's what I'm saying. Because you guys essentially have to like all walk up to each other like, hey, just another day around here. That's kind of exactly what happens. Oh my God. And there's this other thing where, we're just kind of going all over the place here.

This is great. When you finish a course or an auditing action, you're not allowed to finish it until you write a success story on how great it was and how it changed your life and how you would want other people to have that. Now, if you're like, eh, I'm not really

feeling it. You're like, oh, you're not? We're going to have to go back and see what's wrong with your last level and that costs you more money. Hop on the lobotomy machine, my friend. The beatings will continue until morale improves. But you get to a point where it literally costs you more money to say that that thing didn't give you exactly what you hoped it would.

So you're trained to lie to yourself. That's crazy. Just to save money. And then you get up and you lie to everyone else to get them to do it as well. Financial incentive on the other end of it. There really is. There it is. Yeah. That's the wildest part to me. Like how much, how they, even from the beginning,

they're like, oh, pay money to do this course. There's something wrong with you. And then they find a way to keep that. It's a gravy train the whole way up. It gets bigger and bigger with how much money you got to spend. Yeah. Yep. And there is actually a financial incentive to bring people into Scientology. How so? Well, because you get a 10, 15 to 20% commission, people that you bring into Scientology, they're called your select... Like if I bring you into Scientology, you're my selectee. My pyramid scheme. Except it's only one level deep. So it's not a pyramid. So if I bring you into Scientology, you're my selectee. My pyramid scheme. Except it's only one level deep.

So it's not a pyramid. So if I get you in and I get 100 people in, I'm getting commissions on every dollar those people give to Scientology. But if they get people in, I'm not getting an override. They're not in my downline. I'm going and suing in court on behalf of Scientologists. I don't like this. There are some people who that is all they do for a living is bring people into Scientology. Or they run around and find people who have fallen out with their FSMs.

Like if I got you into Scientology, but five years later we're not friends anymore, you don't want me to be your FSM, you can just go pick another FSM. Yeah. And so there are some people who just go around and they collect up Scientologists. That's a real liberal rule. They just make the commissions. They just make the commissions. Whoa. Yeah. And so there are some people who just go around and they collect up Scientologists. That's a real liberal rule. They just make the commissions. They just make the commissions. Whoa.

Yeah. So like Grant Cardone, when he encourages his employees to get into Scientology or he gets – he's making money on that. He's making money on that. Absolutely. Oh my god. That's just what he needs, more money. It's one of the reasons I personally do so many videos about Grant Cardone. Yeah.

I don't care – honestly, on a personal level, I don't care that he's a con man. I care that he's one of the number one recruiters and financiers of this human trafficking cult. You call it a human trafficking cult? It's a human trafficking cult. It absolutely is. And why do you call it that? Because they bring in people from other countries with these false promises and other, I guess, less advantaged countries, whether it's South American or Eastern European or poor Russians. And they bring them here with these false promises. And once they get here – and let's say they join the SEAL organization.

They're being paid $50 a week to work 120 hours a week. So maybe they were promised they were going to come here and they were going to be a highly trained auditor and all this stuff. And then they're just put to work in the hotel rooms, just cleaning the hotel rooms. They're on a billion-year contract. They're making $50 a week. They overstay their religious worker visa that they got to come here. If they even got a religious worker visa, sometimes they'll just come over on a tourist visa.

So they end up here illegally. So if they leave and stay in the US, they're going to be deported and many of them don't want that. But by the time they get to the point where they want to leave, they literally can't afford a plane ticket home. And so the church or, you know, I call it the church sometimes but Scientology ends up having all the leverage and this happens

this doesn't only happen with foreigners there are some people who because there aren't enough Scientologists in the country to staff

all the organizations they'll shuttle them around from state to state and they'll end up convincing someone to like sell all their belongings and go to Albuquerque

you know some you know 20 year old kid you know 20 year old sell all their stuff go to Albuquerque. You know, 20-year-old kid. Sell all their stuff, go to Albuquerque. Oh, you're going to – Cook some meth. Yeah, they're opening the new org. You'll make $1,000 a week.

They get there, they're making $5 a week. Oh, my god. By the time they're like, I don't want to do this anymore. They're like, I'm sorry. We can't help you. Like I can't even pay rent. I don't even – I'm not allowed to go get a job because you say I have to work here in the org. But I don't make any money here in the org and I i want to go home but i literally can't even buy a

bus ticket yeah you know this story repeats over and over and over uh not just in the u.s but all over the world and also you have you have it as such a strong cult that we hear all these stories that are true of people who quite literally get imprisoned by Scientology where, I mean, we've seen the pictures, like they literally have these prisons and they're like, well, they could technically leave, but they don't because they're so brainwashed by what happened and they're basically put in these torture chambers. Yeah. You know, it's funny.

In recent years, Scientology has eased up on that kind of stuff a bit, not because they've seen the error of their ways, but because they're like, dude, these people just leave and end up telling the most horrific stories on like Nightline or to Alex Gibney or on YouTube. They're like, I think they've started to realize we're doing more harm to ourselves by continuing to do this. We don't care about the people, but we do care about ourselves. So like we mentioned the Sea Organization, right? Yeah. For decades, there was a program within the Sea Org called the Rehabilitation Project Force or the RPF. This was, I am not exaggerating, the reconditioning and labor camp for Sea Org members.

That's some dangerous words right there. If you're a Sea Org member and you're assigned to the RPF, okay, you are separated from your spouse. You are separated from anyone you work with, and you are just put with the RPFers. This program took three, sometimes ten years. You do not see your spouse. You do not have any days off. You're now getting paid $12 a week instead of $50 a week. You only speak when spoken to.

You have to run everywhere, not walk. It's five hours of hard labor a day and five hours of interrogations a day. And this is for – like this is – I'm explaining this program because it's actually an example of one of the things Scientology quietly got rid of in the last number of years. Okay, so this is gone now. Yeah, but this program had been around since L. Ron Hubbard's day. This program was around when I was in the Sea Org. This program was around when she was in the Sea Org. How did this stuff – this is what I don't understand.

How did things like this not get prosecuted? Because technically it's all protected under the shield of religion. They're considered religious volunteers. It's considered that they are voluntarily subjecting themselves to like – I keep wanting to use like civilian terms, but I'm not sure – I forget what the religious word would be. Like we've got monks up in the mountains whipping themselves on the back. I understand.

That kind of stuff. They're like, no, these people want to do this. It's for their spiritual cleansing and enlightenment. You know? And this is where they go, these people could leave if they wanted to. But you go, how would they leave? Who would they go to? Where would they go?

How would they get there? Like in many ways, I mean, we're speaking speaking we will both speak from experience on this in many ways people stay because it's just easier than having to figure out how to turn your life upside down and start over from scratch yeah it feels like like i always try to picture this and it's almost like let's say clear water for example in clear water there's a lot of scientologists and there's a lot of people who aren't in Scientology, and they live right on top of each other. Oh, yeah.

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Please gamble responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. You're in a house here, and this house is a Scientologist who wants to leave Scientology, and this house is a Scientologist who wants to leave Scientology, and this house is a normal place. The day he decides to leave Scientology and he walks to the other lawn just to see like, okay, maybe I can get some help from my neighbor here. It's almost like he crosses a literal Rubicon, and it's like you're – it's almost like they snatched your soul.

And now you're walking out without your soul, and you got to hope it finds its way back home to you. It's very strange but I can't – I try to put myself in the shoes of that and I have two people here who had to do that. But it seems very, very scary. It is. It is and I don't know if you've heard this analogy of Scientology and the Matrix. I don't think I have. So Scientologists, they believe that this is a prison planet. The best way to keep someone in a prison is to make them not realize they're in a prison

and to make them maybe a little happy with where they are so they never try to escape. So Scientology believes that everyone on planet Earth was brought here from one of the other planets in the Galactic Federation and was dumped here. They had their spirit memories wiped and were dumped here to believe that they were just bodies that evolved here on Earth, and that even humanity evolving the world's major religions is part of what we've been programmed to do to keep us from trying to figure out how to get off this planet. So the fact that, let's just take Christianity, that you believe you live a lifetime and then

you either go to heaven or hell. Well, if that's what you believe, you're not trying to figure out how to get off the planet. It's not relevant to your worldview. And L. Ron Hubbard basically said all the world's major religions are just fake stories that are alien psychiatrists, alien imprisoners have programmed us as a civilization to evolve over time to keep the matrix and you realize what the real deal is and that only Scientology can give you back all your memories of all your previous lives to erase the amnesia of all your past and have you regain your native godlike abilities. So in this analogy – You saw the matrix, right? Oh, yeah.

Okay. So you got Morpheus. L. Ron Hubbard would be Morpheus or perhaps now that's David Miscavige but Neo is Tom Cruise oh come on why do we have to give him the coolest character he's already cool okay but Cypher

but in this thing remember the guys who get unplugged from the Matrix their life sucks now because reality is shit you're living in this post post apocalyptic world. You're eating slop, but you're not a prisoner. That's how Scientologists see themselves. Okay, so they see that they're so virtuous by working all these hours, giving up all their money, sending their children into the Sea Org.

That's the price of unplugging everyone from the Matrix. Yeah. That's the price of unplugging everyone from the matrix. Now, you remember in that movie, Cypher was the worst of all of them because he already tasted what it was like to be unplugged from the matrix and he asked to be plugged back in. So he screwed everybody. That's how Scientologists view people who leave Scientology. That's why Scientologists see people who have left Scientology as being worse than people who've never been in. My issue with that though – and again, like I wasn't in it. So like I can't really put my mind there, right? But it's not – like in The Matrix, they literally plugged in and they went to a different world.

Like in a sense, right? But they didn't. Not a physical world't not a physical world but meaning that's my point it's like a totally different experience whereas in Scientology you just show up to a building that's blue with like a fucking sign and they're like hey welcome

you don't go into a different world like you know you're still getting Domino's pizza or you know that's a really good distinction you're right. They've convinced Scientologists that there's these two completely different worlds while being in the same world. So what they've convinced themselves is that we've learned the true, our true spiritual nature. That's how we're unplugged. We know who we really are. We know

we're not a body. We know we don't live one lifetime. We know about the Galactic Federation. We know about the Fifth Invader Force, which by the way, this gets really funny. Fun and funny. It already is. So L. Ron Hubbard – and this is in materials most people would not have even – who've done OTA be familiar with because when he first came out with OTA, there was a first version, and people got so pissed off with it that they changed it. Okay, but in the first version, he basically said, the Bible, when it talks about the second coming of Christ, which I make mistakes when I start

talking about Christianity, because I'm no religious scholar, okay? So if you guys know anything about this, please jump in. When Christ comes back, it has something to do with Armageddon and basically the world essentially ends, right? But the people who are saved basically take over the... But Christ coming back, that's actually the bad aliens, the fifth invader force coming back to reinvade earth. But the story has been flipped on its head in the Bible so that all the Christians will welcome the second invasion. Okay? Right?

Convenient. Yes. Very convenient. And so in this story, L. Ron Hubbard says that's why – speaking as L. Ron Hubbard, he says, I fulfill the prophecy of the Antichrist. He basically says, I am the Antichrist. He says that. In the first version of OT8. But you have to understand – But he's like, the Antichrist. He says that. In the first version of OT8.

But you have to understand. But he's like, the Antichrist is good. But what does it mean, though, when someone who doesn't believe in God or Jesus or Christ or the Antichrist, what does it mean when he says, I'm the Antichrist? What he meant was the Bible is just a work of fiction to trick people into welcoming the second alien invasion. I keep calling it the second alien invasion, but when the fifth invader force comes back. Same shit to me. Right.

I'm just saying. And so, but this is, I'm just, this story that I'm telling you, other than being absolutely hilarious, is an example of how Scientologists very much look down on people. They're not someone who's like, all religious people are good. They very much look down on people. They're not someone who's like, all religious people are good.

They very much look down on religious folks. They don't really consider themselves to be religious. They don't believe in God. They don't believe in a Jesus or a devil or an angel or a heaven or hell or anything. They only call themselves a religion for the tax benefits. And I guess there is an argument that could be made and that if you're talking – because Scientologists do sincerely believe that we are all immortal

spiritual beings with native godlike potentials and only Scientology auditing can get you back to that state. We can argue whether – is that religious? Religious people get offended when you say it's religious because they associate religious with God. Yes. The truth is Scientology does not believe in a God. But you could probably make an argument that if they do truly believe that you're an immortal spiritual being and only Scientology auditing can get you back to where you used to be, meh. I think religion – I think you're right. Like it usually has to do with God.

That's how we think about it. But on a broader level, it has to do with meaning. And so I can see how this is described as filling the void of meaning. Yes. You know? But that's so – wow. So especially if Scientologists believe that their sort of matrix story is the one true story and all of the other religious stories are bullshit and are actually part of the matrix. Scientologists would scoff at you if you're like,

oh, we're not a religion. We're the only religion. We're the only. The only one. Real religion. No other real religion. Yeah. Everything else is bullshit.

That's like, that explains though, like, because L. Ron Hubbard is such a fascinating guy to me. Obviously he wrote this pulp fiction in a way. He would write – what was it? Like one penny a word or something like that? I've heard that. I don't know if it's true. Whatever it was.

Like he had to write things really fast, like seemingly as if he was on mushrooms the whole time. Never did a second draft you hear? Never did a second draft. Just crazy shit on the page. Wrote tens of thousands of pages. I'll give him that. But like he sees himself as – and this seems to be a pattern across pretty much all cults that have ever existed. Someone comes along and says, no, no, no.

