Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Ex-Scientologist Exposes Its Secrets | Growing Up In Scientology

Episode Date: April 15, 2024

Ex-Scientologist Exposes Its Secrets | Growing Up In Scientology

I was a Scientologist, my wife was, her parents, her two sisters and brother, my three daughters at this point. I was actually for years being like a little spy. I was still existing in the Scientology world, but feeding information to the high-level members who are on the outside of helping people leave Scientology. A really good analogy is the movie The Matrix, where all of these human bodies are plugged into a computer program to keep them preoccupied and ignorant of the fact that, that they are actually in a prison. Because once you believe in this sort of matrix-like story that Scientology tells its members, there's nothing anyone could say to you to get you to see things differently.

But at what point do you go, okay, well, I need to get out of this organization. So they go to my wife and they say, you have to divorce your husband or we're going to kick you out. And so this is where Scientology gets like really, like, vicious. You have to disconnect from your daughter. and your three granddaughters, they would run away from the kids. The Scientologists would describe it as an applied religious philosophy. Okay.

So one of the easiest ways to enter this might be, okay, well, what do they mean when they say that? Scientology is to be as fair and charitable as possible. Sort of a self-help. It's a self-help. It's self-help. Yeah. Now you might go, well, then how's it a religion? Let's just throw the religion conversation out the window for a moment. Scientology at the lowest levels and at the introductory levels is indistinguishable from any sort of personal coaching, executive coaching,

personal improvement, self-help, Tony Robbins, whatever. Right. Scientology looks exactly like that. Which is what I like about it. Like I like the how, you know, learn more, get more experience, educate yourself. You know, I like that, the idea of that. Right. And that is. At some point it goes off the rails. That is what appeals to people. That's how people get in. Right.

Someone goes, who joins a cult? Nobody joins a cult. Right. Nobody, no one who's in a cult thinks they're in a cult, and no one intentionally joins a cult. Right. And so, like, and I'll just pull someone out right in the beginning here and throw them right under the bus. Are you familiar with who Grant Cardone is? This online guru guy.

Yeah, of course. Okay. He's so obnoxious. Who he is and what he is and everything he does. that to me, I go, that's Scientology. It's like trying to act like he's got the solution to all your problems. Right. Like everything he says is a golden nugget, pearl of wisdom.

And if it didn't work, if he told you about how to fix it, and it didn't work, it's because you're a loser and you're the ones who made the mistake. You didn't hustle. Yeah. You're a loser. Right. Small thing, you got a 10 exit, bro. Okay, so that's Scientology.

Right. Except Grant Cardone is even more obnoxious than El Ron Hubbard. So Scientology. Okay. Applied religious philosophy. Okay, so this word applied. The applied and everything I'm talking about, the self-helpiness, that's kind of what the applied means. Right. It's something you do. It's not something you have to believe. You don't have to pray. You don't have to believe in a God. Just take these solutions and apply them to your life and it will improve it. Right. Okay, that's the applied. Self-help. It is self-help. Okay. So why do they call it religious? What's the religious thing? Okay. Scientology does have a fundamental belief in the immortal spiritual being, the immortal soul. Right. In Scientology, they call that a Thayton, which is funny because it sounds like Satan with a lisp. Right. Okay. But it really comes from like the Greek letter Theta. Okay. And I don't know what the significance of that letter is, but it's theta with N at the end. And I don't even remember how that came to be or why, but that's what it is.

Okay. Okay. So Scientologists believe that we are all immortal spiritual beings. Right. And that the spirit isn't something we have, it's something we are. Like, you as a Thayton are sitting behind your eyeballs right now looking at me, and that's why it seems like you're looking at me through your eyeballs. Okay. Okay. And that you can't kill a thing and a Thayton is immortal and is natively godlike. So even if my body dies, my soul or my Thaeton goes on. Not your Thayton, you. Okay. You are a Thayton. So you go on because you are a Thayton. Okay. I feel like we're splitting hairs, but I know. No, no, I know. But, you know, but, you know, but, you know, A Scientologist would be like, no, no, no, not your thing, you.

Right. So this is an exercise, Scientologists like to do to new people. They go, okay, close your eyes and get a picture of a cat. Okay, that picture, that's your mind, and who's looking at the picture? You, as a thing, you're the one looking at the picture. Okay. Okay. And so you said when my body dies, my thing, well, that's a Scientologists actually don't

even use the word dying. They say drop your body. You dropped your body and you just picked up another body. that sounds like unalived that's right YouTuber should start saying drop the body instead of saying unalived okay so Scientologists

believe that you are an immortal spiritual being that cannot die it's not even possible you're not even natively located in space or time like we as Thetons collectively created space in time and one of these days we can uncreate space

in time because we're independent of it we don't even exist in it we created it to have something to do like just to have some fun to play around with some stuff okay okay so um so so i and we got down this path because i said where does the religion come into applied religious philosophy tax deduction tax free wait no exactly yeah what is it uh tax exemption tax exemption thank you that's right exemption so uh if they believe that we are immortal spiritual beings well that immediately at least starts to delve into what someone might call religion. Like Scientologists don't believe in a God.

They don't believe in a heaven. They don't believe in hell. But they do believe in eternity. And they do believe that you as a Thayton transcend the death of your body. So if that's not, I mean, I'm not a religious scholar. But it seems to me that once you're getting into the subject of things that transcend death and are eternal, it feels like you're getting into the world of religion. Past lives. No, I can see it as bit. I know that there was initially when, Scientology was, you know, incorporated or whatever it was, that I know there was a fight of, you know, in the court system on whether or not it was actually should have a tax exemption and ultimately the courts decided like, who are we to, they said it's a religion, it's a

religion like, and I get that. Like, I feel like that's true. Like if you said it's like, who am I to say that you get a tax exemption, you don't? Like, that's not really up for the court. I don't want the courts making that decision is what I'm saying. Well, it's funny because tax exemption is so easy to get. Like, it's controversial, like, you know, getting Scientology's tax exemption revoked is something I'm personally dedicated to. But I have a nonprofit organization

that has tax exemption. It's not hard to get. The problem with Scientology having tax exemption is it has a particular type of tax exemption by the government that gives it religious protection in the courts. So, like, if you take Scientology to court and you say, here's one of its policy letters

and this policy letter, the court will go, oh, we're not allowed to interpret that policy letter. that's scripture. Oh, okay. So that's the difference. That's the difference. Okay. So on some level, I want to get their tax exemption revoke just because that will open the door to truly bringing down the organization. But tax exemption isn't even a controversial thing. I mean, almost any, it takes 10 minutes to create an organization and apply for tax exemption from the IRS, and it's a piece of cake to get. It's the religious protection that they enjoy in the courts because of the type of tax protection that they have that is the real problem. Okay. Yeah.

Okay, so we were talking about the applied religious philosophy. Applied in the sense that it's just self-helpy, a Scientologist would say, you don't have to believe this. You just have to use it. And once you use it, you will see that it works. But you don't have to believe it. Okay, religious because it deals in things that involve past lives and the immortal spiritual soul. And philosophy, just because anything's a flaw, you know, any belief system could probably

be called a philosophy. Right. So now, Scientologists do believe that, um, uh, So the immortal spiritual beings been around, they would say, about 76 trillion years or something like that, you know, give or take, a few. And that Earth is a prison, meaning like a literal prison. Like this is a dumping ground and we as beings are here because we were sent here as a prison. And our memories are wiped. Every time we drop our body, we're programmed to report to these little memory wiping stations on like the moon or Mars or Venus.

and then we're programmed to, there's no BS, this is for real. I know, but I was telling Colby, this is, like, here's where it kind of goes off the rails. But who am I? Everything up until here was legit. No. They don't get into this detail in South Park. South Park, everything they said in South Park, do you ever see the South Park episode about Scientology? No.

Oh, you can see that. Real quick, here's what, like, I want to throw this out there. Like, to me, you know, if you take yourself out of, if you said, hey, if I hadn't grown up with Christianity, and you describe Christianity. It's insane. You know what I'm saying? So, like, for me to say this is, and really the only reason that gives Christianity validity is because it's so old. It's been around forever, and it's helped shape our society.

So you're like, yeah, well, I accept this. You know, I grew up in it. It was acceptable. And part of what makes Scientology so nuts to me is that, you know, there's a guy in, like, the 1970s that said, listen to this. here's what I think we should do. I know. And said, I'm going to go with this whole thing. I'm going to turn this into a religion and we're going to do this.

And then the idea that he kind of pulls it off. And it starts, it starts, you know, people ran with it. So that's the part that's like, yeah, that's insane. But then again, I also kind of take myself back and I say, wait a minute, bro. Like, come on, man. Like, you don't know. Who are you to say? I know.

Now when they, you know, when you start doing insane things in the name of a religion, you know what I'm saying? you start saying, hey, we're going to, whatever, we're going to start executing people, like, you know, let's say the Nazis, or we're going to start, you know, these are things we're going to do to further our agenda or whatever, in the name of whatever. You know, I guess the Nazis would have been, you know, their ideology, but regardless, you know, or, you know, the crusades or, you know, priests, you know, doing unacceptable things or, you know, at that point, then it's like, hey, wait a minute, now where you've gone off the rails. Yes.

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I mean, anything you can say about Scientology. you could probably say about another group. Right. And when people point that out to me, I go, I didn't grow up in the other groups. Right. Why would I be talking about the other groups? I get it.

I get it. But, you know. So it's been around forever. They wipe your Thaden. Your Thayton memory. Between lives. Thaten. Thaten.

Thayton. Thaten. You're from the northeast of Thayton. And you're programmed. By the way, the beings who run the between lives in plant stations, are of course psychiatrists, because Elrond Hubbard hated psychiatrists. Okay.

And the psychiatrist came from the planet Farsack, okay? Okay. This is good stuff. And we were all dumped here from the Galactic Federation run by Zeno. Why? Why were we dumped here? Because we were the troublemakers, and we were the artists, the rebels,

I mean, what do you have against artists? I don't know why Elron Hubbard, I don't know why he threw artists in there. I'm feeling a lot of this, you know. know it's like it's like Australia pirates the bums so the Earth is Australia that's a great that's a great yes these guys are troublemakers yeah we are the Australia of the Galactic Federation nice and um so we were dumped here on this tiny little third rate planet on the outpost of a of this galaxy and um the psychiatrists run the implant stations that wipe our Thayton memories in between lives

and then you're programmed to like shoot back down just to the hospital and pick up a new baby body and live a brand new life. A really good analogy is the movie The Matrix, where all of these human bodies are plugged into these machines and being harvested for the heat energy of their bodies. Right. But they're plugged into a computer program where they believe they're living this amazing, fulfilling life, but it's really just a distraction to keep them preoccupied and ignorant of the fact that they are actually in a prison. Right. Scientologists very much believe that this reality, this world that we're on, this is just the show, like our lifetime, after lifetime, this is just the show that we are unwittingly participating in to distract us

from the fact that as spirits, we're actually in a prison, your body's a prison, you get a new prison every lifetime, the earth is a prison. And so Scientologists do believe that with enough of their one-on-one counseling that they call auditing. Well, I've heard about, okay. With enough one-on-one counseling where you're delving into your past lives and relieving yourself of traumatic incidents and all this kind of stuff, you regain enough spiritual awareness and ability to be able to skip the Between Lives Implant Station

so you don't lose your memory between lifetime after, between lifetime. So if you do enough Scientology this lifetime, the benefit is that you're going to remember it all next lifetime. You won't have to start over again. nice and that that as a scientologist your primary your number one priority in this lifetime should be to get as many people in the world as possible into scientology and far enough up their bridge they call it the bridge to total freedom so that we can really broke out the the the thesaurus on this one did you i mean you know like instead of the ladder climbing like

he's got all these like i don't want to say that i don't want to go with spirit let's go with break out the big thesars let's find another that's right that's right and so scientologists believe that that's what they're doing is they're unplugging people from the matrix by getting them enough scientology auditing and and that it's the most important thing you could ever dedicate your time and your money to in this lifetime is getting yourself as far up Scientology's bridge as possible grant cardone has done the entire bridge he's OT O-T-8, he's O-T-8. Grant Cardone is a top-shelf individual?

As top-shelf is Tom Cruise, they're, you know, big beings, those two. But small people, though. I mean, I don't. By the way, all, I talk mad shit about Grant Cardone in my Lex Friedman interview, and he cut it all out. Oh, did he? I was like, I was so waiting for the interview to come out because I'm like, oh, my God, I dump on Grant Cardone for like 15 minutes.

It was hilarious. I will keep it all in here. I just think he's just a dare, like, oh, yeah, yeah, no, he's the, I like to call him in my videos, I'll be like, the internet's most famous Scientologist and con man and frauds. I go, I go, the number one recruiter and financier of the international human trafficking cult known as Scientology, Grant Cardone. That's how I introduce him every time I talk about him. Well, yeah, when's he going to jail?

Like, when's he going to be in jail? Him and his brother are lucky they're not in jail. I mean, yeah. But anyway, I digress. So Grant Cardone is OT8. So is Tom Cruise, by the way. And they believe that, yeah, by getting as many people into Scientology and up the bridge to total freedom as possible, you're essentially unplugging people on this planet from the prison that they are in. And Scientology has a level about halfway up its bridge of total freedom called the state of clear. And they believe that their goal is to, they say, clear the planet. Now, it sounds weird because it sounds like you're trying to kill everyone on the planet. But what it means is get everyone in the world, or at least half the people in the world, into Scientology and up to the state of clear. And that is what they believe they are doing.

