RedHanded - Episode 228 - Scientology - Part 1: The Maternity Ward of Questionable Religious Sects

Episode Date: January 13, 2022

In part 1 of this 2 part series, Hannah and Suruthi peer under the slippery stone of Scientology’s sinister origins. They track the life of founder L. Ron Hubbard, from the birth of Dianetics, to the constantly shifting goalposts of engrams, and of course the conception of the Sea Org. Sources: redhandedpodcast.com  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah.

I'm Saruti. And welcome to the second episode of Red Handed 2022. It was supposed to be the first, but life happens sometimes. It does happen. And by life happens sometimes, we mean that Sruti accidentally gets incredibly drunk and then falls over in her childhood bedroom and ends up with an ankle size of a grapefruit and is still limping around. Yes, no, it was not the ideal way to start 2022. It's not what I had planned. I had planned to come into this year being far more impressive. And I have degraded myself almost immediately.

But you could look at it another way. Oh, tell me. You have already overcome. There you go. See, that's why she keeps me around. I've already hit the trough. Yeah, it's only up from here. That's what I keep telling myself.

But I hope not because I'm surely struggling to walk uphill right now the ankle is bandaged it is not ideal thank you to everybody on patreon who sent me recommendations on how to deal with a sprained ankle it is nothing more injurious than that it's absolutely fine everybody just feeling a little bit bruised ego wise and ankle wise but all is well and we're back we are so back back back back again with something you know what part one of our Scientology series I feel fine about I feel like we're not going to get fair gamed no one's going to sue us yeah part two uh-oh we may run into some issues oh I can't run very fast right now. I'll carry you on my back. But that's the rule, isn't it?

You've just got to pair up with someone who isn't as fast as you. Oh, yeah. So they'll just get you. So I'm the limp gazelle right now, ready for a chomping from Scientology. The reason I say that is that, of course, lots of podcasts have covered Scientology. What they tend to do is stay on the L. Ron Hubbard side of things and then they stop. We won't be doing that. We are not going to stop. That is the epitaph that will be on my gravestone. She would not stop.

Exactly. So without further ado, Happy New Year. One more ado. Let's get on with it. I'm not quite sure why I chose to write the opening like this, but I did. Lots of things seemed like a better idea on that side of 2021. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What organisation has over a billion dollars in liquid assets, partial or total tax exemption in 25 countries, but cult status in many others? What so-called church claims to have millions of members worldwide, but realistically only has about 25,000 on its home turf of the United States? And of course, which leader's wife has not been seen in public

for 15 years? Correct, sausages, you can all read and you also listen to the opening of the episode. It is Scientology. And as I alluded to, this is going to be a two-parter. This is part one, in which we'll be dragging you through the history of Scientology and the shady dealings that got them to where they stand today, surveying Los Angeles from the towers of their celebrity centre. And then next week, we will go boldly where no true crime podcast has gone before and take you to the darker side of Scientology and its terrifying current helmsman, David Miscavige. Helmsman is a scary word. It is a scary word and also he's a scary man. Double whammy.

Dead-eyed Miscavige, as I have taken to. I've watched so much Scientology content and he is the most dead-behind-the-eyes person I have ever witnessed. Have you listened to the Joe Rogan podcast where he interviews... His dad. His dad. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

We'll leave a link to it in this episode if you haven't. Would highly recommend. And we're also going to find out how Scientology commands the celebrities that sing its praises, hound those who leave and speak out against them, and most sinisterly of all, we are going to try and answer the question that Leah Reminiini has been asking for years where is shirley miscavige and we're going to try to do it all without getting fair gamed i will say though if we get a letter from the church of scientology i'm framing that shit that will be a career highlight for me yes i think that is fair

that is a fair reaction I'll call the framers. It's hard to buy bespoke frames. Why are they so expensive? Why are frames so expensive? Why are frames so expensive? I think about this often. I think about it all the time. Why is this frame four little bits of wood? Should we just start framing this? Oh, stop it. Oh my God. Honestly, guys, I cannot tell you how many times a day. She's like, should we just do this? Like, yes, with all of our spare time. You can't stop.

I won't stop, remember? She will not stop. So back to Scientology. We have decades of ground to cover with Scientology before we can get anywhere near answering the question, where is Shelley Miscavige? Or even before we can get to the church and its tyranny of today. And it would make absolutely no sense to start anywhere else other than with the life and times of the man, the myth, Lafayette Ronald Hubbard. That is a great name. I'm not going to lie.

Yeah. It's not like a forgettable name. No, you're going to remember someone called Lafayette for sure. I would. And I say myth not to bolster any kind of legendary status around Hubbard. The church do just fine on their own with that. We are using the M word because when someone is as prolific a liar as L. Ron Hubbard was, it is quite difficult to separate fact from science fiction.

Scientologists have one story. Those against the church have another. The reality is probably somewhere in the middle. So here is what we do know. Hubbard was born in Nebraska in 1911. Do you know what the state motto of Nebraska is? No, but is it better than Kentucky's? Unbridled Spirit is my favourite one. Unbridled Spirit. It kind of makes me a bit like, oh, I'm it better than Kentucky's? Unbridled Spirit is my favorite one. Unbridled Spirit. It kind of makes me a bit like, oh, I'm not even from Kentucky. I know. And also, New Hampshire is live free or die. You know, you can't get much more intense than that.

But Nebraska is equality before the law. Mm hmm. Yeah, not bad. Not bad for Nebraska. I don't know anything else about Nebraska. No, I couldn't even point to it on a map. Not a fucking clue. So he was born in the equality before the law state in 1911.

And unsurprisingly, he was an only child. His family moved to Montana where his dad ran a theatre. A young Hubbard loved the vaudeville acts that would swing through town. He also, like many only child losers, loved to read. Anyway, let's just keep going. But he wasn't reading The Lone Ranger or whatever the fuck kids were reading back in the 1910s slash 20s. No, no, no.

Little L. Ron Hubbard was reading Freud and Jung. And he also developed a love for magicians. If your child is reading Sigmund Freud. Well, I think it depends on the type of parent you are, because there are some parents who'd be like, my child's a genius. Yes.

And some of them would be like, maybe stop reading about sex so much, you little child. Or maybe his parents just weren't paying attention. Because if I had to choose between vaudeville, which includes a lot of boobs, and reading Freud, I would choose the boobs. I've also read quite a lot of Freud at university and it's tough going.

I think if my child started reading Freud, I would just be like, oh my God, my child's a genius. I knew you would. Everyone be quiet. Leave him alone. Let him read about sperm dreams. Oh, absolutely. So L. Ron Hubbard's obsession with magic according

to him led him to search for shamanic discovery see that's where it's always going to end up that's the problem and of course that caused quite a lot of horror among his Methodist family and he actually ended up becoming blood brothers with a medicine man from a Native American tribe. Not totally casual, I'm going to say. Wait till you hear what the medicine man was called. Well, we can get to that immediately. Because the medicine man was called Old Tom Madfeathers. And he could jump 15 feet in the air, apparently.

And that, my friends, is our first visitation to L. Ron Hubbard makes it up. It's bullshit. But this is what he does. Is it totally impossible that he would have met? They're called Blackfoot, which is actually, it's three tribes under one name. I don't know what all the names are and I'm also going to say them wrong, so I'm just going to not do it.

But there are Blackfoot Native Americans in Nebraska. It's not impossible that he would have come into contact with them. Do I think he was called Old Tom Madfeathers and could jump 15 feet in the air? Absolutely not. He just uses it in his own myth-making. And he's also like, would this Native American man who existed, why would he be bothered to become blood brothers with Elron Hubbard?

Well, right, yeah, exactly. There's also that. What is he like? But again, it's part of the myth-making that Elron Hubbard does for himself, exactly like you said like this man this mystical Native American man could see something in me and he chose to become blood brothers with me well that's what it is he's already paving the way to be the messiah yeah or perhaps paving the canal because L. Ron Hubbard's dad was a navy man and Hubbard was of the boat he was an able seaman in 1923, he took a 7,000 mile journey from Seattle to DC via the Panama Canal to visit his dad.

And while I was researching this, I had another moment of, has Hannah completely misunderstood this? I can confirm the Panama Canal is in Panama. So what he did was went from one side of the United States all the way down across and then back up. Oh. Which is why it was 7,000 miles. I see.

And why it was all aboard a ship. Got it. Now I understand that. But there was a good hour of panic where I was like, maybe the Panama Canal doesn't exist at all. It's good to double check the facts. Especially when if you get it wrong, you get savaged on the internet. So he went to go and see his dad.

And then the young adventurer kept roaming further afield. These travels would set the foundations for a lifelong obsession with mysticism. In Hubbard's version of events, he peddled around the Orient like a bereft orphan and watched monks meditate for weeks on end. He entered forbidden Buddhist territories that no white man had ever seen before and saw ceremonies that no westerner would dare to dream of. In reality, he went on a trip with his parents that was organized by the YMCA and he was in China for a grand total of 10 days. Got it. During this pretty brief trip, he fostered the following opinions on the land of the Red Dragon. This is a quote, the very nature of the Chinaman holds him back. And another quote, the trouble with China is

there are too many C word dog wrote to turn for east asian people there are too many c words here so he's not the most generous or kind or forthcoming or tolerant or i'm not even going to say of his time because it's not good enough well you know when is this in the like the 30s i, I'm not surprised by that. No, I mean me either, but I also think if he lived now, he would say the same thing. Oh, he would, but then I guess someone who was brought up in the 30s, they're probably thinking that anyway. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul,

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Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. So after this whirlwind tour of the Far East, Hubbard enrolled in the School of Engineering at George Washington University. And it's a fine university, currently ranked at number 63 in the USA. Yeah, that's fine. That's good. But Hubbard was terrible. He was a very, very bad student. He spent all of his time that he should have been doing engineering-y things. He actually spent that time running a school newspaper and a literary magazine in which he published his first work of fiction. Arguably, therefore, he just picked the wrong degree. I'm not sure that he would have been able to do a creative writing degree at that particular moment in time.

I see. Journalism? Maybe. I don't know. Communications? Something else. PR. PR? Literally anything else. International relations. What I mean is he's not slacking about while he's not doing engineering. He just doesn't want to be doing engineering.

He just doesn't want to be doing that. He wants to be being a journalist or a writer. And soon, probably realising that he didn't want to be doing engineering, he dropped out of university to flop around collecting weird shit and flying planes. For all his faults, Hubbard was an adept pilot. And to illustrate this fact, he gave himself the nickname, and he gave himself the nickname, Flash. Yeah.

