The Joe Rogan Experience - #947 - Ron Miscavige

Episode Date: April 18, 2017

Ron Miscavige is the father of the Church of Scientology leader David Miscavige and former member for over 40 years. His book Ruthless: Scientology, My Son David Miscavige, and Me is available now.

four three two one and we're live what's up Ron how are you I'm doing okay yeah good man so this is I came in here 10 seconds ago we're on the air I know well I wanted it to be that way it's okay it's more natural sometimes like some of the best stuff gets said off mic so we figured now how to do it where people get in and as soon pretty much as soon as we sit down we start talking um no complaints so you contacted us after the leah remini interview right and you wanted to get on and you have this book that you wrote it's called ruthless what's the correct pronunciation it's cabbage miscavvige? No, Miscavige. Miscavige. Yeah, the actual name of the book is Rootless Scientology, My Son David Miscavige and Me.

Right. Now, let me just say this before we get started because Scientology, this is the first time I've ever been contacted. They sent an email to my publicist and they have a rebuttal to what you wrote and their rebuttal is at a website ronmisscavagebook.com and they want people to know about their website which is scientology.org and they have a statement this is their statement r Ron Miscavige is seeking to make money on the name of his famous son, David Miscavige.

Oh, David Miscavige has taken care of his father throughout his life, both financially and by helping him in even the most dire circumstances. Ron Miscavige was nowhere around when David Miscavige ascended to the leadership of the Church of Scientology, mentioned by and working directly with the religion's founder, L. Ron Hubbard, and entrusted by him with the future of the Church.

Any father exploiting his son in this manner is a sad exercise of betrayal. Mr. David Miscavige's far-reaching vision and unrelenting dedication has brought the Church of Scientology to where it is today, guaranteeing its future for generations to come. Scientologists worldwide love and respect Mr. Miscavige for his tireless work on behalf of their religion.

So that's their statement. That's what they wanted to say. And I feel like it's only fair. You know, we had Leah Remini on and we have you on and I've had, uh, Louis Theroux on. Right. And look, I feel like I don't know the story, but anytime a father is so disconnected from his son, they have to write a book about him. It's a sad time. Do you feel like that? No. You don't feel sad at all?

I don't feel that. I just woke up one day and said, I'd like to write a book about Scientology. Right. And if I can give you a short encapsulated statement, I think we could set a nice groundwork for the whole interview. You mind if I do that? Sure. Okay. I was a Scient do that? Sure. Okay. I was a Scientologist for 42 years. Were you raised in it? No, I got my family in, in 1970, but I was in the church for 42 years. The last 26 and a half years, I worked at the international base in Hemet, California. I escaped from that base on March 25th, 2012. You escaped? Escaped. That's right.

I had to plan that escape for six months. We can go into this in more detail, but just let me give you the short story. About a year and a half later, there was a private and guest investigator caught by the name of Dwayne Powell, who was around the corner from my house, looking at a house to buy so he could spy on me from that house. And there's no shit. So a lady in the neighborhood saw him, and she thought he was a drug dealer or up to no good. So she called the West Dallas police,

and Nick Pye came out and confronted the guy. He gave Nick some shit, and Nick said, hey, listen, man, you're under arrest. Do you mind if I look in your car? So Nick went to the van and opened it up. And in a trunk, there were five license plates from five different states. There were two handguns, a stun gun, two rifles, one fitted up with a silencer and 2000 rounds of ammunition. So they arrested the guy. They took him in for interrogation, and then his son came looking for him because his son was a partner in this business.

The father's name was Dwayne Powell, and the son was Daniel Powell. Daniel came looking for his father. And by the way, if you want to hear these interviews, they're on Tony Ortega's website. Tony Ortega, the underground bunker. You can hear what I'm telling you. Okay daniel is telling me you know how they operated they were getting paid ten thousand dollars a week to follow me and report on my doings from eight o'clock in

the morning till eight o'clock every night an incident happened in janesville wisconsin this is it's kind of what do you do like what could you possibly do that'd be worth studying? Is it just to freak you out? Like, that's what I don't understand. Like, if you follow, like, if I follow Jamie, you know what I'm going to get? I'm going to get Jamie looking at the internet, Jamie watching basketball. Maybe Jamie goes to the gym. Maybe Jamie goes for a run.

Maybe Jamie goes on Tinder and does a little right, right, swiping right. Yeah. I don't know. Okay. What do people do that you could get out of watching them? It's not like you're out there burying bodies. No kidding. Anyway, let me continue because this goes on.

So they're interrogating them. That's Nick Pye. And there was an alcohol, tobacco, and firearms agent, Ricky Hankins. Right. And because they were concerned about that silencer. They thought, hey, maybe they're out to hit me. Right. Because I am the father of the chairman of the board. Right. So then Daniel, the son, is being interrogated.

And he said, they followed me to a town called Janesville, Wisconsin, where I went shopping in an Aldi's grocery store. This is very detailed. Well, I'm telling you, this is what happened. So I come out and I had bags of grocery and it was a summertime. So I had a pocket t-shirt on. I bent over to put the groceries in the car. I thought my cell phone was going to fall out. I grabbed my left chest. They're looking at me in the van, which they had been following me in. They saw me.

The father called his contact and said, listen, it looks like the target is having a heart attack. What should we do? They referred to me as the target. Oh, Jesus. No shit. And I got a silencer and fucking 2,000 rounds of ammo. All right.

Okay. So they called. The guy, Greg, said, listen, let me call you back. A couple minutes later, a guy come on the phone, identified himself as David Miscavige, and he said to them,

listen, if it's his time to die, let him die. Don't do anything. Don't intervene. That's my son. All right? Well, it didn't just happen, right? I mean, you didn't, I don't want to interrupt your story because I feel like it goes on.

But I mean, your relationship with your son didn't just start there. So it had to go sour. No shit. Right? Listen, my relationship with David when he was a kid was incredible. I mean, we got along great. He was a snappy little kid. He was just very bright, great sense of humor.

Just I enjoyed his company. But as he grew older, as he got into Scientology, which I got him in, by the way, and I can get into that, how I got him in. He then started acquiring power. And I think he went from Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde. As an example, when I worked on staff, he never referred to me as dad. He called me Ron. The base that I lived on in Hammett, it got to the point where if you wanted to send a letter to somebody, you had to write the letter, put it in an unsealed envelope.

The security guards would read it, see if there was anything bad in there that I shouldn't be saying, send it back, and I would correct it. When it was okay, then they'd seal the envelope and send it out. If I wanted to call somebody on the telephone, I had to have somebody listening on the other extension. And this is by his orders? Or is this just how Scientology runs? No, it's not how Scientology works.

He is the undisputed dictator of Scientology. So this is his entire doing. That's the way he wanted it to run. Scientology in 1970, when I got in, was totally different. Well, how was it then? It was like for a free spirit, you know, just very laissez-faire. But you did courses. You could come in and do things that would actually improve your ability

to communicate, to have better interpersonal relations. I bought the book. I bought Dianetics in 1994 because I moved to California and I was really into self-help books and stuff like that. And I saw one of those late night infomercial ads. Yeah. And I was like, this looks like, you know, the reactive mind. Hey, I want to have control of the reactive mind.

And, you know, I got into it. I read it a little bit and I was like, hmm, probably some good principles in here. Some decent ideas. And I always associated Scientologists with being positive people that got a lot of things done. That's a very true statement. And I'm telling you at what they call the bottom of the bridge, because the entire Scientology experience would be a bridge to total freedom. You enter in at a certain point. You're given basic things, basic courses, basic communication skills that you're taught.

And I'm telling you, you go out on the street after you do this stuff and you're more effective in handling life. So the early stages of it, you feel. Absolutely. They're very effective. I mean, they were effective then. They're effective today. If you learn the proper communication formula, that will improve your life alone. Sure.

Just communicating correctly. Knowing there's components. There's parts of it. It's not just, hey, you. And the other guy correctly, knowing there's components, there's parts of it. It's not just, Hey, you and the other guy says, what do you want? No, there's literally get the other person's attention. Make sure, uh, you're giving him a communication that he can understand. You're not going to talk to somebody in French if he's English, you know, just all little details that you learn and you drill these. And then there's other things about interprofessional relationships with your wife or a group. You learn these, you're better off.

So they're essentially telling you how to be a better person in the beginning. Yes. And part of that, you would then also become more positive just simply by having these skills. Well, this sounds good. It is good. So where does it go bad? Well, here's where it goes bad. Look, the further on you get in, let me back up a second.

Let's say you learn the component parts of communication. Uh-huh. And you say, hey, you know what? This is good shit. Right. You agree to that. That's the first step on taking you on this entire journey. And then maybe you'll learn how you could divide your business into seven parts so that you could monitor various parts of it or your life in the seven parts.