Even though there's only like 25,000 Scientologists in the entire world of 8 billion plus people, they believe they are clearing the planet. And this is only Target one. They believe that when Elron Hubbard died, the reason he did not come back to Earth, even though that's what you're supposed to be able to do, right? you do it off Scientology, you're supposed to be able to come back, reincarnate, with full and total recall of your previous lives, and you're supposed to be able to do that. But Elron Hubbard never came back. Why? Because he went off to Target 2 to start Scientology on the next planet in the Galactic Federation. And so he gave himself the perfect excuse not to come back.

Did he say that when he was diving out? There was a reference that he wrote about Target 2, and I'll see you guys up the line on Target 2. Wow. He took it to the grave. A good little Scientologist, I grew up thinking, Elron Hubbard's on Target, too. We got to finish the job here, and then we're going to go meet him on Target, too.

So, real quick, so can you talk about El Ron Hubbard for him? Sure. Okay. Yeah. So let's talk about the founder. Is that what they call on the founder? What did they call it? Yeah, the source, founder.

Yeah. Well, source, not the source, just source. See? Capital S source. He said, we can't go with founder. That's so common. Yeah. No, no, no.

Most of his policy letters and bulletins are signed founder. Oh, okay. But then later in his life, he was like, you know what's better than founder? Source. And then he created, we're going to go all over the place here. And then he created what's called the sea organization within Scientology. Because Elvron Hubbard was in the Navy. He loves the sea.

Okay. So he created the sea organization. And these are the guys who signed the billion year contracts to just work for Scientology for the next, you know, for the rest of eternity, basically. Now, the reason I mentioned the Sea org is because he's like, you know what's better than being a captain, being a Commodore. So the Seahorg members call him Commodore. And Scientologists, who aren't here remembers, just call him source or founder. But, yeah, I just can see me walking through this building

or Scientology headquarters and people like, source, source. Yes, source. Refer to source. What does source say? Have you seen the documentaries on Nexium? No, well, I don't know anything. I know, I've watched maybe 20 minutes of videos,

and, you know, that's it. A little here, a little there. No, NXAM is a totally different cult. Nexium is a totally different cult. And anyway, I just mentioned that because that was founded by Keith Reneery. But he had a name as well. Vanguard.

His name was Vanguard. That's Vanguard's way better than... Yeah. Okay, so what the hell were you talking about? Oh, El Ron Hubbard. You know, where could I even start with El Ron Hubbard? I can tell you this. As a good little Scientologist growing up,

it's a good thing there aren't a lot of original unedited pictures and video of El Ron Hubbard. Because I was probably almost 20 years old the first time I actually saw video of Elron Hubbard and I remember going, oh shit, this is our guy.

This is what he moves like. This is, oh, dude, I'm embarrassed. I mean, he just like a total geek or? Oh, he said, he moves in acts and talks like a con man. I was like, I don't know, you hear him sometimes on recorded lectures and you, you sort of, you have your own image of what he was probably like and what it was probably like to be there when he was actually doing those things.

And the first time I saw a video, I was like, uh-oh. So not-that's our guy? Not Jesus-like. Exactly. Not washboard abs, Jesus. So I was like, his mouth is all weird. His lips, his teeth are disgusting. I was like, oh, no, that's our guy.

And then I had to deal with that and, you know, resolve that for myself. Well, he's beyond all that. Yeah. That doesn't mean none of that means anything. Why brush your teeth if you're going to regenerate? Right. So he, regular, regular guy, right, goes in the Navy, comes out, starts writing books or something? Does he, it? If I recall correctly, I can't remember if he was a successful pulp fiction writer before he was in the Navy or after he was in the Navy. I can't really. Was it like, I thought it was science fiction.

Science fiction, pulp fiction. Well, no, he did a lot of westerns, did a lot of adventure and mystery and thrillers. Science fiction is probably what he's, because of the battle. Battlefield Earth. Yes. Yeah. What's funny about Battlefield Earth is the movie was just awful. I'm a big fan of the book. I thought the book was great.

Even Mitt Romney randomly in an interview said Battlefield Earth was actually his favorite novel of all time. Like, randomly. Right. That's like... Just got picked up 25,000 votes. I know, right? Yeah, 25,000 votes.

But that's worldwide. That's not even the U.S. That's 25,000 Scientologists in the entire world. Oh, wow. El Ron Hubbard, I don't know what can be said. The guy was so obviously just a fraud and a con man and a liar during his entire life. But back then, it was so much easier to get away with that kind of stuff. Yeah, there's no internet.

You could just say whatever you wanted to whoever. It's like when a comic is working, you know, you do the same act in every club and everywhere you go. It's a new act because no one's ever heard it before. Right, right. Or if you're still somebody else's material and you do it two cities away, they'll never know. Yeah. And I think one of the best books on. on El Ron Hubbard is, I think it's called Bear Faced Messiah by Russell Miller.

And you read this thing. One of the things that struck me about reading this book is how actually unbelievably fair it is. Because if you take all the lies Elwyn Hubbard ever told about himself and you just take that out of the story, his life is still pretty incredible. And you're like, it's one of these things where it's like, if you just stuck to the truth, you would have been okay. But then, of course, he never would have created Scientology. I was going to say, I know a guy I wrote a book about Matt named Marcus Schrenker. And he's a pathological liar. You know, I'm not saying L. Ron Hubber was.

I don't know. But if you just looked at who Marcus Schrenker really was, he's a top shelf individual. And this is a guy who's got, you know, he's got two degrees, a master, he's got, you know, a degree in aeronautics, a degree in finance, a master's degree in finance. He's got, he's a pilot. He's a stunt pilot. He owns his own wealth management firm. why do you have to lie that you you worked for NASA or that you flew in desert storm and 40 sorties and you were like like like like he comes up with there's all this other insane it's like remove that yeah the basics of what I just told told you so this is gorgeous wife beautiful kids two million dollar house like why are you lying about being a pilot like I mean he was a pilot but I mean a fighter pilot like you're already an amazing individual yeah some people are like It was just pathological.

Yeah, I don't know. I don't get it. Elron Hubbard clearly was that way. Oh, okay. And, you know, as it relates to Scientology, because, you know, in 1950 is when he wrote the book, Dianetics. Oh, I remember Dianetics. Now, that's technically, when Dianetics came out, that was 1950. Oh, okay, because I remember hearing about it in the, there was, maybe there was a resurgence or something.

It was huge in the 80s, I think. The infomercials, the, the, yeah. do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Yeah, I remember that. And they got it back on the bestseller list, like 35 years after it was published because, because of those late night infomercials. Now, when Dianetics was written, it was, Scientology was not even a word Elvron Hubbard came up with yet. Oh, okay.

Dianetics was supposed to be a mental health science. Okay. There was no past lives. There was no spiritual beings. There was no Thetans. There was no nothing. It was really a common man's psychotherapy. It's no fun.

and and it's um but you read this book right it's i'm mentioning dionetics because if you read the book the book lays out a procedure that he intended to be just a form of psychotherapy that any two people could read the book and do together and maybe work through some trauma but the book is just littered with things that are just obviously untrue once you do enough of this procedure you achieve the state of clear you'll never be sick again you'll have perfect eyesight you'll have perfect idetic recall you have no psychosomatic illnesses your mind is a perfect computing machine and you're like I feel like I need this

you're like dude I feel like I need this you know that you knew when you wrote that but that wasn't true so it's almost like I see L Ron Hubbard as someone who couldn't tell you a real story about something that actually occurred without just lying to make it sound three times more interesting than it was

when you're like it was already interesting to begin with and I've known people like that oh yeah listen I've been locked up with a ton of them Yeah. I mean, they either end up, I guess, starting cults or they end up in prison. That's right. Or running as a CEO, running a huge company. I was going to say, isn't it amazing? Yeah. How far you can actually get in life like that. Yeah. I mean, just look at all around Hubbard. He died with like $600 million in the bank or something like that. I think it depends on the, obviously there's a scale on any type of mental issues, mental health issues. There's a scale. And some of them are almost manageable. Like like narcissism, a touch of narcissism will get you. you really far, a little bit too much, you know, you end up in prison. So, yeah, yeah. So there's

lots of. And if they had found, if they had found Elron Hubbard towards the end of his life, that's where he would have wound up. But that's why the last six years of his life was spent in seclusion out in like, you know, the deserted lands of California living in a trailer. Like, no. He died in a bluebird motorhome on like a horse ranch in northern California. So, so he, when does he start Scientology? Like 52 or 54, I always get it wrong. So, but again, like, but you said he hadn't come up with the term Scientology. That's right. So what happened is Dianetics, even in Dianetics, he didn't even, if you just take Dianetics for what it is, he didn't even believe in past lives.

In order to believe in past lives, you have to believe in a spiritual being. Right. You have to believe in something that Dianetics was literally. For a limited time at McDonald's, enjoy the tasty breakfast trio. Your choice of chicken or sausage McMuffin or McGrittles with a hash brown and a small iced coffee for five bucks plus tax. Available until 11 a.m. at participating McDonald's restaurants. Price excludes flavored ice coffee and delivery. Really, it's called Dianetics, the modern science of mental health is what the book is called.

Okay. It had no intention of ever, the book, the book focuses on, it says, traumatic events that we've experienced that involve pain and unconsciousness, create these recordings in our subconscious mind called Ngrams, and that these Ngrams later on react negatively upon us and are the source of everything that's wrong with us, mentally and physically. And with Dianetics auditing, you go back through these Ngrams and you erase them just by recalling them over and over again. And once you've erased all of them, you basically become perfect. But the earliest painful incident you could experience is either birth or incidents in the womb before prenatal, prenatal incidents.

And you go, okay, well, scientists might disagree on whether you can remember anything back then. Right. But at least we're talking about this lifetime stuff. Yeah. Okay. So that's all Dianetics was. It was literally just recalling moments of pain and unconsciousness and getting the earliest possible memory you can, which, according to Dianetics, would inevitably be birth or prenatal incidents. And that once that was done, you're done. You can't, there's no more pain and unconsciousness you can erase. You've just erased everything back to your first moments of existence.

So the original Dianetics organizations made a ton of money. He clearly based all this on years of research. yes yes all the research he's that extensive he's never produced any of the research studies but take his word for it oh and then and then what happened is there was this one um event that he held in like might have even been the shrine auditorium in l.a back then if it existed oh the la forum i don't know one of these big event halls in l.a where he brought on stage the woman who was supposed to be like the first dietic clear he's supposed to have perfect memory and you know he's doing this in front of hundreds or thousands of people and he brings her up and she's calling him elliot

he's asking her questions like what color is my tie she just she can't remember she can't remember anything it's a total disaster i mean these are the kind of things that it takes a real con man to like totally discredit yourself in public like that and to somehow completely recover and pretend like that never that never occurred and um well i totally lost the reason i was when dionics was finished when that ran its course that's right so these organizations these early dietic organizations made a ton of money, but he was spending money faster than you can make it. And eventually these things went into bankruptcy. And then some, I think Don Purcell bought it out of bankruptcy. So Don Purcell all of a sudden owned the rights to dietics. I think at one point

he even owned the rights to El Ron Hubbard's name. And so then, who's this? Don Purcell, he was just one of the early, he was a very rich guy who was just one of the earliest people involved in dietics, these dionetics centers, research foundations. People would come to get clear. Now, look, even with the placebo effect, the placebo effect, you know, you tell someone that something is going to help them, a certain amount of people are going to be helped by that thing, whether that thing is total trash or not. Yes. So you had people involved in Dianetics.

You had Elvon Hubbard saying this turns you into basically a perfect human being. It's very attractive to people because also you're saying, what's wrong with you is not your fault. It's not your fault. You have Ngrams. That's just, that's just physiology, right? But Dianetics can remove the reason why you're so. a fuck up. And it's not your fault. I need this. We'll do it. We'll help you. Okay. So it was just

very, it was very popular for the first couple years. Right. Anyway, he was just spending money like crazy. He ended up losing all the rights to it. But because he no longer had the rights to it, he's like, okay, I got to, I got to create something else. Yeah, I got to spend this off. That was sort of how Scientology came about. He needed a spin-off series. So all of a sudden, the diionetics, oh, this is why I was mentioned that. Because all of a sudden, it was like, ooh, how do we jump from, how do we jump from one thing to another thing? Well, all of a sudden, he says, oh, the boys down at the Research Foundation are discovering that people are going further back in their recalls than prenatal, further back than the womb. They're going to pass

lives. And all of a sudden, this is, what's happening here? It's almost like he blamed this discovery on other people. It's almost like, oh, we had to, we had to investigate this. We didn't know. Yeah, we had to look into this further. Nobody's more shocked. than me. Yeah, I mean, people are coming up with, you know, memories from other planets and past lifetimes. And so, and so you go, okay, well, how's that possible? Well, in order to have memories from earlier lives, you have to be remembering as something that is not the brain, that is not the mind, but it's something that can transcend death. And so that's where, you know, it is. And so that's where Scientology came from. Scientology came from, it was basically the

to Elron Hubbard at least, the next, I want to say logical step, but to me it was the next scheme. Do you see him kicking back with a notepad and his feet on the desk and just jotting down some notes as they come to him? You feel like there was maybe two or three of his buddies and they were maybe drinking and saying, what about this? I don't know. Elrod, listen. I don't. See, he was surrounded by people who genuinely believed there was something very unique and powerful and charismatic and that there was something special about him so he can't ruin that by saying i don't feel like he was bringing people in on his there's definitely him kicked back with a held up jotting down notes right in an outline and i think there's a part of him that genuinely

believed in what he was coming up with like this i mean obviously we're you know for me this is pure speculation as far as like what was happening in 1952 what was happening in 1954 did he know he was conning people. I'll tell you where I come down on it. I feel like when he wrote Dianetics, he genuinely believed he had found something that people would find helpful. But I believe he knew that what he wrote about it

was obviously false. Like he's like, we have something helpful here, but in order to market it, we have to lie about it. And someone go, well, that's what all marketing is or advertising is like, you're kind of lying about how great your things. I feel like there was an aspect of that. I feel he believed Dianetics auditing could help people,

and I think he also knew that pretty much almost everything he said about it was bullshit. Right. Okay. So, but see, but there's still an aspect of belief.