I know. I've been told. I've been given all the information. It's come down from on high. I'm the one who has to give it to you. You have to listen to it in the format with which i give it to you and then people go seems right you know and then they follow it that is exactly what he did now you would think right since that's the play that there'd be some story for well wait a second well where'd you get your

special knowledge don't worry about it i swear to, he does not say where he got the special knowledge. In fact, he doesn't even... I got it at a tavern in Edison. He doesn't even have like a golden tablet story like the Mormons do. The closest he gets to explaining anything about this is he says he was Buddha. And I risk saying these words incorrectly because I'm not a religious scholar, but there is the state in Buddhism that you're trying to achieve, I believe, other than nirvana, is like you're called like a Bodhi or a Bodhi.

I always get it wrong. L. Ron Hubbard basically says that as Buddha, I came to raise mankind up to a level and I thought I had achieved that with Bodhi or Bodhi. But then after I dropped that body, I was embarrassed to discover that state was only temporary. Okay. We needed to take it to a whole nother level. We needed a permanent state.

I just picture this like in South Park when they had Al Gore be like, member pick. Like that's how Ron Hubbard's like, not Buddha, member pick. So Scientology's state of clear is supposed to be the permanent version of whatever Bodhi is in Buddhism. So, but you're like, okay, but I don't know if the Buddha ever explained where he got his knowledge from. Because again, not a religious scholar. I grew up in a cult. But he literally in the body of Scientology never says, this is how I came to obtain all

this new knowledge and you can't. In fact, he actually says the opposite. He says, we will not speculate as to how I came to rise above the reactive mind. And I'm thinking, I think that's what we should be speculating about. But for all the smart people that get into Scientology and weren't just born into it, they end up – it's just a fascinating study in how smart people can gradually be brought to a point where they believe all these things. Even if, I do think a lot of these smart people who joined Scientology, I think there are things that they question along the way.

They just convince themselves why those questions don't matter enough right now. Yes. And maybe we'll cross that bridge later, but later never comes. Yes. I think it's something, you know, I've only ever lived in my head but I think to a certain extent it's something we are all capable of as human beings being sucked into some sort of idea that is attached to something good like we talked about earlier with the incentivization structure that we go down the rabbit hole if you will. And there's different things that happen every day in society where we see this. It's just on a whole other level when it becomes this center like religion in your life and you're a part of a community that not only encourages you not to talk amongst each other because that would whatever because it's not in their control but also you know you they they literally teach you that you're separate from the earth and from all these other idiots on this prison planet because they don't know what's really going on in scientology that is just like

again i can't really put myself there but if i were born into it of course i'd believe that i'd be like yeah sure and then at some point you, they just slowly boil the frog like I was saying and you tell me like Xenu, I might be like, you know, makes sense, which I really hope like when I die, if we get to whatever the afterlife is, if I find out Scientology was right, that's really going to be a bummer. I hope that doesn't happen. That's not going to happen, right? I don't think you have anything to worry about. Good. It's funny. One of the things – well, two of the things that Scientology pretty much promises Scientology will give you is the ability to come back next lifetime with full and total recall of your previous life and lives. Recall?

Oh, yeah. Your perfect memory. You just retain everything. Because basically what would happen is you skip the between-lives implant station, so your memory doesn't get wiped. So did they tell you what to remember from your previous life?

Tell you what to remember? Yeah. What do you mean what to remember? That's the wrong way to ask it. Did they say, oh, you were a Scientologist in a previous life because you're joining as a kid right now, so it'll come to you.

They're not allowed to tell you what you should remember. It's just heavily implied. But remember, we talked about the Between Lives Implant Station. I might not have gone into detail about it, but it is the thing, like when you have a near-death experience, you see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Well, Scientologists believe the light at the end of the tunnel is the implant station. Don't go towards the light. That's where you get your memory wiped by the alien psychiatrist prisoners. Right. What is the name of the people that guard a prison? I keep saying imprisoners or captors. I don't know if they're right. Guards?

Prison guards? Yeah, I guess prison guards. Alien psychiatrist prison guards that are manning the implant station. So they believe that with enough Scientology, when you drop your body this lifetime, you'll be able to skip, bypass the implant station and just pick up a new body. So like today you're you. Tomorrow you're still you but in a new baby body. Being like, how do I use these arms and legs and why do I keep shitting myself? But you'll still remember everything.

Even though they wipe you. No, you skip the implant station with enough Scientology. That's what they believe. Oh, but how do they define enough? They don't. They just convince you that with enough Scientology, you get yourself in good enough shape spiritually and mentally. You can skip the implant station the next time you drop your body. It's like chasing the magic dragon.

Yeah. So Scientologists end up to a point where they're like, oh, no. If I don't either do enough Scientology or if I don't be a good boy or a good girl and I get kicked out of Scientology, God forbid, I'm going to be doomed to an eternity of amnesia because I'll never get enough Scientology to be able to skip the implant station. I'll just continue to be a prisoner on this planet over and over again for the rest of eternity. That's the promise that Scientology gives you. So considering that, there's two big things that they promise, that you'll be able to come back next lifetime with full memory of everything that happened this lifetime. And also that you'll get to a point where you can causatively and at will and with full perception exteriorize from your body.

Just exteriorize. Have an out-of-body experience. But causatively. Not like, oh, I just was in a car accident and I was looking down upon myself. No, like you could be sitting here and you just leave your body with full perception. So instead of here, I'm here. But my body is here, but I'm here. So I'll be looking at you from over here, but my body is here. Like honestly just exteriorization.

Fully, stably exterior at will and with full perception is something Scientology promises it will eventually give you. No Scientologist has ever accomplished either of these two things. I was going to ask you, did you have it happen? I mean, come on. Not even close. You know how many times I tried trying to like pop myself out of my head?

I'm like, I'm close. I can feel it. I can feel the vibration. As a young little Scientology staff member, one of my biggest ruins, if you will, is, damn it, I've never been exterior. But there are Scientologists who will tell you that they've gone exterior. And you're like, if L. Ron Hubbard could go exterior, then why did he have to infiltrate all those government buildings? Why couldn't he just pop through the files and read the papers with his spirit eyes?

That's it. That's it. See, there's an explanation there. And L. Ron Hubbard never came back. Yeah. If Scientology was true, and if L. Ron Hubbard wanted everyone on planet Earth to get into Scientology, all he had to do was come back. That's it.

And it's the one thing every Scientologist is told they will be able to do. That's all he had to do. But instead, they say he went off to Target 2, he went off to another planet. Oh, they say where he went. Target 2. They went off to another planet. Or they said where he went. Target 2. They didn't name the planet. Okay. Just Target 2.

He didn't want us to know where he was. Don't forward the mail. Their explanation for why L. Ron Hubbard didn't come back is he's off on Target 2 getting Scientology rolling on another planet while we wrap up business on this planet and get at least half the people in the world into Scientology. Where I'm going with all this is it's remarkable that the two biggest things Scientology promises you will have or you will get or be able to do should be easily demonstrable if it was real. No one's ever done it. And Scientologists are still able to continue to be convinced that this is why they need to stay in Scientology.

What could possibly be more important than being able to come back the next lifetime without having your memory wiped? What could possibly be more important? What could possibly be more important than actualizing your full true self independent of your body? Like the ultimate spiritual experience, the ultimate spiritual realization. And yet no one's ever done it. No one's ever done it. I have never spoken to a Scientologist who actually convinced me that they even really believed they had gone exterior. Some of them would be like, oh yeah, I went exterior once. I'd be like, really? Tell me about it. And it's very clear, very- I was sitting here and then I was over there.

It's very clear, very quick that they're like, well, I sort of felt this way and I felt that way. I'm like, it's not a feeling. You either did it or you didn't. How many fingers am I holding up behind my back? If you can't tell me, then you did not achieve this ability. Oh, my God. Did you ever, like, talk to your mom about some of these concepts while you were growing up? Not when I was growing up.

Like, Mom, I'm trying to go exterior. What the fuck? No, not when I was growing up. But after we both were out of Scientology. After you left. But she still believes in Scientology. And so she does not like having these kind of conversations. Wait, your mom's out of Scientology, but she still believes in it?

Yeah, so she doesn't like David Miscavige. She doesn't like the organization and financially ruining its members and all this kind of stuff. But she still believes in L. Ron Hubbard and the technology of Scientology. So like Xenu and all that? Yeah, well, she did the OT levels. And she goes, you know, you don't have to believe it. You just have to audit it and the e-meter tells you that it's true and i'm kind of like she's tried to kind of convince me that she

didn't really believe it or doesn't really believe it or you don't have to really believe it and i'm like i don't know it kind of says like it kind of sounds like you don't believe what l ron hubbard said i don't know it's weird a lot of people who've done the OT levels have said to me something along the lines of, you don't really have to believe it. You just have to do it. I'm like, I don't know. It seems like you should believe it. How deep did she get in OT? OT five. Okay. So she didn't, I get, she didn't get to Zinu level.

Zinu's OT three. He's OT three. Okay. so she did get to that. Yeah. Do you have a good relationship with your mom today? It's not excellent. Yeah. But it's a relationship. We're in touch.

Okay. That's a new one. Like, you don't really, at least I haven't really, from the outside, heard of that much where, like, people leave, but they still believe in some of the concepts. I've really only heard of the ones – and I'm probably naive on this, but I've only heard of the ones where people leave and they're like, oh, my god. What the fuck happened to me in there? So actually when you were talking to Tony, he mentioned the independent Scientology movement. And what that is is people who have left Scientology, the church of Scientology, but still believe in Scientology and they practice

Scientology outside of the Church of Scientology. So my mom is one of those guys. So is that like an official – It's not an official organization. It's not official at all. Right. And yeah, those are people who are more like – I guess they might call themselves originalists because –

Protestants to the Catholics, if you will. Pretty much. They basically say, anything that happened in Scientology after L. Ron Hubbard died is bullshit and garbage and throw that away and we're going to stick with the stuff that was the way it was at the point L. Ron Hubbard died.

And that was the good stuff. Interesting. And yet, none of these people have achieved exteriorization. No one's ever come back in the next – no one's ever come back and been able to convincingly discuss their past life experiences in a way that was like, oh, this is for real? Yeah. You know? So, yeah. You know, one of the things that happens with people who are born into Scientology and it's hard for a parent to accept that they've actually done anything harmful to their child by bringing them into Scientology. Yeah.

It really is. And that has been a source of conflict between my mom and I. Not that I'm so dedicated to like shoving her face in the fact that bad things were done, but that she gets so defensive about the fact that anything bad ever was done at all. Or the one I like the best is, you guys wanted to do it. It's like, no. 12-year-olds want to play baseball and play football. We basically just decided that if we had to do this thing we might as well you know get good at it that's a tough i can't imagine that that's a really tough place to be because obviously like there's a part of her even if she still believes maybe in some of the concepts or whatever there's

a there seems to me like there's it seems to me like there is a subconscious part of her that's like oh shit yeah this is bad but you, like she obviously loves her kids and everything and she doesn't want – she doesn't want their lives to be more maybe ruined by this than it already was. And so maybe like the trauma of like reliving that and realizing like, oh, shit, I was the bridge to this to get them into this. That's probably really hard for her to even acknowledge. I'm guessing. Yeah. Well, it seems to be that way. And what makes the, uh, the conversation a little more complex is like, uh, I've in many ways turned out rather well. And I, you know, I'm, I'm a pretty successful pretty successful guy. I don't seem like I'm some horribly damaged person. And so it's kind of like it's easy for my mom to see the things that have gone well for me in life and go, well, that's because I got you into Scientology.

So what do you have to complain about? And you go, well, how do I argue with that considering it's the only path I traveled? It's a complicated thing for parents of kids who are in Scientology as kids to grapple with. I mean, there's a lot of people in my shoes who have difficult relationships with their parents, specifically because of the subject of Scientology. I can imagine, for sure. But when we were going off into some things about Scientology itself and whatever, but within your story, the last part we were at was when you were like 15 to 18, something like that, working as – running the course room in the Philly Scientology location. Yeah. So what came after that? So when I was just before I turned 18, I was getting pretty disillusioned, not with Scientology itself, but with life at the Philadelphia Org.

It was just terrible. The people there, it was not – I was not having fun at all. And it got to the point where it was like I'd just rather do anything other than this. So me and my brother moved to Hollywood, and I mentioned those freeloader debts earlier, right? I think so, yeah. Where if you work for Scientology and you're on one of the contracts and you don't fulfill the contract, you owe them money for everything you did in Scientology.

So I was 17 years old. I was given a bill for $100,000. $100,000 of all the hours I worked for you. Yeah, you owe us for that. Exactly. That's fucking nuts. And so, of course, I never had any intention of paying that because it was just unrealistic. Of course.

But mentally, I still consider myself a Scientologist. So for a couple of years, we moved out to Hollywood and just kind of lived a fun life for a couple of years. Outside. No association with Scientology whatsoever. And then eventually it just got to a point where I was like, is this sustainable? Like am I really going to – because I still consider myself a Scientologist. I was like – I just didn't see where the path was going.

I didn't see the path back. I wasn't able to pay the freeloader debt. What were you doing for work? Some background work on some TVs and movies and stuff like stuff like that signed up with central casting and it was i had a great time it was fantastic yeah so you're making money for yourself at least i was absolutely totally supporting myself but eventually i was like okay i actually have to go back to philadelphia and finish my contract and so that's in order for me not to have this freeloader debt i actually have to go back to philadelphia and finish like the last two years I have on my contract.

Yeah, but were they like knocking on your door trying to come find you like, hey, you owe us this money? No, but I still considered myself a Scientologist. Wow. It's that strong. Yeah. And I was like, OK. I've sort of been in denial that this thing is ever going to get resolved in any way and I guess I have to go back and finish those two years. So I did.