So you could manage how you're doing income wise, how education is your public relations. These are all things you can easily agree to. So now a little later on, there's a datum or a fact introduced that doesn't quite make sense to you. But you think, you know what? Everything they told me was good so far. I'm just going to accept this. Now you're on the road.

Can you give me an example? Is it like Xenu type shit? Well, yeah, that would be a big example but that's way down the line right that's way down the line but there's any there's some early wackiness that give you like indications that things well no i'm gonna tell you something you know i think you're right i think that's the one where you've agreed to so many things so far and all of the auditing you've gotten that that's helped you when it comes to that. As an example, when I got on that level, I thought, well, wait a minute, there's 150

billion people on 76 nearby planets and they brought them here in spaceships. How the fuck did they get everybody here? I looked at it from a physics point of view. Yeah. From a point of view of logistics. Right. It's a lot of spaceships. But I thought, well, I'll at it from a point of view of logistics. Right. It's a lot of spaceships. But I thought, well, I'll accept it.

I'll just do it. 150 billion people? Per planet. The problem was overpopulation. Right? Oh. But do you see what I'm saying? So at that point, you've agreed to so many things that were right.

Right. I understand. When it comes up to that, you're not going to say, hey, you're out of your goddamn mind. It's helping you give you a direction in life it's making you more positive it's giving you better communication skills you have a structure that you can follow when you communicate with people it makes you more presentable so everything's good in the beginning yeah why doesn't somebody just take that part and just like get rid of the rest. Listen, I tell in my book what we're looking at right here, you know, Ruthless, Scientology, My Son, David Miscavige, and Me.

I say at the very end, if they were just to stick to the beginning things, number one, and number two, have a general amnesty where they forgive everybody who they think has tried to dun them in. The shit's going to hit the fan, but maybe at the end of it, you'd get some people back and knock off the disconnection policy. I think if they did that, it could be one of the best self-help groups ever. But once you get up into those upper levels where they tell you you're going to become superhuman, as an example, you will be able to, as as a spiritual being leave your body and go some other place as an example and read a newspaper in germany huh it's not like remote viewing yes

and i'm going to tell you joe i was involved for 42 years you never went to germany no never france in portugal but you know what the fuck. No, seriously though. Right. I never met one person that ever achieved that, nor did I achieve it. But you don't talk about it. I understand. One of the things they say, you don't talk about your case to somebody else. So that's compartmentalized. So everybody who's done this is thinking, eh, I never got it.

Maybe I'm the only one. Right. So like maybe if I just keep working at this, one day I'm going to pop through. That's exactly it. And you keep on going for the next level. Do they explain how you're going to do that? Is it through meditation techniques? Is it through some sort of hypnosis?

Like, how are they supposed to go to Germany and read a newspaper? Well, there's drills that they have you do, like in the earlier, what they call OT levels, operating thetan. Thetan is a word they use for spiritual being. Right. All right? And one of the drills that you would do would be spot three objects outside of your body, spot three objects inside your body, spot three objects outside your body. Spot three objects inside your body on a repetitive basis. And that's supposed to let you out as an example. So it's like a meditation.

I guess it would be. When you say spot, are you saying like envision? Well, I mean, in the physical universe, you can look at three spots. Like that clock, this book, like that kind of thing. Yeah, three of them. And then inside your body, just think about- You'd envision three spots in your body. Your lungs, your ribs.

Yeah. Okay. But then the other thing is, when you get to OT3 and you're talking about body thetans, these are the alien beings that were brought here, put on a nearby volcano, an hydrogen bomb was set off, and they sent up a ray, grabbed these people. You can look on the Internet and find this out. Oh, no, I've read it all. Okay.

Yeah, unfortunately. And what happens then is they are all latched to your body like a bunch of fleas. Damn it. And they're affecting your thinking. Right. And your personality. And the idea on these upper levels is to get rid of all of them and achieve this. Nobody's ever done it.

Like, if there were three people who did it, I'd say, you know, maybe it can be done. Not a fucking one. Excuse my French, buddy. No, you can swear away. Okay. Listen, I got my doctorate degree in swearing in the United States Marine Corps. So how did you go from that to this? How do you go from the Marine Corps, which is about as real as it gets, to this?

Well. You're just looking to improve yourself? Yes. I was always, listen, as a little kid in Mount Carnival, Pennsylvania, where I was born and raised, I used to go up in our garret or the attic, whatever you want to call it. And my dad had all these books there. And I used to take books off the shelf and read them and try to find out about life. I was always looking for something.

And always looking to improve myself or find a better way to live. And I had a friend back in the 60s, Nelson Sandy. I'm a musician, too. I don't know whether you knew that. No, I didn't. Yeah, I played professionally my whole life. Nelson Sandy. And I also been in Yeah, I played professionally my whole life. Nelson Sandy and I've also been in the sales business

because I had four kids, you know, you've got to pay the bills no matter what you do. So Nelson was a friend of mine in sales and one day he said to me, Ron, how would you like to make an extra $100,000 a year? I said, what the hell, you know? Great. So he introduced me to something called Holiday Magic.

It was a multi-marketing scheme. Oh. All right? You know what I mean by multi-marketing. Yeah, pyramid scheme. What scheme? Pyramid scheme, right? Pyramid, yeah.

Yeah. So I went to an opportunity meeting, and I thought, you know, maybe I could do this. So I bought in, and I started doing it. And one day, we're at an opportunity meeting that we were running. And there's a girl standing next to me talking to a guy over here, and I'm talking to this guy. This guy says, I'm a Scientologist. I just hang on a second.

What is that? I pinned him down for about a half an hour, and for whatever reason, the name rang a bell. So he told me that I could go visit somebody who was a Scientologist, and they discuss it one day a week. Got the name of Frank Ogle in Woodbury, New Jersey. By the way, you're from North Jersey, aren't you? Yeah, Newark.

Newark, yeah. Okay, so I go to this place, and he would have little classes where he'd talk about communication and various things. I went there for about four days in a month, like for a month, one day a week. And I thought, okay, I got it now. Another factor here, David, when he was born, was cursed with an asthma condition. That was the bane of his existence.

I mean, as a little baby, sometimes he turned blue. He couldn't breathe out, and it was horrible to watch this. And I was the one who took care of that just about totally. As a matter of fact, when he would have these attacks, I would take him to a pediatrician in Burlington, New Jersey, called Dr. Ziegler. He'd give him a shot of adrenaline. And I knew that giving a little kid a shot of adrenaline was not great.

Okay? So I would try all kinds of home. They didn't have inhalers back then? They had inhalers, but that's handling the symptom, not the cause. And I didn't know what to do to handle the cause. Right. I used to do shit like one winter, he's just in a full-blown attack, turning blue. It's a cold Jersey, you know, cold Jersey winter.

I took him upstairs to the bathroom, took off his clothes, took off mine, stood in the shower, said, David, I'm not punishing you, man. I'm with you. I had the warm water on. I turned it off. That water's coming out of there about 34 degrees.

He started breathing, kicked it, wiped him down with a Turkish towel. That handled it for the moment. I used to do shit like that, anything to handle them. So now I found out about Scientology from this Nelson Sandy, and Frank Ogle was the guy. I took David down one day, and I said, is there anything you can do for David with Scientology auditing,

which is basically another word for counseling. He took David in, and 45 minutes later, Dave comes out. I say, how's it going? He says, dad, I'm handled. And he never had another severe attack in his entire youth. How is that possible? With communication.

With communication, you can stop asthma? You come to the point where you have a realization, maybe where it started or how you could be contributing to it or maybe where it starts kicking in. How old was he when you brought him in there? I guess this was, he was about nine years old. Wow. Yeah. Okay. So like what, what tools did they use to help him kick asthma?

That communication. But what do you mean? Like the just communication, like, hi, what's, what's, what's going on? You got asthma? That's communication. Like what do you mean by communication? Okay. like hi what's what's what's going on you got asthma that's communication like what you mean by communication okay he did you used what's called creative processing which is something that they used to use and what it is is you figure out how you could be contributing to that and then you do a mental image picture of something that you think you're doing to contribute to that and back and forth it's a

little for me to try to explain it in a little session like this it's a little hard because well it's a little hard to understand but it did work on him so you're saying in some sense asthma may be psychosomatic and maybe in your head for him it was to that degree yes i am saying he never got asthma again he never had a severe attack again he had minor attacks but he was able to stop them with these he used to get attacked so bad that it would debilitate him i mean he was out of school for a week one time with an asthmatic attack this is before we i ever took him to see frank ogle and um that impressed me the fact that this this handled that for the moment anyway so with that and some other things i decided i'm going to get my whole family in scientology because look his whole life that was a problem for me to handle. And this, at least at that moment, got him to the point where he was like in charge of it.