Hi, I'm Flash. My friends call me Flash. No one calls you Flash, Ron. No, I don Flash. My friends call me Flash. No one calls you Flash, Ron. No. I don't think anyone should give themselves a nickname. I think if you give it to yourself, it's not a nickname. It's you being a dickhead. Like, I just, I don't think it's, no, it doesn't work.

It doesn't work. Don't give yourself a nickname. No. Do you have any nicknames? No. No, I can't imagine. No. I don't have nicknames.

No. And like, the only nickname I have, and it's not a nickname, it's just a shortening of my name. Yeah. And even that, it's not in the same way that like Tom is to Thomas, where like your bank manager or your boss or somebody else could call you Tom immediately. That's true, yeah. I would find it very uncomfortable if somebody I didn't know just started calling me through.

I don't know why. I feel like it's a- That, I would feel weird about that too. I'd be like, it feels overly familiar. I'm like, don't know why. I feel like it's a... I would feel weird about that too. It feels overly familiar. I'm like, don't do that. That's weird. Not like when listeners do it because I think it's cute

because they listen to the show and I feel like we have a connection. If a random person just started calling me Saru, I'd feel a bit weird about that. It's like in Korean when you're like calling someone. So like my friend Sejin, for example,

it'd be like, oh, Sejin, like come here. But if you're very close to that person, you're a family member, you just use the end of their name so like Jinah but you can only do that if you're like family close and it's really offensive to do it if you're not I don't feel that level but I do feel weird I feel weird about it but anyway my nickname is certainly not Flash but L. Ron Hubbard's was is it Cerruti Blankface? Cerruti Blankface? Hey it's Hannah Blankface also about L. Ron Hubbard,

the important thing to know, weird nickname or not, he wasn't completely adept at everything because he actually got married at 22 to a lady called Louise Grubb.

But he called her Polly. There's a lot of old and timey names. And maybe the reason he decided he could be called Flash is because someone was like, I'm Louise, but call me Polly what i don't think polly is a it's not like

peggy is for margaret you know what i mean like it's not no it's definitely not for louise so maybe people could just be like my name's hannah but you can call me esmeralda like it you know i think maybe they're a bit more free and easy with the names why not why not polly slash louise got pregnant pretty soon after the wedding. And so, of course, Hubbard needed some money. Fast. His magazine writing wasn't exactly quite cutting the mustard. So he turned his attention to pulp fiction. Where, like literary giant Charles Dickens, he would be paid a penny for every word he wrote.

Which, maybe that was a good deal then. It's a good deal. And it's also why Charles Dickens' books are so fucking boring. And long. Honestly. One of my biggest, like, one of my English teachers at school, his biggest, like, bugbear with me, he was like, Hannah, your sentences are so long, like, you need to break them up. And then we had to read fucking Oliver Twist, and I was like,

are you having a laugh? The first sentence, like, four paragraphs. I'm no fan of Dickens. No, I just, I mean, mean i hate to read so i can't do it i mean i was torture why would you do it i would say it from the other end of someone who i wouldn't say loves to read i'm like i like to read i like to read books i fucking hate dickens chasing that sweet sweet coin hubbard started to turn out hundreds of thousands of words per month his motto was first draft draft, last draft,

get it out the door. Just like it red-handed. Just like it red-handed. I'm kidding, we work very hard. We do work very hard. Many, many drafts. I always call the first draft the vomit draft. You do. Just get it, get it out, and then you can go over it, and it's never as bad as you think. No, no, no. So this prolific production line of prose would earn Hubbard a title that he still holds today. He wrote over a thousand works of fiction over the course of his life, which is more than any other human being ever. I don't know why I wrote that like there's a cow that's written in 1002. Which is more than any human has ever achieved. Maybe there's a gazelle somewhere that's done 2,000. We don't know.

Stranger things have happened. So Polly grew up, had a few kids, but Hubbard was not that bothered about them. He had his sights set on the bright lights of the City of Angels. And in 1937, he got his break. A story he had written called The Secret of Treasure Island was optioned by Columbia Pictures. But after that, nothing really happened, and he would soon be back in Washington with his wife and his stupid kids,

a fate he blamed squarely on, and this is a quote, dumb Jew producers. Excellent. He's very much an equal opportunities racist. He hates everyone, yeah. But a very convenient epiphany was just around the corner. On New Year's Day 1938, during a dental operation, L. Ron Hubbard's heart stopped beating under anesthetic. And instead of writing off this near-death experience as a gas-induced hallucination, Hubbard awoke, believing that he had been gifted the answers to life, the universe, and everything. He'd seen a great gate and had heard a voice telling him that it was not his time to die it's just the dentist don't die it's not your time

to leave i can't handle another fucking i've got children a fucking lawsuit of another person who dies in this chair i'm sorry i overdid it on the lord and I'm come back. It's the 30s. Do you reckon he's just giving like pumping heroin? Just straight heroin into his fucking jaw. What's the thing that the dentist does in Cider House Rules? Ether. Where they like, there's like a muslin over your nose and they just like drop there. It's probably that. Excellent.

You just come out with like burn marks all over your face. Great. Yeah, yeah. Fully. But that's not what happened to Hubbard. And he decided that a writer by trade, he was going to do the thing he only knew how to do and he wrote about his life-changing experience and all of the secrets that had been bestowed upon him by the mighty universal power he wrote them all down in a book that he named excalibur

so excalibur is obviously the sword in the stone of King Arthur no one can pull it out apart from King Arthur because he's King Arthur it's a very messianic story but these sorts are always drawn to Camelot to Arthur to I know it's not the same thing but Richard the Lionheart all of that kind of thing it's just like I don't know it's a weird like little magnet that always draws these sort of people yes and i think that like like the story of king arthur and camelot is very like intertwined with richard the lionheart and richard the lionheart obviously led the crusades in palestine so like it's all very intertwined with this like fight between good and evil and the like holy leader yeah it's uh they

always end up there sooner or later. But the thing about Excalibur, L. Ron Hubbard's Excalibur, not King Arthur's Excalibur, is that it was never published. And that led quite a few critics, myself included, to say that this book probably never existed at all. Which would make sense because once you've published The Key to Existence, you're not much use to anyone anymore. Just ask Joseph Smith. Hubbard got around this small problem of the book not existing by proclaiming that the first six people he had showed the manuscript to completely lost their minds and one of them even jumped out a window. It's just too much. It's just too much.

If you're not ready. You can't handle it. If you're not ginger pants our Ron Hubbard, then you can't handle it because he has the answers he does if anything you know if you can barely handle the secret you cannot handle oh god oh no no no come on so he argued that it was actually a public service to not publish escalabar maybe that's how we do it i wrote such a great script on what am i working on whatever i'm working on right now but you just can just can't handle it. So here's just an hour of blank. And then the rest of your life, you'll be known as the best podcaster who ever lived.

Yeah, we'll do that. Fabulous. And similarly, in a vein of equal arrogance, Hubbard had high hopes for himself. He wrote that he wanted to smash his name into history so violently that it would take a legendary form. That's never a good thing. Don't that it's kind of like you know at the beginning of bronson where he's like i always wanted to be famous that's what this is like elrond hubbard does not care how he gets there

at all he just wants to get there with a lot of babes and a lot of money well this is the thing it's like that book i was telling you about that i'm reading at the moment it's by a journalist called will store and it's called the status game and it is basically in that i don't think it's like a unique theory to will maybe but i haven't heard it explained in the way that he explains it in the book before and he basically says that people achieve status in society by one of three ways which is by competence by virtue or by dominance and i think l ron hubbard realized early on that he's probably not the most virtuous person and nor does he care to proclaim virtuosity apart from his twisted version of it as we'll see later on and i think he realized he probably isn't competent so he decides to go with dominance and he dominates a game that

he makes up yeah i mean that's the way to do it. That is the way to play the game. Make up the game and tell no one else the rules and then just drip feed the rules. And then smash your name into history violently. Yep. Bingo.

So yeah, like we said, he is on the road to what he considers to be legendary status. But legend had to wait because Hubbard returned to pulp and to New York, where luckily for him, science fiction was having a bit of a moment, and he got the bougie recognition that he had been yearning for, for years.

And what happens when a man desperately seeking this much attention and approval gets a little bit of recognition? Well, they do what you probably expect expect and he ended up cheating on his wife polly slash louise quite a lot which was obviously her fault in the gospel according to hubbard anyway because he wrote quote my failure to please polly made me always pay so much attention to my momentary mate that i derived small pleasure myself cry me a fucking river i'm so sorry for you how awful also i haven't really dived into this so actually what i should say so the major source and i think the absolute best book out there on scientology is called going clear there's also a really great documentary of the same name based on it so if you're going to read one book go and read that one it'd be long it's like 15 000 pages bloody hell i know you bitch read it i've done it read

it there's a lot in there about hubbard's obsession with masturbation i have not put that in because the book as i said is 15 000 pages long but yes he was obsessed with masturbating with masturbating and then not masturbating and like the virtue of that blah blah blah he goes on to become impotent in his later life but his fleeting pleasure didn't stop him from shagging about, and he ended up with the clap. As we will go on to discover, Hubbard didn't like doctors, so instead of getting some antibiotics to clear that thing right up, he self-medicated with sulphur, which is a component of some antibiotics. But it's not the whole deal, and it's not sulfite either. But so worried was Hubbard about his wiener that he blasted himself with so much sulfur, even he was concerned that

he had permanently inhibited the function of his brain. Then he fucked around in the navy for a bit, a period of his life that was vastly overblown in later years, because he painted himself as some sort of war hero, but truth be told, he achieved very little at war. In 1944, he found himself in Princeton with a bunch of other science fiction writers, gaming scenarios for the American armed forces. None of his ideas were ever used, however. During the invasion of Okinawa, Hubbard's earthly body betrayed him once again, and he was floored by hip, back and optic nerve injuries, which he claimed he healed completely himself using principles that would become the basis of what he would call Dianetics, which of course, if you know anything about anything to do with this world,

you will know, would in turn become Scientology. Once he had miraculously healed himself with the secrets he refused to share for fear of sending the listener around the bend, Hubbard fell in with the James Dean of the Occult, prime suspect for a Patreon bonus, I think, John Whiteside Parsons, who happens to have a crater on the moon named after him because he quite literally invented solid rocket fuel. Wow. That's quite a claim. Mm-hmm.