I finished those two years, went back to Philadelphia. At that point, somewhere in there, my mom finally came back from Clearwater, having finished her training, because she actually did the auditor training. And then when my staff contract was up, some kids that I had grown up with in the Philly Org, but had then gone off and joined the Sea Org and become some high-level Sea Org executives, they came back to town for a wedding of one of their family members and sort of was like uh i they sort of got their hooks into me and was like hey remember how badly you used to want to join the c org i was like yeah and they're like uh we'll get you replaced and we'll we'll bring it to la you can join the c org right now And within like two weeks, I was in LA in the Sea Org. And I was 22

years old at that point. And so I was working there on L. Ron Hubbard Way in Hollywood, Sunset Boulevard, and I think Vermont is like, yeah. And so then I was in the Sea Org for four years and that was the next chapter of the story. Four years in the Sea Org. Four years in the Sea Org. What does that look like? It was actually much easier than being in Philadelphia because all you have to do is focus on your job. So for me, comparing my four years in the Sea Org to all the time I spent at the Philly Org, it was actually – it was easier to just be there and focus. But again, it was – it eventually got to the point where it was equally as unfulfilling.

Like there's this culture in Scientology organizations where they're constantly on witch hunts trying to find who they can blame for the fact that there aren't enough people joining Scientology and going up the levels. I wonder why. People are always just fighting and finger pointing and fault finding. And eventually I was like, I don't need – like you guys need me more than I need you. I can literally go and do whatever I want. OK. Now, Sea Org members can only marry other Sea Org members. Oh, yeah. that's right.

Right. So I met – I call her my wife because we're not divorced yet, but we're going to be divorced soon. So while I was in the Sea Org, I met my wife Heather, and she had been in the Sea Org for like 14 years. She was also born and raised in Scientology. Whoa. How young was she when she got in? years whoa she was also born and raised in scientology whoa and how young was she when she got in well she was she was born in yeah yeah but how young was she when she got into the seer i think 16 wow yeah i think yeah so she was a little older than you she is older than me

she is seven years older than me okay yeah and because you're also not allowed to have children in the seer if youg, if you get pregnant, you have to either leave or get an abortion. And they very much pressure you to try to convince you to get an abortion. But we both knew that we didn't want to be there anymore. And we knew that the easiest way to get out was to get pregnant. So that's what we did. And that was in 2006. And that was sort of our easy way out of the CR because, I mean, they don't want anyone walking around pregnant. Yeah, it's crazy to me. I think I was talking with Tony about this. happily takes on families with kids coming in who are born into it,

doesn't want their own members who are marrying each other by rule to have more. I mean I guess I'm glad they're not bringing more kids into it, but that seemed like really ass-backwards logic to me. It's true. One of the easiest ways to understand that aspect of it would be like the Catholic clergy, where like Catholics have lots of kids, but the clergy don't. The clergy, like they have – like abstinence. Like they're not supposed to even have relations. Yeah, I mean like half of them are gay though.

I know. I know. You know? But that's an example where – Just saying. They want their public members to have kids. Yeah. But the people who have dedicated their lives to work for the church, they don't want those

people having kids. It makes sense. Now, the funny thing about Scientology is it's so expensive to do Scientology. The Scientologists don't have a lot of kids. They just actually don't. Oh, that's right. Big families are not a thing in Scientology. It's totally different than like Mormonism or even Catholic families.

You hear about 10, 11, 12 kids, Scientology. It's not like that. How expensive was it a year for you when you were in the Sea Org? Oh, no. In the Sea Org, you don't pay for anything. You don't pay anything. Before that, when you were – When you're a staff member, you don't pay for anything.

Still nothing. Right. So it's only the people who are members that don't necessarily work for it. Correct. OK. So you didn't experience that as much. I did not experience that at all. Yeah.

And that's not – it's not an annual fee. It's a pay-to-play thing. But when you were a kid, like your mom had to experience that paying for you, right? She was on staff. Oh, so her kids don't, she didn't have to pay for anything for her kids? Oh, we might have done the kids courses that are like a hundred bucks. Okay. Alright. So you really didn't,

you didn't get that. But a lot of people within Scientology or members do, and they pay, I think Leah Remini was like paying hundreds of thousands of dollars at one point. I mean – oh, yeah. I mean Leah over her lifetime as a public Scientologist probably gave over $5 million, somewhere in that vicinity. Could she go get that back? No.

Oh my god. No. Yeah, that part is wild to me. So you get pregnant. Yeah. Four years in. What, I mean, did you go, like, is there like a main office you go to and say, I'd like to report a pregnancy? Like, how does it go down?

Literally every Scientology organization has its one person who's like over the ethics, personnel matters, ethics matters, called the Director of Inspections and Reports or the DERINR. I went to the DERINR after morning muster and I said, Heather's pregnant and we're not getting an abortion. Just like that? Yep. And what'd they say? They said, okay, I'll put you on the leaving the Sea Org routing form. Whoa.

Now, does that affect backlash within the organization though? Because like now you've dropped out of the Sea Org. You get a new freeloader bill. Oh, another one. Yeah. How big is this one? I'd only been in for four years and I – basically between the two of us at that point, it was about $100,000 because she had been in for so long. But we negotiated it down to $40,000.

Oh, how does that work? A little negotiation with Scientology? Yeah. You and Miscavige in a background. Hey, this week, by now, we'll give you a 50% credit. They'll be like, hey, if we review this, if we review this, and we knock this off, and we give you a credit for this, can you pay this week

before Thursday? It's like a Scientology timeshare. So you guys paid like a 40 grand bill. Yeah. Like up front. Yeah, I had, before I joined the Sea Org, I had bought a house up in North Philly in Olney, and because so many You guys paid like a $40,000 bill. Yeah. Like up front. Yeah. Before I joined the Sea Org, I had bought a house up in North Philly in Olney. And because so many of the Philadelphia staff members were living there, I actually was allowed to keep that house the whole time I was in the Sea Org. So by the time I left four years later, I had a bunch of equity in that house. But I took out a line of credit and paid the $40,000.

You paid that in cash or check? Yeah, cash. Pennies. Oh my god. Just walk in with a bag, count it, fucker. So you leave the Sea Org and now what happens? Okay. And how old are you, 26 now?

Exactly. Okay. Yeah. We are still Scientologists at this point. And we're just ex-Sea Org members, but still Scientologists. You're not questioning anything at this point and we're just ex-Seorg members but still Scientologists. You're not questioning anything at this point really you'd say? So this is 2006. Life goes on pretty much as normal until 2009 when the Tampa Bay Times starts publishing these interviews of these high-level executives who had all not just left the Seorg but actually left Scientology.

And these were executives who worked directly with David Miscavige and many of them had also worked directly with L. Ron Hubbard. And this is where things start to get interesting, because I go, you know, we said earlier, how could anything be more important than the promise of what Scientology says it's going to give you? It's like, even if David Miscavige is beating the shit out of everybody, and everyone's on rice and beans, and everyone's sleeping on the floor under their desks. Small price to pay for unplugging planet Earth from the matrix. If you got a taste of what it was actually like to be unplugged from the matrix, how are you bitching about David Miscavige roughing some people up? Maybe the math isn't working out on this.

Maybe these people know something I don't know. So that's when I started – I mean I started following all of that very, very closely and then started secretly getting in touch with some of those people because these were people who were famous in Scientology. Yeah. Marty Rathbun, Mike Rinder, Tom DeVocht, Debbie Cook. These people were famous in Scientology. So was there – I mean obviously you're reading some of this because you do live in the real world. You're a Scientologist but you can get access to it. And it's making you – it's giving you a lot of hesitation. But do you remember like any one moment where you were like the Rubicon's cross? Like holy shit at that point.

I never had some sort of a crisis or existential crisis or, oh my God, what does this mean for me? Because for me, I just felt like I'd always been kind of singularly focused on just figuring out how to do my job the best way I could, whether I had buy-in or didn't buy-in. It was almost like as a child, I was put on this path and I followed this path and I tried to get as good as what I had to do as possible. And in many, I did believe in a lot of the big aspects of science or the big pieces of the Scientology story, like the prison planet and full operating Thay in. And I did believe in those things, but I didn't, it's almost like I had to convince myself. There was so many

times that I had to convince myself why I should still be there and keep doing this thing even though I really didn't want to. I would have to remind myself, oh, yeah, prison planet. Oh, that's why we're here. Okay. Fuck. I forgot. I forgot. So – but so many – but I had – so many times over the years had to convince myself to keep going.

And there were certain pieces of the puzzle that if I was like, oh, yeah, that's why, that's why. But when I finally found out from one of these executives in particular named Dan Kuhn, who worked personally with L. Ron Hubbard, and his job in the Sea Org was to go through everything L. Ron Hubbard had left behind and figure out what needed to be released, what stuff he left behind that had not yet been released and how to release it. Sorry to hear that. Sounds like an awful job. Yeah. Out of everyone in Scientology, he's someone I knew would know if there were these upper unreleased OT levels that – it's basically the magic holy grail that all Scientologists think they're waiting for. He's like, there's nothing. We went through every scrap of paper

in every file of every cabinet that L. Ron Hubbard left behind and we have no idea what is supposed to be on OT 9 and 10. There's a box of used condoms. We got that. And for me, as soon as I heard that,

I was like, oh, it's bullshit. That's all I needed to hear. Yeah. I got no crisis whatsoever. None. Was that meant, me as soon as i heard that i was like oh it's bullshit but that's all i needed to hear yeah i got no crisis whatsoever none was that meant did he end up as a source mentioning that for publishing those reports like he's telling you but did he sit did did the reports ever say that as well i don't think the journalists at the time would even care about something that far into the weeds they cared about they care about david miscavige beating people even care about something that far into the weeds. They cared about, they care about David Miscavige beating people. They care about people being locked up.

They care about torture. They don't care about OT nine and 10. I know, but that's basically saying like the whole premise of it is a lie. Like I, if I were the journalist, I would care about that. So the people who cared about stuff like that at the time was like the,

the, the most prominent and recognizable and loudest voices who were those Sear members members, like Marty Rathbun and Mike Rinder. Yeah. They were the – and they each were running their blogs separately at that time, I think. I think Mike had his blog going the same time that Marty did. Do you happen to remember?

Yeah, they had it at the same time. Yeah. Those are the guys who cared about that kind of stuff and knew that Scientologists would care about that kind of stuff. Because honestly, who cares about that? Scientologists care about that kind of stuff and knew that Scientologists would care about that kind of stuff. Because honestly, who cares about that? Scientologists care about that. And so I don't even know – I can't remember as I sit here right now if this information from Dan Kuhn was in a personal conversation or if it was on one of the blogs or both because

I did meet him later in real life. But that kind of information for me was like, oh, I never liked getting auditing anyway. I just – as a Scientologist, I never liked getting auditing. I just knew – I can't imagine why. It was horrible. I just knew that I was being told auditing was the only path to achieve this thing that was basically required to be unplugged from the matrix. And it was always a problem for me.

It's like, damn, I know I got to do that auditing, but I really don't like it. So once I found out that the path was bullshit and the gold at the end of the rainbow, the pot of gold at the end, it was just a lie. It doesn't exist. And that didn't give you like some existential – Nope. I was like, sweet. I don't have to worry about anything. Wow.

Good for you. I mean that's great. I'm glad like you didn't have like a crisis of it. But one of the things I haven't asked you that's kind of the 500-pound elephant in the room here is about some of the pressure though that exists because people inside Scientology, from what I've heard, witness these things happen. Like when people start to try to leave or stuff like that, they'll put private detectives on them or if people are trying to leak things from the outside they'll pressure them and and shit i mean i think mark and i were watching some videos of that that he had where guys were coming to do this like when you go to contact these executives doing these stories are you afraid like your your phones tapped or like you're being watched or like you're gonna get caught for doing this like i was too naive to be afraid good for you yeah but i should have been were they watching i don't know if you've seen my other chats, but it's hard to talk about this part of the story without getting emotional.

Take it down. Okay, so how it went down for me was my mom was the first one to sort of like leave Scientology. But she didn't want to get kicked out of Scientology. She just wanted to sort of fix what was wrong with it. And she eventually got officially kicked out for just running her mouth negatively about David Miscavige to people she should not, from Scientology's perspective, should not have been doing that to, right? Now, in Scientology, when someone gets kicked out, you have to completely sever all ties with them. Right. So that's called disconnection.

So I know I said my mom and I don't have a great relationship right now, but we were very, very close. So realize at this point, it's me and my wife. My wife's parents have been in Scientology forever. My wife's two sisters and brother are in Scientology. Their spouses are in Scientology. All their kids are in Scientology. My little brother's in Scientology. Scientology is everywhere. I work for a Scientologist. She works for a Scientologist, all that kind of stuff. So Scientology tells me that me and my wife and my kids have to disconnect from my mom completely or we're going to get kicked out.

So for a couple of years, I pretended like I was disconnected from her, but I never really was. And because Scientology has this snitching culture where members just report on each other all the time, I was getting a little careless and lazy about how carefully I was keeping this secret. And I would kind of let things slip to friends of mine who I sort of suspected might also be on the way out to sort of test them. And that was, of course, playing with fire. And that's where I got burned. So eventually, people who were supposed to be my friends and even my kids, even my daughters, the nanny, even the Scientologist that we had hired to be the nanny for our daughters

is like secretly asking our kids if they still see their grandmother, right? Now, we never told our kids. They were so young at that time. We never said, hey, you're not allowed to tell anyone that you see grandma. Like we never told them that. Like how do you even explain to a kid? Yeah, you can't.