It didn't happen to him again that severe. Mm-hmm. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does make sense. Yeah. So that's what persuaded you to begin. Quite a bit. So everything was good for a while.

Right. I got in. I'll tell you how good it was. I got in, and my whole family got in. I'll tell you how good it was. I got in and my whole family got in. I decided to take my whole family to England. And in 1972, I moved there for a year and three months and had the whole family study Scientology. In England? 1974, study more Scientology. When I was there that time, I got a recording deal with the Polydor Company, solo album. And I got a writer's contract with Chappell's Publishing, and I got asked to play on BBC. All this is in the book, by the way. I'll give you details on it.

So this was all while L. Ron Hubbard was alive? While he was alive, yeah. Did you meet him? Never met him. Nope. But your son did? Listen, my son joined the Sea Organization when he was 16 years old. Within seven months, he was working with L. Ron Hubbard.

What is the Sea Organization? Explain that to people. Okay. There are several different ways that you could do Scientology. The number one way would be is if you're a public person and you just go into an organization. They're called orgs. You go in and you buy services, but you live in the outside world. You have a job, you have a home, you know, all these things, but you pay for a service. That's number one. Another level would be that you worked for an organization and you could sign a two and a half year or a

five-year contract to work there and you would like billion year contracts too well now what you're getting ahead of it that's public that's a working for an organization on the level of a two and a half or a five-year contract the last last step would be the C organization. There you sign a billion-year contract. In other words, you're signing away your future lives to get this Scientology disseminated. Has anybody ever challenged one of those billion-year contracts? Like, what does it mean? Like, do you owe them anything for a billion years?

Listen, you're getting the skinny. And as hard as this is to believe, once you're in it for a while and you see that this is helping you and maybe your family, the point of it is that they want to get this disseminated to every man, woman, and child on the planet and improve life for everybody. So it's like you're on this crusade to get it disseminated. So they believe they're doing this to help people. Yes. All sounds good, right? All sounds good in the beginning. Well, it reads better than it lives. It's not that way at all though. Well, how is it? How is it? I'll tell you. These days, right now, like? Sure. They get people to donate money to what's called

International Association of Scientologists or donate money to build an organism i mean build a new church someplace and they give you a piece of paper and commend you you know it's a nice business low overhead you know so you give them money they give you paper they give you a commendation or saying you're the some level right you're you're you've achieved the thing is look they've opened a lot of new buildings but joe there's not people in there there's air okay but they say we're expanding they're expanding their real estate interests but they're not expanding the number of people in scientology why is that well if you go on the internet you can find out all the abuses they've done like people going bankrupt because they had to contribute so much money they get a second and and third mortgage on their house, give it to the church, they can't

afford it, they have to declare bankruptcy. People being disconnected from their families. Let's talk about that. I want to go back to the Sea Org thing for a second, but then let's talk about that. Yeah. So the Sea Org thing is your son joins the Sea Org when he's 16 years old? Yeah. Here's what happened.

I came home from work one day, and he's laying in his room on his bed, kind of like that, with his head in his hands. I said, hey, Dave, what's up, man? He says, Dad, I don't want to go to school anymore. I said, why not? He said, listen, all the kids are taking drugs. They just, they don't show the teachers any respect. They're not willing to learn anything.

He says, I want to join the Sea Org. I want to help L. Ron Hubbard. Because by this time, we've been to England twice. He's trained to be an auditor. An auditor is a person who applies this technology of Scientology in auditing or counseling, okay? And he says, this is what I want to do. Well, I thought to myself, he's 15, he's going to be 16 shortly. Look, when I was 17, I joined the Marines.

My dad had a sign for me because I was only 17, and it probably was one of the best moves I ever made. I mean, the first night in boot camp, I said to myself, this is the worst fucking mistake I've ever made in my life. At that moment, 12 weeks later, I said to myself, this is the worst fucking mistake I've ever made in my life. At that moment, 12 weeks later, I said to myself, I can make myself do anything. And in that 12 weeks, it turned me from an undisciplined civilian into a disciplined Marine. And I've utilized that my whole life. It's helped me always.

I kind of looked at that and I thought, well, I was 17. Maybe it looked like I didn't know what the hell I was doing, but I came out a winner. And if David wants to do this, and what is he going to get out of going to school? And he has no desire to do anything else. I was okay. I'll help you. So that was it. So when he was 16, the next day we put him on a plane, he went down to the Flag Land Base in Florida. And as I say, within, I think it was seven or eight months, he was working right with L. Ron Hubbard out in California. Now, the Sea Org, like, is it a boat? You're actually on a boat?

No. in 1967, Ron started what he called the Sea Project, where he bought this ship and invited people to come with him to contribute to this project, saying that his research could be done better away from

landmasses. I mean, in fact, the law was after him. Oh, right. It was a tax thing, right? Yeah, I mean, they were trying to snag him. And when you're out in international waters, they can't serve you a subpoena. But it was such an adventure story. Right. It's clever.

Look it. Plus, you get to wear a captain's outfit. No, not everybody. He got to, right? Oh, yeah. Admiral, not captain. Did he give himself medals? L. Ron Hubbard yeah you know I never saw

that all I saw was that he was considered the commodore but you remember the peace corps yes all right now that was an adventure and people would go on that sure but they actually were doing something though right what was the Sea Org doing well the Sea Org was on this ship and they'd have people come there for advanced level services get that and they would send missions out to various organizations to correct any outnesses in the way maybe they were delivering the technology or or fix something that was going wrong it was run like a little uh military organization and then the sea org went ashore and they established the Flag Land Base in Clearwater, Florida.

So that is still referred to as flag. Yeah, when L. Ron Hubbard had the ships, that was considered the flagship. Okay. Am I filling you in enough on this? Yeah. So he joined that. He ascended through the ranks.

He's working with L. Ron Hubbard. Yeah. And slowly you guys get disconnected. Is that what happens? No. As a matter of fact, when he was doing that, we were still in very good communication with each other. Like, I'm telling you something. We had a lot of great times together when he was growing up.

No two ways about it. And I can't say that it was like bad relationship in any way. There was a guy by the name of Lord Acton. He was a Britisher. He was a member of parliament. He lived from 1834 to early 1900s. He's the one that made the observation, power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely and i think this is what happened to david that when l ron hubbard died he saw a chance to move up and he got people out of the way who didn't want to cooperate with him put people on various posts that would cooperate with him and he took over the ownership and the leadership of Scientology.

And what contributed to that was an incident where he had a severe asthmatic attack, and they had to take him to the emergency room of a hospital. Paul Grady is the guy that took him there. And when Paul picked him up after they did the stuff, they handled him, he was okay, David said to Paul, listen, I had a great realization when I was there, and it's this. Power is not granted. It is assumed. So he assumed the leadership of Scientology, and he rose right to the top.

That's how that happened. So how did you get disconnected from him? happened. So how did you get disconnected from him? Well, look, there was an event that he had, not an event. There's something that he did, which he'll always be admired for. He actually got the Church of Scientology tax exemption. All right. He literally got the IRS to grant the fact that this is a church. You have now a tax exemption. People contribute to it, can deduct it. That was a very, very big win. That then gave him power, okay? I decided to join the Sea Organization in 1985. I wanted to contribute to doing whatever I could to help him. I joined the Sea Organization, and I'm at the Hammett base you know

I'm coming out of the music studio because since I was a musician I worked in the music studio and we did films I composed music for various technical films we had or public relations films and I walked out of the studio one day and I saw him a little distance off to the left with an entourage

and I yelled out hey Dave and he turned around and he looked at me and I'm telling you distance off to the left with an entourage. And I yelled out, Hey, Dave. And he turned around and he looked at me. And I'm telling you, Joe, he gave me a look that I thought I better never do that again. On that base, I was then a staff member. The fact that I was biologically his father, and in fact, his father, he referred to me as Ron when he spoke to me. When he sent me a gift for my birthday or Christmas or something, he always said, dear dad. But that was the beginning.

Now, the further on down the road we got, the more it became, I used to have to call him sir after a while, okay? It became more and more me, Ron Miscavige, the staff member and David, the leader of the church. Once they started implementing the rules at the base where you couldn't send a letter out without it being checked, where you surrounded with barbed wire pointing in and pointing out. You couldn't talk on a telephone without having somebody listen. You couldn't drive off on your own to go to a store to get a fucking pair of underwear. You had to order it on the internet. If you got on the internet, there was a filter on it

where anything about Miscavige or Scientology come up, you'd be blocked. So now I'm living a sequestered life, waking up in the morning, going to breakfast at 9 o'clock, 9.30 having a muster. You know what a muster is? No. Okay. You line up your people and account for everybody. All right. 12 o'clock, go to lunch.