There's still a degree in which he believed in the value of what he was selling and therefore it was justified to sell it by lying about it. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So I tend to feel...

Listen, I'm a comment. You don't have to explain to me. I know what you're saying. I'm with you. Exactly. Exactly. And so I feel like there was still an aspect of that in Scientology.

Yeah. Because I can tell you this. By the time the 60s come rolling around in the 70s, there's no question in my mind. Elvron Hubbard firmly believed in this whole mythology that he was selling about Scientology and the prison planet and Xenu and Farsack and the Galactic Federation.

I, for me, without any doubt, believed that he believed it. Now, did he believe everything he said about it every step of the way? No, of course not. He knew that a dionetic clear did not have perfect recall and perfect eyesight. Right. I mean, based on his one presentation alone, he should have said, I can't go with this anymore. Yeah. I'm going to have to, we're going to practice more. Yeah. And, you know, there are still people alive today who personally knew and worked with Alvron Hubbard. There's people in Scientology who knew and worked with Alvin Hubbard. There's former Scientologists who

personally knew and worked with Alron Hubbard for a long time. Some of them have YouTube channels. Okay. And, you know, they'll tell you the dude was larger than life. I mean, his charisma. And, I mean, I guess you'd have to be, right? You'd have to be in order for it all to have worked out the way that it worked out. That fits imperfect with the whole con man thing. Right.

But the last six years of his life were often seclusion, hiding from the authorities, hiding from various governments. And he was still secretly running Scientology from the shadows, you know, running like real intelligence like black ops kind of like um couriers and cutouts and you know signing things x and uh oh it's a wild story and it really should be made into a movie i think the closest that anyone's come to doing that is um who's uh paul thomas anderson made a movie called the master with philip seymour hoffman and wakene phoenix that is loosely a story about elron hubbard and dionetics i've never seen that yeah never seen that yeah um

Why do you think nobody has? You think just that Scientology, they have a huge hold on Hollywood. They would bog it down in litigation. Right. I don't think they have a strong of a hold on Hollywood as people think. Okay. Like, other than Tom Cruise and John Travolta, can you name one famous Scientologist? I mean, you could, but it's hard, like, not household names.

And they- Well, it was the guy they just locked up for the- Danny Masterson. He's out. So, yeah, he's out of the game. Yeah. So they have a fearsome reputation for suing their enemies into oblivion. Even that is a reputation they acquired in the 80s and early 90s.

They actually haven't even sued anyone in like 20 years. Like they haven't sued Leah Remedy for her TV show. They didn't sue Alex Gibney for the Going Clear documentary. They didn't sue Lawrence Wright for the Going Clear book. They haven't sued. sued me for my YouTube channel. So a lot of what's happening, a lot of the activism that's happening today,

like the TikTok protests and the YouTube streamers protesting outside Scientology organizations is kind of like showing the world. Scientology, there's very little they can actually do to people these days. They just can't get away with a whole lot of nonsense these days.

But is the organization struggling or is it still going strong? No, it's struggling. Oh, is it? Big time. Yeah. So how are you involved? I mean, you were born into family, right?

Yeah, I was four years old when my mom got into Scientology. And what was- Single mom raising two kids? Where was this? Philadelphia. And how did your mom get? She met some, she met a friend of her named Cheryl Scordado, who's similar age. She had a son, just a few weeks older than me and my brother at the time.

And I don't know how Cheryl herself got into Scientology, but meeting Cheryl is how my mom got into Scientology. That's how most people get into Scientology other than watching Grant Cardone videos. Right, being pulled in by somebody, they know. Yeah. So she got in, there was something, you know, my mom was raised in a religious family,

very Christian family in Iowa. And so I think my mom would probably say she always felt like there was some greater purpose that she was here for some reason meant for something greater. Organized religion never seemed to answer that question for her. And I think she would say that when she found Scientology, whatever she was introduced to,

in Scientology just resonated with her, oh, this is it. Like, it just gave her this sense of meaning. Oh, this is it. This is how I help people. This is how I help myself. This is how my life has greater meaning. Whatever it was that did that for her.

So how did that end up manifesting itself in her life, in your life? She joined staff. So there's sort of three different levels of involvement in Scientology. There's public members who pay to do courses and pay to get auditing. Like, it's very much a pay.

Like, it's not, it's very much a pay for play scheme. And it's extremely expensive. It's pretty expensive. You know, a normal major, an introductory course might cost like 50 bucks and take a week, but a regular course is going to cost like $2,000, $2,500, $2,500, $2,500 an hour. Right. I mean, it's expensive. Yeah. And so public Scientologists are the ones who pay to do Scientology. Then there's staff members. They work for Scientology like nine to five, their nine to five job. Right. Or maybe nights and weekends. And then there's the Seorg members. Those are the billion-year contract guys. They're like, they're like the Scientology monks. They don't do anything but Scientology. They don't own homes. They live in

Scientology birthing. They eat in the Scientology cafeteria. They work in the Scientology buildings. They can only marry or date other Seahorg members. They don't, they, it's almost like Scientology provides the bare necessities for living. And they just 365, 24-7, you work for Scientology for the rest of your life. I mean, until you, until you leave. So, like, I was in the C-org. Okay. Yeah. Wow.

I mean, how, like, so what, how does that work? Well, first of all, so you're, you are going, you and your siblings are going with your mom to events? Or are you staying home? She's going. And then are you kind of brought up in the church or the whatever? Right. So she joins staff in Philadelphia. Now, so staff, not C-RIC, staff.

So she's got a check. Even, you're 100 bucks a week, $20 a week. I don't, I don't. are you surviving on that? I actually don't really know how to, usually staff members survive because they've got like a spouse that has a real job in the real world. And it's almost like their hobby as they work at the Scientology organization. I was going to say, you cannot support yourself working at a Scientology organization.

So oftentimes maybe five or six staff members will like all split rent at a, you know, a small apartment or something. Well, I understand that a lot of places like this will, will have you, like basically, you're indigent and they'll have you apply for, food stamps section 8 like they'll go to the government and get as much as they can then they're basically paying you cash to work full time but the government's saying they they are not working yeah you know what I'm saying so it's kind of a well so that's the thing because being a staff member at a Scientology organization legally you're not an employee or a religious volunteer you don't

you don't even have to get paid right most weeks you don't get paid because that organization tends to make less money than it takes to even pay the bills okay it's weird for an organization that's known to have a lot, a lot of money. The organizations themselves don't actually make a lot of money. Okay. That seems to be a contradiction. Yeah. But so the organizations are in the business of selling Scientology courses and auditing.

That's not actually where Scientology gets most of its money. Gets most of its money by asking Scientologists to donate to this separate organization called the International Association of Scientologists or the IAS. Right. And that's like Scientology's membership organization. That's like they're a club member. So they essentially go, hey, and Scientologists will tell you that they think of the IES as like Scientology's war chest. This is the money Scientology uses to defend itself against the evil powers on Earth that are set to destroy it,

litigate against governments, you know, get psychiatrists thrown in jail. And so you've got Scientologists. To do all of the auditing in Scientology, maybe it costs $500,000. But you've got Scientologists who've given Scientology like $50 million, $100 million, $300 million. So Scientology's coffers are. are filled with money that are just donated straight donations, not buying auditing in courses. Okay.

But the organizations themselves are supposed to support themselves by selling auditing in courses. Right. So if you give Scientology a million dollars, that doesn't go to the local organization. That just goes right up to the membership organization. So the staff members who work in the local organizations are poor as dirt.

Right. And those organizations oftentimes don't make enough money to pay their electric bill. Right. But Scientology's got billions of dollars. in the bank. It's weird. Have you, Colby, ever been stopped by anybody, by one of the Scientologists? Oh, I've been stopped. Where, though? What city? Ebor City. Oh, there you go, yeah. They, I guess they're in the, or I don't know if they still are. They bought the spaghetti warehouse building down there, and they

moved in there. I don't know if that's where they are currently in Ebor City, but this was 15, this was early 2000, 2002, 2003, me and a buddy named Rudy, we were walking through, and we got stopped. And the guy got, you know, hey, can you take a quick survey? Well, this, we blah, blah, and it was like, we'll help, you know, we help. Here's what we're doing. Here's, you know, you kind of, you didn't really really understand what it was. And it takes five minutes, no big deal and i don't know how somehow or another i kind of like joked with rudy like you know he definitely needed something like he had some problems like this guy's saying he can they can fix you you need fixing so you know always fucking with this guy and he takes the course and then at the end

the course you realize they're trying to sell you tapes did he take the course no no he took he did a survey like he answered all the questions right i think i did too and i mean you know in the end you You know, it was spot on. Like, he's every characteristic he had, every mental issue he had, he had. And then they shifted like, you know, basically it's like, oh my God, 50 questions they found out you're an asshole. Like I could have told you that. So you guys took the 200-question personality test. Yes.

They call it the Oxford Capacity Analysis Test. It has nothing to do with Oxford. Okay. Just makes it sound fancy. And the reason that test is used, you know, to get someone in, it's just a recruiting tool. They show you the graph of your results. And they go, this isn't what we're saying about you. This is what you're saying about you.

Right. This graph is a reflection. This is your opinion of yourself. You have some issues. You have horrible. You're horrible at communication. So for a good salesman, this graph is the perfect crutch to sell you. No, no, we're not telling you you're messed up.

You're telling us you're messed up. Right. But we can fix you. For $50, we can offer you a communication course that will fix this low point on your graph. And it's a perfect sales tool. Yeah. And all of Rudy's problems were indicated. And they were basically saying, like, you probably are having issues here and here and here.

And I was, you know, I'm sitting there, you know, like, it's true. Boy, they got you, boy. Oh, man, that's crazy. They begged it. Rudy, you do have that. You do that all the time. That's probably why you're not successful. Like going on.

And then they tried to sell, I think he bought the tape. Now that I think about it, I think he may have bought the tape. And it wasn't like two tapes. It was like 20 tapes or 10 tapes or something. It was outrageous. They got him and he walked away. I don't think he ever probably listened to anything. But yeah, they used to stop you all the time in Ebor.

Like, I've been down there several times since then. But that was 15, 20 years ago. Like, I've never seen them down there since. But I assume maybe they're still in that building. I guarantee you they probably still have the building, but that center is shut down. Oh, okay. So the main Scientology organization, other than in Clearwater, the Scientology organization in Pinellas County that you can actually join Scientology, because you can't join Scientology

in Clearwater, is in Tampa. Okay. And so, Ebor, and there's Ebor, St. Pete, and Plant City. Ebor and Plant City are not the same thing, right? No. Okay. So the Tampa organization has these, well, they call them test centers, where specifically they're just little, it's just to be out there passing out the personality tests and the

film flyers and all this stuff. But those test centers, once they get you in, they'll send you to Tampa. So, Ebor, St. Pete, Plant City are just little extension offices for the Tampa organization. Okay. So Tampa is the main organization. So was your mom one of these guys doing that kind of a test type thing? Her job in the organization wasn't to do that. Okay.

But that's right. That's how we got into that because you're like, so my mom got in, she joined staff. Right. And then so me and my brother, because I had a twin brother. We were just like, you know, little kids growing up. And so, yeah, we, you know, the org had a nursery. So, like, the kids of all the staff members who, you know, they're not making enough money to pay for daycare. Right.

So there's just a nursery, which is really just a room where they stick all the kids to be just horrible to each other. I'm going to say, they have, like, do they have, like, um, dolls of, uh, of like the intergalactic? Zeno. You know, I want to be Zeno. I know, right? No, you know, Zina's like, you can't say the word Zeno in Scientology. Really? Stop. It's, it's, what is the, what is the Harry Potter? Oh, Voldemort.

Voldemort. He, he the, the, shall not say his name. No, I've never even heard the word Zeno until after I left Scientology. Oh, my God. It's true. It's hard to believe that any secrets could be that well kept. Yeah. Yeah. You know what you got to do when in the, in the, in the intro, you got to use the, all the people in the

matrix being plugged in, that scene. That scene, that'd be great. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, my mom got into Scientology. So I'm four years old when my mom got into Scientology. I guess the whole experience of what it was like being a little kid with my mom being on staff. Not a not compelling storytelling there. But I lived a relatively normal life until about 12 years old, sixth grade, seventh grade. Right.

When my mom took me out of school, my brother out of school, my stepbrother, my stepbrother, my step sister, her friends, kids. We were all taken out of school to join staff at the Scientology org. work there full-time. I did not go to high school. I do not have UD. Are you serious? Do not have a, I, yeah. So I went to, I finished the sixth grade public school. Are you allowed to do that? Like, shit, I don't think you're allowed to do that. Totally illegal, but like, who's keeping track? Nobody's complaining. Um, we technically did seventh grade in homeschool. So technically we finished homeschool seventh grade. That, that was it. Period. I mean, everything after, everything after that was just,

Scientology. Wow. Came down to Clearwater, Florida for a few years, studied to train how to be a course supervisor up in the Philadelphia org, went back to Philadelphia. I was 15 years old when I went back to Philadelphia. Now I'm working full, full time, like 9 in the morning to 10 o'clock at night in downtown Philly, 13th, you know, 13th and race street. I'm living in South Jersey.