So eventually Scientology keeps getting reports that I'm still in touch with my mom. And also because I'm getting a little lazy here and a little lazy there, they start to figure out that I'm posting on these blogs of Mike and Marty, right? Okay. So eventually they're like, okay, this guy's just going to keep lying to us about being connected to his mom. So they officially kicked me out. And so then they go to Heather, my wife, and they go, well, you've got a disconnect from your, your husband. You have to divorce your husband and you and the girls have to disconnect from,

from him. And she goes, now you would think that in a normal marriage, you would just be like, why would I ever divorce my husband? But Scientologists don't think that way. Like relationships are just transactional. So she tried to lay it out to them and she goes, let me show you why the math doesn't work for me. We have three children. Those children love their father. If I divorce him just so I can stay in Scientology, he is still going to have custody, have custody of our daughters. Because I'm still connected to him until the girls turn 18, I'm not going to be allowed to do Scientology anyway,

because I'll be connected to a suppressive person through our kids. Then the kids will turn 18 and then I will have to give them some sort of an ultimatum of who they're going to be connected with. And they're obviously going to pick the parent who isn't giving them the ultimatum. So then not only will I have lost my husband, I will then have lost my kids and I will not have been able to do scientology in all this time anyway so they go oh so you're not gonna you're not gonna divorce him and she's like no i'm not gonna divorce him and they go okay you're out so so then they go to her parents who already have three other kids and numerous grandkids

and they go you guys have to disconnect from your daughter, who is their oldest daughter, right? They have four kids and Heather's their oldest daughter. And they say, you have to disconnect from your daughter and your three granddaughters, or you guys are going to get kicked out. And this is really the point where scientology just gets when you know when scientology says they can leave if they want to

and you go if they want to so at that point heather's parents are basically just going which kids and grandkids would we like to never see again? You know? And for what? For what? For nothing. Right? For bullshit. And so, so they disconnect. And that was in 2014. And then

Heather's father died like maybe three years ago or something. And he apparently had cancer for a couple of years and no one had ever told her. And no one did tell her until he was in the hospital the last three days he had to live. And she went to the hospital to see him and he was very happy to see her. None of her other family members would speak to her or see her at the hospital.

And at this time, her parents owned, they didn't live in these houses, but they owned the houses literally across the street from us. And they were like rental properties. And they would do the maintenance on these houses themselves. And so, oh, did they be right there?

Well, when they were over there, because our kids didn't know anything about what was going on. They didn't understand why they weren't going to breakfast at Grandma and Grandpa's every week, right? Oh, my God. And so when they would go over there, we would send the kids over and say, go say hi to Grandma and Grandpa. And sometimes they would run into the house and hide from the kids. And sometimes the kids would catch them before they could get into the house. And what actually happened is, Heather's mother, whenever the kids would actually succeed in like talking to her or seeing her, the mom would go report herself to the ethics officer. Oh, my God. And because the mom kept self-reporting herself, Scientology told them they had to sell those

properties so that they wouldn't see the kids. So they sold the properties. And that was the last time the kids saw their grandparents. And so on my YouTube channel, I will sometimes say I'm doing this channel just to be David Miscavige's worst nightmare. And I don't pretend like I'm doing it for any reason other than that, even though there's plenty of other benefits and plenty of ways that, you know, people get helped just by everything we're doing on YouTube. But I don't pretend that I'm doing it for any other reason than to be his fucking worst nightmare. Because even when my mom was declared and they were trying to get me to disconnect and I had gotten caught, I said, look, you guys don't understand. If you just leave me alone, I won't say anything bad to anyone.

I won't talk to Scientologists and talk shit about David Miscavige or Zinu or any of this shit. I won't try to do Scientology. I'll just, I'll do my own thing. You guys, if you make me disconnect from her, first of all, she's going to go nuclear and she's going to be your worst enemy.

At that time, that's actually what I was saying. Because you can't say, I'll be your worst enemy. That's a threat and they'll just kick you out right away. I was like, you're going to make her an enemy. So you could get away with diverting it. That's right. But then even later, when I was sort of on the verge of being kicked out, I made the same argument. So like I already tried everything I could to keep – well, the family together.

And Scientology just refuses to just treat people with any fucking humanity. They just do not care. And honestly, and when I say Scientology, everything that happens these days in Scientology is a direct reflection of David Miscavige's intention and will. Everything. Everything. And so when I say Scientology is a destructive cult,

I'm talking about just this aspect of how it destroys families who actually love each other. Heather was always so close with her parents and her sisters and her nieces and nephews. Like the only wedge that drove that family apart was Scientology insisting it had to be that way. You say that Scientology has no regard for humanity though and the symbolic reason that doesn't surprise me is because it's a religion, whatever you want to call it, that quite literally teaches that everyone here is just a prisoner sent here by something else. So it's not even real. That's right.

So there is no humanity. That's right. And it gets – that exact same train of thought. It goes, she's not your daughter. You don't give birth to a thetan. Yeah, that's right. Your bodies created that body and then a thetan popped into it. You have no relationship with that thetan beyond that.

That's part of the matrix. That's part of the trap. You thinking that your family is so important is part of the trap. Like that's how sick it is. And that is honestly, I know it's easy for Scientologists to coast through and not actually realize that that really is what their body of knowledge means. And it doesn't really come into focus until it happens to you. Because L. Ron Hubbard talks about suppressive persons and all this stuff. And when you read those policies, you're like, yeah, yeah, this makes sense. Because he's talking, he uses examples like Hitler, not grandma who read something bad

about Scientology on the internet, right? So even as a Scientologist, when I read all the stuff about disconnection and fair game and SPs and PTSs, all that made sense to me. It all makes sense when you think it's talking about something over here. And then they're like, no, we're talking about your wife. We're talking about your mom. And that's why I do what I do. You do a great fucking job at it but you know it when we do these episodes on scientology naturally there's a lot of funny stuff around it for sure so we get a good laugh i think humor in life is

great but part of the reason i am so fascinated by this topic and and interested in covering it on this show is for exactly what you just did right there because it is something that you know even if there's only 40 50 000 people and there's that means there's 40 50 000 people who are living under some fucking psycho regime that has no regard not only for their humanity but for what i think is at the core of meaning of life which is like love you know like they don't they don't want you to feel that and yet this is the same type of organization that pulls you in because you're going to be more successful doing this that's why you come in which is that's also an emotion too right success i work hard i get a good work ethic i rise up i do things and this is helping me do it so they're kind of it speaks out of both

sides of its mouth in the worst way because it sucks you in and then once you're there it tortures you and tells you that every natural urge you have as a human is not real it can fuck off and if you don't like it we're going to make your life hell that's so i think it's a very small price to pay they're not a nearly big enough price to pay that you're over here with a big youtube channel we're ripping them a new asshole every day but it'd be great if there were like 7 000 channels your size doing it 24 7 maybe that would like make the full dent yeah that they deserve because it's really like hearing a story like that i i mean i obviously you're it's it's extremely emotional thing but i'm sitting over here with a pissed off look on my face because like these are kids in the middle

of this forget even you guys like that's horrible what they did with with your mom and you and your the parents of your wife like that's that's horrible but then to have the grandkids be sucked into something that they have no control over and you know that like her parents love those kids but they've been told they're not allowed to do that something and and the fact that then they were so deep that they had to believe that i mean that that's that's trauma not just for that for the kids like that's fucking crazy to me man and then it gets it goes further right so then i first tell my story publicly publicly on leah remini's television show in the first season and what do i get i get aaron smithLevin.com, a hate website created by the Church of Scientology. Yeah, I've seen it.

Everyone who went on Leah's show got that. Yep. Everyone. And so it's not enough to destroy a family. You then actually have to try to destroy the person. You have to try to destroy them professionally. You have to try to ruin them utterly. Fortunately, it don't fucking work anymore.

Yeah. They can't get away with it. Yeah, people see through it. They can't get away with it. And one of the things that I've tried to do once my channel kind of started blowing up is to get as many other former Scientologists as possible on YouTube doing the same thing. It's the one place where you can say it without being censored. You don't have to ask for permission. And then, God forbid, you get a little cherry on top and eventually start earning some ad revenue.

And I mean, honestly, it's a huge like, oh, wow. So you don't have to be a martyr to do this anymore. You could actually dedicate yourself to it and encourage other people too. And so we started calling it SPTV. And then we created the SPTV Foundation to help people who are leaving Scientology not have to go through all this on their own. And so we've tried to figure out how to take all this momentum and all this effort and energy and channel it in as productive and helpful a way as possible.

But I still go back to those basic bare bones. I don't give a fuck. All that stuff is great and we'll do as much good work as we can. I'm here to be David Miscavige's worst fucking nightmare. And if that means making a hundred channels like mine, then that's what I want to do. That's why I try to help other people build, other former Scientologists build their channels up as much as possible because YouTube is the place where Scientologists, they can't stop you. They can't stop you. It's not like they can get a documentary killed. They can get a book killed. They can do all this stuff. They cannot stop you on YouTube.

It is hugely powerful. And everyone sees right through their fake views on their channel. I just want to throw that one out there. What was that one of 57 million views or something? Yeah. With like 10 comments or some shit like that? I don't know. It's unbelievable, like the stupidity.

But we keep mentioning miscavige and i'm sure we're going to talk about him a lot tomorrow so i would imagine you're not a fan fair to say okay good i knew that but we had to make sure so if if we're flying around with some jokes at miscavige that's gonna be cool with you that's my life life. All right. All right. Good. So he is such a fascinating guy to me. He's so easy to make fun of too. But at the end of it, he's the tip of a spear. He's worse than a mob boss in a lot of ways. And unfortunately, I have to give him this, from a financial standpoint, he seems to be quite crafty at keeping the organization flush. But you had mentioned it earlier, and I know Tony had dug into this on episode 210 that we did together about the whole process where he ended up taking over the organization by 1988. But if you don't mind, can we go through some of

that power struggle again for people who didn't see that podcast and how a really a young man like came to be in charge of this organization when the founder himself had dropped his body yeah absolutely and i'll do my best you know i wasn't there at the time but what dave must have been 24 years old yeah he took over so the thing is when when l ron hubbard went off into seclusion he brought two of his messengers named Pat Broker and Annie Broker. They were the only people who knew where L. Ron Hubbard was for the last six years of his life. He had a doctor named Dr. Eugene Denk and there was maybe a couple of other people who knew. On the other side of like the actual Scientology operation, David Miscavige just sort of kind of managed to rise to the top. It's funny because

it's, when I say to the top, that sounds like it's very specific and it's very literal. There was a whole echelon of executives. Scientology was never, other than L. Ron Hubbard, was never supposed to be run by one person, ever. Not even Pat and Annie were, like, it was almost like, L. Ron Hubbard was always very clear that it was committees of people that was supposed to take over running things. David Miscavige was – had a reputation for just being ruthless at attaining – ruthless and effective at accomplishing tasks he was given. And he did not hesitate to just take out people who he seemed – who he saw as competition. And so whereas someone like a Mike Rinder would be able to more accurately describe the various organizations that existed at that time and who was at the top of those

organizations and what is it that gave David Miscavige his special power that he had at that time. But one thing that I very specifically remember is that David Miscavige was tasked by L. Ron Hubbard with getting rid of all of the pending litigation against L. Ron Hubbard so that he could come out of seclusion. And this was called the special project, and David Miscavige was the special project I see, or the special project in charge. Because that project was so important and all-encompassing, it sort of put him in a position of power over the actual official church structure, if you know what I mean.

Can you pull the mic in just a little bit? Oh, sorry about that. Yeah. You're good. It gave him a specific quality of power. And he and Pat Broker were also basically like the bottleneck of information. That's all information had to pass through David Miscavige and Pat Broker were also basically like the bottleneck of information. That's all information had to pass through David Miscavige and Pat Broker. So even all the weekly reports from church management that had to be delivered to L.

Ron Hubbard, it's David Miscavige who would take those, you know, meet David Miscavige, you know, a dumpster behind the 7-Eleven. Good time, not a long time. And give it to Pat and then Pat would give it to LRH. These people, Dave and Pat together could manipulate LRH to do whatever they wanted by just feeding him false information about people. Like they could literally get L. Ron Hubbard to issue orders that someone should be removed from post and assigned to the RPF. Someone who L. Ron Hubbard used to know and trust. And this is the other thing where you go, shouldn't L. Ron Hubbard have been smart enough to know that he had put himself in a position to be...

Right, exactly. And why did he need these secret info dumps? Couldn't he just exteriorize and go have a... Hey, go over there. Or couldn't he just telepathically communicate with the OTs that he had put in charge of the church? Like, if you think about... You're asking questions below your OTA.

Exactly. You don't have the fucking rank to ask those questions. But this is how David Miscavige rose to a position of power where once L. Ron Hubbard died, he had the connections and power that he needed on the organizational side to eventually get rid of Pat. Now, the way he got rid of Pat was by calling Pat's bluff when Pat claimed to have OT 9 and 10 and 11 and 12 and 13 and 14 and 15. And Pat didn't make something up? He couldn't get him the fake tablets? It would be so hard to make up something that seemed believable. Enough mushrooms in the world, man. You can do it. So there was this warehouse, if I'm recalling the story correctly, that all of LRH's stuff was in.

And it was like guarded, you know. And this is where Pat claimed he had all the stuff. Well, David Miscavige and Marty Rathbun and Mike Rinder and a whole bunch of other names that Scientologists would recognize basically showed up to this place with like shotguns and everything, right? And said, we have an inside man that has just told us the FBI is about to show up and raid this location. We have to get everything in here out now or it's going to be in the hands of the feds. So they loaded up everything in the warehouse, took it somewhere off site, and over time went through everything. And once David Miscavige realized Pat did not have the OT levels, he said, you done, son.

And it was only a matter of time before Pat Broker was out of there. Because the truth is, Pat Broker didn't want to run Scientology. He wanted to keep running L. Ron Hubbard's horse ranch. He was just spending, he became a horse man. Yeah, he was a horse man. Wow. Some people are ass men. Some people are horse men.

And Pat was just – the people I know who knew Pat was like – he was just always a lazy liar. Like he was in no position to run Scientology and he had no interest. He just wanted to keep LRH's money and just living his horse life. So once Dave got rid of Pat, you know, Pat just disappeared. He's alive. He's out there. Man, you should try to find him. Is he still – is he like – does he consider himself a Scientologist?