12.30, line up for another muster. Go to work in the afternoon. Five o'clock, go to dinner. 5.30, go to another muster and work the rest of the night. Or sometimes 9.30 or 10 o'clock, have another muster. That was my life, seven days a week, except on Saturday you'd work on the grounds to beautify the base. Doesn't sound like a good time, Ron. It's a great existence, Joe. Is it? How would you like to live that way?

It doesn't sound good. It wasn't good. Were you stuck? Well, here's the thing. There were enough times when I did things that were good, like we would do an album. And as a matter of fact, here's something that we didn't. I first got in, and there was a book that came out called Mission Earth that L. Ron Hubbard wrote. Edgar Winner.

You remember Edgar Winner or no? Edgar Winner, Johnny Winner's brother? Yes. The musician? The musician, the rock guy. Yeah. Okay, Edgar came to the bass, and we did an album. I played on the album with him.

Edgar Winner came to the, wow. Yeah, he was a Scientologist. He was? He probably still is. Wow. One of them's dead, right? Johnny's dead? Yeah, Johnny's dead.

But Edgar, I mean, he was, you have no idea how good he is until you see him operate in the studio. Anyway, I played the trumpet parts on the album. I played solos and some of the stuff. The album, that was, you have no idea how good he is until you see him operate in a studio. Anyway, I played the trumpet parts on the album. I played solos and some of the stuff. The album, that was what I did. And it was a great time. Bust your ass working, but that's a good time. Right.

Isaac Hayes. I used to do gigs with him. You know, of course you know how Isaac Hayes is. Great guy. And those were fun times. There were other things that we did that turned out good. But then there's time in between where you're working sometimes days on end. OK, a couple of days, no sleep, working your ass off.

And if you screwed up, it was hell to pay. What kind of work is being done? What is all the work? OK, I'll give you an example. There's about six major events that are done by the church every year. There's the, in New Year's, there's a major event, okay? And then in March, you have L. Ron Hubbard's birthday. And then in May, you have Dianetics, all right? What do you guys do for L. Ron's birthday? Well, there would be an event where you would show him in various aspects of life,

improving life in some aspect, and we'd have a video on that, and we would have to write music for that. Sidney would have to shoot the pictures or take old pictures and produce these, edit them. We'd do music for it, and we'd have a product at an event. When David's doing the event they could present this for uh when the the anniversary of dianetics modern science of mental health that was another event okay and then so you're preparing for events essentially all the time it went you'd end one you'd have to start the next one in june you have the anniversary of the maiden voyage

that was something we did every year. And then there's auditor's day in August. All right. And then there's the international association of Scientology event in October. So all this time, you're just constantly working. You're never hanging out with your son. You don't, you don't have any quality time together. Sometimes he would come to the base for two months and wouldn't even give me a phone call. Look, Joe, you got to understand, I wish the fuck this didn't turn out this way, okay? Just straight up. So do you feel responsible in any way for bringing him in?

Well, everybody deals with life the way they deal with it. My other son isn't that way and my daughters aren't that way. Is your other son Scientology as well? He's out of Scientology now. Did he quit with you? He quit earlier than me. And what about your daughters? They're out of Scientology now. Did he quit with you? He quit earlier than me. And what about your daughters? They're in. They're in? Yes. And are you disconnected from them? They're disconnected from me. Right. You're not allowed to, they're not allowed to talk to

you. Well, here's what happens though. If they were to talk to me, their friends would disconnect from them. If you have a job with a Scientology employer and they found out that you talked to me, you'd get fired that day. It's insidious. It spreads out. The penalty for talking to what's called a suppressive person, which would be me, like a real-life prick. As an example, when I was 70 years old, David and my two daughters bought me a car. Okay? A car.

When I was 75 years old, my daughter sent me 75 gifts. Now I left. Now I'm the worst father who's ever lived. I'm a slime ball. They character assassinate me on their hate sites. They would give a car to somebody who was that bad. Oh, we made a mistake. He really was a prick all along. It doesn't make sense. So if you're trying to make sense out of it, it doesn't make sense. But this is built into the policy of Scientology. Anybody who leaves and says anything about the church could be considered to be a suppressive person. And was this always the case or has this been exacerbated? Well, L. Ron Hubbard wrote the policies while he was alive. He also wrote more fiction

than anybody that's ever lived does everybody know that inside the church they probably do yeah does anybody make that connection no the guy wrote more fake shit than any person that's ever walked the face

of the earth but he also had the time to talk to the aliens to get all this data yeah to write this real stuff that is just that is uh that's that's a suspension of disbelief that yeah defies logic well as it defies understanding, I should say. As I said earlier- Maybe I just need to get to a higher OTC. What is it? Is that it? OT levels. OT?

OT levels. Operating Thetan levels. Oh, okay. But you got to understand, most people who do it don't have rocks in their head. They're not nuts. They're not stupid people. No, I've talked- I had a neighbor who's a Scientologist.

He's a very nice guy. Yeah. And he sort of fit that bill that I was talking about earlier. Sure, go ahead. He fit that bill that I was talking about earlier where he's a guy that's always improving himself, he's healthy, exercised, he's well kept, he

was a nice neighbor. He's a good guy. And, you know, I was like, alright. I sort of looked into Scientology after I became friends with him. You know, I mean, I got the book early on, like I said, but I never really did anything other than read the book. I never looked into, this is before the internet, you know, the internet sort of exposed all

this stuff. That was the end of it. Yeah. That literally is the end of Scientology. And how much has it dropped off since then? Well, it's been estimated by people who would know that there's maybe 20,000 Scientologists right now. What was it at its peak?

I think it was in the early 90s, about 100,000. Wow. Yeah. 20,000. That's like a good Louis C.K. concert. Well, the thing is, most people at that international base are people who have been around for 25, 30, 35, 40 years. Right. And you think, okay, how could you live this way?

Look, most people are not going to do what I do. I was 76 years old when I left. Okay. And you were 75 when they gave you 75 gifts. So you're like, this is not enough. I got to get the fuck out of here. No. You mean not enough gifts?

I should have gotten 76, right? Yeah. Listen, I was this. Well, actually, I'll tell you something that happened. And I brought this just to show you. And you have a little. What is that? It's a Kindle.

Okay. Are you allowed to have those in there? No. Really? You can't have a Kindle? And I didn't know why. I didn't know why. What happened is this.

David gave me this Kindle. All right? And he's like, shh. And the security guards were doing their nut trying to get it away from me. But they wouldn't come and strong arm me because David is the man. So David gave it to you and the security guards are trying to take it away from you. Why? Okay, I didn't know.

Did you tell him it was loaded up with L. Ron Hubbard books? Well, it was. It was his fiction books that he put in there for me. Battlefield Earth? No, not Battlefield Earth, nor Mission Earth. But the other earlier fiction was in there. Oh, okay. Which I thought was pretty interesting.

But anyway, they're trying to get this. Hey, fuck you, man. Dave gave me this. This is mine, you know. Okay, Ron, they back off. Now, one day, I'm reading something, and there's a feature on here where you see this. Is the camera on that now? Yeah.

Okay. You see this little switch here? Mm-hmm. That goes this way, this way, up, Yeah. Okay. You see this little switch here that goes this way, this way, up, down, and in. So if you got a word that you'd like to look up and get the meaning of, you'd go to the library or not the library, the dictionary, and you'd select the word and press it to the right. and it would say search store. I accidentally held it a little bit too long, and it went right past search store to Google. I was on the Internet with no filter.

With your Kindle. With my Kindle. I went, what the fuck is this? You didn't even know about the Google back then? I knew about the Google, but there was filter on all their computers. Oh, but you could go through it with that. There's no filter on this. Wow.

And that's why the security guards were trying to get it. But they wouldn't tell me that. Obviously, they're not going to say, well, there's no filter so you can get on the Internet. I mean, these guys weren't that swift. They weren't the sharpest knives in the drawer. But how did they know then? How did they know about that feature? They're the ones who, if you get a computer, you give it to them, they put a filter on it, and then they give it back to you.

Okay. So they just never. So they got some techno geeks who knew how to do that shit. But they had never done that to the Kindle. But they wanted to. Well, they wanted to take it away from me straight up. So did you start Googling stuff with your Kindle? I looked at Google.

Now, this is the first time I've told this story, by the way, Joe. This is an exclusive, you know. Oh, I'm excited. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you. One of the things I looked at was like L. Ron Hubbard's war record. He was not a hero. He didn't have two purple hearts.