I'm 15 years old. By the way, my mom's still in Florida. Right. I'm staying with Cheryl Scoredado. I'm staying with a woman who got my mom into Scientology. She lives in South Jersey in Washington Township. I, as a 15-year-old, every morning in busing into downtown Philly, administering the courses from 9 a.m. until 10 p.m.

And then busing, taking a bus back to South Jersey, you know, walking the mile from, like, I mean, it's insane. It's one of these, like, walking uphill in the snow. Yeah. And that was considered totally, not only acceptable, you're considered a superstar in Scientology if you're doing that stuff at a young age. Because remember, Scientologists, because they believe in this immortal spiritual being, there's no such thing as a kid. If you're a kid, you're just a 65 trillion-year-old spiritual being in a young body. I mean, if you're 15, that means

15 years ago in one day, you were probably an 80-year-old person dropping the body. Right. Yeah. So you're considered, actually, if you're a young person being successful in Scientology and, you know, training and auditing, it's just assumed you are a past life Scientologist who has, you know, reincarnated and come back as a Scientologist. And you're probably a big deal. Boy, they like, they got their own little little group of slaves going. Yes. And it's, and they're mentally chained. Like, they don't even have to keep track of you. No, we got, we got him brainwashed. He's good. Yeah, no. Scientologists brainwashed themselves after a while. And I don't know. Maybe that's true for other organizations. But it feels like in Scientology, it's particularly true. All right. Yeah. Because once you believe in this sort of matrix-like story that Scientology tells its members, there's nothing anyone could say to you to get you to see things

differently. Right. I just love the Matrix analogy, because if, for someone who's really familiar with that movie, like once Neo gets unplugged from the Matrix, and he sees what's really happening in the world, that humanity is really just being imprisoned by all the robots, there's nothing you could say to Neo that would be like, you're right, we should just plug ourselves back into the Matrix and give up. Right. Like, that's why Scientologists are so dedicated to the cause. They're willing to, you know, throw away family members and parents and children and retirement

accounts and educations and careers to do nothing but Scientology. It's a very, very powerful thing to get someone to believe. that particular type of story I mean you want to talk about you get someone to believe that yeah you can get them to do anything for the cause yeah anything yeah there was um oh god was it the puppet master well I forget the name of this this um series on HBO where this guy convinces like two or three people that he's working for like the CIA or something and they're they're in they're been targeted by terrorists and and literally goes convinces them to basically like empty out their bank accounts all of them get into a car like they're going from hotel to hotel like he's got them terrified the whole time and he's protecting them and they're you know he's got this whole thing and this goes on for years years eventually i think a couple of them he takes one like the one this one woman and and by the way he's he'll relocate them they'll all get jobs they give him all the money they're all living like like in a one bedroom, he eventually takes a one woman, got her working full time, while he's doing

other things with other, he's a con man, but when you sit there and this, like, she's been gone for like 10 years or something. And when finally it all comes down and somebody recognizes her, I believe, and the police show up and grab her and put her in a car and explain it to it. Like, she's like, like, no, this isn't, what are you talking about? She's like, don't you understand? I'm in danger. He's helping me. And they're like, no. Wow. And, you know, so it just, when it finally hits her, she's like, like, what the hell could I have believed this?

Wow. It's really, I want to say that it was called the puppet master. I could be wrong on the name. Boy, I just was like, the whole time, I'm like, how could she believe that? How could she believe that? How could she whole time? But she's 100% all in. All in.

Well, let me tell you my puppet master moment in Scientology. All right. Instead of just going through the whole chronology of the whole thing right now. Yeah. Let me jump forward to that because it's a little interesting. Okay. Because. This has all been interesting, but yeah, I hear you. So if Scientology has this, it wants its members to believe that, look, you do enough of

this Scientology bridge to total freedom, you basically become Godlike. Now you might go, well, look, that's a big promise. Isn't it obvious to people that no one's achieved that? And you go, okay. Well, how do they deal with the fact that you cannot prove that anything? anyone's ever achieved this in Scientology. Well, here's how they get around that. And then this gets to my puppet master moment. So I already said that Grant Cardone and Tom Cruise have both done all of the auditing that

there is to do in Scientology, their OTA. So you might go, well, Grant Cardone's not Godlike. So how do they explain it? They go, well, before El Ron Hubbard died, the reason he was offered a seclusion for all those years, it's not because he was hiding from governments that wanted to throw him in jail. It's because he was working on some very advanced upper level research. You wouldn't understand. Yeah, you know, the world's not ready for it. And those, so OT8 is as high as it goes right now. But Elron Hubbard before he died, he finished up through OT15. Okay. And he didn't die of a stroke with drugs in his system. He dropped his body because in order to do the upper level research higher than 15, you can't be hindered by this meat. That's right.

He had to be able to do that research independent of his body. Obviously. Yeah. Okay. That's a given. So we won't get. So, but nine through 15, he finished that. It's just out there.

No, he gave it to Scientology Management. Oh. It's in the vault. It's secret. It's in the vault. Okay. It's in the vault. We can't release it.

No, it's too powerful. Because our organizations need to grow big enough that we're in control of the world. We have enough sufficient control of the world so that when we release the next OT levels, we can handle the blowback from the people that are going to be attacking us. We have to have to have a sufficient amount of influence on Earth before we can release the powerful levels. Okay. So Scientologists, I mean, it's crazy.

I mean, it's like the best con ever. You know, it reminds me of the constant fear of Babylon or, you know, the apocalypse coming and how we have to prepare for it and how they keep that fear, you know, in like, shoot, what was the one in Oklahoma or no, where's the branched? Vidians, where he was constantly, Waco, he was constantly saying, David Koresh. Corres, they were constantly, they're coming for us, they're going to come, it's going to be Armageddon, we have to prepare. So they keeps them in this perpetual fear, and it gives them a goal, an unex, you know,

unobtainable goal that something's going to happen. And when the DEA shows up or ATF shows up, it's like, oh my God. That's right. Yeah, but I can see how they're following it for years believing in this, because it's so overwhelming their mission is so huge. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

So, as a good little Scientologist growing up, I could see that everyone who had achieved OTA was, to be honest, not that special. Right. I was not confused about this. But what kept me believing in the entire story was my belief in these upper unreleased OT levels that were the real keys to the magic. Is this something, by the way, that's just being passed. cast around by word, or is there actually documents that are saying?

David Miscavich gets up there at the five or six annual events and talks about, we're going to release OT9 and 10. OT9 and 10 are coming sooner than you think. And that's why we're raising all the money for these new buildings. That's why you need to give us $10 million for the new building. That's 10 times bigger than what you obviously need. Like, Scientology has become a real estate scam. Right.

But so, Mr. Savage is, David Miscavich is the leader of Scientology. And these unreleased O.T. levels are nine through 15, but only O.T. 9 and 10 are supposed to be released next. It's supposed to be released together. You realize people have been waiting for this for 40 years since 1988 or something. Right. Okay, however many, that's about 40-ish issues. I grew up in a call, so you have to help the numbers. Okay. Okay. So for 40 years, they've been being told O.T. 9 and 10 is right around the corner. Right. Okay. I believed that thoroughly. Okay. This belief in the upper O.T. levels for me was the linchpin to everything. That was it. I mean, everything else I could see. I could see that Scientology could make people

good at communication. I could see that Scientologists were like really good at, well, the Grant Cardones of the world. He's a hustler. I mean, Grant Cardone's a hard worker. He's a, he's a bullshit artist. He's a con man, but he's also a hard worker. Right. Okay. I could see positive things about Scientology and Scientologists, but I could see that they were nothing, not really that special. Right. So for me, it was all about the upper O.T levels. All right. Well, when Elron Hubbard died, there were certain key Scientology managers who were responsible for going through everything he left behind that had not been released yet and figuring out what do we do with this. How do we compile it? What courses should we make? How should we release them? Well, some of these people started leaving Scientology. Okay. Okay. They're reading scraps of gibberish here and there and they're like, yes, yes. It's not seeming all that special. Now, if we go back to the Matrix analogy, if you're, and by the way, you've seen the Matrix,

right? Yeah. Okay. If you're Neo and you know exactly that the Matrix is real, right? Nobody could ever convince you it's not real. Right. Nobody could ever convince you to go back in. So as a good little Scientologist, I'm thinking to myself, how could anyone who ever

experienced the magic of these levels and knows what El Ron Hubbard left behind, how could anything get them to leave Scientology? Right. No matter how badly they were treated. Right. Like, who cares how badly you're treated this lifetime? This lifetime is irrelevant. So, right?

You see what I mean? Yeah, yeah. No matter what hardships they're experiencing. Right. So eventually enough of these people left who I knew, because these people were well-known people in Scientology, that when I heard from them, there's no upper OTA levels. There's nothing. I was like, oh, like for me, I didn't have some crisis of faith.

I was like, that was the only thing that was making everything makes sense to me in the first place. Right. So I was like, oh, they don't exist? Tell me more. And like, well, we thought they existed. When El Ron Hubbard died, there was these people that were with him, Pat Broker and Annie Broker. And Pat, you know, they were like his, El Ron Hubbard's at that time, like, his most trusted people. And when El Ron Hubbard died, Pat Broker, he was like, I've got all the good stuff. He's like, I've got the upper OT levels and you don't have them. That's how Pat Broker was able to, for a few years, retain control of Scientology. He claimed to have all the magical shit that Elvin Hubbard left behind.

Okay. Pat Broker's not in Scientology anymore. David Miscavich runs Scientology. One of the ways David Muscovich was able to take over Scientology is he called Pat Broker's bluff. Pat Broker was out of town. Muscovich orchestrated a whole team to basically raid the offices. It was like storage units and everything.

David Muscovich orchestrated a raid of all of the properties where Pat Broker was claiming to have the magic. materials right they went through every scrap of paper elron hubbard left behind every file every drawer everything nothing and he goes we called your bluff you're out of here and uh any and i believe he threatened pat broker with um reporting him to the IRS for a whole bunch of just the massive tax evasion just hordes of cash buried here hidden in walls there because uh elron hubbard was a kind of kind of weird like that later on in his life right and anyway the long story short here is the fact that that David Miscavich found out there were no upper OT levels is actually how he was able to take

over control of Scientology from Pat Broker. And so you can say whatever you, early on we said like these crazy belief systems that Scientology has. It's not, how is it really different than crazy belief systems of other religions? I'll tell you one way it's different. Christian priests really do believe in heaven. Right. They really do believe in God. They really do believe in Jesus. David Miskavitch knows full well, nothing L. Run Hubbard claimed about the upper O.T. levels is true. He knows that. So he is every single day perpetuating a fraud upon all the Scientologists of the world. Only a handful of people in Scientology even know that. Right. Like, your average Scientologist believes that there's these things called the upper OT levels. And I assume,

I give them a little bit of a benefit of the doubt, that like me, that genuine belief, is at least a small part, but probably a big part, of what keeps them there. Yeah. And so that was my puppet master moment where, you know, the police are trying to explain to her what's happening. And she's like, what are you talking about? He's saving me.

And they're like, no. All right. So I'm sitting here, you know, all this. By the time I officially left Scientology, I was only 34. So, and I started working for them when I was 12. So you went all through your 20s? And I mean, yeah, what are you hoping to achieve during this period of time? Like, are you still going through the levels?

Or you're just saying, no, I'm going to give my life to the organization, like a monk? It's the latter. Because the truth is, the people who work for Scientology most usually don't even do the levels. Like, I did not do hardly any, literally, quite literally almost none of Scientology's bridge to total freedom. Staff members and Searge members are totally content with just dedicating themselves. to the work of getting everyone else in the world up through those levels. They're pretty much like, look, we're good, we're good, we're competent. We've risen above all your mere problems.

We have risen above all that because we see the urgency and we're going to put our own bullshit to the side and we're on the business end of this. We're going to dedicate ourselves to getting everybody else through. That's usually how it works. Right. Okay. And so you said, well, what's your thing? Yeah, I just thought I was, this is the, what could be more noble than dedicating your life to unplugging people from the Matrix?

Right. What would you not be willing to experience? What would you not be willing to put up with if you truly feel that is the virtue of what you're doing? Right. I don't need to be a general. I can be a foot soldier. It's just as rewarding. Exactly.

That's not my calling. Everyone in the organization feels that the piece they're providing is a pivotal piece. And so it doesn't, like I, I didn't even have necessarily ambition to rise up the ranks. staff members. It was like every, every job is valuable. Right. And so my job in this organization was to oversee the delivery of courses and the delivery of auditing to people on Elron Hubbard Way in Los Angeles. And are people, and you're getting people to come, to join. So the functions of an organization are divided up pretty clearly. So like, I was never, so the recruiting people into staff, that's one division. That's not what I had to do. Selling something. Sending,

Scientology to people. That's another division. That's not what I had to do. Convincing people to come and take the courses and the auditing they've already paid for. That was, I didn't even have to do that. Oh. My job was just delivering the courses and the auditing to the people who had already paid for it, who were already convinced to come in and get it, and now somebody had to give it to them. So my job was to make sure they got the service. You can't mail it to them?

No, the course, the course you do in a course room. Oh, okay. You know, you sit down at a table and you study the stuff. And auditing is one-on-one count. They're like a proctor. What's proctor? Someone who administers a test to make sure that you do it. Yeah.