No. No. Totally, totally away from it. It's nothing to do with it. Good for him. Yeah. Yeah. And that was really – there was a couple other people,

maybe Janice Gillum Grady. I always forget her sister's name for some reason. What's Janice's sister's name? No. Oh, we're both embarrassed. I'm sorry. You know, Janice Grady and her sister, oh, Terry, Terry Gamboa. Terry. There were two people who had worked very closely with L. Ron Hubbard for a whole lot of years. There's two examples of people who perhaps could have been in a position to potentially take over control of the church. David Miscavige just had – he has a lot of energy. Yes. And when he needs to, the charisma that we were talking about. Yeah, we got to – I mean if you're going to talk about how a guy gets in this position, unfortunately you do have to give him the compliments of the things that allow him to get there.

He definitely has ambition. He definitely has a lot of energy like you said. He's ruthless and he's business savvy in some ways and mixes – when you mix ruthlessness with business savvy, I mean we know how that looks for sure. So that's it. He was never selected by L. Ron Hubbard to take over Scientology. And it's funny because there's not a Scientologist in the world who would believe that, that he was not selected. That's part of the lore of David Miscavige. It's part of what gives him his power is that he has spun this tale that he was the chosen one.

Within Scientology and now people have left it. OK. Exactly. But he – the thing about him is like obviously L. Ron Hubbard was fucking crazy and had all these weird rules and just created the whole weird thing. But it seems like the – that ruthlessness we just talked about went – at least when I hear these stories, it went up a whole other level when Miscavige took over. Yeah. Is that fair to say? I think it is fair to say.

So before Miscavige took over, were they doing like some of the sick and private detectives on people and stuff like that? Yeah. That already existed at least? That definitely already existed. One of the big turning points in Scientology becoming kind of this like militaristic, hostile, aggressive, dangerous organization, things got much worse in 1967 when he created the C organization. And then he created the Scientology ethics codes and the ethics conditions and justice became important and monitoring behavior and thoughts became more and more important.

So from 1967 onwards, things got more, I wanna say militarized. It's probably not the right word to use, but much more strict and stringent and aggressive and hostile. And I mean, look, it's not uncommon for like Sea Org members to literally like come to physical blows with each other. Like it's not even – like imagine that being like, oh, we worked at Microsoft and my boss

swung on someone in the conference meeting today. It's like that's normal in the Sea Org. It's not necessarily considered great, but it is common. Wow. It was at the morning meeting and the captain decided to swing on his deputy and people had to tackle him to the ground. You're like, yeah.

It didn't... Another day at the office? It didn't used to be like that in like the early 60s. So, yeah. Once... The answer is that those types of

really heavy-handed and over-the-top tactics did exist before Miscavige. And in many, many ways, Miscavige has made a lot of things much worse. And in other ways, we can point to examples where things have actually gotten better in weird ways. Like what? Like they're not using quite as much effort to force people to have abortions in the Sea Org these days. Oh, right, like some of the recent things. And they got rid of the rpf yeah um small things but again but those changes weren't changes they made because they're like we should improve the quality of life of our members they're like

no we need to not have these things constantly end up in lawsuits right but these if i'm understanding correctly from earlier in the podcast these are things that are in recent years yeah since like the power of media has been able to expose some of these things. So that means for 30 some years or almost 30 years, whatever it is of him being in charge, like he was upping the ante on all this stuff for a long time. Yes. So behind the scenes, like, you know, the other 500 pound elephant in the room here is the fact that his wife, Shelly is like missing. And so obviously they still do some of this shit to his own wife in this case.

And Tony and I talked at length about where they believe she is in Northern California and all that. And so obviously they still do some of this shit to his own wife in this case. And Tony and I talked at length about where they believe she is in Northern California and all that. But like people can't even confirm if she's like alive and whatever. So they still do these things in the open and somehow there's still this tax-exempt organization that can be listed as a religion. I don't – that's never going to sit with me as making sense. Like where is the US government on this at this point? Eventually, when some politician, whether it's a representative or whether it's a senator,

realizes how popular it would make them to champion the cause of revoking Scientology's tax exempt status, when that day comes, things will happen. They'd be a pop cultural phenomenon. Exactly. Right, they'd never lose an election. Here'd be a pop cultural phenomenon. Exactly. Right? They'd never lose an election.

Here's the play Scientology made. Scientology has tried to infiltrate the conservative wing of the United States, of the US. How so? They use Greta Van Susteren. They use Joy Villa. Greta's still around. Did you remember Joy Villa? She popped up for a hot minute.

Does that name ring a bell? She would wear the Trump dresses to the Grammys and stuff. Oh, wait. She was a Scientologist too? She is. She is and has been. That's why she popped up the way that she did. I remember that girl.

Oh, my god. So here's why they're infiltrating the conservative wing of the US. They need to convince Christians that if the Christians allow the IRS to come for Scientology, the Christians are next. They have to convince the Christians to fight Scientology's fight for them. One of these guys eventually has to call bullshit on this. I want to say one of these guys. Whoever is – politics and religion, we all know they overlap.

Oh, yeah. And I'm just saying I don't know who the guy is. But somewhere in this whole puzzle, there is someone who's the guy who's like an opinion leader enough in the religious sphere and an opinion leader enough in the political sphere that they can be like, we have to stop letting Scientology make a fool out of us. They are not like us. They are not one of us. They are a family-destroying human trafficking cult who are hiding behind this cloak of religion, and they think we're going to carry their water for them because they want to scare us into thinking that religious liberty will be threatened if we revoke Scientology's tax-exempt status. One of these guys has to stand up and go – and not only go, I'm the one that's going to call bullshit on that. But let's realize all politicians act in their own self-interest. Of course.

But one of these guys has to realize it would be in their own self-interest. What could be more popular than standing up and saying I'm going to lead the charge on – holding congressional hearings into revoking Scientology's tax exempt status? Of course. Let's just put that first. That would be on HBO. Yeah. Great. It would be amazing.

They'd make a documentary on that in five minutes. I know. And so it's like all the former Scientologists in the world can do all the content on YouTube and make David Miscavige's life miserable and we can keep helping people leave Scientology all day long. That's great. But even if there's still a thousand Scientologists left and Scientology still has tax exemption, that should be a horrible embarrassment for the United States of America. Yeah. Maybe I'm thinking of this a little bit too broadly. But when you bring up the Christianity point, the cringy parts of Christianity are like to me like the megachurch people, like those dudes who are like riding around in Bentleys and saying, pay me for God, right?

But they have huge, huge groups of people who follow them who are all voting blocs, by the way. And like they want to keep the gravy train going. So they're not a hell of a lot different to me, by the way. Maybe they don't imprison people and shit. But like that's the problem when you're dealing with the whole like Christianity thing as a whole. It's sucking in all the ones that are doing it correctly, like Alessi here. And then you're getting like some of these megachurch guys who have some Mulan followings and they're ruining it for everyone with the politicians. I agree. The Joel Austeins of the world are problematic,

but I will at least say this. More people show up for Joel Austein's Sunday service than there are Scientologists in the world. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I think Joel Osteen could probably fill Dallas Stadium, the Cowboy Stadium. Oh, yeah. You couldn't get 5,000 people to show up for a David Miscavige event if you spent three months booking it. So you're right. And it might be that – and I'm referring collectively to Christians only because they are the ones who have the power to actually do something about this. Oh, I understand. Yeah.

They are the ones who have the power to actually go – religious freedom in the United States is not put in jeopardy by revoking Scientology's tax-exempt status. And it might be that they go, shit, we've got our own Joel Osteen. Fuck, we don't want to, man, we can't do something. It's like, no, you can. I agree, there's something wrong with, you know, pastors having 50,000 square foot mansions and private jets. But they at least have,

at least, massive congregations. Scientology, it's scamming its members, it's harming its members, it's lying to its members. You know whatming its members. It's lying to its members. You know what? Joel Osteen, I promise you, believes in heaven and believes in God and believes that Jesus died for our sins. I would probably buy that. David Miscavige knows there's no OT 9 and 10, and he's lying to everyone about it.

Like, it's an actual fraud. I believe that even these mega pastors believe in heaven. What about the guy who was selling plots of land in heaven? Who was doing that? Oh, you didn't see this? Can we pull this up? Christian pastor selling, this is like pretty recent. This was the other day.

I think I tweeted this too, but Christian pastor selling plots of land in heaven. Yeah, you got to see this. When I see shit like this, I'm almost like, the people who actually bought it i can't feel bad because i'm just oh my god all right yeah yeah here we go eternal real estate here it is a church in mexico is selling plots of land in heaven go down a church in mexico is helping people prep for eternity by selling plots of land in heaven according to the pastor of

entoms who claim to have received quote permission from god unquote i love these guys who get permission. The church is offering heavenly real estate for the simple price of $100 per square meter. Pictures of the offer have been circulating on social media, showing a brochure with an elaborate depiction of a holy house in the clouds the illustration features a family ascending a golden staircase to their new celestial home the brochure also clarifies that the church accepts various payment options including paypal google pay visa mastercard prison and hell that's all i have to say to shit like that but that's very scientology of them in a way in a different you know belief system but in 2018 is in bob wayne pastor was arrested after

selling tickets to heaven to his congregation for 533 dollars yeah yeah uh know, it is true. If the IRS revokes Scientology tax exempt status, they might have to start doing some more heavy lifting on taking a look at some of these other guys as well. But the thing is Scientology has already lost its tax exempt status once. Yeah. When was that again? I'm not going to get the date right. But like – Can we go back?

Some fact checker out there. It might have been like 58 or something, 56 or something. The IRS revoked the status because they determined that L. Ron Hubbard was personally enriching himself from the funds. It was an inurement. Yeah. Oh, not bad. He lost this exemption in 1957 and 1968. Yeah.

Both. There you go. But something happened in... I'm getting it mixed up in my head. Something happened in 93 too, right? 93, they got it back most recently. I've never lost it since. So they had it off from 67 to 93.

They did not have it. Right, right, right. And didn't they do like a blackmail campaign to do that? Yeah, they sued like... they filed like 2,000 individual lawsuits against individual IRS employees. Not against the IRS, but they would sue the actual employee. It's kind of genius. I'm not going to lie.

I know. When you're – like Miscavige is not a dummy. No. Got to give it to them. So they get it back in 93. They've never lost it since. Right. And he – this is what Mark Bunker

was really digging into that blew my mind. He's used his coffers to build a real estate empire, and he'll buy up a lot of real estate, for example, in Clearwater that's all in the same area. So it creates a ghost town of Scientology in half the town. That's right. It's intentional. And one of the reasons he does this is because as a tax-exempt organization, they're not allowed to just accumulate money and do nothing with it. Buying property is one of the permitted uses. And if Scientology says we need this building for our congregation, the IRS isn't really allowed to go in and be like, is there anybody even in the building?

Yeah. And so it's the one thing that Miscavige can spend his money on. And technically, it's not an expense. It's just taking assets from the cash column and putting it into the real assets column. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it also helps him. It's one of the ways he's allowed to continue to convince – he's able to continue to convince Scientologists that they're still expanding throughout the world because he's like, look, we just had to get a big brand new building. But it's empty.

Yeah, and their population, as you said, has been dwindling since the peak in the 80s. It's down to, I think, like 40,000, something like that. It's between 20 and 35,000. OK. Yeah. But Scientologists don't know that. Scientologists think there's millions of members. This is the crazy thing about what it's like to just be in a cult and how your thoughts

are really controlled. Think of it this way. In the late 80s, early 90s, Scientology was claiming 10 million members. Even if they've had zero growth, there's only about 150 Scientology organizations in the world. If there were only 5 million members, there would be over 70,000 Scientologists per org. Anyone who works in any one of these orgs could tell you they can't put together 200 Scientologists per org. They just don't think about it. They don't think about – It's math.

What I see in front of me, what does that mean if that's true everywhere? They just don't have that thought. They're that deep. I didn't have those thoughts when i was in you're just too damn busy trying to do your job you just don't it sounds crazy yeah when you when you left though after that whole very traumatic ordeal like now you're out in the real world what'd you go do for a job right away um i got in the hedge fund research i was for the last for the last five years i was in scientology i got into into hedge fund research. For the last five years I was in Scientology,

I got into the hedge fund research space. And so that's what I continued to do. So you at least had that as an off ramp. The fact that I was doing very well financially is probably what kept me from just completely melting down. I'm sure. I'm sure. But now you're out, you're getting hit with all this crazy realities in front of your face, families getting ripped apart and all that you had vowed though to make yourself like an enemy david miscavige's worst enemy what like what worse worst nightmare were how were you planning to do that at first assuming you weren't first thinking youtube right away oh Oh, no, no, no. I had started my YouTube channel quite early on after leaving. So that was plan A.

I didn't start uploading every day until like two years ago. But that was plan A. You wanted to go straight to YouTube for this. Yeah, I didn't have any other idea of how I was going to do that. Yeah, I mean obviously it's worked out pretty smart. Yeah. But like you also mentioned you work with people who are trying to leave scientology and stuff like that so in a way you're kind of like a counselor to the other world right oh yeah we're we're we're

shuttling people from from the underworld into the light what's that like like when when you get someone that i assume they're contacting you like covertly or something like that, like, hey, I want to leave. What's the usual – is there like any one usual impetus that makes them – that makes someone that calls you want to leave? These days, believe it or not, it's because they've been watching stuff on YouTube and it's gotten them to start questioning things. Other than that, people usually start questioning things when horrible things happen to them that they thought could never have happened to them, like what happened to me and my family. Yes. I never thought that could ever happen. When it does happen to you, you're like,

as it's happening, you're like, holy crap. Or if it happens to someone close to you that you know. It is Scientology that ends up turning its own members away. In most cases, it is Scientology's horrible treatment of its own members that ends up getting cases, it is Scientology's horrible treatment of its own members that ends up getting them to be like, is it just me? Or is there something wrong with this organization? Is it David Miscavige? Is it L. Ron Hubbard? Are there other people like me who are having these same problems? Now, these days, because there's so much information out there on YouTube, very often part of this equation is they found some videos of former Scientologists who – and they go, these guys don't seem like they're rabid and hateful and lying. Like they seem to really know what they're talking about.