This is a fucking made-up story. Yeah. And there was a girl named Annie Tidman who was with L. Ron Hubbard when he died. Annie Tidman was a messenger with L. Ron Hubbard since she was a little girl. And she was with him when he actually died. So Annie was a long term loyal Scientologist. She's at the base where I lived in Hammett and she got lung cancer. So they sent her to Los Angeles to get care and they sent a girl down to be like a personal servant to take care of her needs so she'd be okay. So occasionally I would

say to Martine, who's the medical liaison officer. In other words, she took care of our health and she'd have us go to the doctors and stuff. I said, Martine, how's Annie doing? Oh, Ronnie, she's doing great. Yeah. Okay, good. I'm on a Kindle. She died six months earlier.

Never told anybody on the base. Now we're living in these apartments on the base. This is several days later. And there was a building called the laundry room where you took your clothes to get cleaned and pressed. You picked up sheets, little amenities like that. And there's two girls outside the laundry room. And they said, Ronnie, would you want to chip in for a birthday present for Annie? I said, nah, I'm going to pass on it now. And they thought, Jesus Christ. I said, nah, I'm going to pass on it now. And they thought, Jesus Christ.

They either know and they're keeping up the ruse or they don't know. And they're being used as shields to make sure people think she's still alive. Well, that was a major thing for me. I then started to think I got to get out of here. Mind you, I thought earlier things were starting to go south and we would have, I'll give you an example. Here's what happened. We're on the ship and we're playing for a show at one of these maiden voyages, uh, anniversary things. And we have a guy there who's, uh, anniversary things and we have a guy there who's uh no he's not a rap artist but he's like a beat box you know you know he can use his voice yeah like that you know so now dougie's up there and

then he starts saying you know he says i'll tell you my kid was picked up by the cops the other day but he's not really a bad kid you know he's hanging out with the wrong guys and blah blah blah and he's all saying this shit that you don't say to this exclusive audience. David hears that. To handle this, me and the rest of the band were sent to work in the bilges on the ship. Because he fucked up, we paid the price. What I should have done was kicked in the band, because I was directing the band, kicked in the band and start playing

the music and drowned them out. You go into builds, the temperature down there is between 125 and 130 degrees. I'm in my 60s. Doesn't matter. Shit like that would go on. So when things like that would happen,

I thought, man, we can't live this way. But my wife, Becky, she is an eternal optimist. She would always say, Ron, it's going to get better. It can't keep on going this way. And I'd say, Becky, listen, if you see a boulder rolling down a mountain, that boulder is not going to stop and start rolling up. It's going to get worse. If things are going bad, they have a tendency to continue going bad. It's just fantastic to me that you found out all this information on Google.

Yeah. And that you were shielded from all this stuff. Yeah. That's the craziest part. And you were 75 at the time? Somewhere in that range? I was in my 70s in that time. I think it was two years later that we actually escaped.

So how did you escape? I think it was two years later that we actually escaped. So how did you escape? Well, first of all, I used to run the music department. And when I say run it, you know, I'd make sure we did all the jobs we were supposed to do. And I would compose music. I worked with a guy by the name of Peter Schless. And we had some nice shit that we did together.

So at this point, you'd been in for how many years? 40 years? No, in the Sea Organization over 20-some years. 20-something years in the Sea Organization and all in all Scientology, much more than that. Yeah. Well, I was in Scientology for 42 years. This is your only source of income. Yeah, it's 50. Well, to begin with, when I got in, we got 30 bucks a week.

And then- Generous. What's that? Generous. Well, it went up to 50. It went up to 50 then. Oh, it's a big raise. When you got paid.

When you got paid. When you got paid. Sometimes you go for months without getting paid at all. Now, the downside of that is you ain't paying much into Social Security. So, if you leave like some of these people leave they got shit for social security they may have no no place to go no marketable skill uh no car what are they going to do right so that you know people just stay they stay they gut it out and that's in the position that you were in what what made you decide okay well just the google information no no it was the

treatment the way people were being treated and some of the shit that went down like so you would you've been okay if they treated you well and you still found out that that woman had been dead for six months that l ron harvard wasn't really a warrior but i'll tell you why if they had been actually disseminating this information and people on this planet were doing better and life was becoming better for large numbers of people, I don't know if I still might be there. In other words, if you could do something. So if Scientology was really being effective and doing what you thought it was supposed to do. Precisely. Which is help humanity.

Precisely. Do you think that at the core that its potential to help humanity is still there? You think that like you were saying that the beginning stages of Scientology are beneficial and there is something? Like if they got all these beneficial things and just offered those. The odds of that happening, the odds now I'm talking about, would be the same odds as me turning into a penguin right now. It's not likely to happen. Not so likely. Not very likely.

Maybe, you know. And your son, he's going to be running it forever? There's absolutely nobody who's going to take over. Is it an election? No fucking election. He runs it and that's the end of it. He's surrounded by people, I guess you'd call them psychophants or sycophants. Sycophants, yeah.

Who just pump him up all the time. And if he says, you know who would like to have such and such, maybe he might want a different car. They'll go out and get it for him. What are those people like? What are the people like that surround him, that enable him to maintain this power? They feel that he is a power source and they support him a power source because he's the he runs the organization well yeah because he got his tax exemption uh he'll do things he's tough uh he's he's actually david is a very smart guy

if it weren't for this streak in him where he attained all this power and had this shit going on in Scientology. Who knows? I think he could be successful at anything. Well, I believe that as well. I think anybody who gets to, I mean, it's really unfortunate, but anybody gets to any, even a position of being like a drug kingpin, like Pablo Escobar, I'm sure he could have been successful at other things had he decided to focus his mind in that direction. You're exactly right.

And that's how I feel. So you feel like your son just fucked up in getting on a path that is, in your eyes, illegitimate versus him being a CEO of IBM or something like that. You could say that. You could say that. And I'll tell you, I think you would be correct. Not I think. You would be.

Have you ever talked to him about Scientology? You don't bring it up. You don't bring it up. No. I mean, look. Take anybody with that much power. Do you think you can sit down and say, now, look, what I think is, what the fuck are you talking to me about?

I'm running this fucking show. Yeah, but if it's your dad, I would think you would just sit down. I didn't have that line with him. I'm telling you. No. Listen, if you're a Scientologist and you're at that level, you are of the belief that no spiritual being is another spiritual being's mother or father or daughter or sister. You happen to be occupying a body that maybe was given to you by another person but in your heart you're actually an independent thinking life unit an immortal one to boot okay right okay but let me

ask you this do people really believe that or do they just kind of go along with it because everybody else is going along with it is it deserving is there ever a time where you're alone with somebody else in the C-Org and maybe you're setting up some video or something like that and someone goes, hey man, is this shit on the up and up? Very seldom. Very seldom. But what does happen? I'll tell you why.

The walls over yours? Fuck no. You're telling this to somebody, they might write a knowledge report on you. A knowledge report? Now you're in deep shit, okay? Jamie, I'm writing a knowledge report on you. A knowledge report. Now you're in deep shit. Okay. Jamie, I'm writing a knowledge report. No.

As soon as we leave here. Okay. Listen. Okay. You might laugh, but boy, when it's happened, it's serious shit. Listen, I'm sure. And if it's found out later that he said this to you and you didn't write a knowledge report, you are as culpable as he is for saying that.

And what happens to you? Somebody writes a knowledge report? You go in for interrogation. Oh. What that. And what happens to you? Somebody writes a knowledge report? You go in for interrogation. Oh, what do they do? They talk to you? Sit you down in a meter. Tell you what are your crimes. What evil purpose

do you have toward David? What evil purpose do you have toward L. Ron Hubbard? What thoughts have you had about leaving? What thoughts have you had about destroying the organization? Anything of a harmful nature.

But what if you say, man, fuck this place? Do they kick you out? No. So how does that work? What if you get there, what if someone writes a knowledge report and you go, you know what, man? I've been thinking. I got on Google.

I started reading a bunch of stuff. I think it's all bullshit. I don't even want to be here anymore, man. And fuck all this working for 50 bucks a week. This is stupid. I don't want to do this anymore. Why are we all doing this? Why don't we just take the beginning parts of this and just get rid of all the stupid shit about separating from your children and

make this thing better? What do you say? What would they do to you? Well, first of all, you wouldn't dare do that if you were at a place like I was, at the international base, which is Golden Air Productions in Hammett, California. Wow. What would they do to you? They'd seize you. And then what happens?

And you'd be sequestered from the rest of the group, put into a place where you weren't associating with the rest of the group. Right. You'd go to lunch at a different time. You'd have a security guard watching you morning, afternoon, and night. And you can never leave? That's right. What if you say, I just want to go home?

I want to get out of here. I want to go get an apartment somewhere. Can't do it, man. You just can't do it. You'd be kept. It'd fucking physically keep you. It'd physically hold you down. Physically hold you back.