And he loved rockets, he loved fuel, and he also loved sex magic. And he especially loved to do it at his millionaire's row home in Pasadena that he called the Parsonage, which is very clever. John Parsons had the Parsonage sectioned off into multiple apartments, which he leased to atheists and atheists only, which in the 40s was pretty revolutionary. This no-god rule attracted astronomers, opera singers, criminals, felons, atomic bomb engineers, and eventually L. Ron Hubbard. The parties, coffins, drugs, naked ladies, cauldrons and ubiquitous wanking probably helped too. The parsonage claimed to be a branch of the Ordo Templi Orientis, a not-so-secret society dedicated to magic and witchcraft as pondered by Alistair Crowley. Hubbard always strenuously denied that Scientology or Dianetics were based on the Book of the Law, but one of

Hubbard's sons, Ronald, who now goes by the name Ronald de Wolfe, says this is utter bullshit. It's also worth noting that the modern Church of Scientology claim that Hubbard was only part of the Order of Templars Orientists because he was spying on the occultists at the request of the CIA. That old chestnut. But according to Ronald de Wolfe, all scientology actually is is black magic stretched out over a long period of time and that's the inner core of scientology and the only bit that

actually works yeah it is quite reminiscent of when we did the satanist it's so similar it's you know the not being a, the taking charge of your own business. All positive, positive messages. Yes. But also fundamentally the thing with Scientology. They want your money. That is that, yes, they want your money. And secondly, is that it's not your fault.

I think the difference between like sort of modern Church of Satan, Satanism is like you are in control of everything. So that means when something bad happens, that's on you, bro. Which is a better message. Yes. It's not your fault. That's, but Scientology is like, it's not your fault. It's aliens. Oh, see, I can't get on board with that. No, and we're not there yet either. So hold on to your pants. Hubbard never actually met Crowley, who of course died in 1947. But Hubbard wasted absolutely no time in taking his place. He acted as Parson's scribe in a ritual they called Babylon Working, which sounds like the latest co-sharing space in London. Babylon Working, the hanging gardens of shared offices. So the aim of which, speaking about this ritual, was to give birth to the Antichrist, or a far more fun nickname, Moonchild.

Yeah, Moonchild's not that bad. No. Antichrist. Yep. But, you know, slight rebrand. Parsons and Crowley had all the will in the world, but they hadn't a womb between them. So they needed a lady. But she couldn't just be any old lady.

They needed the Scarlet Woman, as prophesied by Crowley himself. The summoning of the Scarlet Woman involved Parsons wanking into a piece of paper quite a lot as Hubbard watched. That's literally all it is. Some charting, some wanking onto some paper, and they do it over and over and over again. Imagine if that's all you had to do to find yourself an appropriate match. Because we're back on troweling through Hinge. Oh God, it's so depressing.

Imagine if all you had to do was just wank onto a piece of paper. If only. I'm just swiping into the abyss. Feeling empty. Who knows how many wanks later, Marjorie Cameron showed up to the parsonage accompanied

by a bolt of lightning, saying that she had been in a car accident and didn't know who she was or where she was going. The perfect woman. The perfect, perfect woman. No memory of who she ever was before she met you, and you can just mould her into exactly what you need her to be. And that wasn't the only thing that made Marjorie Cameron perfect, because she also just so happened to look like the legend.

She had red hair and slanted green eyes with strong masculine features. That's Parson's story, anyway. Marjorie's story is that she knew exactly who she was, and that she went to the parsonage because she wanted to see naked women jump over fires. Sure, fair enough. You do you, Marjorie. But as soon after she joined, we do know that this is kind of both of their stories, enough. You do you Marjorie. But as soon after she joined, we do know that this is kind of both of their stories, that Parsons started banging Marjorie, mainly on an altar, trying to make a demon baby. So she definitely is the Scarlet Woman in his

like telling of things. And they definitely do have a lot of ritual sex. I don't know if the Moon Child was ever produced, but Marjorie didn't just show up out of nowhere, like dropped in by Satan himself. She was fully aware of what was going on. And while Parsons was busy banging Marjorie trying to summon up the Antichrist, Hubbard, rather sneakily, stole his girlfriend, Sarah Northrup. And this might seem a little bit harsh, a little bit devious, a little bit sneaky. But when you consider that Parsons was actually first married to Sarah's sister, kind of seems a bit karmic. Yeah, I think there's a lot of swapping going on anyway.

Yeah, I mean, there's a vibe at the Parsonage. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of group sex going on. But I would argue John Parsons is, you know, a medium attractive man. Aaron Hobbard is not. But I think he has that sort of like magnetism thing. Does he have the magic with a Sienna K? Yes. He's got that

sex magic and he manages to put it all over you. Oh god. Yeah. He dribbles it all over your face. He manages it again and again and again but I predict that that is A. to do with having the confidence of a white man and b if you spout enough nonsense in a place where people are

specifically looking for nonsense then you know i think it's just confidence it's just confidence and charisma it's like i've been listening to a lot of history podcasts over the holidays which i'll talk about and under the duvet but But come on. Cleopatra, famously not a white man, incredibly confident, incredibly charismatic. Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. Yeah. Fucking mad for her. Very true, yeah, yeah. Anne Boleyn, not super hot babe, apparently, but we want to believe she was.

She wasn't. She was just super educated, super sophisticated, super charismatic. Fucking, if you listen to our Gunpowder plot episode over on patreon fucking changed the course of british history english history absolutely fucking transformed it so i think just if you're single just work on your charm and your charisma and your something else and you you too stop crying on the bus you too can be magic with a ck. And apparently also Helen of Troy, the ship that launched a thousand faces. Do you want to try that again? The face that launched a thousand ships.

Actually, I watched a very interesting documentary with Bettany Hughes, one of my favorite historians. Apparently, contemporaries should not look up. Interesting. Apparently, she was just incredibly charismatic. There you go. There you go. The one thing you can't buy. Just be confident and charismatic and then all your problems will be solved so anyway parsons didn't seem too phased by the loss of his girlfriend sarah to hubbard

in fact he decided to get into business with hubbard the idea was that parsons would front the money which is about 20k and then hubbard would return to his watery ways, buy a yacht, and then sell it on for a profit in California. What a business. Surprise, surprise. Hubbard did not. So the plan, he was going to California, buy a yacht, sail it through to Miami, and then sell it for a profit in Miami. Why boats go for more in Miami than they do in California, I do not know. This wasn't like a boat flipping situation. It was just, I'm going to move this boat from one place to another place because I'm so good at sailing, and then I'm going to sell it. Yeah.

Predictably, he didn't even do that. He just ran off with the money and with Sarah Northrup. You've got your girlfriend and your money. Yeah, exactly. And she soon leveled up from girlfriend to wife in 1946. But Hubbard had never really bothered to divorce Polly and she was still languishing with his children in Montana. But that didn't bother Hubbard at all. Him and Sarah moved to Hollywood where he beat the shit out of her and received a

bunch of psychiatric diagnoses. Hubbard was told that he was paranoid, bipolar, schizophrenic and almost everything in between by a multitude of different doctors. But he took no notice and passed the time by writing an introduction to traumatic psychology, which he described as, quote, making a monkey out of Freud, when actually quite a lot of his basic principles are exactly the same as Sigmund's, they just have different made-up names. Ah, the classic. Yeah, so just stealing it and calling it something else and then being like, how ridiculous are the foundations of Freud? Soon after this jaunt into the maze of traumatic psychology, L. Ron Hubbard published the book that would catapult him to a new kind of fame. And it was called Dianetics, the modern science of mental health. And just like Alistair Crowley, he claimed that this text had been dictated to him

by his guardian angel. He described this work as a phoenix, quote, risen from the ashes of Excalibur, which details in full the mathematics of the human mind, solves all the problems of the ages, and gives six recipes for aphrodisiacs and plays the mouth organ with the left foot can we please copy and paste this into the review section for our own book

red-handed the book risen from the ashes of excalibur i have not read diabetics no i wouldn't have expected that even for this episode no just because i refuse to give the church of scientology any money for a start and secondly i have read a summaries of it and b have read a lot of things that people who have read it have said and they're like it's completely incomprehensible i think i heard it described once as like as if someone had taken the first year of a mathematics degree and not really listened, and then writes down the equations. But I don't think we need to read it to determine that the mathematics of the human mind, it is not. Dianetics has been described as a self-referential

semantic labyrinth. And as such, it was published in May 1950. And that is probably my favorite description of a book ever. Yeah, it's like those little phrases we enjoyed. I can't remember which was it. Was it esoteric Hitlerism or something? There was another word in between, but I know what you mean. There's some great ones. But you're right. Self-referential semantic labyrinth. It's pretty good. Is pretty good. Maybe we can use it on a hinge prompt. What hinge prompt works with that? What am I looking for? I'm looking for a self-referential semantic

labyrinth oh my god i mean you'd probably get a fair few on that and it turns out friends that we don't actually need to read dianetics because the church of scientology claims that it has sold 18 million copies and is quote indisputably the most widely read and influential book on the human mind ever published which i have tried to corroborate but it's like all of those restaurants on brick lane that say that they are the best curry in the best curry house in the uk the best curry in the uk you can say what you want yeah yeah never go to tie-ups dianetics can say they're the best curry house in the uk and i tried to think of like okay like what's the most famous like psychoanalysis book or like the most you know

the what's the one you think of first and it's on dreams by sigmund freud like that's the one that i would think of first but i can't find anywhere how many copies of on dreams have been sold but it must be more than 18 million it just must i mean the number of i'm sure like university syllabuses syllabi whatever on dreams must on. I'm guessing it's more than 18 million have been sold. Yeah, yeah. I just don't believe for a second that Dianetics takes that title. But never mind. And I'm going to do you all a favor by giving you the basics of Dianetics to save you from

curiosity and stop you from buying it. Here is essentially all you need to know. It's pretty basic and it's stolen. So Dianetics argues the following, that there are two parts to the mind. There's the conscious or analytical problem-solving mind that holds memories, all of your memories, nothing's ever really forgotten. And this part of the mind is rational and it's aware of itself. So far, so good, right?

That seems okay. Yeah. Then there is the reactive mind. That's where phobias, nightmares, insecurities, and destruction lives. And this part of the mind doesn't think. And it doesn't hold memories. It holds things that are not quite memories that can reproduce in their own image and are sentient.

Now we're getting a bit, now we're getting into it. So they're not quite memories, but they can control you, essentially. And these not quite memories are called engrams and when they are activated when they self-produce they can control a person's actions okay so it's like leveling up of the lizard brain idea but to an nth degree or not even the lizard brain it's a very like rudimentary way of saying like trauma stays in your brain and then traumatizes the rest of your brain okay got it so trauma is infectious in your brain and then traumatizes the rest of your brain. Okay, got it. So trauma is infectious in the brain.