They seem honest. They seem genuine. They don't seem to have an agenda. And holy shit, maybe I've got some thinking to do. My eyes don't deceive me. Yeah. Yeah. And the thing is that one of the things that can be hard for Scientologists on their path out is we haven't even really gotten into all the kind of Scientology terminology and there'd be no point because it's incomprehensible. But it's very hard for a Scientologist to actually talk – especially who's considering leaving. You can't talk to any of your friends because they'll turn you in.

You can't talk to your partner because they'll turn you in. You can't talk to your partner because they'll turn you in. You can't talk to your kids. You can't talk to your parents. There's no one to talk to. So they end up looking online and like, oh my god. So oftentimes the first contact with someone who's leaving, it's very easy. They're just relieved to be able to explain what they've been going through to someone who actually understands what they're talking about.

So there's no – on that first phone call or meet up however you do it i mentioned phone call okay they're usually not like scared and hesitant no they are they are but once they once they start unloading it's going it's like oh my god it's like just a waterfall like a therapy session yeah or a hydrant yeah whoa and like, are there some that you really, it's a struggle for a while, they're on the fence, they don't want to go, and then eventually they go? If they're on the fence, I tell them, hey, look, no one can twist your arm and convince you to make these kind of life changes where the stakes are this high. I never try to talk someone out of Scientology. I try to listen to them and acknowledge them and talk to them, but I will never try to convince them to leave. Because look, I stayed under the radar, which means I was sort

of mentally out, but was still a Scientologist in good standing from 2009 to 2014. That's five years. That's a long time. So I'll be like, look, no, because I go, I'm never going to talk someone into losing their family. You know, like, I'm never going to get on the phone. So I want to be like, no, what you really should do is the thing that's going to make all of your family disconnect from you. It's like, if you're going to make that decision, it's going to be because you feel like you couldn't even live another day without doing this. So because the stakes are so high, that's like when I say I'd never talk someone out or convince someone to leave, that's what I mean. The stakes are so high.

You can't try to make someone feel guilty for not leaving. I go, look, do whatever is best for you. Usually I say the first thing that you need to do is get a job that doesn't rely on Scientology. You have to – maybe Grant Cardone was right about one thing. You got to get your money right. That's a hell of a place to make me laugh, but that was funny. So like often what happens, someone just needs someone they can talk to who actually understands what they're talking about.

And then yes, they'll always ask for advice. But my advice is always what's right for you? What's your situation? What's your family situation like? What's your work situation like? What's your relationship situation like? And where would you like what's your relationship situation like and where would you like it to be like and also and are you doing okay like are you are you like suicidal are you like horribly depressed because i'm also not trying to be like no you should yeah yeah like you have to they have to do what's right for them

god it's so heavy there's so many variables too and every person's different as well but you guys you guys are kind of like the Underground Railroad for Scientology. Yeah. Like in a way – like do you envision you and some of the other people who have left Scientology and are helping people get out, do you envision like long-term having a process where you could literally help people get placed into careers and do things like that that can help them on the back end? So you do that already? Absolutely, yeah. Wow. That's amazing.

Yeah. The thing is when people in the real world hear someone's Scientology story and that they're leaving and what they're going through, they want to give them a shot. They want to help them out. That's great. They want to go, you're doing the right thing. We're going to give you a shot. They want to help them out. They want to go, you're doing the right thing. We're going to give you a shot. So like, even on doing resumes and whatnot, some of the things that ends up happening is we figure out how to put a resume together where it

doesn't say, I've been working for the Church of Scientology for the last 20 years. You put it together in a way that looks okay on a resume. And then when you get into the interview, you go, let me tell you what's – I'm sorry. I'm crying, but I would not recommend crying. It's like, let me tell you what's really going on. You know, I put some bullshit on my resume because I've been working for the Church of Scientology for the last 20 years, but I don't want to put that on a resume. I'm sorry. It's all right.

Take it down me getting emotional about this is just knowing how much people in the real world want to help people who are leaving scientology it's awesome oh yeah and that's what happened when i got declared so i've been working for this scientologist in scientology he's famous his name is kurt feshbach and he and his brothers had the first billion dollar short only fund back in the 80s and they went broke but he was still a famous scientologist and he opened his brothers had the first billion-dollar short-only fund back in the 80s. And they went broke, but he was still a famous Scientologist. And he opened up his hedge fund research business. He opened it back up about five years before I left Scientology. I have no high school education.

I don't have an equivalency degree or anything. Nothing. But he taught me the business. And while working for him for five years, I got to know some of the biggest names in the industry, got to work with some of the biggest hedge funds in the industry, and made some really great contacts. And when he, Scientology gave him the heads up that I was going to get declared so that he could lay me off before that so that I couldn't have a lawsuit against him for religious discrimination, right? So when he laid me off, I had no idea what I was going to do.

Nothing. Did he come to you and do it personally? Him and his deputy, yeah. What was that like? Oh, they just pretended it was just bullshit thing of, oh, his health is deteriorating and he needs someone to fully take over and you're not quite up to that. It was a total bullshit story. Okay. someone to fully take over and you're not quite up to that. And it was a total bullshit story.

I never would have gone into business for myself. I didn't have some father figure mentor business. Like it's not, I wasn't wired that way. I didn't even consider it an option. I didn't even know where to begin. It was one guy in the hedge fund industry who said, you're too good at this to go off and do something else. I'm going to help you get your LLC set up. I'm going to introduce you to a fund that I think you can sign as your first client. And it'll be up to you to impress the hell out of them. And when I'm talking to these guys who are, you know, running billion-dollar hedge funds, I don't try to shine them on. I mean, at this particular time, I was like, they'll be like, hey, how come you're not with Falcon Research anymore? And I'd be like, you know, I can't remember if I was able to say this to them without getting emotional, but I said, I know that's a pretty normal question to ask. And I know you're not

intending to like go really deep on this, but in order to give you an honest answer, I kind of have to really tell you what's going on. And I would have to tell them the Scientology story. And I'd have to tell them about my mom and my kids and my wife and my parents and her parents. And they would just be like, you've made the right decision. And we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna give you a shot. That's amazing. You know, and then that, it made everything possible for me. It's like, I was making 10 times more money after getting kicked out of Scientology than I was when I was in doing the exact same thing. And it never would have happened. Now, I realize not everyone's going to have that exact same experience, but it's like,

I've already walked that walk. I know what it's like to have to explain something that many people would find embarrassing. But I mean, a lot of people might be embarrassed that they work for Scientology or were ever in Scientology. But it's like if that's what it takes to get the person across from you to understand why you put some bullshit on your resume, but you tell them what's going on in the interview and be like, I'm going to work my guts out. Give me two weeks. You'll want me to run the place. And if not, I'll leave. It's powerful. Get your foot in the door by being honest about it because people out there want to help people who are leaving Scientology.

Well, that's a really good thing. Yeah. That's great to hear there's people out there like that. But also – and obviously like it worked out for you and they're helping other people who you get to help now too from the other side but like also you know i think it might be different if i were an adult when i got in and then went to leave later because i might be real embarrassed about that but if you're like yo i was born into this and i left i'm just i mean this is just how i'd be i'd be like so empathetic of that because it's all you ever knew and i'd be like more like those people were, more power to you. Like great.

Hop on board. Like you want to help people like that because they never had a chance. It's supposed to be a country of like second chances, but you're talking to people who never got a first one. So it's powerful stuff. But I mean I see how emotional you are reliving this that you've had to relive so many times. It's kind of like right under the surface. And if you watch a lot of my videos, I'm very upbeat. I'm very high energy.

I'm very – and that's how I like to be. It's embarrassing that I have to cry every time I come on the podcast. It's not embarrassing at all. It's really – it's powerful stuff. I know, but I went up and Andy Stumpf, Andy Stumpf from Cleared Hot. He's a former SEAL. Yeah, I know Andy Stumpf. I said, Andy, you're a former SEAL.

I've seen some SEALs come on here and tell some stories about some crazy stuff without crying. And I don't want to be a little bitch and cry on your podcast. I'm like, but I'm not sure if I can help it. He's like, just do it. Yeah, dude. Everyone's got their own experience. And this is – I would argue that like something as a child that you were a part of and the power of that with all the – we haven't even gotten to the rest of your family. What happened there? But like – yeah, if you're going to be emotional about something, that's at the top of the list right there for sure.

I'm sure he understood that. No, no. He did. no he did yeah yeah so you but you keep talking about how it was the crux of it was like your mom and you at a similar time where she's getting kicked out you're told to disconnect you're like get the fuck out but you had brother sister step sisters all this stuff in there when did they leave my mom uh divorced the guy who was the parent of my stepbrother and my stepsister when I was still in Clearwater training. So they were out of the picture early on. Okay. My younger brother lives a couple miles from me.

I haven't seen him in five, six, seven years. He's married. Got it. He's got a daughter that I've never met. And my brother hasn't seen my girls in years. And then I had an identical twin brother who died in a car crash when i was 23 and uh before that happened he had been declared as oppressive person as well and me and my mom had to disconnect from him so like between me disconnecting from my brother

and then him dying and then my my kid's mom disconnecting from her dad and then him dying and then my kid's mom disconnecting from her dad and then him dying. It's like this is why I do what I do. It's like creating the foundation and helping people leave, that's icing on the cake. That's giving everything we do kind of a greater purpose. But all that could not exist and I would still be doing what I'm doing just to be

the biggest possible nightmare i can to david miscavige and the cult of scientology well like i said i'm glad you're doing it 100 i mean someone's got to and there's other people out there like you mentioned who are doing it as well but you guys are also fighting a huge pr battle in the middle of this because the one thing that like obviously has drawn a lot of attention to society or to Scientology over the years is that they market some major names who join them. And we've mentioned Tom Cruise today and whatever, but he continues to be this high-level person there. We see them grooming Elizabeth Moss, who I believe was born into it, into that kind of role. We see guys like Michael Pena in there, John Travolta.

I mean, these are names that the average person recognizes, and they're like, ooh, I want to be like them, and maybe I'll join. So, you know, you guys who are fighting against this, in a way, like, you're not an actor, you're not a you're not an actor you're not a movie star or something you're not this celebrity so you're like the normal man and the way that they can fight back against their one of the ways they can fight back against is well look at the really high level successful people who are famous who are in our organization you're going to believe them or aaron it's true it's true but funnily enough you could be like when's the last time tom cruise

spoke about scientology he got his ass whipped in 2005 when he did that. It didn't work out very well for him or his career at that time. And then his career started doing a little better when he stopped talking about Scientology, even though his wife left him and then he disowned his only daughter. But my point is even the people Scientology would point to, do they even talk about Scientology? Yeah, it's like Fight Club. You don't talk about it. It's crazy. So did he decide to disconnect from his daughter or did they pressure him to do that? Oh, Scientology definitely did not pressure him to disconnect from his daughter. So he decided. If anything, Scientology would want him to stay connected to

his daughter so that Katie would not pull her totally out of Scientology forever. So I believe that it was probably Katie, her dad, her team who saw what happened with Connor and Isabella, the children that Tom and Nicole adopted, and how Connor and Isabella were poisoned against Nicole and indoctrinated to believe that she was a suppressive person because she was trying to – she didn't want to be in Scientology anymore. She was pulling Tom out of Scientology during the Eyes Wide Shut days. Plus, Nicole's father is like a psychiatrist, I believe. That's like a huge – oh, my God. No, no.

That's like, oh, my God. And so even though Nicole still had shared custody, to the best of my understanding, with Connor and Isabella, the time that Connor and Isabella spent with Tom, they were being conditioned, brainwashed, to believe what Scientology wanted them to believe about their mother. And Katie would have seen firsthand how that affected Connor and Isabella's relationship with Nicole. And I believe that Katie – I don't have any inside track on this. It's my personal opinion that she was like, there's no way in hell I'm letting you do to Suri what you did to Connor and Isabella. But the reason why I believe that Tom Cruise would have pretty willingly agreed to disappear is because of everything else that we've discussed about how Scientology delegitimizes and deprioritizes familial relationships. Suri isn't really Tom's daughter.

Suri is just a being who's 67 trillion – 76 trillion years old and a small price to pay. Small price to pay. A small price to pay, yeah. And it really is that disgusting. But I can tell you, Scientology would not have told Tom Cruise he had to disconnect from Surrey. Absolutely not. He's too important to them.

He has all the leverage. He's got to know that, too. That was Tom's decision. It was Tom's call to make, I should say. Because someone could say, well, was it Katie's decision? Tom had to agree to it. It was Tom's call to make. And that's why he would have convinced himself that that's why it was okay.

That's so – it's just so mind-blowing to me. I mean what – do you think like if Tom Cruise suddenly like woke up and left Scientology, that would be such a big loss that they'd just be dead? Yes. He's that much of a linchpin. He's that much of a linchpin. He is that much of a linchpin. How do we make this happen? I know. A little CIA MK Ultra mind control.

Let's go. I know. You know, people ask me, and I'm sure they ask Jenna and other people all the time, is there anything somebody could have said to you when you were in Scientology that would have made you reconsider things? I go, no. Because of the nature of that matrix story. It'd be like Neo going back into the matrix to do his little stunts. And someone in the matrix tries to convince him the matrix is real. You can't. It's not possible. It would be kind of like that. It's not possible to break through

on that level when you think you're the one that's awake and everyone else is the one that's asleep. But they're trying to convince you otherwise. It's – on some level, it's not possible. I say all this going – if someone would have asked me 20 years ago, could Mike Rinder ever leave Scientology? I'd be like, no way. Come on. No, that's not possible. But he does.