Like you give it to them. Here's how it works. Well, sure. But like when I say a course, like a course room. Like if you're sitting, I don't know, like most courses are administered by someone like teaching the class. And in Scientology, no one teaches the class. You sit down and you study the materials on your own.

But someone, so like a Scientology court, when you go into a Scientology organization, there's a course room. And you could have, let's say, if you had 100 students in there, people might be studying 20 different courses, but they're all doing it in the same course room. And they're studying their materials at their own pace. But the course supervisor oversees them and kind of checks on them and checks that they're understanding their materials and twins people up to do things together. So in Philadelphia, I was running the course room in Philly. That's what I was doing. In L.A., I had a different job.

I was not only overseeing the courses, I was also overseeing the delivery of the auditing. Right. Yeah. I just got thrown out because I don't know what a proctor does exactly. Yeah, yeah, no, no. It's just somebody who watches you. It's kind of the person that kind of monitors people taking a course, really to make sure they're doing it and not cheating.

But that's like one of their functions where they're basically, they give out their course, and then they kind of watch you to make sure you're taking your clock, really tests. It's really more for tests. Right. But, okay. So I, so it's almost like I didn't have. have to have those jobs where you're like trying to part get someone to separate someone from their money right to buy this course by you know lying to them about what it might do for

them i never had to do that right i never had to convince people to join staff or join the sea organization um yeah is your brother involved oh he's dead oh i'm sorry that's a whole other story We should probably skip it for today, except. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So how many people do you, how many people join that stay? What's the fallout?

I'm going to say the attrition rate's got to be north of 90%. Okay. Yeah. Like if you just think about it, you could probably measure it a few different ways, but at the height of Scientology's popularity in the late 80s, early 90s, I'm told there was the most active member of Scientology ever had at one time in the entire world was about $100,000. And today it's closer to 25. And when you say worldwide, so this is what are the countries or Scientology in?

Most countries of the world. Okay. Yeah. There's about, well, I don't know, how many countries are there in the world? Like 186, 21212. There's probably only about 150, 175. at the most 200 Scientology organizations in the world. About 50 to 75 of those are in the United States.

You've got a bunch in Mexico. You've got a bunch in most of the South American countries. You've got some in Canada. Most European countries have at least one Scientology organization. Even Russia has a handful. Japan's got one. Taiwan's got one. None in China.

Right. It's illegal in China. I was saying Iran and Iraq. Yeah, yeah. None, none in the Middle Eastern. Israel's got a bunch, or not a bunch, but Israel has some. And none of the middle, none of the Muslim country. No, they don't want that smoke.

We don't want the Christians here. We don't want you people. Yeah, exactly. So at what point, oh, and all of Africa, like, there's like none, except there's a handful in South Africa, which is like, you know, they're not interested in Africa either. Scientology is one of the whitest organizations ever. It's probably whiter than the Mormons. At what point do you like say, I mean, you have this kind of epiphany, but at what point do you go, okay, well, I need to get out of this organization.

Yeah, so that's where it gets tricky. Right. Because every time I try to tell this story on a podcast, I end up crying, and I don't want to do that. I really don't want to do that. It's good. No, it's not good. Colby is willing to sacrifice. your mental health for views.

That I know. I'm going to do my best. I don't know if you ever watch my stuff. Like, I'm a fucking pussy, right? I cry all the time. I know, but it's not fun. It's not fun. Okay, because there's two different subjects here.

There's leaving Scientology like, oh, I don't believe it anymore, and I'm not under the spell. Right. And then there's, like, getting kicked out and losing everyone you've ever known. Okay. And that happened in two different?

Yes. Yes. Okay. One, do you stop believing first? Yes. Okay. Absolutely. And I'm already. All right. So where do we want to enter this? Where do you want to enter this? Okay. So let's enter it. Okay. So 2006, my wife and I were working in the C-Organization in Los Angeles. You were married at this point? Like you were? Well, Searge members are not allowed to have relationships with people who aren't. seorg members and you're also not allowed to do any premarital shenanigans right so

seerog members get married very quickly right okay so i got my run as like 23 okay uh and she's 100% all in oh she was born and raised in scientology herself and and working she'd been in the seorch for 14 years by the time or something like that right okay okay um and i and i realize they just sort of backfilled a part of the story that we had never actually organically arrived at um uh but that's okay so um in by By 2006, my wife and I were in this organization in Los Angeles. Now, because Seargue members work for Scientology 24-7, 365, you're actually not allowed to have kids in the Seorg. So if you get pregnant, they pressure you to either get an abortion or leave.

Wow. Like, for real. Because they don't want to have to take care of. Yeah, it's too much, too much distractions. Or money? But both. I mean, Searge members are basically free labor. So if you now have to spend half your time raising kids, you're losing that free labor.

right plus it costs money to you know raise the kids yeah plus there's so much liability surrounding you know that it's not good for the kids it's not good for the organization uh anyway so if you're in the C-org and you get pregnant um you have to leave the C-org or get an abortion and we were the only reason we got pregnant was that we could leave the C-org okay

so 2006 is when we leave the C-org but we're still Scientologists okay okay 2006 we moved from Los Angeles move to Clearwater, because her family is all in Clearwater. And so from 2006 to 2009, we're still relatively good Scientologists who still more or less believe. And then in 2009, the Tampa Bay Times, at that time, it might have still been the same P. Times. But the Tampa Bay Times publishes a series of articles called The Truth Rundown with a bunch of these former executives

who knew El Ron Hubbard, worked with Elvon Hubbard, had been some of the senior most leadership of Scientology for like, you know, 30, 40 years. Well, a lot of these guys had left Scientology and no one even knew because they were just being, they left and they were just never spoke out. Right. Well, a bunch of these guys started, you know, talking to the Tampa Bay Times. And the Tampa Bay Times were publishing these stories of how basically David Miscavich is like beating people up, imprisoning them on the Scientology management base in Gilman Hot Springs, California. you. I'm talking about 2009 because that's when I, as a, you know, someone who just grown up as a good little believing Scientologist, not questioning anything, was like, if for all of these

things that I'm hearing from these people, people who I know to be good people, people who I believe are telling the truth, for what they're saying to be true, a whole lot of things I've believed my whole life would have to be false. Right. Okay. So I very very, very, quickly went down the path of realizing, oh, almost everything I thought was true was bullshit, including no upper O.T levels. Okay. Even once I found that out, there was no part of me that was like, oh, I need to like officially leave Scientology. I was actually for years being like a little spy. Right. I was still like existing in the Scientology world, but feeding information to the high-level members who were on the outside and were kind of helping people

leave Scientology. I didn't actually want to leave Scientology in an official sense. I was a Scientologist. My wife was. Her parents, her mom or dad, her two sisters and brother. My mom was still in Scientology at this point. My little brother. My three daughters at this point aren't in Scientology, but all of their friends, all their little friends have parents who are Scientologists. My kids are going to a private Scientology school. I work for a Scientologist. My wife works for a Scientologist. That's what happens in Scientology. Everyone ends up being connected to each other, professionally and personally. So for me, I was like, okay, fine, I no longer believe in it. I no longer want to participate in it. But I still wanted to at least

officially be considered a member so that all Scientologists wouldn't have to sever all ties with me. Right. And for me, that's just kind of natural. Like my best friends were Scientologists. Right. And they're good people, but they were Scientologists. And the rule is, if someone gets expelled from Scientology, you sever all ties. Right. 100% doesn't matter who the person is doesn't matter if it's your parent or your child okay so okay so okay so okay so from 2009 to about 2013 I'm basically you could say just being like kind of a Scientology spy right right and getting like more and more careless about it like getting a little Like, not covering my tracks all that well, you know, trying to talk to my friends about it,

trying to get some of my friends to come over to my way of thinking and stuff. And Scientologists have a very strong snitching culture. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say that doesn't seem like it'd go well. And at one point, some Scientology officials in Clearwater tried to confront me. They scheduled a meeting with me at a Starbucks and buttered me up for a couple hours and then busted out this folder of like, Aaron Smith-Levins, blog,

posts. Because two of the most senior Scientology officials had been running their blogs. And a lot of Scientologists were like anonymously posting on these blogs. And Scientology was really dedicated and smoking out these identities of who are the people that are pretending to be Scientologists but are secretly contributing to these blogs. So they had whole profiles built up of like the aliases that people are using and the comments and trying to figure out who's who. Anyway, so they basically confronted me. We know this is you. and I just like, I just denied it, deny, deny, deny, deny, deny, deny, deny, deny, deny, deny.

Well, oh, and at one point my mom had gotten kicked out, okay? And I was supposed to disconnect from her and just kept lying. I kept saying that I disconnected from her, but I never really had. And they kept sort of getting reports from people with evidence that I had not really disconnected from her. But I was never going to admit to them. Eventually, they just realized he's going to keep lying to us about this. Okay. I'm sorry, I'm jumping around a little bit in the story.

So she gets kicked out around maybe 2011, late 2011, early 2012. Eventually, Scientology realizes I'm just going to keep lying to them about being connected to my mom. Plus, they believe they've got this evidence that I'm secretly posting on these blogs. Okay. So eventually, in late 2013, they start telling people that I've been kicked out. Like, officially I hadn't been, but they started telling people. Right.

So people started disconnecting from me. And I was working for this hedge fund Scientologist guy, and you're not allowed to employ someone who's being kicked out. And this guy was a very famous person in Scientology. So, and they didn't want to put him in a weird spot of exposing himself to a law suit by having to fire me just because Scientology kicked me out. Right. So they actually told him that they were going to be kicking me out. So they could, like, maneuver that they're just going to lay me off and all this sort of

stuff. Okay. So from 2009 to 2014, I was getting more and more distant from Scientology. You could say more and more and more antagonistic to them, working against them more and more and more and but not wanting to be kicked out. Right. See what I mean? I would just state of Scientology is by forever, for all I cared.

Eventually, they're like, shit, this guy is just going to keep doing this. Right. He's gutting us from the inside. He's got to go. Exactly. So late 2013, early 2014 is when they do, like, officially get rid of me. So, but the way it works is, you know, my mom had already been kicked out. So them getting rid of me, like, I still, I could now have a relationship.

with my mom and that's fine. But my wife's family's all in Scientology. Okay. So they go to my wife and they say, you have to divorce your husband or we're going to kick you out. And she's like, that's not going to work for me for obvious logistical reasons. And by the way, the reasons at that that time weren't, that's not going to work for me because, you know, I'm in love with my husband. Scientology doesn't care about that. Right. Like she's got to lay out the argument that like, well, now look, we have three daughters. Right. And they love their father. So if I divorce Aaron now, I'm still connected to Aaron because we're going to share custody of our kids. right so i still won't be able to do scientology because i'll still be connected to this

suppressive person they call your suppressive person when they kick you out i still won't be able to do scientology like she goes i'll be a scientologist but i won't be allowed to do scientology because i have this connection to a suppressive person and i'll have that connection to him until my kids are 18 and then when my kids are 18 if i tell them that they have to choose between me and their dad, they're obviously going to choose the parent who's not telling them they have to choose. Right. So what you're telling me is that if I divorce my husband now, just so that I can stay in

Scientology, I'm still not going to be considered a good member, right? And then in 15 years, I'll lose my kids. And just so that I can be a Scientologist? Do you see how the math doesn't work for me? Right. And they're like, okay, you're out. So we're going to kick you out because you won't divorce your husband. And what about our family?

Exactly. That's what we're getting to. Okay. So my wife has two sisters and a brother. And her parents are also both Scientologists. Her dad's dead now. And so this is where Scientology gets like really in like in city, like vicious. And this is where if people go, what's your beef with Scientology?

What I'm about to explain to you is my beef with Scientology. I don't care about what they fucking believe or how much money they want from you. So they go to her parents and they go, you have to disconnect from your daughter and your three granddaughters. Okay, because I have three daughters. Now, this is back in 2014. So my daughters are eight, six, and four. And they're just like, I mean, they're two of those beautiful little girls you could imagine. Okay, so they go to my wife's parents and they say, you have to disconnect from your daughter, your oldest daughter,

who you guys love to death. Like they've had nothing but an amazing relationship. Your oldest daughter, your oldest child and your eldest daughter, and your oldest daughter, and your three, eight, six, and four-year-old granddaughters. You have to disconnect from them. You have to never see or speak to them ever again. Or you're going to be expelled from Scientology. Now, at this point, they're basically just going, which children and grandchildren would we

be most okay with losing. I mean, and when I say they're doing that, I'm not like how, they're being put in a position where no matter what decision they make, they're having to weigh, which children are we never going to see again? Right. Which grandchildren are we never going to see again?

And for what? Okay. So her parents disconnect from her and our daughters. They live two miles down the street from us. Never saw them or spoke to them ever again. And then her father died a few years ago. And she never would have even known that he was dying, except that her brother, who doesn't believe in Scientology

and doesn't consider himself a Scientologist, told her you should come and see him. He's in the hospital, and it looks like, you know, this is going to be it. And it turns out he'd been dying for two years. He'd had cancer for two years, and nobody bothered to tell her. And nobody bothered to tell her. And then when she went to the hospital to see him, he was very happy to see her. She got to see him for a little bit before he wasn't conscious anymore.