Exactly. And no one wants to be controlled by rapidly dividing cells that you don't even know exist. But luckily, L. Ron Hubbard has the answer. Because engrams can be eliminated when the details that caused them to grow in the first place are recited repeatedly until they no longer possess any type of emotional charge and in this way quote Dianetics deletes all the pain of a lifetime I see so like exposure therapy yes yeah well not even exposed just talking about it talking about it again and again and again which is you know not a million miles from psychotherapy well this is the thing isn't it but it's interesting because obviously depending on what you've got whether it's depression, obviously, we know that those two things can be comorbid. But for example, my friend who has anxiety was accidentally sent to psychotherapy and then was forced to talk about it, talk about it, talk about it, which is obviously what you do there and not forced, but, you know, encouraged to. And actually, all it did was make her hyper fixate on her anxieties when what she should have been going to was cbt again i am not a therapist i am not a doctor go get professional help if you need to

talk about these things but interesting so the process by which hubbard suggests you neutralize these engrams that are ruining your life is called auditing and the subject is asked by the auditor questions about their traumas until these traumas no longer have any power and in the early days of Dianetics this auditing usually happened when a person is in a semi-hypnotic state very similar to Freud because what Freud would do is have his patients lie down and he would be out of their sight line that was the whole thing exactly the same so the person's lying down they're sort of in a sort of meditative state and then hubbard is asking these quick fire questions there is a film called the master in which philip seymour hoffman plays someone who

is based upon like literally they might as well have called him like flelshron slobbered like it's because obviously they get sued into the ground if they make a film so it's philip seymour hoffman joaquin phoenix is in it and there's a scene in it where philip seymour hoffman is auditing joaquin phoenix in this early way of this like quick because now obviously they have a lot of tech and we'll get into that later but in the beginning it was just this rapid fire answering questions like have you ever slept with a family member and then you ask it again and again and again until you get the real response and it's very fast it's a weird film i don't know if it's even worth a watch to be honest i've watched a couple of times but it's the only example i can think of of like an example of

like early dianetics auditing techniques so someone who has no engram so you've done so much auditing that they're all gone. You've neutralized them all. You are completely in control of yourself. No engrams are controlling you. When you get to that stage, you are called by L. Ron Hubbard, clear. And a clear person, according to Dianetics, can remember everything they've ever read, everything that's ever happened to them. And they can also do really quick mental maths and are the best at chess in the world. Interesting. Interesting benefits. So Dianetics happened to be published amid a post-war self-help boom, and it spent 28 weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list.

That's pretty good going. That is very good going. Those who loved it were almost outnumbered by those who hated it it's quite divisive it was very like a marmite situation because it was of course absolutely rejected by the scientific community almost unanimously and this cemented hubbard's hatred of doctors and above all psychiatrists who he said were quote straight out of terrorist textbooks and were the sole reason for the decline of the universe and should be hounded down. In the swells of the success of

Dianetics, Hubbard set up a school to train auditors to carry out his Dianetic wisdom. In order to join the course, you had to buy the book and attend Hubbard's lectures, and all of a sudden, L. Ron Hubbard was rich. Despite his riches though, he didn't produce his first clear until a few months after the book was published, and it was a total disaster. The unveiling happened at an auditorium in LA, and the subject was Sonia Bianca, a physics student from Boston. Sonia, however, couldn't even tell the audience the contents of Dianetics, let alone everything that had ever happened to her. It's a total disaster. Like literally members of the audience are like, what's on page 22 of Dianetics? And she doesn't

know. Even though you are, of course, meant to have remembered everything you've ever read. Or everything you've ever seen, everything you've ever done. She literally can't even tell the audience what color tie Orn Hubbard is. Like, it's a complete humiliation. Oh dear, oh dear. So after this catastrophe, another Clea wouldn't appear for 16 years. During this period of success and humiliation, Hubbard and Sarah were living at the Chateau Marmont

and Hubbard was beating the shit out of Sarah still. He didn't want to be married anymore to her, but divorce would be too shameful, despite their marriage being a bigamous one in the first place, which meant that technically they weren't even really married. Hubbard told Sarah that the only way out of his predicament was that she had to kill herself if she really loved him. That's a red flag.

Yeah, just a baby one. He said, well, firstly, this is all of your fault and you have to help me get out of this situation by killing yourself because that's the right thing to do. Yes, please. So Sarah, feeling guilty that her not-husband was completely unhinged, did the right thing, paid attention to the red flags and got the fuck out. She moved to a Dianetics training centre in LA,

but Hubbard was convinced that she was still trying to ruin him from afar, or worse, section him. This is the thing, because Sarah's whole life is L. Ron Hubbard, and L. Ron Hubbard's whole life is Dianetics, she can't get that far away from him. He's always going to know where she is. Sarah and Hubbard had a daughter called Alexis, who was touted as the world's first Dianetic baby.

It sounds like she's not real. She definitely is real, so I feel bad saying this, but like, her life is really quite fantastical. So she's audited her whole life. She's speaking when she's really, really, really young. And this next bit is probably the most chilling piece of research I've ever, ever, ever come across in my life. So Sarah took Alexis with her when she ran away from Hubbard. And one night, Sarah left Alexis with a babysitter. And this babysitter is holding Alexis, who's a literal baby, maybe not even one years old, or maybe like one year old. And Alexis whispers in this babysitter's ear, don't sleep. No, thanks and apparently the voice in which alexis says

this it's like this like horse like whisper like an old man the baby's just like i didn't even know babies could make that noise no and can one year old speak she can because she's the first dianetic baby oh there you go that is quite enough to put the shits up anyone and unnerved the babysitter put the world's first dielectric baby to bed. And later that night, Alexis was abducted by Hubbard's men. Sounds very Tom Cruise. Leave him out of it. He's next week. Later on, these men returned for Sarah,

saying that they would kill her child if she didn't go with them. Sarah was dragged into a car where Hubbard was waiting. And then they drove around San Bernardino all night, stopping at every hospital they came across. her child if she didn't go with them. Sarah was dragged into a car where Hubbard was waiting, and then they drove around San Bernardino all night, stopping at every hospital they came across. Hubbard would demand that the staff in these hospitals declare Sarah clinically insane, which is an odd move for someone who hated psychiatry with every inch of his being. Unsurprisingly, they were turned away at every hospital. And in response, Hubbard took himself off to Chicago, along with the baby, to be analysed himself, to dispel the rousing rumours that he was a paranoid schizophrenic.

And he got his wish. He managed to find a doctor who said he was just a creative person stressed about work. And this clean bill of health was won by Hubbard as a badge of honour. Clearly, it wasn't 100% true, because immediately after receiving this diagnosis, Hubbard called Sarah that he had killed Alexis, chopped up her baby body into little pieces, and watched her arms and legs float down a river.

Of course, that wasn't his fault. It was Sarah's fault for leaving him. She is to blame for all of these things. And also, somebody who would call up their wife-not-wife and tell them that sounds totally, perfectly A-OK. Sane. Sane, sane stamp on the hand. He's fine. Stable. Stable and perfectly well. After this, Sarah searched for Alexis for weeks. As long as Hubbard had their baby, he had total control of the situation. and Sarah was unfortunately completely tied to him. Sarah even tried the FBI but they dismissed her perils as quote just a domestic dispute. Sarah did manage to file for divorce citing systemic torture, sleep deprivation, strangulation and scientific torture experiments.

But Hubbard didn't care. He was in Havana with baby Alexis, who he kept in a cot with chicken wire over the top. This story is completely fantastical. Yeah. Not that we don't know these kinds of things happen. Obviously, being neck deep in the world of true crime, we know that these kinds of things happen. But we have to remember, guys, this isn't just like the past-o version of Dianetics and Scientology before anybody knew who he was. He was already a figure, a public figure at this point that this is happening. His fucking book was at the top of the New York Times bestseller list for half a year.

Like, he's well known. Oh, yeah. I will say that it's very interesting, though. In Havana, they love you to know where Ernest Hemingway stayed. They love you to know which daiquiri bar was Ernest Hemingway's favorite daiquiri bar. Not a sniff on Hubbard in Cuba. Probably a good idea. You don't believe in ghosts?

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wherever you get your podcasts. So unable to not tell a lie, literally ever, Hubbard told Serra that he was working as a spy in Cuba. It's his go-to. Yeah. I was somewhere I was not supposed to be out spying. I'm being a spy. I'm working with the CIA.

I'm doing something incredibly more important and interesting than what it is that I'm actually doing. Sarah, she obviously has a very tough run of it, but she does eventually manage to get a divorce. She probably could have just said, I need a divorce because he was already married and he never got a divorce from his first wife. So please, can I have a divorce? And also he's in Cuba. Yeah. And he's got my fucking baby. And thankfully she also manages to get baby Alexis back. Sarah Northrup described that day as the happiest in her life. It was during this time in Cuba

that L. Ron Hubbard wrote his next work called The Science of Survival, which included what he called the tone scale, which is apparently ripped straight off from Hinduism, every cult leader's fucking favourite go-to religion. And essentially, if you're wondering what the tone scale is, it's basically a rating system for people's virtues four is being completely clear and people below a two bring

death to themselves or those around them perverts are placed at a 1.5 and anybody who's on the scale at a mere 1.1 will apparently abort a child and the list of course goes on yeah it like categorizes people as being the goodness or the badness of them based on the type of things that they do and it's coming back to what we were talking about with the status game which is the idea of like competence dominance and virtue here he's like he's weaponizing virtue yeah totally and it's like if you do which sounds very familiar doing one thing wrong puts you at a 1.5 or a 1.1. And to move up the tone scale, guess what you have to do? Do you have to get audited?

You have to do what he says. Uh-huh. So a clear person, somebody who scores a 4 on this tone scale, is apparently accident-proof. Apparently they can't get ill. They can't be hypnotized. But yet L. Ron Hubbard cannot prove any of these things still. Yeah, because he can't produce a clear person that can actually do any of these things.