Put you in a jail. Put you in a jail. And if the church, well, I'm sure they're going to hear this, but they're going to say, oh, Ron could have left any time he could. That's bullshit. That's complete bullshit. If I would have been caught when I was trying to leave, which I'm going to get into. I didn't forget we were talking about that.

If I would have been caught, they would have taken me and Becky, taken the keys to my car. I would have been sequestered from her. She'd been sequestered from me. We would have both been security checked. Sit down with the hands on an e-meter, which I'm sure you know what it is.

Yeah, I did one of those once. I don't really think it works you don't think it works sometimes it does okay but that's not the point you'd sit down with that and be interrogated and then you'd work maybe four or five hours away at some manual labor and when you weren't doing that you'd be back on the on the cans again as they say what if you don't work what if you're like fuck you i don't want to work yeah like a difficult bastard right yeah like what's ever happened what's that is anybody ever You'd be back on the cans again, as they say. What if you don't work? What if you're like, fuck you, I don't want to work? Yeah, like a difficult bastard, right? Yeah, like what's ever happened? Has anybody ever rebelled? I mean, it's human nature to rebel against authority.

Yeah, but- There's a certain amount of human nature to succumb, but- But when you're up at a place where you have three or 400 people who feel differently, you're not that brave, okay? Does anybody ever have the gumption or the notion to go, hey, what the fuck are we doing? Does that ever happen? Okay.

Maybe. Well, no. What they do is they escape like I did. That's it? Yeah. They don't speak up? Well, if they speak up, they know what they're in for. Right.

They know what they're in for. Who the fuck? Here, there was a guy named Alex. He wanted to route out. It took him four fucking years to route out. Route out? That's what they call it, wouldn't you? That's the proper way to leave, where you sit down and you do this routing for him.

It's basically security checking you until you're, you know, for years. So once you... Say if you sign a five-year contract. Yeah. Would you say there's... Is that possible? A five-year contract? You would be at an outer org.

There, you just walk out of the fucking place, and people do that. An outer org. But you can't do that at the Sea Org. Well, not—you could in Los Angeles. But at the international base, you're living on a compound. You're surrounded with barbed wire pointing in and pointing out. You're not going to jump that fence fence or you'll really screw yourself up. I understand.

But if you say, say if you sign a five-year contract, when the fifth year is up, you get to leave? Yeah. Okay. They're going to try to get you to reenlist, okay? But if you're at, let's say you're working at one of the organizations in L.A., okay? Okay. You can walk out in the street and say, hey, see you later. What are they going to do? Because you're in the free world. You're in the. Okay. Okay. You can walk out in the street and say, Hey, see you later. What are they going to do? Because you're, you're in the free world. You're in the free world. You're not in the free

world at the international base. I understand. All right. So you had to plot some sort of an out. So you had to think about it and then you had to work with the wife and you guys had to like, hush, hush. Right. And you asked me what led to that? Well, there's one major thing that led to it. And that was this. We got a new music director. I didn't want to have the post anymore. I was getting old and got this young guy. And I would write melodies all day, all week, months.

Every melody I ever wrote was rejected by him. In other words, everything I was doing was a piece of shit but i couldn't quit so this new guy was not fun to work with terrible it was terrible i was the only one who had gotten a recording contract on my own steam nobody gave it to me i didn't have a rich daddy or something, a contract with Chappell's Publishing for my writing and asked to play on the BBC. Nobody had achieved that in that department. Now, maybe my skills weren't up to how they write modern music. And I used to beg him. I said, listen, what do you want as an acceptable particle?

I'm a trained musician. Give me some ideas what you want, and I'll start writing that. Fuck you. Learn it just like I did. This is how I was treated. Well, this doesn't sound like a fun time. So you couldn't talk to your son and say, hey, kid, listen, this fucking new guy sucks. Wait a minute.

I did that. I called him. And I didn't call him. I wrote to him. I said, Dave, you've got to get together with me. Right. So we got together. I said, look, I'm working all day long, and nothing I'm doing is being approved.

You've got to get me a different job. I said, I don't care if you get me a job waxing cars in motor pool, but I want to do something. So at the end of the day, you can say, here's what he did. Okay. Right. I get it. He says, I'll look into it. He never looked into it.

A couple months later, I said to Becky, look, we're getting the fuck out of here. Then we started planning. So what was your plan as far as like getting a job? Because you had been working there for 25 years? Well, I'm a good musician. I'm not just a punk. I mean, I play quite a bit of jobs in Milwaukee. So you had skills.

I have skills. Oh, yeah. I'm a good salesman, too. I also, here's how I look. Okay. I'm 76 years old. I want to spend the rest of my life suffering out every day. Fuck this.

Right. I'm getting out of here. Right. Got it. And Becky finally says, okay. And she saw the writing on the wall that it wasn't going to get better. Right. So now we don't want to leave and leave everything behind because what little possessions we had was what we had.

All right. So we started. By the way, I mentioned a little earlier that my daughter sent me 75 gifts on my 75th birthday. Right. Yeah. Becky came up with the idea. My mother is going to celebrate. By the way, my wife younger than me, my first wife.

I divorced from and married a much younger woman. So her mother is going to have her 70th birthday. So we decide to send her mother 70 gifts. Now, in order to do this, it has to go through the security guards. So we would send her like a detailing kit for a car i mean her chances of detailing a car as a gift were nil to none but they saw that okay we're sending her 70 gifts so it got through them we sent her our elrond hubbard library books that we had some other things and we got a lot of stuff out of there that i couldn't fit in the car when we were going. You see what I'm saying? Smart. And then after all was said and done, we got everything out of there.

We plotted it out. And I did this on Sunday mornings. On Sunday mornings, you had breakfast at nine o'clock. Now, we lived on the southern side of the base, and we lived in rooms. You couldn't have a refrigerator. You couldn't have a coffee maker there. But across the street on the north side, I worked in the studio. There was a refrigerator there, and I used to keep like Italian salami,

maybe super sat, some Parmesan cheese, Romano cheese. So early Sunday morning at 9 o'clock, and I planned this out because there's two gates. There's one main gate where there's a security guard sitting in a boot, and then down the road about 200 yards, there's another gate where there's a little camera, and they see you coming, and they got used to me going across to the north side to go to the studio, and I'd come back through the main gate and bring the

security guards a piece of cheese or salami so they thought hey Sunday morning he's going to get his goodies in other words I'm feeding the watchdogs this is set up right right so comes the day we're going to leave March 25th 2012 we get up real early and I had a little notebook I must have checked it 20 times, what I wanted to take, what I wanted to leave behind. Like the night before. And by the way, my biggest cover on being able to get out of there was the fact that I was 76 years old, and I was the father of the chairman of the board. Nobody would suspect that I was going to leave unauthorizedly. All right?

Okay. So I'm out with a mesh bag full of shoes putting in the car, and one of the security guards come by on his bicycle, an Italian guy, Sal. Hey, Ronnie, how you doing? Ah, good, you know. And he sees me putting this in,

but he justifies it in his mind. Oh, he's putting stuff in his car. Right. Doesn't think twice why I'm doing it. Of course. Another guy's coming by by an old-time scientologist i have a bag of clothes i'm putting in the car ronnie how's it going good deal norm yeah all right you know put it in the car so we got through all that okay so now sunday morning

nine o'clock we get in the car we're loaded up and we're driving down to get to that second gate is about a half mile down the road. We go there and I'm going past our mess hall where we would eat. And this is called Massacre Canyon Inn or MCI. It's where the crew would eat their meals. And I see the chase car, like on Sunday morning, there's only two security guards on duty. One is in the main boot and the other one is in a car so he can rove. And it's called a chase car. Okay. So the chase car is parked outside of the mess hall. I knew Sal was in there.

So I go around another 100 yards down the road, get to the gate. And by the way, at this point, my heart is in my throat. All right. Because when I hit that buzzer, if Juergen would have said, come up to the boot, that was it. I was fucked. Okay. Hit the buzzer, didn't say anything, the gate opens. I pulled out of the gate.

It says, Becky, we're turning left. So I turned left, jammed the throttle, and I knew I had to make it down to these. There's three roads. One goes to Route 60, straight ahead, rather. The other one goes to Route 10, and if I turn left, I go in the hammock. I knew by the time I'm going down the road, and he was trying to get me in the next tail run, what the hell are you doing?

Then he'd call Sal. Sal, get up to the booth pronto. I know Sal would have to run out, get in the car. I'd already be at those crossroads or the tree roads. So I knew when Sal came, he'd either turn right or go straight ahead. I turned left, went in the Hammett. We hit the boondocks and I was free. Wow.