But even when she was in the hospital, like her mom and her sisters wouldn't see her, wouldn't talk to her. And when she went to the funeral, they wouldn't talk to her either. And it's like, for what? She didn't even do anything. She wasn't publicly attacking Scientology. She wasn't posting on these blogs. she wasn't spying on anyone, she wasn't sharing information with anyone. Her only thing she ever did wrong was she wouldn't divorce me. Right. That's it. So, you know, I'm sure there's all sorts of

academic definitions for what makes something a cult. But as far as I'm concerned, when you're in a fucking organization that has such a power over its members, that they can tell parents you have to never see your grand children again. What the hell are you involved in? Right. And, you know, this got so bad that even after, so, you know, I'm expelled, my wife is expelled. Her parents owned, even though they lived a couple miles away, they owned the properties right across the street from us. As I rented, they were rentals. Right. So every now and then they would come over to those properties to do some sort of maintenance, it was mowing the lawn or whatever. And when my wife would see either her dad or her mom over there, she wouldn't try to go over and talk to them,

but she would send the kids over. Because the kids had no idea, like the kids were so young, they had no idea that they'd been disconnected from or anything. They had no idea. Right. And so she'd go, go say, go say how to pop up? And they would run away from the kids. if they if they if they if they if they if they if they if they if they saw them come over they would go hide in the house hide for the grandchildren and um sometimes the kids would catch them sometimes the kid would catch them and see them and then um her mom would go and basically report herself to the ethics officer and say i i saw my kids like it was a violation i saw my grandkids my my granddaughters came and spoke to me and i spoke to them I couldn't get away fast enough.

And this happened so many times that Scientology made them sell the properties. Scientology made them sell the properties so that my daughters couldn't go over and see them when they were over there, like literally. And I was so pissed off when I was so pissed off at this that I actively interfered with this. the sale of the property? Because I was like, look, because I knew they would try to sell these houses to Scientologists. Right. And I said, if my Scientology in-laws aren't allowed to own these properties, no Scientologist is going to own these properties. So when I would see the realtor showing the property over there, I would walk over with a letter. And I would say, I'm a declared suppressive person. And I live right.

across this street. And by this time, I had hired one of the former Scientology, famous former Scientology executives, Mike Rinder. He was working for me. Right. And he would work, we worked from home. And I'd be like the biggest suppressive person in the Galactic Federation is going to live across, be working across the street from you 40 hours a week.

And you should know this. Anyway, I, I, I got like three or four contracts to fall through. Right. I was like, if anyone's going to live across the street from me, it's going to be a non-scientologist. And so, and, yeah, my kids have never seen, my kids never saw their grandparents again. My kids are now 17, 15, and 13. And is your, their grandmother, the grandfather is still alive. The grandfather's dead.

Right. And the grandmother's still all in. A true believer. Still a true believer. Yeah. Total true believer. Yeah, that's bizarre. And it's one of the reasons I relish being such a loud voice in the former Scientology world is it has to make those guys a little uncomfortable to exist in Scientology, knowing that I'm out here telling this story.

Right. on some of the bigger platforms. You know, I told this story on Jordan Peters and I told the story on Lex Friedman. And, yeah. So that's why I said I, I always say, I'm going to tell this story quickly so I don't get emotional,

but it's not really possible. And so. You need to get a job. That is how I ended up out of Scientology. So I'm sorry What so you were working for the one guy The side big Scientologist Oh yeah yeah yeah

You stopped working there Oh that's right So I was working for him He owned a drug tea He owned a Scientology Has this drug rehab program called Narcanon And my wife was working at that facility So and he owned that facility

So basically we were both essentially working for him Well we were both fired Our kids were kicked out of the school That they were going to And I was fortunate enough that I was able to start my own business and go to business for myself in the hedge fund research space. It's one of these happy accidents where it's like I never would have gone into business for myself ever if I had stayed in the Scientology ecosystem.

Right. The highest thing I could have ever aspired to is work for a guy like Kurt Feshback is the guy I was working for. But I've been working for him long enough. and done enough good work with other people in the hedge fund space who had nothing to do with Scientology. Right. That when they heard I was no longer at Falcon Research,

where the first question was why. Right. But when I tell them the Scientology story, they go, they're ready to say. Are you fucking kidding me? And they want to help you. Yeah, they want to help you. Their heart goes out to you.

Like, hey, I get it. Like, what can I do to help? Yeah. So one of these guys helped me set up my own company, introduced me to my first client. then I ended up working for a very famous guy named Bill Ackman, Pershing Square Capital. That got me a higher profile.

And I mentioned the business success because in some ways, as like soul crushing as this whole experience was, it would have been so much worse if at the same time I was like, I'm ruined financially. I don't have a high school diploma. right like the only people I'd worked for mostly were at Scientologists I in some ways I felt like I would have been unmarketable in the real world right and I know a lot of people on their way out of Scientology encounter those obstacles and don't know how to overcome them right so they stay they stay or or they really really struggle in life right and the sort of happy accidents, the luck, I mean, you know, let's say like the better you are, the luckier you get. But like, I mean, I impressed a lot of important people with a lot of really good work,

but I was fortunate that things aligned in a way where this experience that was essentially destroying my life was at least not destroying me financially. All your problems in life are much worse when you're, don't know how you're making your next mortgage payment. Right. Yeah. I didn't have to worry about that part of it. I've been very successful since leaving Scientology. And in some ways, I never would have been as successful as I have been if I had not left Scientology. It's a really weird. It's a really weird thing. So, I'm sorry, go ahead. No, no. Oh, I was going to say, so, but you're also have a YouTube channel. Yes. When did that start? And what was the goal of that channel, just to be a thorn in their side?

Originally, this is nothing wrong. Originally, that wasn't even the point. Now it's the point. Now it's the point. Now my goal is to be the biggest nightmare. Had you started the YouTube channel prior to that? No, it's just that when I first started it, it was just, you know, the channel's called Growing Up in Scientology, and it was really just something I started because none of the platforms that were reporting about Scientology, whether we're talking about documentaries or TV shows or blogs or whatever, none of these stories were being told by the members themselves.

They were being gate-kept or moderated or edited or produced by non-Scientologists, who always picked somewhat rather weird parts of the story to focus on. There just wasn't a thing. Oh, and also a lot of the stories were being told by people who had joined Scientology. Right. Not people who were raised in it as kids. Yeah, yeah, engrossed in it. Yeah. Totally different experience. Right. Kids, I mean, kids will do whatever the hell you make them do. Yeah, yeah. Right. Now, if you're, if you're raised in a, in a Jewish household, you're Jewish. Exactly. Like you, you know, it's, it's, it's, yeah. I was going to say it was funny when you were talking to it. I was thinking like the, the, the, the, the, the, you're raised in, the,

largest employers of, I'm sorry, the largest employers of, let's say, you know, Asians or, Asians, the largest employers of, you know, Jews or Jews, you know, larger, you know what I'm saying? Like, like, so I can see when you were explaining the Scientology model, I was like, well, that makes sense. Like, that's, that's what you do is you, you keep everybody together, you employ everybody, you're around like-minded people. Right. Like, but, you know, it builds that community and that and so people it makes it difficult to leave yes you know ever like you said that's a that's a huge step to say okay i don't really buy this anymore but damn if i you know if i start talking about or mentioning it like that it's going to be it's not like it's like oh i don't have to it's not a big deal

you don't have to go to church anymore like no it's way worse than that that's right and there are other organizations or sex of organizations that have a similar disconnection policy. I think the Amish might have it shunning. I always get in trouble if I try to talk above my pay grade, but the Jehovah's, I find that former Jehovah's Witnesses and former Mormons tend to seem to resonate the most with stories of former Scientologists. And yet, and the Mormons have, they're not as strong with the disconnection as Scientology is. The Jehovah's Witnesses might, might be. But I go, I didn't grow up in those groups. So I talk about, I talk about mine. Right.

I started the channel about seven years ago when I was still doing a lot of the hedge fund work. And it wasn't even monetized for like five years. I didn't even bother to turn on monetization on my channel because I didn't want Scientology to be able to say I was doing it for money. Right. And I didn't need the money. And I was like, why bother? Why give them something that can use to criticize me when it's like, I mean, it would, I don't even know what it would have made, but not, it's not even something I was doing regularly. Right. And so because the channel was called growing up in Scientology. It was just me doing chats with other people who'd been born and raised in Scientology,

who were now out. Right. And it was just honestly just something, it was a little bit of a passion project. Cathartic, right? Yeah, exactly. It's good. You have like, like-minded people. You have common events, you know, and nobody's going to, nobody's going to connect with you

the way somebody else did. No, I'm not going to really understand being raised in that environment the way you're going to. That's right. And no non-scientologist is going. to be able to ask the same types of questions that a former Scientologist is going to be able to ask another former Scientologist, right? That was the idea going into it

is like, how could someone who doesn't understand the breadth and depth of the experience be able to ask the exact right question? Now, someone might also go, well, yeah, but that specialized question that the former Scientologist is going to ask is only going to sound like a great question to another former Scientologist,

so your audience is limited to be. But anyway, it doesn't matter. It felt like a great thing to do at the time. Right. And so I would just post sporadically. I mean, honestly, sometimes I would post once every few months, maybe once every few weeks. It was just, I don't know, it just seemed like a good idea at the time. It really wasn't until about 18 months ago, maybe 24 months ago, that I was like, you know, I want to try to post something every day and see what happens. Two years ago, I ran for Clearwater City Council.

Okay. And that's when I was like, you know, I'm going to use my YouTube. YouTube platform to get nationwide support. Everyone hates Scientology. Everyone wants to see someone do something about Scientology and Clearwater. And just from my YouTube channel, I raised like $70,000 for a Clearwater City Council campaign, not the mayoral race, just a normal city council seat. That was unheard of.

That was practically unheard. At the time, it was the most money raised for a non-majoral race. I was going to say they're usually run for around 20 or 30 grand, right? If that, like, in that a lot. 10, 8, 6. Yeah. And I lost the race. And I was humiliated.

And I mean, I was running and I said, you know, I'd never worked so hard on, it's the campaign season lasts for six months. Yeah. I'd never worked so hard on anything in my life. I knocked on 5,000 doors. I, and one of the reasons I was working so hard is I said, you know what? If I lose, I'm going, it's going to be humiliating for me. And so I'm going to leave it all on the table.

Okay. So I'm mentioning that because the timing, speaking about this speaks to the timing issue on some things on my channel. So I lost, and I basically just sulked for like three months. I just didn't do anything for like three months, four months, whatever it was.

But when I came out of that sulking period, I'm like, I'm gonna post every day. Because I pretty much saved up a lot of money we're doing the hedge fund research. Yeah. And I was pretty much semi-re-I-was doing house flipping. Ebor, by the way. Oh, yeah, nice.

Me and a partner, we've got to talk about that. I was doing real estate, but essentially semi-retired. okay and eventually I was like I need to pour my effort into something right I was like let's see if I can upload every day that seems like a goal I can set for myself can I upload every day yeah and then that became twice a day then it became three times a day then that became four times a day sometimes I'll do four live streams but now I do it live so I don't have to spend time editing right I do like four live streams in a day there's a lot of

Scientology news there's lawsuits there's criminal cases there's you know there's all sorts of on. Now, there's other cult, you know, there's just, you know, cult news in the world in general. And so when I finished, when my campaign ended, I probably had 40,000 subscribers. Well, over the next six months, I hit like 100,000. Nice. And then the next 12 months after that, I hit 200,000. And now about like 235,000. And it's become this thing. And then I started empowering other people, other former Scientologists, to start their own channels. Right. And then I want, one day one of my viewers recommended the term SPTV. Well, SP is a suppressive person. That's someone who's kicked out of Scientology. I'm like, oh my God, that's brilliant. So I created, and then

someone sent me an MTV logo modified to say SPTV. And so I'm like, oh my God, that's it. That's it. That's it. I found it. SPTV. So then I would encourage, and, oh, and then I turned on monetization on the channel. And I was like, who knew that you could make money like this on YouTube. Right. I'm like, but you know who needs to know? Everybody needs to know. All former Scientologists need to know. There's no gatekeeper anymore. Yeah. Anybody can do this. Producers don't get to decide what stories get on the air. Studios don't get decide what stories making into documentaries. Bloggers don't get decide what parts of someone's story they want to talk about. You can all tell your own story exactly how you want, whenever you want, with whoever you want.

And Google will pay your ass to do it. Right. I'm like, Everybody needs to know. Yeah. So anyway, I've been on this campaign for the last year or whatever convincing former Scientologists to start their channels. And then I can use my platform to promote them, promote their channel, get them monetized so that they can interview. It's just, you know, it's like this fractal growth or exponential growth or whatever. And it's sort of, I'm just sort of dedicated to making David Muscovich in Scientology regret all of the families they've destroyed. Right.

And be like, this is what happens. We're going to fucking destroy you. I say on my channel, I said, I am motivated by pure revenge. Yeah. And success is the best revenge. Yeah. I don't think it has to be a negative. No, it can very much be positive. So, I mean, is that, that's not what you're solely doing now.

It is what you're solely doing now. This is all you do is the YouTube? Or what about the? Well, the whole real estate stuff, my, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, licensed real estate agent, and I have a broker, my broker keeps going, like, do you think you can promote the real estate? And I'm like, I'm just so busy doing the videos. I can't even bring myself to promote the real estate. So the answer to the question is, I don't want it to be the only thing I do. I'm just so busy doing it, and I honestly love it, that it has

de facto become the only thing I do. I would love to be building this burgeoning real estate empire on the side, but it's like, I can't even bring myself to take the 60 seconds that it would take to promote the real estate business in each one of my videos. But the straight answer to your question is, YouTube is all I do right now. Right. I would love to use it to kind of build other businesses, but it's like I'm just, my attention span is only, only so, there's only so much I can focus on in a day. Yeah.

That's kind of what's happened to me slowly, like all these other things that I was doing to make money have fallen. Once this started making money, the other things have fallen to the, to the wayside, you know. One, it's funny, my channel has sponsors. I've got like four sponsors, like big sponsors. And, you know, they pay you X amount of money for like a 60-second ad.