He just says it, and then it gets spun into existence. And this is where things started to go wrong for Hubbard. And when you're famous, when it rains, it pours. The Dianetics boom had crested and fallen. People had moved on from Hubbard's mind philosophy, and even worse than that, copycats had started to pop up, and thus, Dianetics as a concept was diluted, and Hubbard almost forgotten. His Dianetics Order to Training Foundation went bust, and he was left with no wife, no money, and living in a trailer in Kansas, which he was not a fan of. But even though he had fallen

from grace, Hubbard managed to keep some fans of his own. And one of these fans, not Hubbard, invented the e-meter, which Hubbard unveiled in 1952, along with his new wife, Mary Sue Whipp, who was 20 years his junior, and a new era began. Dianetics was repackaged by Hubbard as Scientology. He claimed that the meaning of the word Scientology is the study of knowledge, which in itself is a self-referential semantic nightmare that only folds in on itself even more the longer you stare at it. So let's leave that aside for a second and let's talk about the e-meter. You might have seen a picture of it. It's these two metal cans that are held together with like

crocodile clips. And then it's like a dial that the auditor is looking at. And the arrow sort of swings depending on how fucked up you are. Essentially the way it works, and don't tell Tom Cruise I told you, it's a dumbed down lie detector that's what it is. A dumbed down version of something that already doesn't do what it's meant to do. So it monitors changes in your body when you're thinking about certain things is the argument and even people who are vocal critics of Scientology have gone through it themselves they're being like there is something about the e-meter that does work. For sure I mean it's basically like there are things about a polygraph machine or a lie detector that work but it doesn't work in what it's saying it does.

What it does is measures your physiological response to stress or to questioning. So it isn't detecting deception. It's just detecting increased heart rate, increased sweating, but that could be caused by so many other things. Exactly. So I can believe the e-meter is sensing something and possibly even getting it right a couple of times, but there's no universal physiological response to all types of stress or all types of stimuli or deception. So therefore, what can you really be measuring? I think the argument is that if you're looking at engrams, which are trauma related, the needle jumps when you are stressed about your trauma. And then you can zone in on where the needle jumps and what you are thinking about at that particular moment in time.

Do I think it's useful? No. But a lot of people do. But never mind. So instead of the person being asked the questions by an auditor being in a semi-hypnotic Freudian type lying down on a couch state now the person audited has to hold on to these metal cans that measure changes in electrical resistance and i think you know i don't know if it's exactly the same theory here at play but we also know that placebos work right and we also know a lot of research studies show this that the more complicated or complex the ritual for

taking of the placebo or partaking in the placebo is the more effective it is so maybe they just hit onto this idea that instead of just lying there and doing this if you give people cans to hold and then you have something that flashes and dings when they say something it's even more convincing it will compound the belief in whatever they're being told even more possibly oh exactly and that's what hubbard's going for because he is saying that this E-meter Scientology featuring Dianetics is the scientific path to spiritual discovery,

which a lot of people are looking for. People have been looking for spiritual discovery forever. Absolutely. But now he's like, I've got the science. And it's at the time period, like you said, when science fiction was having a boom. It was at a time when people were ready to at least although it still would have been taboo to some extent the idea of atheism and the idea of putting

your trust in science more than anything else so he's kind of hitting on a perfect crossroads oh it's a niche there are a lot of people looking for it so the idea is that the e-meter detects mental masses in inverted commas or en engrams, and then auditing. So the question asking breaks those down and finds the source of spiritual distress. And when the blockage is cleared, the little needle on the screen of the e-meter will float. That's what you want. You want a floating needle. You don't want it one end or the other. And a clear person, when they're being asked questions, they are so at peace. They are so free in their minds. A clear person will have a floating needle no matter what

you ask them it's genius it really is genius because having somebody sit there and tell you that you're clear or that your engrams are going crazy or whatever phraseology they're using is one thing having a machine in front of you that is beeping and a needle that is wiggling about that shows you visually it's kind of like almost he's gamified therapy that's exactly what it is yeah it's very smart i kind of think it's smart gamified therapy. That's exactly what it is. Yeah. It's very smart. I kind of think it's smart by accident though. Take away all of the negative things about Scientology, which we won't be doing, don't worry.

We are going to fully go in for it next week. What he has achieved is quite impressive, but I don't think he meant to do it. I know there is a fine line between genius and madman, but I know which side I think he was on. And they're also not mutually exclusive necessarily. But also the thing I would say is doing Sinister Societies, the new podcast we're doing on Spotify, where we're literally recording like two or three episodes of cult-based activity every single week at the moment. It

really has compounded in me the idea that cult leaders, demagogues, autocrats, all these kind of people, sometimes, of course, they're intelligent. Sometimes, of course, it's well thought out and planned. But a lot of them are just doing what needs to be done purely by instinct. They just instinctively know. And also, if you spend literally all of your time only thinking about how to defraud and manipulate people, we also would be pretty good at it. And I think that's the thing. I think a lot of happy accidents happen for Elmer and Hubbard, which turn into lots of very unhappy accidents for millions of other people.

Bingo. So the e-meter wasn't the only new idea on the block. Freud hating Hubbard nicked more ideas and decided that engrams could be formed from prenatal memories. So now we're saying it's not even engrams developed while you're living your life. It is in the womb. As early as that, you can develop these engrams. These sperm dreams soon gave way to engrams being formed in previous lives. And the Dianetics Foundation didn't like this one bit. And they actually tried to ban any past life chat from the practice, feeling that it fundamentally undermined the doctrine. I don't really know why you're fucking bothering to draw that distinction at this point. I think it is a distinction, though, because it's making it more about spiritualism and less about, like, therapy, right?

So if you're saying that, like, things have happened to you and therefore you are acting like this because of this thing that is controlling you because it was created by something that happened to you. If you're then saying it was created by a past life version of you, that means you're completely not in control of why it's there in the first place. So when we say prenatal, we're not saying it happened in the womb. We're talking about something that happened in a past existence. So it starts off with the in the womb and then you're like, well, while I'm here, I might as well be like, oh, I was Julius Caesar. Interesting. Anyway, let's not get too sidetracked by what the fuck they think is going on.

What we need to know is that the Dianetics Foundation are like, we think you've taken it a step too far, Mr. Hubbard. Yes, yes. So the mistake that Hubbard had made with Dianetics was that he was not the source of absolute truth. That is a major problem for a would-be cult leader. And so he changed his angle. Engrams were no longer the sole focus and Hubbard moved on to thetans. What is a thetan? I hear you scream. Well, it's kind of like a soul, but it's not inside the body. Rather, it's attached to it. And when a person goes exterior, which is the Scientology term for an out-of-body experience, it is the thetan that is doing that. I mean, I need so

much more coffee to understand what is going on here. It's all just made up. It's all made up. So stay with us as much as you possibly can, right? Scientologists basically believe that the body is just physical and it actually stands in the way of the thetan. Which is not a million miles away from literally every other religion. The only difference is that most Western religions will say that your soul, your thetan, is inside of you. Whereas Scientology is like, it's there, it's around. It's just hanging about. And another potential trouble source for one's Thetan is to be oppressed by other people. Those people are called suppressive persons or SPs,

which we will come to learn more about in next week's episode. I guess like a suppressive person, can we call them like an energy vampire? Yeah. But the problem here is that their definition of what is suppressive is anybody questioning the stuff they're telling you exactly yeah like it's i think everyone has come into contact with suppressive people who for whatever reason are trying to make sure you don't do your best which in itself is a like it's just like oh toxic person walk the

other way like that's uh yeah yeah that's that's a fine thing the problem with sps in scientology is that what they are defined as is quite problematic yes yes scientology was not going to get away from hubbard in the same way that dianetics had done he was now the central figure and not just the founder and he had lost the rights to the term dianetics isn't that tragic yeah like sort your shit hubbard jesus christ like he that's the term Dianetics. Isn't that tragic? Yeah. Like, sort your shit, Hubbard. Jesus Christ. Like, that's how far Dianetics gets away from him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, rule number one, you're going to have a cult.

You need to place yourself at the center of it as the only knower of absolute truth. Patent pending, patent pending, patent pending. Can't just let the others take over. Yeah, he's made some big mistakes. Rookie mistake. He's not going to make the same mistakes with Scientology. No, no, no. And it was around this time too that Hubbard famously said, quote, I'd like to start a religion. That's where the money is. And he's right, because salvation is, of course, always in demand. And just like that, on the 18th of February 1954,

the Church of Scientology of California was established, and one cropped up in D.C. soon after. The tagline that is still repeated today is, quote, The goal of Dianetics is a sane world, without insanity, without criminals, and without war. It can be stopped only by the insane. Which, okay, it's not a terrible message to have. No war, no criminal, no drugs. You know, that sounds okay.

The move from psychotherapy to full-blown religion might seem a little bit of an odd one on the surface, but it really isn't, especially when you look at it from a shamanic angle, which, lucky for you, my little sausages, was what I did my dissertation on. I did my dissertation on the medicalization of madness. And my supervisor literally quit because

it was such a like mind maze when someone either converts to a religion or is a religious person they're like it makes me a self-referential semantic labyrinth absolutely he was just like i don't this is you are aware this is an anthropology degree not philosophy and i was like well it's too late now anyway fine got a 2.1 in the end, even though he literally disappeared. So religious people are like, being religious, my religion, my faith makes me happy. It makes me better. It helps me with my drug addiction or with my life. And that's what everyone wants.

It's also the same goal as psychotherapy. You want to be better. You want to feel right. So actually, they're the same thing and madness used to be seen as this like light like in king lear the fool's the only one that tells the truth right and then through the medicalization of madness fuko's dissertation is called madness and civilization read it if you don't want to be alive that's the point is that like madness has moved from a positive thing to a negative thing through the structures

of capitalism. So actually psychotherapy and religion, hand in hand, happy bedfellows, it's not that much of a jump because their goals are the same to the person. The sort of the structure of the religion may have different goals, like making lots of money, but for the individual person, the goal is the same. So let's talk about what Scientology actually is. And funnily enough, the pillars of Scientological belief in the very beginning to where we are now in 2022 are basically the same, which is, you know, that's okay for a religion. A lot of them change their minds. So here we go. There are three tiers of Scientologists. Most of them, vast majority of Scientologists are public Scientologists. They're your normal everyday people. They pay for books, courses, auditing sessions. They're usually

approached by smiling people in the street and then hooked in that way with a free like stress test. And a vast majority of Scientologists stay on this lowly tier. Then we move on to big money items. Tier two of Scientology is inhabited by the famous people. That's your Tom Cruise's, your John Travolta's, your Laura Prepons, although I do believe she has very recently left. And these people have to be vocal about their involvement in the church. They're an attraction. Normo Scientologists on the lower tier attempted with the idea of rubbing shoulders with the stars,

but actually they don't really get anywhere near them. And Normos don't have to be as vocal about their involvement in the church. They're just foot soldiers and no one really cares what they think. The third tier is the sea organisation. It is the clergy of Scientology, the truly hardcore, those who administer the church, audit people, and these days rule with an iron fist. Hubbard first came up with the idea of the Sea Org when he was living in Sussex. He bought a massive estate from the Maharaja of