So what did you do then? We drove to Wisconsin. Did you have money on you? Yeah, I had money on me. And I paid for everything cash, Joe. You only get 50 bucks a week. How long did you save money? Well, I was also getting Social Security, so I would salt on me. And I paid for everything cash, Joe. You only get 50 bucks a week. How long did you save money? Well, I was also getting Social Security, so I would salt that away.

Very low amount, by the way. Right, because you weren't making much money. Yeah, it's just bullshit. Right. But anyway, I paid for gas with cash. We ate for cash. We stayed in a motel two nights. I paid cash.

Because you couldn't use your credit cards because they'd be able to track you. Exactly. So when you finally surfaced, how'd you surface? I went to her mother's place. And then what happens then? Did they try to get you? How does that work? Well, here's what happens.

No, believe me. Do they try to bring you back? You know, look, Ron, it's been a big misunderstanding. Oh, here's how it went. About two weeks later, we're sitting in her mother's house, and it's a split level where there's an upstairs and downstairs in the kitchen. The window was almost level with the ground. You know how a split level goes?

And I'm looking out the window. We're having breakfast coffee, and I see this girl outside, Marion. And I thought, fuck, okay, they found me. So I went through the garage outside, and there's Greg Woolhair. And he says, ah, Ronnie, I guess you're surprised it took us so long to get here. Ha, ha, ha. We thought you were going to go to Lori's place. We never thought you'd come here.

Ha, ha, ha. Like nothing happened, you know? Right. So he says, okay. So I says, Greg, listen, you're just wasting your time. I'm not going back. And he says, Ron. I says, hey, I don't want to live that life, okay. So I said, Greg, listen, you're just wasting your time. I'm not going back. And he says, Ron, I says, hey, I don't want to live that life, man. It was a terrible fucking life.

I'm not doing it again. He says, you blew. That's a term they use if you leave without authorization. And he pulled out this policy. It's called leaving and leaves. And what it says. Leaving and leaves? Leaving and leaves. That it says leaving in leaves leaving and leaves that's the

name of it and what it says in there substantially is this the only reason a person leaves a group is because they have committed harmful acts against the group and they want to remove themselves so they don't keep on committing harmful acts against the group. How convenient. No shit. You can't just leave because you want to leave. You have to be a bad guy. Or the fact that you're working maybe 12, 14, 16 hours a day, sometimes not going to sleep for three days. But you got that raise to 50 bucks a week.

I shouldn't have done it. It's a nice raise. So what do you do then when you say you're not going back? Well, they try to convince me, and it got to the point, and it says, guys, you're wasting your time. I am not going back. And I went in town, and I saw them a couple times, and they says, come on, we'll take you out to a nice place to eat.

We'll take you to a movie. Like they're going to schmooze me into going back to live that life. Greg says to me, Ronnie, look, you can go to Flag. You'll have your own apartment. You have a kitchen. We know you like to cook. And then you can train some of the guys at a cell. You can play with the band down there.

I said, Greg, you're out of your fucking mind. You get me down there, it's going to be the same thing. No, it won't, Ronnie. It went on. So do you think they were just trying to bullshit you? Not who I think, absolutely. So if you got there, there'd be no apartment. They'd punish you right out of the knowledge report.

You can't do this. Yeah. Why do they want you to stay? Why do they give a fuck if you leave? That's what I don't understand. Because I would be what they consider to be a sensitive particle. Like these guys that were following me. Sensitive particle?

A particle. Oh, here's what I mean by that. Like Dwayne Powell and Daniel Powell. Well, I was a father of the chairman of the board. Right. That's a blight. I mean. Did you ever talk to your son after this?

I tried to call him once. I tried to call him after I found out the PIs were following me. And after I heard that he got on the phone and said, if he dies, let him die. Don't intervene. Don't do anything. This is what you heard, right? Well, you can hear it, too. There's a recording tony ortega's yeah absolutely tony ortega underground bunker and you can hear these interviews okay okay they're as public as you're gonna get but

you don't hear his actual words no okay so there's really no reason that this guy would make up that story because people do make things up right well okay let's put it this way. But I'm just playing devil's advocate. You can play devil's advocate. The father was interrogated to begin with. He told the same story. The son came in later, didn't have a chance to talk to his father, told the same story. Okay. So you haven't had a chance to talk to your son? I called and an attorney got on the phone and said, Ron, David won't talk to you. He doesn't feel he could trust you. Now, let me ask you this.

Yeah. As a father, because I'm a father and you're a father, the idea of being estranged from your kids in that way, where your kid hates you and your kid doesn't want anybody to save you if you die, do you feel any remorse? Do you feel like in any way you fucked up? Do you ever look at your life and go, how did I lose my connection with my son?

Listen, it's written in policy to do what David did. There's a policy that says, listen, somebody who leaves. I understand that entirely, but I'm talking about as a human being. As a human being. As a human being, I thought it was terrible because we had a good life together. But do you feel any responsibility? Do you feel like there's anything you could have done differently? Yeah, not get him in Scientology.

That's it? Yeah. Do you feel like once he got into Scientology, it's not your fault? He lives his life. He's the one who got the power to do all these things. I understand, but you raised him, right? I mean whatever connection and bond you developed with a great life together when you don't have to that didn't carry forth in some way You know I'm saying I mean obviously I'm not in Scientology and obviously I was not in your situation Yeah

but I can't imagine that you must you you must have gone over it and looked at your communications with him and wondered if maybe if you extended yourself more, if you talked more. Is there something you could have done that would have prevented any of this? Joe, you're dreaming. I don't mind telling you that. Please do. I'm doing it with all respect, okay? Because you do good interviews. I've seen you do other interviews, and I'm happy you got me on the show.

No, I couldn't have done anything different except maybe not get him in Scientology. So you feel like once he was corrupted. Listen, there's policy that L. Ron Hubbard wrote. And David loved L. Ron Hubbard, and he applies the policy to a team. Does David believe all that stuff? Does he believe in the- Well, he's got to. There's a policy called fair game.

Are you familiar with that? No. What's that? Fair game. If somebody goes against the church or talks out against the church and they're declared a suppressive person, he can be lied to, tricked to, and destroyed

with no punishment on the person who did it. But that's not what I mean. What I mean is the really crazy stuff, like the stuff that sounds like science fiction about like the Thetans and dropping them in a volcano and the hydrogen bomb and all that stuff. Does everybody believe that stuff? I think a lot of people do believe it. Is it discussed? No, you don't discuss that.

No one discusses it. No one discusses it. So when you're sitting around the Sea Org? But no, let's get back to what's pertinent to this, and that's the policy, how to operate as a group. That one, the fair game policy, is written. And by the way, just to satisfy you, I'll send you soft copies if you can give me an email. No, no, it's okay. It's okay.

Okay, here's another one. If a person does this, find or manufacture data about the person. Okay, so once you've become their enemy, you left them. They're going to fucking ruin you. You left them. You're the dad of the chairman of the board. You're a sensitive particle. You got a real problem.

That's right. Okay. So you said they took out a bunch of different website addresses. Not a bunch of different website addresses like not a bunch 500 in other words they got 500 iterations of my name variations so no matter what you put in and by the way i have a website which i did just did and it's called the real ron miscavige.com okay you could see my website but if you put any other thing in there you're going to get a hate site that tells you things about me that you think i was the worst person who ever lived did you write this book did what was the what was the motivation did you want to make money or absolutely not i wanted to

help but you didn't make money right you made some money yeah but that isn't the reason of writing a book the reason the right the only reason i'd write a book. Well, not me. The hundreds of families that are disconnected from their kids. I understand. And listen, I knew if I. And by the way, what led me to write it was not even him saying, if he dies, let him die. I then took a CD with these interrogations on of Daniel Powell and Dwayne Powell. And my wife and I drove down to Florida to see my daughters.

And I was going to play these for them because now they're disconnected from me. So I went to my daughter's daughter, Lori's place. She's not home. I went to Denise's place. Her husband, Jerry, answered the door, answered the door about that far. And he's talking to me. I said, Jerry, I'd like to speak to Denise. Well, you can't because she's not here i said well look where is she because i gotta get in communication with her he says no you have to go to the church and handle it with the church

i said jerry for christ's sake and jerry's in as well yeah of course he is yeah they are if your wife's in you have to be in is that how it works it basically is yeah you've been so he said no you got to handle with them and i said it's a waste of time so i'm talking to him for about 20 minutes and i finally said jerry what's up what does this mean he's well i'll tell you why denise and i are through with you and becky forever that was it you know fuck you i'm gonna do a book and i'm gonna expose what you do to people because if i did a blog who am i i'm gonna get maybe a book and I'm going to expose what you do to people. Because if I did a blog, who am I? I'm going to get maybe a couple thousand people to look at this blog.