Right. But it can take, I don't know, an hour or two hours to script and film and edit. And when you look at what they actually pay you for that ad, I go, I could promote the real estate business in the same amount of time. No, actually, so much more benefit. And yet for some reason,

I can't even bring myself to do that. I feel a little silly. Yeah. My broker's like, I'm like, I don't want to show it. I told my broker, I said, I don't want to be spending housees, spending time showing houses when I, can she spend time doing videos? He's like, just promote the business, send the leads to me, I'll give you a court of the commission. And when he said that to me, I'm like, oh my God, I could literally just print money here.

And I still can't bring myself to do it. I'm still so focused on the videos. I can't, I don't even promote the real estate business. So you know the way around that is to do it one time. Yeah. One decent 30 second ad and then drop it in the video. Then you don't even know it's how you just go through and you can know what? I'm at the at the 10 minute mark. You're so right. Splice, drop it. Keep going. You're so right. Splice, drop it and that's it. And then people get hit, you know, in an hour or 30 minutes. They get hit twice, you know, one at the very, maybe one at the very end. You're so right. Yeah. And then you only have to do it once. You have to think about it again because, you know, trust me, I hate, you know, there's really like I, you know, these guys, you know,

these guys that do the whole, you know, hey, do me a favor, like the video, subscribe, and hit the bell. You know, I do that at the very end because I hate doing it so much, especially at the beginning, like I put, anything I dislike, obviously, I try and put off as long as possible. So at the very end, it's like, if you know I'm going to say it, you better, this is where you're done. Right. So that's typically when I say it, which is the worst part because obviously, you know, 80% of

people that watch your video don't even make it. the end. As soon as I go, okay, well, they go click. That's right. They don't ever get to anything else. That's right. So, but yeah, it's, it's, it's funny because I've had people say, man, you know, because if you watch my videos, not that I would suggest, um, suggest that or subject you to it. But if you watch it, typically a lot of times I'll, even that, remember the FBI guy? One of them, um, Tom, uh, Simons, like I was like, bro, you should start, you know, he's already got like, he's already doing Instagram. I think he's got like a ton of followers.

He does every day. He puts up some little 30 second or one minute spot. I'm like, you really should start doing YouTube. He's like, ah, what am I going to talk about? I just interview other FBI guys, other criminals, other, I can get you a ton of people. I don't know. He kind of him hot about it. Anyway, somebody was like, you know, you're always telling people they should start a YouTube

channel, especially they have an interesting story. And they're like, you know, aren't you worried about like, you know, creating competition? It's like, do you have any idea how massive this platform is? Yeah. Like, there's no way I'm creating competition. Like, and even, I'm not that guy. I don't believe that. I believe that there's enough pie.

A lot of people think, oh, well, if you're getting some pie, it's coming from my part of the pie or coming from my potential pie. Like, bro, I could never tap into, you know, one, a fraction, a fraction of a fraction of what's the potential of YouTube. It's that vast. That is the beauty of the platform. Right. So everybody could do it.

Everybody could start it. Yeah. I think what happens to a lot of people is they, one, it seems easy and, you know, it takes, it takes commitment. And then the other thing is people hate seeing themselves. Yeah. Hate it. The first video I did, oh my God. It was, it was like a five-minute video, and it was like two and a half hours of editing.

It was so, I think it's still, I think it's the intro video I have. I did like an intro video. Hey, this is Matt Cox. And you see all these chops. and clips and fades, and all the times I said, um and I didn't like this and I didn't like that. It was horrible. But, but, you know, once you get used to that, yeah, and once you start posting. And then the thing is like, you know, you're like, I'm not making, you know, once you get monetized, you're like, man, I'm not making any money. You know, how long is it going to take?

Well, you know, if you start and if you post and if you're consistent, eventually it will start to grow. And it will grow and grow and grow. And there's not a lot of businesses out there that you can see that growth and really track it and realize is it making the money I want no but you know what compared to a year ago damn it's making a lot of money you know compared to two years ago oh my god you know and look if that just track just stays on I mean it's incredible any business where you don't have to go out and find you like YouTube is basically gifting you this opportunity right Google's book club on Monday gym on Tuesday date night on Wednesday Out on the town on Thursday.

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You put up content, we put the ads in there and we pay you. Your job, just put up content. I don't have a car, bro. know who you're talking to. I don't have a car. Like, that's not my vehicle out. Like, I don't even have a vehicle. I sold it like six or eight months ago. I was like, I'm paying six or seven hundred dollars a month for what? Why? I never leave you. Because you never leave home. And I thought the only, the only thing that this is, the only hindrance this is going to be to anyone is my wife. And I'm okay thrusting that responsible of saying, hey, we need

creamer. Okay, I'll pick it up on my way home. Okay. Hey, like, I feel poor. for her. Hey, I need to mail this, but I don't have a car. She said, I'll mail it. Hey, can you go buy that? So it's really only causing her problems. I love it. I never have to leave. She drives us to the gym in the morning. We come back. I look on my thing and I go, oh, somebody's showing up in about 10 minutes. Yeah. I mean, to echo everything you're saying. Right. Because I had already lived two extreme versions of the financial experience. Working for Scientology, 120 hours a week, making zero dollars for years and years and years. Working in the hedge fund space, working the same amount of hours, but being paid a ridiculous amount of money. Then you go to the YouTube space and

you're like, okay, the money's not as ridiculous as the hedge fund world. No phone calls, no appointments, no clients, no bosses, do what you record, upload, what you want, when you want, how you want. You can't, it's, it is the dream. And so when I started to experience that, I literally, what I thought was every one of my friends needs to know that this possibility exists. And I will do everything in my power to help them achieve it. Yeah. To the extent that I can, you know, there's only so much you can do to help someone.

But I'm like, this platform. And what it means for the, to empower former Scientologist to be able to finally say what they want, exactly how they want, without needing to worry about whether they're pissing someone off because their audience is now potentially limitless. It's everyone on the, it's everyone on the internet. Yeah. I mean, it really is, um, I know everyone has imposter syndrome. Everyone goes, yeah, you can do it, but who am I? I go, you're you. Yeah. Everyone's just who they are. Everyone's, like, can you be interesting? Can you talk to someone? Are you interested in others? Like it's not even about you if your thing is going to be, you're going to interview other people.

Yeah. This is the easiest thing. All you got to do is go, right, right. Uh-huh. Exactly. Yeah, Oh, I did this whole thing. Mm-hmm. So then what happened? So that's really it. It's very easy. That's the secret. Right.

It's just like I told you on the Lex Friedman thing. I mean, I was like, which he cut out. But, you know, I was like, let's face it, Lex. I mean, this is a joke. Like, this job's a joke. Like, do you know what my hardest thing is in this whole situation? What? Scheduling people.

Right. I have to schedule like seven people to get four people to show up. And it's probably not that bad for everybody else because I'm dealing with derelicks. mostly. Mostly I'm dealing with guys who have been in and out of prison their whole life. So if I get that one guy that is a, you know, the FBI agent, he's going to show up. You're going to show up. But it's funny when I texted you yesterday, I was like, hey, can't wait to see you. You were like, yep, plan on being there with this. I will be there. Like you knew, you're like, listen, bro, I'm going to be there. You don't have to give me the little text, but you don't know what I'm dealing with.

I'm dealing with guys that don't have calendars. They don't keep records. Like, you've got to tell them, hey, bro, you're going to be here. tomorrow yeah i got guys you know 30 minutes ahead of time i'm tech they in the day before they did say yeah yeah bro i'm gonna do i'm gonna be there and 30 minutes ahead they're like yo bro like like i can't do it turns out something came up it's like what it wasn't on your calendar yeah you know so yeah that's the that's the only problem uh in interviewing people is like your whole thing the solo thing way harder every time i agree to do video with someone else right i have the opposite problem i go i can't believe i agree to do this. I don't want, it's so much easier to do solo videos when I, I do it

unscheduled. By the way, I don't even plan my videos. I wake up in the morning. I have no idea what videos I'm going to do that day. I think of my video about 20 minutes before I go live. And then I go live, 20, 30, 40 minutes. And then, yeah. And no, so I have the opposite problem. I don't like scheduling things with people because now I'm, it's almost like I've experienced too much freedom. I don't want to be tied down to a schedule. Now, our thing is different because I scheduled to come and do your thing. I'm looking forward to that. I'm looking forward to that when i agree to bring someone on i'm usually like oh crap now i've got to schedule my whole day around it you know so i'm so spoiled it's gotten ridiculous yeah yeah i i definitely

don't don't want to do the things i don't want to do um but uh it's so easy and here's the thing too like for me to do a solo which i've done them you know like if i'm telling a law a story you know i'll do a solo but even then i can't do it by myself colby's got to come over like colby has to come over And he basically walks in, sits in, okay, what are you? Okay, great. Hits the button, sits there, plays on his computer while I'm doing it. And then I'm like, okay, so, hey, thanks. And he's like, oh, and he clicks it off.

So even when you're doing it live, even if it's live? Or is this pre-recorded? Live stream they do. No, no, I mean, my wife and I have done live streams by ourselves. But even then I need her to read the comments and her to be involved in. Like, I can't be reading comments, answering questions. Listen, I'm lazy. I, you're some things I'm extremely disciplined.

with and some things I put off forever, but me doing a solo video by myself is more difficult. And here's the thing, it's maybe going to be, if I drag it out, 20 to 45 minutes, but if I talk to somebody and their story can go two hours, three hours, who knows how long it'll go. That's great because the watch time is where you pay people like, oh, man, that video's got a lot of views yeah but it's 25 minutes right you know I'll take half the views on a two hour video because now you're going to make $800 or so you chop up the clips to publish separately as well we do shorts uh we do sure and I do have a clip shorts not make any money no you have public like segments yeah I have a clip I just we just we had started a clip channel and then it died off like

we'd never we the guy that was running it for free stopped dealing with it so we kind of just forgot about it and then probably two months ago I started it again putting up the clips, you know, but, you know, it starts slow. It's like, YouTube's like, yeah, you fucked up. We're not pushing nothing. We saw what happened. It was where all of them were getting five, six, seven, ten thousand views. Now they're back to getting four hundred, three hundred. So it's going to take some time before YouTube goes, okay, it seems like you're serious about this again. Because that's really what people, I was explained to people. YouTube is basically saying, we want you to run a network style channel. We want you to post regularly. We want you to post regularly. We

you to have good interaction, good quality, you know, decent, interesting videos. And we want you to post that on a fairly regular, doesn't have to be at one o'clock on Tuesday every time, but it fairly regularly. And once we believe that you're doing that, it takes about a year or so before the algorithm says, look, this guy is serious. Let's start, let's incentivize them and start really pushing them. But then if you break for three months, it's kind of like, wow, like they're disappointed in you. If I break for a day. It drops, it starts, everything drops. I go like, oh, my God.

You or the YouTube or the algorithms. The algorithm is like, oh, yeah, he's gone. Yeah. So do you know who Julian Dory is? So he's got a channel. He's friends with Danny Jones and me. He's got a super successful channel. And I'll give you his channel.

If you go look at his shorts, like it makes you feel like you don't know what you're doing. his shorts are so he has shorts that have 40 million views really he's a minute now keep in mind too he studies the algorithm like a biblical scholar studies you know the bible i mean it's it's insane he can tell you every little thing like he's like oh wait that line you got to get rid of that line oh it doesn't like the lines don't take fuzz out the line and you're like what no no wait wait that's that's four that's five seconds that clips five seconds and i'm like yeah never go over four and he acts like he's like serious he's like you never go over three seconds on a b roll clip what are you doing like i'm sorry julian like i went up to i got to check it out

i went up to new jersey and did a couple of videos with him and then i we spent like a couple hours going over like what he you know he's and he was real forthcoming like always later you know it's you know it's funny youtube people are always seem willing to help each other which i think is great you don't know there's not a lot of business like how many realtors tell you, you know what you've got to do. I know, right. To other realtors, they're like, kick rocks, bro. Yeah.

But he really, he's like this and this. He's like, oh, I don't like the, Matt, I don't know. Listen, the music, look, it's, it's beat. It's beat. And he's, like, sitting there, I'm like, you're too intense. Like, you need to calm down. He's so over the top on it. But then again, but it works.

You know, he's putting out stuff, you know, 12 million, 22 million, 15 million, Seven million. I'm like, I'm excited. If mine gets like, I'm like, oh, my God, this one got 30,000 views. It's amazing because everything else is getting like 1,500. Yeah, exactly. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, this is amazing. And Julian would be like, stop it.

I worry about getting, I've seen some of my friends' channels. The YouTube shorts drive tons of subscriber growth. Right. I'm worried about growing subscribers that aren't engaging in long form content because I'm worried the algorithm is going to, I'm worried the algorithm is going to be like, oh, your viewers don't even like your stuff because they don't watch. your content. They watch shorts. But I know, but, but YouTube also seems to be wanting to push people towards shorts, you know. So they're trying to destroy TikTok. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And Instagram and all that stuff. So, um, I know it's, it's fun to be a part of the process. Yeah. I think, you know, look, as far as the subscribers, my, I don't know what, what, how Colby feels, but I feel like, um,

at least if the subs, they're subscribing and hitting the bell, or at least I'm now kind of a part their feed. So they've at least notified the algorithm, hey, interested in this. Do they watch the long form content? You know, I don't, you know. I'm hard to say that YouTube says they try to link them and

more often than not, we haven't seen a link but our podcast, and it could have just been because there's a good reel and a good podcast, but our most few podcasts at the same time at a reel that was popping off getting like 20,000 views every day. Yeah. And it wasn't

that a correlation or was it just you're both really good? Yeah, several of those, several of, it's funny too because I'll, listen, I'll work two hours on a short. Yeah. I'll put B-roll in. I'll put, I mean, I'll study, I'll put the, I'll send it to people. What do you

think of this? I changed the music. What about this? I mean, really do the, um, the narration, the whole thing, right? Or what, they don't call it narration. They call it what? Voice over? Captions. The captions. Like, I mean, it's per, like, I'm like, this is flawless, right? And I'll put it up. And it'll get 1,200 views.