Jaipur, declared himself a doctor of horticulture, connected e-meters to tomato plants, and told gardening magazines that plants can get worried too. There is a very, very funny picture of him holding up a tomato plant being like, see? Has feelings. Excellent. But soon he got bored of tomato emotions and decided to start recruiting the spine of his Scientological empire, the Sea Org. Hubbard was a Navy man, so the Sea Org was run like a military operation aboard ships. The handy thing about big boats is that if you are in international waters, the taxman can't get you, and it's also very difficult to extradite you anywhere to do time for any of your many crimes. The other

thing about the Sea Org is that in order to enroll, one has to sign the famous billion-year contract. The argument behind the billion-year contract is obviously since Hubbard decided that past lives are part of his deal now. The argument is that if you are in the sea org in all of your lives to come you will come back to scientology somehow so you are signing over your coming lives to scientology also and there is a further theory that if you get to clear and then operating thing level which will come on to if you get up to those higher tiers the argument is that you don't actually die which gets very awkward when people die so to house his sea organization hubbard obtained three ships one of which due to a typo on a tax document was called the great scotman

and he then set sail to build his church one of his very first recruits was a young bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Hannah Whitfield, who you can see in multiple Scientology documentaries, including Going Clear. Hannah had been raised in a super radically spiritualist home in South Africa. Her mother was a fervent follower of Helena Blavatsky, a critical figure in the spiritualist movement. And a crucial part of Hannah's childhood belief system was that the Messiah was coming. He would lead a revolution in the 50s in America and start a new race. And most importantly of all, he would be ginger. So when Hannah was training as a nurse in Johannesburg and someone handed

her a copy of Dianetics, she couldn't believe it. And immediately she was off to join Scientology. And eventually, Hannah Whitfield became the 60th recorded clear in the world. In the early years of the Sea Org, recruits from all over the world maintained the fleet of ships, which is essentially a full-time job. And then on top of that, they also audited constantly. We're talking like cleaning with toothbrushes, like scrubbing the decks, painting stuff. Like these ships are like, they're ships, like they're big. So in themselves, that's a lot of maintenance, but they're also like rust buckets. So they needed like doing up. Constant, constant work. Oh yeah, round the clock. So while these Sea Org recruits are doing all of

this, Hubbard locked himself away in his air-conditioned captain's quarters, took loads of drugs and wrote. He also sent his crew off on various treasure hunts, like a kids party. It's really like, I would say that these years at the Sea Og are not great, but relatively harmless compared to what's to come. It's kind of like he entertains them and he sends them off on like, because they're going around all over the place, like they're going to Greece, Morocco, Italy, all over, like very beautiful places. So he'll just like make handwritten maps and like send them off for the day to go and find something. And the aim of all this auditing was to create of course clear people

whose thetans could be free. While a thetan is free they can fly around the stars unencumbered by earthly shackles. So this is the end game of auditing to recall the thetan to immortality free of all limitations i think this is the interesting thing it's like obviously if you are struggling with trauma if you're struggling with some kind of you know mental illness go get help go get therapy go get whatever relevant treatment or help you need but the aim is never to become like a perfect person the aim is to deal with your challenges to become a better person for yourself a happier person happier version of yourself this is like to become perfect yeah to become superhuman quite literally superhuman which is

perfect really from a cult perspective because it's something that can never realistically be achieved unobtainable exactly so basically it is the idea that someone who has audited so hard that they can now exist without physical support and assistance is an operating thetan or an OT. So once you're clear, that's the next step. Clear isn't the end anymore. I see. You're clear and then you're an OT.

And there are eight levels of OT that we know about, and there are rumoured to be nine and ten. So yeah, varying, varying levels. And fun fact, Tom Cruise is apparently an OT level eight. He is an OT eight. He's very proud of it. Well, if I'd have spent that much, I would also want to at least say that I was proud of him. Well, yeah. OT 8 is, as we currently understand it, the highest you can get. I see. And it's even more impressive when you put it into context. Because according to Hubbard, quote, and this is a quote,

neither Buddha nor Jesus were OTs. According to the evidence, they were just a shade above clear. But Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise is an OT level eight. So when someone gets to OT level two, which they can do by taking multiple courses that cost money, reading a billion books that cost money and paying just loads of money, which costs money, they are taught how to delete implanted n-grams from their past lives so up until ot2 you're dealing with your own life right and then ot2 they're like okay so psych all of that work you've

done now we need to look at who you were before and deal with those underlying n-grams and that's ot2 got it got it and the really big news happens on OT3 level. Da-da-da-da-da-da. This is the big shit. This is the big shit. This is the phase that Hubbard dubbed the Wall of Fire. And it's essentially Scientology's kind of Garden of Eden story, the how we all ended up here story.

And it was first unveiled to the sea org in 1968 aboard a ship called apollo and i really hope try try very hard everybody to be ready for this next part because scientology says that if you are not ready if you have not yet worked your way to ot level three then the information that you are about to hear will quite literally kill you yep you'll get pneumonia and you will die have we made a terrible decision do we want to kill all of our listeners well proceed at your own risk but i will say that i have read it quite some weeks ago and i am fine apart from all of the pre-existing conditions i have i haven't got any new ones just the pre-existing engrams yeah just you know the depression and the anxiety but um you know

it's fine but you know we're not insured for this. So it's on you, player. Maybe we should get some insurance before we do this. Well, it's too late. I don't think anyone insures you against L. Ron Hubbard. So insures you against mind-melting facts being floated into your ears via a podcast. Yeah, the only reassurance I can give you is that this information has been published many times. It is openly available on the internet.

And I have read it and I am still here. But proceed at your own risk. So here we are. We're all about to be OT level three. In the beginning, there were Thetans and they were all godlike and pure and floating around various planets. And then 75 million years ago, there was a galactic confederacy which was made up of 76 planets and 26 stars. And according to Hubbard, the world we live in now replicates the civilization of that period. People at that particular time and place were walking around in clothes which looked very remarkably like the clothes we wear this very minute. The cars they drove looked exactly the same, and the trains they ran looked the same, and the boats they had looked the same and the boats they had looked the same circa 1950 1960

so who ruled this confederacy you might have heard this name once or twice is it yeah somebody with an unrealistically fantastical name his name is xenu and xenu was the suppressive to end all suppressives he'd been chosen by a guard called the loyal officers and they decided that he could no longer rule over the galactic confederacy xeno had to go but xeno wasn't having it he was like i'm like it here i like being the ruler of the galactic confederacy so he took his last moments in office to and this is a quote goof the floof what does that mean i don't know to goof the floof you goofing one's floof i just can't believe that we have to spend time that you have spent time being forced to research and now we are sat here

reading out what sounds like a rejected plot line for an avengers movie yes exactly but the saving grace is at least i haven't paid millions of dollars to get here this is true this is true so xenu he wants to keep hold of the Galactic Confederacy. He's like, you can't tell me what to do. I'm Xenu. So he gets his pals together, and his pals are mainly evil psychiatrists. And they tell the populace, the population of the Galactic Confederacy, that they all need to come in for tax auditing. And then when they come in to have their taxes looked at,

Xenu and his troops are waiting. And all of the Thetans go in like lambs to the slaughter to the tax office. And then when they come in to have their taxes looked at, Xenu and his troops are waiting. And all of the Thetans go in like lambs to the slaughter to the tax office. And then Xenu's waiting there with his minions. And what they would do to all of the Thetans is, so Thetans don't have bodies, right? That's a key thing. But the way that Xenu's minions get them is to shoot a frozen needle full of alcohol and glycol into their lungs, which I don't know if they have, but apparently in this version of events, Thetans do have bodies and even lungs that can be paralyzed with alcohol and glycol.

So anyway... Maybe when they were back in the day godlike, they had bodies. I mean, stranger things have happened. Why not? So when the Thetans are all frozen up, they're packaged into boxes and they're loaded into space planes. And billions of Thetans were transported to Tigiakak which is the planet that we morons now call earth and the thetans are dropped in their boxes into volcanoes and then those volcanoes are blown up with hydrogen bombs but obviously thetans are immortal so now they are free to float around on the winds of explosion

and trapped in an electronic ribbon and forced to watch a 3D super colossal motion picture for 36 days. I wish I understood that and could explain it to you. I don't. And then there's a civil war in the galaxy and Xenu is locked up in an electric wire cage buried in a mountain on Earth. But you'll be glad to hear it's very unlikely that he'll ever get out. It's like a 10-year-old wrote.

It quite literally is. I'm shocked that this man wrote a thousand books. I mean, the thing is, I don't know what the thing is. If a 10-year-old wrote this, I would be super impressed. So because Zeno's locked up in a metal wire cage made of electricity, Tegak, or Earth, was classified as a prison planet and it was abandoned by the Confederacy. Invaders came and went, but the Thetans stayed on Earth for 75 million years. And when people showed up, the Thetans started to attach to people

because they no longer had a free will of their own. And these Thetans that are left over from Xenu's catastrophic takeover of the Galactic Confederacy, they're called body Thtans to us humans because they attach to people and fuck their shit up and they're also the reason that so many civilizations have fallen into ruin on earth because we have never solved the body thetan problem so if you're on ot2 you're looking at your past lives how to solve that once you've done that you get to ot3

and you learn that even though you have your own thetan which you can go exterior with and even though you've solved all your present life engrams and even though you've solved the implants from past lives, now you have body thetans that you've got to get rid of and they are everywhere. Nightmare. It's like the goalposts keep being moved. For someone's personal gain. But Hubbard has the problem to the body-thating problem,

because the goal of Scientology is, of course, to eliminate the body-thating problem with auditing. And when all of mankind is clear, then we can stop the destructive cycle and the Earth will live on forever. Perfect. So he's saying all of the stuff that Jesus couldn't do, all of the stuff that Buddha couldn't do,

all of the stuff that Muhammad couldn't do... I've got it. Got it. Got it. Got it. With my e-meter. Perfect. Please hold on to my metal can. The thing is, the problem is, is that you might be thinking, this all sounds pretty crazy.