Now, the difference is Mike Rinder was treated so horribly. Like I said before, a lot of people, their waking up point is they're personally treated so horribly in a way that they didn't think would be possible. That's never going to happen to Tom Cruise. You know what I mean? He's never going to be treated in that way. The only – I think I agree with you because he's like – I mean, let's be honest. He's a megastar. But like the only thing that makes me wonder if it's possible that some sort of bad treatment could happen is Leah. You know, because like what they did to her at calling her in to do all this shit.

But what got her into trouble? She pissed off Tom Cruise. That's right. So you're saying it's still like a hide. Oh, yes. But what if he pissed off David Miscavige? If David Miscavige deteriorated personally to such a point that he could allow himself to like get pissed off and angry at Tom Cruise like that, then yeah, something could happen. But what I say – the reason I say if he could deteriorate is because for David Miscavige's own self-preservation, he would – he should never treat Tom in a way that would upset Tom to that level. Yeah.

Or if he did, immediately come back, oh my god, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. Those two are a cute couple. Yeah. Well, at least David doesn't have to get on his knees. He's still short enough. You knew it cute couple. Yeah. Well, at least David doesn't have to get on his knees. He's still short enough. You knew it was coming. Anyway. I think David Miscavige knows that if Tom Cruise left Scientology, they'd be done.

I mean, I think if Tom Cruise left Scientology, I think half the Scientologists walk out the door. They go, if it doesn't work for him, it'll never work for us. An actor. Well. He's a megastar, but still, like, that's crazy.

He's one of the two biggest beings in this sector of the Galactic Federation. Watch your mouth. Okay, put your manners in. Okay. That's,

that's just wild to me. I mean, look, yeah, when, when you can market a name like that, I mean, we've seen the videos that Mark Bunker leaked. They're fucking pr me. I mean look. Yeah, when you can market a name like that. I mean we've seen the videos that Mark Bunker leaked. They're fucking priceless.

I mean those are some of the best things I've ever watched. But like he has to feel – it's very clear that he – despite the fact that in his life he's this megastar who in that role alone should feel like mega power I guess. But like he feels like a sense of like godlike type power in this organization of 40,000 people. And it's not enough that he's like, you know, a godlike person on screen, so to speak, in front of billions of people around the world. That dichotomy to me, there's like some sort of egomania in him that's driving that because mathematically, it makes no sense. You're right. You're totally right. Yeah.

I mean Tom Cruise has said as far as the responsibility for clearing this planet and achieving the aims of Scientology, there's L. Ron Hubbard, there's COB, and then there's me. So like that is how he sees himself, like where he sees – how he sees his importance and where he sees himself in the hierarchy of upon whose shoulders does the responsibility for salvaging this sector of the galaxy rest? Well, L. Ron Hubbard ain't around anymore. So it's Dave, it's little Dave, it's little Captain Davey and little Tommy. That's it.

And that's, he believes that when he says that. And I think that has been misinterpreted by some that he's actually like number two in the Church of Scientology or maybe he'll succeed David Miscavige. And that will never happen. That's not what Tom Cruise means when he says that. What he's talking about is his responsibility that he bears for achieving the aims of Scientology. He knows that he doesn't have to be a Sea Org member to do the job that's required of him. And so only a Sea Org member would ever succeed David Miscavige in taking control of Scientology. But Tom Cruise sees himself as having more responsibility for moving

Scientology forward than any other Scientologist in the world other than David Miscavige. Did you ever meet him when you were in? I never met him. Never were in the same room with him? I wasn't. I wonder what that would have been like like in that setting. I mean the people that I know who have been around him have never said anything but excellent things about him but like he I mean it's part of his shtick though to be like overly nice to people. Now, if you're one of the people who actually works for him, it's much different.

He's much like a David Miscavige. Yes, I've heard he's like kind of nasty. Like he has all his assistants on set are like Scientologists or whatever and he's like pretty nasty to them. Well, yeah, and if he's upset with any of them, they get to go in for an interrogation from a Scientology sex checker. Imagine what it was like to be his girlfriend. I mean imagine what a pure hell Katie Holmes was living. How horrible do you have to be to be one of the most recognizable, famous people in the world? You can't keep a girlfriend.

This guy can't find a girlfriend. I mean your life has to be – it has to be so horrible in your inner circle. That e-meter is not working, my guy. I mean you're not in a relationship with Tom Cruise. You're in a relationship with Tom Cruise and David Miscavige. You know. I don't envy that. Your best friend is a cult leader.

Yeah. Yeah, literally. That's right. And you're the other leader. I mean that's crazy. But on your channel, Growing Up in Scientology, you cover all the current events with this stuff. And it's really good coverage by the way because it cuts right through the noise. You're on YouTube every day. You're going through basically anything that's happening around the cult that is Scientology.

And one of the earliest stuff I saw you cover was back as this whole Masterson thing was like unfolding. I think there was like a mistrial first and then another trial with all that. That was after you were on Danny's show. And I had Tony in here to talk about that because he was covering it as well for his blog. But the fact that Scientology was so almost like overtly involved in the legal defense that they made themselves a part of the case, I thought that was a huge miscalculation because it also put them on trial, no? I agree with you.

In some ways, the way they behave is like they can't help themselves. Yeah, yeah. It's a great way to put it. And one of the reasons I covered that second trial – I think in the first trial I was probably just doing videos about whatever it is that Tony was writing on his blog. But for the second trial, I was in LA for every day of the trial. Because Scientology is so specific in its experience – and I'm talking about like the terminology, the language, the procedures. A former Scientologist just has – can just from a conversation with the Jane Doe's hear what they went through, explaining it the way a Scientologist would explain it. And you go, oh, there's no question they're telling the truth.

Like, the reason I covered it the way that I did is because I wasn't undecided on whether Danny did it. I knew Danny did it. The way Jane – what Jane Doe went through, what Scientology put her through and how she was subjected to these various procedures proved Scientology knew Danny did it. There's certain things Scientologists or former Scientologists would take away from the information that was shared that people that were never in Scientology would never take away. The fact that there was a civil settlement between Danny and Jane Doe 1. You go, oh,

people settle things all the time just to put them to rest. Not in Scientology. Not in Scientology. Oh, they control you not doing that? You're not allowed to sue a Scientologist. You can get expelled. You can get expelled. Also, there is zero

social benefit, and I hesitate. I have to use the right language here because I'm... Let me know if you know if what I'm saying is clear. In Scientology, there is zero benefit to falsely accusing someone of any type of sexual assault. You're not going to get attention. You're not going to get headlines. You're not going to get sympathy. You are going to be subjected to rigorous interrogation.

It is not OK or acceptable to accuse people. No one's going to rush. There's no hashtag believe all survivors in Scientology. It's the opposite of that. I mean, if anything, it's what did you do to pull it in? There's no sympathy. I mean, there is no, within the Scientology social ecosystem, there is nothing to gain and everything to lose by accusing any Scientologist, much less a celebrity, of sexual assault. So first of all, you just have the fact, like, that's not a thing in Scientology to have false accusation. It's just not a thing. Yeah, I understand. Okay. Then you have the ethics officer jumps in, and the sex checkers jump in,

and the auditors jump in, and their job is to find out who's lying that is their job and they really want to know so like so one um they really do want to know if someone committed sexual assault they're not hold on they're not going to report it to the police but they really do want to know but why did they let's play their game of fucked up immorality. Why do they care about something like this, which we all agree is horrible, but these are the same people who tell you your own son is not your son or your own daughter is not really your daughter. So what's a little sexual assault then? I know. There is a lot of contradictions and inconsistencies in what they seem to care about and what they seem to not care about. Like why do they care if anyone is gay if we're not our bodies? Who cares? Why is Scientology so homophobic if we're all genderless, immortal, spiritual beings who are only temporarily

occupying a body? It doesn't even make sense for them to care about whether someone's gay or not, but they, completely homophobic. Like, but it doesn't make sense, but it is that way. OK? OK. So on the sexual assault stuff, it's not that they very singularly care about whether people commit sexual assault. It's that they really care about finding out if you're doing bad things. They're infatuated with it in fact. No matter –

To hold it over you. Yeah. They're going to hold it over you. You're going to have to make up the damage. You're going to have to do your lower conditions. Maybe you'll make a big donation here, do a big thing here. They really are infatuated with controlling behavior. It's all just controlling money.

And so no matter what they find out you've done, they're never going to report it to the authorities. But they are going to get to the bottom of it and they are going to make you pay in their own internal way. The fact that they even allowed Danny to do a civil financial settlement with Jane Doe One is evidence Scientology verified he actually did this. The settlement was done just to make Jane Doe One legally to make her go away. And you would believe – and I'm not saying you did. I definitely think you did it. But you would believe their system to getting to the bottom of finding out if you actually did it? Because it's kind of –

They're very good at that. They are. Yes. The e-meter doesn't – the e-meter is full of shit. Scientology auditing does not give you the gains that they promise it's going to give you. But they are very good at getting to the bottom of things. Because Scientologists at least believe that the e-meter, the e-meter reads, indicates things that it's even more aware of you than you are of you. So if I'm the auditor and I'm trying to get to

the bottom of something you did, and I ask you a question and you're like, well, I don't have an answer. I'd be like, well, take a look there. And what's that? What is that? Now, you know, I'm using the e-meter. I don't have to sit here and go, I'm using the needle of the e-meter to indicate where I want you to look. But you know because you know how auditing works. That's right. I'm going to go, what's that? What is that? What is that?

What is that? Right there. Right there. What are you not telling me? What is it? What is it? And eventually, did you – can I be really vulgar in this? I don't want to –

Oh, of course. Did you murder a baby? Did you kill someone? Did you have a hit and run? Did you rape a child? It's called the murder routine. If you're doing an interrogation, you accuse them of things so much worse than what you're hoping they'll admit to that they're like, oh, Jesus God, I didn't do that. Okay, yeah.

So yeah. So she was unconscious and I had sex with her. I don't think it was rape though. Like that's kind of how an auditing session might go. It's literally an interrogation and Scientology is very good at it. So for them – The Fed should hire them. Shit.

I know. For them to even allow Danny to enter into a civil settlement with Jane Doe 1 means the Scientology authorities, David Miscavige, already determined he did this. We need to put this to rest. Now, remind me of the timeline here because the accusations came out publicly in I believe 2017. The first trial I want to say was like 2022. The next one was in 2024. Was that pretty – that was pretty recent, right? No, the trial was 2023.

So he's been in jail for like a year? Yeah. Okay. So the accusations though were from the early 2000s, right? Jane 01 and Jane 03 came forward to the Scientology authorities at the time it happened. Yeah. So, okay. That was what I was going to ask. So they came forward at the time, meaning these internal investigations had happened a decade and a half before this even came to public light, which means this entire time that he's a Scientologist and they're propping him up and all this, they know he did this.

That's right. And there was a very specific meeting that – see, I've already had – I've had private conversations and then I also sat in on the trial and sometimes I can't remember which information – what information came from which. In other words, not everything is allowed to be presented to the jury on the stand, right? Right. Here's what I'm talking about. There was a meeting that occurred with Jane Doe One, Danny Masterson, Alfredi Johnson, who's a public Scientologist, and some people from the Office of Special Affairs. It was almost like a summit. It was supposed to be where Danny was supposed to come in and he was supposed to apologize to Jane Doe 1.

And this was being organized because Jane Doe 1 was like all I want. Like if he would just – I apologize. And the fact that the Office of Special Affairs even attempted to facilitate something like this is proof to anyone in Scientology that the Office of Special Affairs determined that Danny Masterson committed this rape. And they were just trying to smooth it over so that it didn't go legal and it didn't become a big flap and a big bad PR for Scientology. And what happened is Danny Masterson came into that meeting and he couldn't just be sincere. He was cracking jokes. He was laughing. He was insulting. And it was actually one of the Scientologists who called an end to the meeting, said that's enough.

We're not – this is too much. Get out of here. Wow. the meeting. He said, that's enough. This is too much. Get out of here. And what's crazy about how the whole Danny Masterson thing ended up rolling out and him getting convicted and in prison is that at any step of the way, the Scientologists involved were willing to settle it internally if it was just handled correctly to their satisfaction. And this is what I mean when I say Scientology over and over again turns its own members against it by just refusing to treat people with humanity. The fact that someone – all they could want in a situation, which is like one of the worst things to happen to somebody, to be assaulted like that.

And all they're asking for is just someone to show contrition for it in a private setting. Like that's their bar. And he can't even do that. That's a fucked up – I mean he's fucked up for doing these things in the first place. But that is an extra fucked up individual. That is someone I don't know that there's – I don't know how you can come back as a person. It's true. And it's especially true that he is a uniquely screwed up individual. It's not just, oh, he knew Scientology would protect him,

so he was raping Scientologists. This guy raped non-Scientologists. This guy raped people in multiple states and multiple countries in multiple decades. This guy is a danger to society. It wasn't just Scientology. It wasn't just the protection he had as a Scientology celebrity. He raped non-Scientologists. Yeah. Why do you think people like – I mean we saw the famous – I think it was like a letter from Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis. Why do you think people like that defended him even after he finally got found guilty?

Well, the number one reason is they didn't think anybody were going to find out about it. Yeah, good luck with that. They truly did not know those letters were going to be admitted into the record and would be available to the public. Who the fuck is their lawyer? I know, right? Like all that money. Lack of brain cells. cells well that's the thing they didn't have a lawyer in this it was actually danny's mom carol who came to them personally and

asked them to do the letter i mean how pissed how pissed is ashton now you know oh my god wow um but there was also a photo that came out a few weeks ago of ashton and mila with one of danny's brothers he's the one that looks the least like, oh, I forget all the brothers' names. But Ashton is still close with the family. That's crazy. Yeah. That would be a line for me.