And then Colby has a guy, I want to say kid. Because at my age, he's a kid. He just graduated high school, okay? He'll go in and he'll, to me, butcher one of my stories. Chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, no B roll, nothing, no punctuation. Ooh, just chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, put it up. Bam, 300,000. Same story.

Same story that I put up. Same thing. And I'm like, it's a slap in the face. Like, I don't know what just happened here. And so I just don't know. Yeah. I don't know. So, yeah, it's upsetting.

It's upsetting. And I've never had a conversation with his assistant guy. I've never, what's his name? Luke? I've never had a conversation with Luke. I've been like, tell Luke that we need to use this. He's like, all right, all right. I've tried to get my daughter, she's 17, and I'm like, look, if you can go through my videos and help me chop them up into some segments and some shorts, like, I'll pay you. Yeah, yeah.

This is, I just, I just, I can't get them to do it. I'm like, it's like pulling teeth. I'm like, guys, this is like fun work. This is like, this is the future. This is, this is, you know, this is the industry you want to be in. I can't get anyone else. But she'll put up, but she'll video herself like, you know, doing some little dance, right? And put it up and go show everybody and be super excited. And you're like, it's a little dance in it. I'll pay you. I'll pay you. Pay you. Listen, I have Jess's daughter, my wife's daughter. Same thing. 17. I will pay you. I will get you customers. I will, you can build an entire business doing this. You can try, because people will pay like 20 bucks. Like you get them on where they pay you $1,000 and you provide them 10, you know, 10 shorts a month and you get a thousand. I'm like, you get, you get four or five of these guys. And then you could do different ones where you say the agreement, you know, 500. you get six or whatever you get for different plans like you can build it wouldn't take you six months to build a business where you were making five or six thousand dollars a month just doing shorts and i know a guy eric eric's got a business doing that like to me if i was 17 like anybody you can do this you got the software i've got a computer for you got the software it's all right there yeah you know it's not even mine we're not even sharing that's yours yeah the opportunities for monetization in this in this industry are uh almost endless yeah it's too bad yeah nobody

everybody sees it. It's why I try to convince his man. Fortunately, I have actually been successful convincing people to start channels and helping them. Um, and I know everyone's got that imposter syndrome. Oh, yeah, but it worked for you guys, but not me. It's like, no, it really could work for you as well. Listen, I got a buddy Zach that every time he comes on my channel, instead of us getting 25% watch time, it jumps to like 45 or 50%. People love him. He's corny, which I can't stand he laughs at his own jokes he laughs nobody thinks he's funnier than him

he that's me I'm telling you and and people love him they love him we we I convinced him to start his own channel Colby's running the channel he did some videos we put some stuff got monetized within a month within a month he hit monetization

monetized was making money and just I'm so busy I just I know I need to start doing that like it's like bro you could be making a couple if you did this for six months you'd be making a minimum reasonable conservatively you put up one video one hour and a half one hour to an hour and a half video a week within six months as much as people like him he would probably make it between a thousand to two thousand dollars in a year he maybe be making three thousand and that's conservative that's very

reasonable that's that's you you scheduling and interviewing one person a week that's what you could be making yeah i know i need to do it well i was doing a lot of content on the dany masters and criminal trial. And so one of my viewers, it was really good. And one of my viewers is a lawyer. And he emailed me and he's like, oh, I can probably, you know, come on and talk to you about this. Stream yard. So every time I'd bring him on, I'd be like, this is my lawyer friend, Zach, my lawyer friend, Zach, my lawyer friend, Zach. I've had Zach on. Yes, you know Zach. Yes. And so because he didn't have a channel, he didn't have a channel. And my viewers would be like, Zach, you got to start a channel. You got to start a channel. So he called his channel, your lawyer, your lawyer friend, Zach. And once he launched his channel,

didn't even upload any content. I got him 6,000 subscribers the first week. He hadn't uploaded a video. And so now he's doing his videos all the time. And his viewers are, he's a lawyer. He makes a good living. Hashtag retires Zach. They want him to make enough money on YouTube that he can retire as a lawyer into YouTube full time. It's like, yeah, it doesn't take that much. Yeah. That's right. You've had Zach on and you've had Tommy. Tommy Scovalon, right? Probably. I'm not great with names. What is his story? Tommy, Tommy lives in Arizona. He's a former felony. bank robber he did about he did 13 years federal time for bank robbery i know he came on your channel okay remotely not he didn't not not yeah yeah in office does he run a uh the life boat is the name of

his channel is the lifeboat he does recovery substance oh yeah yeah yeah so you've had tommy on you've had zach on i think those are the two guys from that from my world right right i think both of those were through um tyler yes yes that's right our mutual booking agent yes I only know Tyler through Instagram. I've never spoken to him. Are you serious? I've never spoken or spoken with Tyler and met him. I just only know him on it through Instagram.

Tyler is a super interesting guy. Tyler has, I want to say, and I love Tyler to death. A touch of Asperger's, would you say? A touch? Like, he's very, very, he's very persistent. Yes, he's super persistent. He has no, listen, Tyler is super powerful. is you can be at a convention and say, oh my gosh, that's, that's Michael Douglas over there.

I love him. I loved him in that movie The Game. Oh, you want to meet him? Walk right up to him. You think, oh, my God, Tyler knows him. He'd be like, Michael, Michael, Michael, interrupt Michael, Michael, this is Matt Cox. You have to meet him. Matt, come here. Michael. Tyler's always inviting me to conferences and conventions. I've never gone. Listen, my, even Michael would think, I must know Tyler. And you'd be talking to him, and I'd take. And I'd Oh, how, Michael, hey, how do you know Tyler? And he'd be like, I don't think I do know Tyler. I thought, who are you?

Like, he would do it. And he would, he would get people. He would, listen, we, he's pulling people off the convention floor at, what, crime con, bringing him up to the hotel. Like, they don't even know what they're doing. They're like, I don't know. I felt like I had to go with this guy. He's persistent.

You cannot embarrass him. You cannot. It's incredible. It really is a superpower. Yeah. But he's very, you need to have this guy on your program. program. I'm like, why? Well, he's got a lot of subscribers and he'll go through this whole thing. I'm like, yeah, Tyler, there's no crime here. There's no criminal story. Yeah, but he, just wait a minute. And he goes through this whole thing and he wears you down. I realize that's why he's so good at all the things that he does. Because he, you're not going to, you're not going to dissuade him. That is a skill. It's either a skill or it's a mental illness. It's one of the other. Something work. It works, no matter what. It's working. Yeah, no, he keeps, he regularly invites me to some, you know, either conventions or like a creator con or whatever is.

I don't know because I've never gone either in Miami or Orlando because he knows it's only a, you know, two or four hour drive depending. And I've just never gone. I've never wanted to do any of those networking events because I like, what, what am I here for? Who, what, what, what? I don't know. Have you ever gone any of those things? Yeah, I know Tyler.

Oh, okay. Even if I say no, you really should go. And he just, it's just like, he chips away at you. And within two weeks, you're like, so we're booking a hotel. and we're going obviously you know Tyler's not leaving me alone about it I have to go at this point oh after you go to one of those things do you regret it does it is it a good use of time um crime con was disappointing because I thought in I pictured you know that there would be you know criminals there and they would be selling books and they would be oh you get a picture

with me and that's not that I want to picture with anybody and I want to buy your book but you know I did want to be able to go and say, hey, oh, wow, you're the so-and-so's near and you're the Green River serial killer. I'd love to interview you. I mean, you didn't chop anybody up. I know. So, you know, I wanted to be able to go and say, oh, you're that guy that robbed 15 banks or whatever, the case may be, I'd love to interview you and get there, you know,

kind of like that. It's not. It's all guys like me. And they've got booths, which I don't even know why you'd have a booth. Right. So, and really, it's not even that good. They don't even have, like, they're like, they're like, they're like, they're. They were a reporter for a year and a half, and they did the crime beat, and now they started

their own podcast, or they were a retired detective, and they started a podcast, or they're just a podcaster, and they start a podcast, and they do missing children, or they specialize in that. So it's 200 podcasters and people trying to sell you mics and the audio thing and cameras, and that's it. Yeah, I've always thought that doesn't sound like a good reason to drive two hours and waste a day And then we got a couple good interviews. Yeah. I would say probably like broke even for everything, like hotel.

Yeah, in the end, we did interview. Some of the interviews, it's funny, too, because we interviewed, what was it, true crime, Kent. We interviewed this guy, true crime, Kent, which, to me, super dark humor. I mean, disturbingly dark. Like, he would say something in the middle of such and stuff. And it's hard to throw me off where I'd be like, yeah, did, right? No. And so, and I'm like, I don't know what just happened.

Like he, he, I tell you one thing he said to me, which had me just go, which was the, when he says, he said, yeah, like, you know, he was talking about a murder that some kids, teenagers murdered somebody, you know what I'm saying? He's like, oh, yeah, they murdered. He's like, what were you doing when you were 15 years old or 16 years? I was like, you know, I was chasing girls. And he's like, yeah, right. like you're chasing girls.

He's like, maybe every once in a while you have a drink. He's like, it's a beautiful, it's a good time. You've aged out of attraction to your uncle. You feel free. And we just throw, like, we'd just throw it. And I'd be like, I, and he just, and he doesn't stop, though. He's great. The video didn't do great.

But then we interviewed another guy who was a detective. His interview did great. I just never know. what's going to do great, bro. Like some of the times of the stuff that I think is it, here's what I know isn't going to do great on my channel, is anything to do with murder. Nobody cares.

Nobody is watching my channel cares. If I do something on my channel about a serial killer or a murder, it gets 5,000 views. If a guy robs six banks and talks about, it's getting 30 or 40,000 views. It's like nobody, it's funny because true crime is about 70 to 80, percent consumed by women, but only violent true crime. Nonviolent true crime, scams, frauds, bank robberies, things like that, is predominantly

consumed by males. And my subscriber base is like 92% male. Is it really? I'm 60% female. Really? Yeah. 75% of my audience is over the age. age of 35 as well, which seems...

How's your wife feel about that? My wife would have a problem. She has a problem if she catches me like commenting at some woman sends me something. I'm like, oh, wow, thank you very much. Why would you even respond to her? Like, she lives in Russia. Like, I'm not going to meet her. Still, still, it's happening.

Like, I just said thank you for subscribing. Why? Why you wanted to subscribe? Okay, I can't do this right now. That's interesting about the female audience watches the violent crime. Oh, yeah. The male audience watches like the fraud and the bank robbery. Yeah.

Listen, there have been, there's tons of articles. I don't know if there's ever been a study about it or anything, but I've actually talked to a psychiatrist that we've interviewed who have, and they're like, yeah, they're like, they think it has something to do with maybe it's a way for them to work through their anxiety out of fear or it's a way to help control. maybe it's something that feeds their inner thoughts of how many times they've wanted butchered someone what would I do with the body maybe they're working through it like yeah the

freezer's a good idea they're consuming all this content they put their plans together exactly what what's going okay or what else sorry what what else is going on are we we wrapping this up yeah sure I guess you have a drive you're going to drive back yeah I'm glad I don't have to worry about I get anxiety just thinking about having to worry about doing like a three-hour interview with someone, then worrying about how it performs. Because I do my, I just sit down and do a live stream by myself. And if it doesn't perform well, all I did was waste 25, 30, 40 minutes, and I can do it again in the next hour. So I don't have to have anxiety about that. But man, thinking about doing like scheduling in advance and doing like a two, three-hour podcast and the editing and the uploading

and then having it now perform, like, man, that would really wear on the nerves. Well, I mean, luckily, I just do the scheduling. And I talk to people and then the rest of it's that's his problem you know yeah periodically once a week i call up and i say when he does a thumbnail and i go are you going to use the same photo of me again the photo i said don't use i don't know what was going on with my face i'm fat in that photo i what do you say sorry all right and then he switches it in 30 seconds you're like how about this one And boom, it's completely different. And I'm like, what do you do?

Why? Why? Why? I have known jawline. I have. That's the, that's a little anxiety for me, the thumbnails. Because I need to look. You know, I'm still on an image.

That's right. That's right. The moral of the story is everyone should try YouTube. Yeah. I guess everyone can't succeed, but everyone could potentially succeed. Yeah, it's an hour, yeah. They don't have to do four a day. You could do it one hour a week.

Yeah. You don't know what's going to hit? It's worth starting. It's worth giving it a shot and see what happens with it. All right. This has been a blast. All right.

Cool. I'm glad. I'm right. He's eyeball on the... There's a camera. All right. Hey, thank you very much. I really appreciate you guys watching.

If you like the video, do me a favor. Hit the subscribe button. Please hit the bell so you get notified of videos just like this. Also, please consider joining my Patreon. Do you have Patreon? No.

You should. Please consider joining my Patreon. Also, I've written up for a bunch of true crime books. The links are in the description. We're also going to leave Aaron's YouTube channel in the description. So you can just click on the link. It'll bring you straight to the YouTube channel. Thank you very much.

I appreciate it. See you.