Who would possibly sign up to this? The thing is, no one who has ever signed the billion-year contract has ever read the Xenu story. Because by the time they get to read the Xenu story they're in too deep. Yeah no one signs the contract with this information in their brain. Nobody knows this when they sign that contract. They only get it on OT3 which could be decades. So that's exactly what happened to our pal Hannah Eltringham. She was one of the first ever to read the Xenu story and she was totally convinced that it was true. She was given an e-meter and told to audit away all of those pesky body things herself. But the thing is, she couldn't find any, no matter how hard she tried, which terrified her. Because

apparently some people are so terrible that they are unauditable. And Hubbard called these people a dog case. Yeah. So Hannah has left her home in South Africa. She has spent years aboard these ships. And because she has audited so well, her needle is always floating because she's clear, right? She's OT2. And then when she gets to OT3, the needle doesn't move. She can't find these body things. So she convinces herself not that maybe this information isn't true but that she must be the problem like she must have done something so terrible sure that she's beyond help got it got it well that'd be a bummer living on a boat for many years and then realizing that you haven't even saved your immortal soul would be

a bit of a bummer so hannah convinced herself that even after her years of service, she just could not be saved. And that wasn't the only thing getting dark aboard the Apollo. Hubbard would frequently throw people overboard. Children who got the terms wrong were sent to sleep in the crow's nest overnight, or he locked them in a literal chokie, all the while proclaiming his ship a floating school of philosophy and, quote, the sanest place on earth. He threw people overboard so much they called it overboarding. There was like a term for it.

I've heard that term before. Yeah, yeah. I think anyone who calls themselves or a place or anything the sanest, I'm guessing it's the opposite. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Don't do that.

So a real turn for the worse happened when Hubbard had a motorbike accident. He broke his arm and loads of ribs. But Hubbard being Hubbard refused all medical treatment. Because who needs medical treatment? Who needs a medical intervention when you've broken several bones in your body? Not this guy. And in fact, it wasn't just refusing all medical treatment. He actually didn't even try and heal himself with Scientology.

But that's probably pretty telling because I'm sure he knew that if he tried and then miraculously didn't heal all of his bones, then he'd probably have quite a lot of uncomfortable questions to answer. With his broken arm and his broken ribs, he just sat in a room throwing things and issuing punishments. This really is a bit of a fork in the road. Terrible things are happening aboard the Apollo, which is like the main ship, and then there are two other ones. But it does get significantly worse after this accident because he's just angry and in pain all the time.

But no one is like, but you're the Messiah. Surely you should be able to fix this. They just do what they're told. It's weird that he doesn't secretly go get medical help. This is my theory i think that hubbard was extremely unwell yeah i think that like to the point where he genuinely believes that doctors are evil like i think he genuinely did believe that yeah and this is the problem it's this idea of like i'm just who i am i'm just being crazy and

you're trying to therapize me you're trying to change me to fit the cookie cutter mold of what the world wants me to be no you're very unwell please get some help elrond hubbard because you're ruining loads of people's lives uh-huh yeah i think that is the basis of it because a lot of people make the argument that as time goes on he starts to amass all of this wealth, blah, blah, blah. And he doesn't live a comfortable life. He lives at sea in one room, writing, writing, writing, writing. So a lot of people use that as the example of like, he did really believe in what he was doing. Otherwise, why wouldn't he have spent all this money?

Why would he be living in a one room on a ship? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. and i think that is a reasonably strong argument that unlike a lot of cult leaders who are narcissistic which isn't a mental condition what he has is i think you're right i think he is sick yes i think he's very unwell and i think that he at least partially genuinely believed that doctors were evil he probably believed in body things he definitely believed that he was the source of truth i do think that like you know he had a good thing going for sure like a lot of people use that argument like oh well why didn't he just cut and run with all the money if it was a scam if he didn't really believe in it and like there is the argument like well he had a good

thing fucking going but he didn't actually have it that good he just stayed in a room you know yeah it's hard to know because you know we can't peer into his mind and see what he was actually i don't want to go there and i don't want to go there we see with cult leaders time and time again one of their most common features is they never know when to quit they never know when they've got a good thing and they should just cut and run but also his behavior does seem to point at the fact that maybe he genuinely believed it i don't know you can choose your own adventure with that yeah so during this time where he's in a lot of pain doing a lot of shouting and throwing things he also announced something called flag order 343RB, which basically meant he could decide

that any OT, whatever level they were on, had to start again if he said so. Oh, hello. Hello, goalpost. Hit me in the face. Yepity-yep. He's like, it's actually quite difficult for me to come up with another Zeno story, so I'll just send you back to the starting line do not pass go do not collect 200 there's no reason you can't get reinfected with all the engrams yeah so what that does is it kept the whole of the sea org in a perpetual cycle of audit with no one ever becoming top dog and the chosen people who were ots that got picked to start again they would be put on what was called a rehab program, which meant they would spend 80% of their time in the hottest part of the ship in boiler suits,

eating with their hands out of buckets and sleeping on stained mattresses on the floor. This imprisonment eventually became the blueprint for the Scientology drug rehabilitation apparatus called the Purification Rundown. Even though Hubbard was high most of the time, nobody else was allowed to be. If anyone was causing trouble, or even slipping into psychosis, Hubbard's solution was to isolate them totally and let them speak to no one. And he basically did the same thing himself, locking himself away, writing, writing, writing. He totally lost interest in his wife, or anyone else for that matter. No sexual interest at all for Hubbard. But everyone else aboard the fleet was at it like rabbits,

and that, because there's no pharmacies at sea, meant babies. In the early days, Hubbard sent any new parents away, but now there were just too many. So his plan was to decree that no one in the Sea Org could get pregnant without his express permission. And it didn't take long before women were sent off to have abortions under threat, a practice that is still alive and well today. Which is interesting because a lot of other cults desperately want to grow their population by procreating. Yeah, I think it's multi-layered. I think Hubbard didn't particularly like children.

And also, if you're on a boat, there is limited room. And also, I would argue possibly that once people become parents especially when women become mothers and you have a child there is arguably then an incentive for you to maybe think more critically about well-being yes that's true like maybe i don't want to hang out on this fucking gross ship yeah yeah on a dirty mattress because now i've got a child that i care about more than you exactly i think people are always going to their priorities change you don't want to give them something to care about more than you. Exactly. I think people are always going to... Their priorities change. You don't want to give them something to care about more than your fucking bullshit.

So there were problems on land for Hubbard as well. He was a wanted criminal in multiple countries, mainly for things like tax fraud, which, if you've listened to Cine Societies, you'll see is how they always seem to get caught. But he wasn't really bothered about any of that. He was much more bothered by the publication of the first major criticism of Scientology. And this came from British journalist Paulette Cooper, who wrote an article called The Scandal of Scientology, after a friend of hers told her about his enrolment in the church and his subsequent discovery through auditing that he was actually Jesus. That's going to set off some alarm bells,

I would think, especially if you're a journalist. Yes, I mean, if you were to come and tell me that, Hannah, we'd have a conversation about it. You would section me. I would section you. Cooper always felt strongly about the need to speak up. She didn't write anything particularly groundbreaking. She just wrote that Hubbard had made up all of his credentials, which he had, and that he had conned people out of money, which he was. But after her article was published in Queen magazine, Cooper's life was ruined by Scientology. Would we say she's the first official account of somebody being fair-gamed? I would say so, yeah.

Yeah. She was followed. Her phone was tapped. She was sued 19 times. Her name and number were written on toilet doors. There was even an assassination attempt by a man dressed as a florist. 300 of her neighbours received letters saying that she was a sex worker, riddled with disease who molested children, and her psychiatric files were stolen and sent to her parents.

And on top of all of that, she was charged with mailing bomb threats to the Church of Scientology, of which she was indicted in 1973 by a grand jury. Hubbard and his minions had somehow got hold of her fingerprint, and they'd planted it on a letter that was submitted as evidence. The plan to bring Cooper down was called Operation Freakout, and it was a total success. As Cooper's life crumbled, Hubbard was just getting richer and richer. He wrote policy letters to his disciples ordering them to make more and more money. He had multiple foundations that funneled cash into personal accounts. In the mid-70s we know that Hubbard had one Swiss account with more than 300 million dollars in it. That's just one

account. So he didn't spend nearly any of his wealth, though. And as he approached his mid-60s, he was in terrible health. He was obese, and he had smoked his entire life. After a few weeks in hospital in Curacao, it became clear that a life at sea was entirely unfeasible for the science fiction writer. So Hubbard left his boat and set up shop in Clearwater, Florida. He bought a hotel called the Fort Harrison, where Mick Jagger apparently wrote the lyrics to satisfaction. But Hubbard was not satisfied. He became more and more paranoid. He

slept with guards outside of his room. He was convinced that someone was swapping his left shoe for one that was half a size too small in order to gaslight him into insanity. I think you're already there, my friend. And his behaviour only got worse when a tailor leaked to the community that Hubbard was in town. This, and the suicide of his son Quentin, propelled Hubbard into a new, and some would say, final phase. If Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires, Los Angeles is the maternity ward of questionable religious sects. And that is where Hubbard headed next.

The reason that so many cults are born on the Sunset Strip is that LA is full of people looking for the ingredients to make it. Most people are there chasing a dream. They are there because they are looking for something. And apparently in the 60s and 70s there was a, there was, like, a running joke that's like, oh, like, first there's drugs and then you go on to Scientology. Hubbard knew that everyone in LA is chasing a dream. Everyone is looking for something. And he also wanted the other thing that LA is full of, famous people. He went after famous people who were either on their way up or on their way down to attract more people to the church.

Again, very smart. Very smart. Celebrity endorsements, as every social media expert knows, can sell literally anything. And Scientology was using that algorithm way before Instagram. Kirstie Alley claimed that her cocaine addiction was cured after just one auditing session. And she also said that if it weren't for Scientology, she would be dead. Is Kirstie Alley still in it? Is Kirstie Alley still in it? I don't know. I think so. I think she's like going to clear water all the time still in it. I see. So these celebrity endorsements did the trick

and Scientology figured out that they were onto a good thing so they built the Celebrity Centre in LA in 1969 and they continued to hook bigger and bigger names. Let's look at one of these very big names, John Travolta. Objectively, before Scientology, he was kind of a no-one, and he credits Scientology with putting him in the big time, which obviously drew more showbiz hopefuls in. After he joined, his career got better and better. And again, you can think of it like, sort of like a networking group, right? You attack people in.

Oh, absolutely. You scratch my back, I scratch your back, more people join. Like, you've got the likes of, like, Will Smith is a part of Scientology. Like, Will fucking Smith. Like, what are you doing? But again, it's like,

do they really believe in all these crazy fucking engrams? Or is it just a place to go? Like a secret fucking membership club where they just get a little leg up i don't know it's how much these people really believe i don't know i don't know but i can completely see how like young hopefuls be like oh but without scientology john travolta would never have made it and there's even a clip of john travolta saying, he was like, oh, you know, they would all still be here if Scientology had been around earlier, be it Elvis or Marilyn, they would be here today if they were Scientologists. Reel it in, John. Absolutely. And it's not just John Travolta and Will Smith, because John Travolta actually brought

a lot of big hitters with him too. People like Patrick Swayze, Forrest Whitaker, I did not know that, and Priscilla Presley. Although Priscilla was the only one who apparently stayed the distant. Yeah, Forrest got out. Thank God. So obviously, as you can see from here, Tinseltown still had a hold on Hubbard, and it always had done. And he threw himself into filmmaking now. Seeing how well Star Wars had done, he wanted a piece of the action. And he turned his 1,000-page novel, Revolt in the Stars, which happens to be Mitt Romney's favourite book, into a screenplay.