Like if a friend of mine committed rape, they're not my friend anymore. I know. This is not very hard. And Ashton knew Jane Doe 3. How? It's even worse. It's one thing if it's – I mean I don't know if you realize this. It's at least eight victims that have come forward.

He was only charged with three. He was only convicted for two. Yeah. But there were victims who were allowed to testify at the trial about Danny raping them even though he wasn't being charged with those rapes. They were called past bad acts witnesses. Was that because of the statute of limitations on their claims that they weren't charges officially? Yeah. Well, the prosecutor – it could have been a number of reasons.

But yes, the statute of limitations is one of them. One of the victims was in Canada. The rape occurred in Canada at a wrap party for a film. And she didn't even know who Danny Masterson was or that he was an actor. It was when she sat down and watched the movie Dracula 2000 that she said, that's the guy who raped me. Oh, my god. She didn't know he was an actor. She didn't know he was an actor. She didn't know he was a Scientologist. So like all the conspiracy theories that Scientology has tried to spin like Leah Remini orchestrated all of these women to make these complaints or former Scientologists are out to get Danny Masterson. Catherine Jenkins wasn't a Scientologist. She didn't even know who Danny Masterson was. She didn't know what Scientology was. And yeah, so the guy is really sick. And that's – do I remember this correctly?

I don't want to over-empathize with someone like that. But he was born into it, right? Yes. The power that also getting the career he ended up having, you know, that kind of like you have this feeling of invulnerability and man of steel. I can do whatever I want to whoever I want, however I want, because that's how it's been told I can do it my whole life. Now, you grew up and you're not running around here committing acts like that. But then he gets like a publicly powerful type position too. And it's like you're almost drunk on that and you feel like,

like I genuinely wonder if when he did these things, if his brain was even functional enough from a moral standpoint to realize what he was doing, A, and B, that it was, this was like the worst thing you could do. He was drugging the women. So it's, and it's like, that's where you get to – it's obviously like premeditated. But like you see some of these guys.

They don't – their brain doesn't function like ours and they're like, oh, yeah, this is fine. What was Bill Cosby's line? Like, oh, just go sleep a little bit. It's a great comparison. If your brain is wired a certain way, are they even truly aware? I mean, look, I think they are aware. But also, are they thinking about the seriousness of what they're doing the same way we think about the seriousness of what they're doing? One little anecdote comes to mind.

There's a clip that floating around of Danny Masterson on Conan O'Brien. It's just the weirdest thing. I've seen this. And he goes, hey, my friend Bodhi, Jenna Elfman's husband, Bodhi Elfman. Bodhi likes to do an impression of me. Hey, my name is Danny Masterson. Do you want to touch my balls? It's like, wait, what made you think that was going to go over well on national TV that your friend impersonating you is asking people to touch your balls?

Yeah. Like he didn't have the self-awareness to go like the crowd did not laugh yeah like the crowd was like it was like so and conan was like oh so your friend uh like everyone was like why did you just do that there was no reason that was an unforced error there was no reason for you to say that and you go oh so like i don't know so what's going on in danny's head where you're like people are gonna think this is funny you know i don't know yeah fucked up guy and and you know i i mentioned earlier too but like i think i'm gonna ask this to every scientologist related person who comes in here but like

what the fuck is up with shelllly? What is the deal here? What's your take on this? I love talking about Shelly Miscavige. Okay, please. You have the floor. Where to even begin? So the thing is, first of all, the same people who will tell you that Shelly is missing

will also tell you exactly where she's working. So can we define missing? I think I've got a different take on this than you might have expected. Shelly Miscavige is a Sea Org member. She has for decades worked at the highest levels of Scientology management. Shelly being missing, what does that actually mean? All of the executives who work at these bases could be described as missing.

Nobody would recognize them or pick them out of the lineup or seen them. They don't talk to their families. They don't visit their families. That's true for all of them. So Shelly Miscavige was never one of these executives who addressed the Scientology public from stage at an event. I was in Scientology for 30 years.

I might have laid eyes on her once, and I only knew who she was because someone told me who she was. She was David Miscavige's assistant in the Sea Org and his wife. But the only reason anyone ever knew who she was outside of the secret base where she worked was because she was his assistant, not because she was his wife. In the Sea Org, being married means nothing. It's not like if you're the president of the United States, you go to events, the first lady is always with you. Yeah.

That is not how the Sea Org works. You would never travel with your spouse for Sea Org. Never, ever, ever travel with your spouse just because you'd have to literally be assigned to be working with them to travel with your spouse. Okay. So the only reason Leah Remini ever came to know who Shelly was is because Shelly was Dave's assistant and Leah Remini as a celebrity would hobnob with the executives at the major events. Some of the evidence of what I'm saying is that Shelley and Leah corresponded via letter. Oh, old school. I promise you.

They had cell phones. Friends don't communicate via letter. Yeah. OK. So I'm being really long-winded about this. I know that Tony already told you the story of around 2005 when David Miscavige got pissed off and he removed Shelly from her post and reassigned her to another base. Yeah. There's literally no reason for anyone to ever see Shelly Miscavige ever again after that point.

Now, I will say something. This gets a little spicy here. Okay. When Tony says, why can't she talk to her family? How does Tony know what family Shelly's talking to or not talking to? I'll tell you how. Because some of those family members have spoken to Tony. And Tony published some things only those family members could have said. That's the last time Shelly Miscavige would ever have speak to those family members. How does anyone know which one of Shelly Miscavige's family members she's talking to?

My point is nobody would ever know. Because any of her family members who would ever speak to the press about her is a family member she would never speak to again. How are you sure of that? Oh, well, she can give you her opinions about it tomorrow maybe. Okay. All right. Because – That's good enough for me.

You cannot speak to people who work in such sensitive, high-level, confidential positions like that in Scientology. You cannot speak to people who are speaking to the press about you. That's like a huge violation of – I want to say confidentiality, but security, of CR security rules. Did she, but here's my point. My point is for someone to say Shelly Miscavige isn't speaking to her family members implies that they're in touch with her family members and those family members are talking to them about Shelly Miscavige. I understand. That's not how that works.

Now, I guess you're wrong. Shelly Miscavige, to the best of anyone's knowledge, is alive and well and working at the CST base in Twin Peaks, California. She did have a voter registration and a driver's license update in... Oh, what is the name of that? Humble.

Well, the CST base in Northern California. Humble, California. Humble, California. Is that where it was? Yeah. OK. So I have my own inside sources who say even though Shelly Miscavige had her driver's license updated there, she is not working at that base. She is still working at the Twin Peaks Crestline base.

So is that like a diversionary tactic? Yes. Okay. Yeah. And the police did make contact with her a number of years ago, and then you heard the story about the fingerprint that didn't quite match up and everything. The point is this. Instead of saying, what's the evidence she's still alive,

you go, what's the evidence that she's dead? And you go, well, because no one's seen from her. I go, who's no one? No Scientologist would even recognize Shelley Miscavige. She could be on the front cover of a Scientology magazine. No Scientologist would know that's Shelley Miscavige. And also there have been people who've seen Shelley Miscavige. Mitch Brisker is a guy who left Scientology recently.

He ran into her at a Chipotle a number of miles outside of the Crest Line and literally had a conversation with her. That was a handful of years ago. So, and I guess what I'm really trying to say here is, the Shelly Miscavige experience is unique and interesting because she's David Miscavige's wife. I love talking about it. I'm not saying people shouldn't talk about it. The fact that he was so upset with his wife, who'd been working directly with him for so many years, that he literally had to remove her from her post and send her somewhere else and presumably never see her again. Who really knows? It's evidence that Scientology doesn't work.

That's what I take away from it. Of course. That's why I like talking about Shelley Miscavige. Yeah. Because it is a failure of David Miscavige to be able to use Scientology to help his marriage just like Tom Cruise. His three failed marriages are examples of him not being able to use Scientology to have a successful marriage. Talking about Shelley being missing is sexy and it's fun and I like doing it.

I just like doing it for a specific reason and I do it in a specific way. There's no reason to think that she is there against her will because here's something that didn't actually come up in your last chat. L. Ron Hubbard was practically Shelley Miscavige's second father. Shelley Miscavige went to work in the Sea Org when she was like, was it 12 years old? At least when she was nine. Yeah. Shelley Miscavige had been working directly for L. Ron Hubbard from like the age, like around there.

What's the age difference between her and David? Aren't they about the same age? They're about the same. Okay. Shelly Miscavige has been in the Sea Org for longer than David Miscavige. Shelly Miscavige worked with L. Ron Hubbard more closely than David Miscavige ever did. He was literally the messenger boy though for him. No.

He was in the Commodore's Messenger Org. He never stood a watch. Messenger has different meanings over different times. In the beginning, they were literally people who stood watch outside of L. Ron Hubbard's door and ran messages for him. Those were called watch messengers. Those were the original messengers. David Miscavige was never one of those. Later, there was a whole organization that was called the Commodores Messengers Organization. He was in that organization. She was in that organization.

But those – being a messenger had a different meaning later on. Miscavige never worked as closely with L. Ron Hubbard as Shelley did. Okay. And so my point there is Shelley Miscavige is a true believer in Scientology. She's a true believer in the Matrix story that we've discussed. She's a true believer that L. Ron Hubbard is supposed to come back. It's actually kind of insulting to think – it's actually kind of insulting to Shelley to think that just because her husband got mad at her and took her off of her post and reassigned her to another base, that she's no longer a believer in Scientology and secretly wants to

leave and is now being held against her will. It's actually, in a Scientology perspective, kind of insulting to Shelley. That was like, oh, so you were only there because you could be Dave's assistant and fly around the world with him, but now that you can't, you don't want to be there anymore? That's actually not – it's also not true. It's not true that just because she was taken off of her post, she now no longer wants to be a Sea Org member. Chances are – and this is where it's ironic, even Leah Remini in her own TV show about Shelly Miscavige, the episode at the end said, Mike, explain this to her. And then she goes,

you're right. She would feel an obligation and a duty to L. Ron Hubbard to be there when he comes back. Of course she wants to be there. And I go, well, can we stop saying that she's missing? Or can we at least be honest about what we mean when we say that? That's all. That's a mind fuck. It is a mind fuck. Now you could go, well, she's a victim. Well, then all Scientologists are victims. The only thing that makes Shelley extra special and interesting is that she's David Miscavige's wife. But it doesn't make her life any worse or different than all of the other Searig members who work on these bases. That's all.

I just like to be very clear about why I talk about it. The same people who will say that she's missing will take a camera crew and show you where she works. So can we at least be clear about what we mean when we say she's missing? Yeah. I mean, at the same time though, like the fact that she's that deep, given that her own husband has like abandoned her, banished her off. But she was that brainwashed from a child being around L. Ron Hubbard that she's still like about this and talking to people in Chipotle about it. It's crazy. It is crazy. My God. But – It's crazy. It is crazy. My god. But it's all crazy.

It's all crazy. And there's another thing about the Shelly conversation is like not exactly an angel. Not exactly – How so? Well, I mean she worked side by side, hand in hand, connected at the hip with the guy who we are describing as like a monstrous psychopath. Yeah. And we just think she had nothing to do with it?

Do you see what I mean? Yeah. So that's kind of what I mean. I'm sure we're going to get into this tomorrow. We're talking about your aunt right here effectively, which is wild. Yeah. Now, I never worked with David Miscavige. I never worked with Shelly Miscavige. But those who did will tell you, yes, she was definitely a kinder, gentler person than David Miscavige was.

Well, that's not hard to do. I know. The bar is pretty low. Right. Literally and figuratively. And are we going to ignore all of that? Yeah. Oh yeah oh poor shelly no one's seen her shut the fuck up who's no one and yes people have seen her and scientologists don't even know who she is she hasn't been on post for almost 20 years yeah she's been on a post she's not just but she just

hasn't been on the post where she gets to travel everywhere david miscavige goes no matter where and so that is in my opinion the story of shelly miscavige it's very interesting and it is worth talking about um but for slightly different reasons than reality check in a way yeah yeah i understand that completely i i that it's it's fascinating because like you said because of who she is and and who she around. But unfortunately, these kinds of things, not necessarily like being banished to this one place or whatever, but there are so many people within Scientology who then get – as you've laid out today in plenty of examples, get sucked into the life and then they just kind of accept the fate that it gives them. And I can't imagine having my mind so fucked up that I get to that point where I've just accepted that and said, well, I guess this is reality. But it's so many. And, you know, now you're trying to at least help some people who have maybe been stuck in it for a long time to get them out. But, you know, we're coming up on the end here. And I think a really,

really good question to close with would be be do you think you are going to live to see a day where Scientology is completely gone? No, not completely gone. I think I will live to see a day where they lose their tax-exempt status. That would be great. Yeah, that's good enough for me. And honestly, even if they don't lose it, just helping people leave Scientology and just being David Miscavige's worst nightmare or trying to be, that's good enough for me. Well, you're doing a great job.

And it's awesome that you're – it's like kind of like you're paying it forward too, using your own experiences to help those who you can fully empathize with what they're going through. It's an amazing thing, man. Thank you. But your story is incredible. Your channel is awesome. We're going to have the link in the description.

I highly encourage everyone to check it out. Also to follow you on Twitter. I know you're active on there. X as well. We call it X now, right? I call it Twitter. I won't call it. Yeah, I still call it Twitter, but it's X. I don't even know how you say it. But I want to make sure people get you there, so we'll have

that link in the description as well. Thank you so much for sharing all this today. It's heavy stuff, but you do a great job telling it, and we're going to get another really, really good one tomorrow. I'm looking forward to that with you, Jenna. So we'll do that. Thanks for having me on.

All right. We'll do it some other time too again. Absolutely. Everybody else, you know what it is. Give it a thought. Get back to me. Peace. Thank you guys for watching the episode.

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