It might as well have been called Space Battle. Like, it's literally just, like, his attempt to get a cut of that sweet, sweet Star Wars. Star Wars, Revolt in the Stars. I mean, you can see that this is really it's like charlie manson right he always wanted to be a singer any opportunity to do that he's like cult leaders like the side gig man that's fine but what i really want in l ron hubbard's case is he wanted his books turned into movies yep we saw in the past he got optioned and nothing

ever happened it was probably devastating to him l r Ron Hubbard did this so he did the revolt in the stars or whatever a screenplay with the help of legendary acting coach Milton Castellus who was somewhat of a Hollywood kingmaker. He brought him even more superstardom hopefuls and he made 10% commission on anyone he brought into the church. Milton Costellus had a invitation only acting workshop. Everyone was like, if you get into that class, you're going to make it. He's like OT4 or something. Again, genius. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he just has this endless conveyor belt of people who will do literally anything he says, and he just boots them down the road to Hubbard. It is the ideal business model, if you don't mind being a horrible piece of shit. If you have no ethics at all, it's the perfect grind.

Absolutely. But as the millions kept pouring in, Hubbard was falling apart at the seams. To make him feel a bit better, a special section of the Sea Org known as the Guardians made a short film to cheer him up. It went down like a sack of shit hubbard was convinced because he's paranoid that the guardians were mocking him and the whole thing was a total disaster and guess who was behind it 17 year old dead-eyed dave david miscavige himself miscavige was from pennsylvania and his father ron had got the whole family into scientology

when david's asthma had been cured by auditing. And little David was as devout as they come. When he hit 16, he dropped out of school and signed that sweet, sweet billion-year contract. I find nothing more insidious than children and teenagers who are devout or pious. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's really... it's sickening. No, it really is.

Someone like 40-plus, being a weird religio, I'm like, whatever, man, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's really, it's sickening. No, it really is. Someone like 40 plus being a weird religio. I'm like, whatever, man, whatever. Your time is gone. But children and teenagers. Yeah, yeah. I'm like, you need a slap. You should be questioning everything at this age. Where's the rebellion? But then I guess maybe is it at a time when the counterculture was to be more conservative? I don't know. It could be, because you kind of see that across time as like when the parents are too hippie,

the kids become more conservative. Yeah, I think it's, he hated school and he thought that there were no morals, there were no ethics at school. Here we go, yeah. And his dad also joined the military very, very young. So he was like, oh, I'll just do that. Sure, sure.

But I love Scientology, so. Within months of joining, little dead-eyed David was right by Hubbard's side, taking the place of his dead son, Quentin. And soon, Miscavige was promoted to the role of acting chief. Essentially, dead-eyed David Miscavige became L. Ron Hubbard's enforcer. I'm talking at this point, he's still a fucking teenager. Yeah, yeah, and he gets there quick too. Oh mate, that's scary.

He knows exactly what he's doing. That is terrifying. I'm more scared of David Miscavige. Oh, 100%. Than of anyone. Oh, you should be. But on the 14th of February, 1980, Hubbard slipped from public view,

along with his closest aides, Pat and Annie Broker, leaving Miscavige as his public mouthpiece. It became very difficult for anyone to know what Hubbard's ideas were and what were actually Miscavige's, because no one was allowed anywhere near Hubbard. Another genius play. Absolutely. That included his current wife at that time, Mary Sue.

Mary Sue was desperately ill with chronic pancreatitis, but that didn't stop the church from putting her up for all of Hubbard's wrongdoing. Essentially what they did, this whole thing is puppeted by Miscavige. What they do is every company, every account, blah, blah, blah. They're all changed over into Sue's name. So the buck stops with her. And the idea was that Hubbard had given this order because he didn't want to be worried about it. He was like, oh, just Sue will do it. So everything went to plan for Elrond Hubbard. And Mary Sue was found guilty.

And he got away with all of it. And she ended up being sentenced to five years, and she never heard from her husband ever again. And of course, this despicable plan was supported by Miscavige. Next, Miscavige set up what is now called Gold Base in Gilman Hot Springs, California, where tales of violence, spitting and screaming have echoed ever since. In 1982, Miss Cabbage married Shelley. She was just 21, innocent, unknowing and thrown into the middle of a storm that was only going to get worse. With Hubbard essentially out of the picture, Miss Cabbage had extremely large fish to fry. In 1985, a $15 million lawsuit was brought against

the church by a former Sea Org member called Lawrence Wallersham. Lawrence claimed that he had been brainwashed, emotionally abused, disconnected from his family, and pushed into a psychosis that shattered his sense of identity. In this trial, the wall of fire, the OT3 Zeno story, was submitted as evidence. Which, as I'm sure you can imagine, the church didn't take particularly well. When we say they didn't take it well, they stalked the judge, slashed his car tyres, and they drowned his dog in his pool. Fucking hell. Yeah, bad news. And then there was another lawsuit filed by someone called Christofferson Tichborne, who claimed that she had seen blatant sexual abuse of children in training sessions, which apparently was called bull-baiting.

And what Christofferson wanted was a $30,000 refund from the church. What she got was $39 million in a court in Portland. This decision sent Miss Cabbage into overdrive, and it didn't take long before thousands of Scientologists descended on Portland in protest of religious freedom. Stevie Wonder even rang in and sang, I called to say I love you, down the phone, to the crowd. Stevie! Stevie! Mate!

I know, it's bad. It's real bad. They're all in it! They're everywhere! Jeez. So at this protest, where Stevie Wonder is singing down the phone, John Travolta was also in attendance. Which was interesting, considering that two years before,

he had told Rolling Stone that he still believed in Scientology, but that he had not been audited in one and a half years. He told the journalist, quote, I've been something of an ostrich about how it's used me because I haven't investigated exactly what the organizations have done. One part of me says that if somebody gets some good out of it,

then maybe it's all right. The other part of me says that I hope it uses some taste and discretions. I wish I could defend Scientology better, but I don't think it even deserves to be defended in a sense. Oh, John. Oh, John. You're in trouble. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Now's the time to ostrich, my friend. Yeah, run. But in Portland, he changed his tune. He said now, quote, once in a while, you have to stand up for what you believe in. And I'm here tonight and I've had counselling. I give counselling and I don't want to lose that. It sounds convincing. Sounds definitely like he's there of his own free will and hasn't been given a prompt card. Eventually, the Scientologists won, and the Portland case was declared a mistrial based on prejudicial arguments presented by the prosecution, and those arguments were that Hubbard was a sociopath and that Scientology is a terrorist cell.

Scientology settled with Christofferson out of court. We don't know how much for. Meanwhile, Hubbard was still out of sight, and there were no clear ideas of who would take over. OTs aren't supposed to get old or frail, so Hubbard being both was pretty bad press. And it got even worse when on the 16th of January 1986, Hubbard suffered a severe stroke

and ordered a death assist from his closest aide He didn't even ask to see any of his family He signed a will that reduced their inheritance and left Pat and Annie in charge Hubbard died on the 24th of January 1986 and just before he died he claimed he had been promoted to Admiral by the Galactic Confederacy

and was off to do some missions for them. That's what I want you to tell everyone when I die. Got it. Space Admiral. Excellent. On to some big missions. What, so I can get section two? Good.

So this left Pat, Annie and Miscavige to come up with a plan of what to do next. Miscavige decided to tell the church that Hubbard hadn't died, but that he had dropped out of his body to move to a higher level of existence the passing of hubbard was presented in the hollywood pallTs and quote, it is beyond anything of us had imagined. The level is in fact done in an exterior state, meaning that it is done completely exterior from the body. The body has served its purpose and in AD 36, AD being after Dianetics by the way, L. Ron Hubbard discarded the body that he had used in this lifetime for 74 years, 10 months and 11 days. And then Miscavige points to a very large portrait of L. Ron Hubbard discarded the body that he had used in this lifetime for 74 years, 10 months and 11 days. And then Miscavige points to a very large portrait of L. Ron Hubbard that's behind him with a hip hip hooray. And it's echoed by everyone in the Hollywood Palladium. It's the most cheesy, sinister shit ever.

Hip hip hooray. Like, are you at Children's Party? And the Sea Org uniform is literally like a fucking sailor. Oh. Isn't it? Yep. Like, it's like a fucking sailor. Oh. Isn't that? Yep. It's like a Kmart Navy uniform, basically.

Oh my God. Yes. And that is where we will leave you this week with Miscavige up there, but not quite. He's still got some consolidating to do, his leadership, and we will get into that next week. Until then, please don't die because you know what OT3 is. Don't jump into the wall of fire. It's interesting though, we have Scientology in the UK and they are partially tax exempt. I don't think they've got the full shebang, but they're not.

They're getting some money and there's two in London. There's like the Church of Scientology and there's the Dianetics Centre. And obviously in Hollywood, their plan is like get people who want to be actors, who want to be stars. So they set up their centres near where those people are going to be. who want to be stars so they set up their centers near where those people are going to be the Dianetics Center in London is right next to RADA so they're using the same tactics over here across the pond that makes sense and we will get to those tactics next week where we'll be talking about Miscavige's Scientology and how it differs and the spaces in between and finding out where his wife is. Excellent. So we will leave you with that this week.

Like Hannah said, please don't die. If you've managed to avoid death in any of its various forms, then please go and check out our brand new podcast exclusively on Spotify, which is called, of course, Sinister Societies. And also you might think about getting yourself some extra red-handed content as a New Year's resolution for yourself. That sounds like it's something that appeals to you. Head on over to patreon. some extra red-handed content as a New Year's resolution for yourself. That sounds like it's something that appeals to you. Head on over to patreon.com slash red-handed and sign up there.

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Thank you so much for listening. We hope you have a lovely new year. Don't be too hard on yourself about your resolutions. You're a human person. Just do your best. And we'll see you next week. Goodbye. Bye. just do your best and we'll see you next week goodbye They say Hollywood is where dreams are made,

a seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near LA in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lanie Jacobs,

a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very

personal quest to find the woman who saved my mom's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health.

This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.