But a book I knew that I could get, and I was on 2020. I was on a Megyn Kelly show. I was on Late Night with Seth Meyers. So we got a lot of exposure, a lot of books. A lot of people are seeing what they did. And I'm just hoping enough people do this so they're going to drop that disconnection policy because that's a killer. So do you think if they drop the disconnection policy, maybe a lot of the other policies would be more tolerable? I think if they drop the disconnection policy and allowed you to talk to your family, listen, if they wanted to do Scientology and I could still talk to them,

I wouldn't give a shit. I'd say, fine, do what you want to do. Look. But wouldn't it bother you that they can't leave? No, they're public. Because they're not in the Sea Org. They're not in the Sea Org. Okay.

But you can't really leave if you're public. Like, was Leah Remini in the Sea Org? No, she's a public scientologist right but when she when she left she she took her whole family with her right so they didn't get a chance to you know pick them out and say look at you got it you got to disconnect from leah that is like one of the things that is like a hallmark operation of problematic organizations right they separate separate you from your family. I think it's terrible.

I think it's the worst thing you can do to a person. Look, and I'm not 45 fucking years anymore, okay? I'm 81 years old in January. I would like to see my family. I would like to have some time. We've got pictures of my great-grandchildren on their Facebooks. I've never met these kids. I don't even know what their names are.

Son of a bitch. I mean. And you feel like your kids are going to be in there forever? Yeah. And they've never expressed any dissatisfaction? Well, when I was in the Sea Org, I was not around them. We only communicate through letters or we'd send each other gifts on birthdays or Christmas or something. I couldn't get leaves to see them. We only communicate through letters or we'd send each other gifts on birthdays or Christmas or something. I couldn't get leaves to see them. At one point, my daughter, Lori,

went to see David and said, listen, if dad can't come to see us, we would like to go to see him. So he acceded. Just imagine, she had to ask him if it's okay to come and see me and they came to celebrity center and we sent up soon about four days together and just having a good time me cooking just enjoying their company it just the whole scene is really bad it's just not okay and it's the way it's set up it's built into the fucking dna as to how to control people And you have a threat, you have extortion, you have leverage. And that's what that is. That is why I wrote the book. When you look back on your life, joining this in the 1970s, 1970s, when you look back in

your life and you, uh, you think about that move, that initial move of joining, what goes on in your head? I don't think about it because there's nothing I can do about it, but I can tell you this. I wouldn't have done it. In other words, if I knew then what I knew now. Of course. I'd say, hey, you know, fuck you, man.

I'm not doing this. What do you think, I'm nuts? Do new people join all the time? I can't imagine there's very many new people joining right now. You know, unless they're a shepherd or somebody like that or somebody who's never looked at the Internet. You can't possibly. And this is what people do. They check something out.

They'll Google it. That's very common. And you start looking at anything. Oh, do I want to get involved in this? You know? And you think, oh, do I want to get involved in this? By the way, in the book, I give references to books that were written in the late 1800s, early 1900s. The New Thought Movement.

And there's many, many, many datums about life that if you were a Scientologist and you see these, you say, wait a minute. L. Ron Hubbard used to say this. All right? Talking about the reactive mind. Remember that from Dianetics? Mm-hmm. William Atkinson and other guys, they talk about subconscious mind. It records 24 hours a day.

They're talking about the same thing he was. Well, Lawrence Wright talked about that in Going Clear. He said that it seems like at least some of what was going on was L. Ron Hubbard trying to self-medicate, that he was writing things to try to cure his own ills. Probably, yeah. But these people, I mean, you can go on the internet and get these books for 99 cents because it's past 75 years, you can't copyright them. And of course, you wouldn't know, if you weren't a Scientologist, you wouldn't know which parts that he took out of that. But I've run across many, many things in the books that he just lifted, almost copied and pasted it and put it into what he called Scientology. Yeah. Well, I mean, if he's trying to get a great collection of work on how to work the mind, how the mind works.

And it worked then, so you knew it would work now. And so there is something to some of the principles. That's what you've always said. Not a question about it, Joe. And you think to this day that if you could remove a lot of it. If you could filter it down to those things that are provably workable. Do you think it's savable? Do you think, like, let's say this.

What if, you know, your son listens to this podcast and he's like, what the fuck? This world, who knows? This life is not going to last forever. What am I doing? I can't even talk to my dad. Maybe I've lost my way. Maybe I get together with him and we try to figure this out.

And he says, what can we do to make this better? I know I'm talking crazy. I know I'm talking crazy. That's okay. What the hell? Let's just as an exercise. What would you do? If he said, let's talk it out, I'd talk to him. I'll talk to anybody anytime about anything. If he said, listen, no new out, I'd talk to him. I'll talk to anybody, anytime, about anything. If he said, listen, no new people are joining Scientology.

We've got a real problem. What do you think is the beneficial aspects of it that we should keep and we should get rid of? And I think he would come up with the things that I come up with also. And so you have wrote about those in this book? I tell about four points that you could do and you could salvage it. But the chances of that happening are just so remote. I wouldn't bet two cents on it. Well, we're not even trying to bet on it.

But do you think that that is just what happens with people? They get into these positions. You create an ideology or you. It's the power. It's the acquisition of power. And then in order to keep that power, because I think power is almost like a drug. That's almost like crack cocaine. You get hooked on it it you don't want to let go of it right and now you have things going to hell around you you're going to do anything you can perceive to be beneficial to keep it going and start implementing that and like buying new buildings and just

making them into these palaces for people to come and do services. And then you drive by them and there's nobody in them. Just nobody in them. Where are they getting all the money to buy these buildings? People donate it. But there's only 20,000 people. Yeah, but you have whales, man. There are people.

A whale. That's what you guys call them? Well, I'm calling them a whale. And as a matter of fact. That's like a gambling term. It is. It's somebody who goes to Las Vegas and they got a lot of dough. And they blow it all.

They get crazy. Come on, Seven. Right? That's a whale. Yeah. Okay. Well, you have people in there. And I feel no need to mention their names.

I'll tell you off the air, but I don't want to throw them. But there's a lot of very wealthy people, and they donate a ton of cash. One guy had a medical procedure. He sold for something like $2.4 billion. Who knows? He probably gave about $50 or $60 million to the church. And the church— What does he get for that?

Do they take him around in one of those things, like one of those old-school king things? No. What are those things called? They carry you around in one of those carts? I don't know. What are those things called? They carry you around in those carts? I don't know. You get a bunch of dudes. They hold the poles. Yeah.

Do you remember? That'd be dope. History of the World Part I. Madeline Kahn was on it. Yes. Yeah. What are those things called? They carry you around.

I don't know, but I'll check it out and I'll send you an email. But anyway. Jamie will look it up. Look. No, they get a huge trophy. Okay. Oh, you get a trophy for like six feet tall and you go on the stage and get your picture taken with david and he congratulates you what about those like big uh dinner plate gold medals that is it called a

litter wow like how weird a litter is a class of wheel-less vehicles, a type of human-powered transport. A simple litter, often called a king carrier, consists of a sling attached along to lengths of poles or stretched inside a frame. Hmm. Interesting. So it's called a litter. I would have never guessed. A litter? No, I wouldn't have either. How weird.

Yeah. Like, what does Tom Cruise have to get to get one of those giant-ass gold medals that's bigger than the Olympics? Oh, the Medal of Valor. Oh, Valor. Well, that's a different situation. Let me tell you something. Tell me something. When you're a celebrity of his stature, there's no rules.

No rules? No, you're catered to- What about a celebrity of my stature, like a minor league celebrity? What kind of sweet perks could I get? Yeah, you'd be pampered. Ooh. You'd be pampered, yeah. Like good seats at a restaurant or something like that?

Well, good seats at an event. Look at that. Juicy gold medal. That'd be pampered. Like good seats at a restaurant or something like that? Well, good seats at an event. Look at that juicy gold medal. That's beautiful. I might join just to get a nice medal. Stand in front of that big globe. And I tell you, that set is put together and that takes

a lot of work. I bet. Look at that handsome bastard. Perfect cheeks. Good nose structure. Guy's 55 years old. He looks great. Yeah. How are they keeping him alive? He looks great. Like, he's one of those guys

that doesn't look like he's aging. I know, no. He probably works out. Well, I'm sure he works out. He's gotta work out. When I... He's a great actor, right? Admit to that, right?

Yeah, he is. The Edge of Tomorrow. Did you ever see that? Science fiction movie? No, I never did. It's a fucking great movie. That's what it's called, right? The Edge of Tomorrow? The one where he keeps coming back to life again? Science fiction movie? No, I never did. It's a fucking great movie. That's what it's called, right? The Edge of Tomorrow?

The one where he keeps coming back to life again? Yeah, Live, Die, Repeat the Kind. That's a fucking great movie. I think he's so wacky that a lot of his movies, they don't get the credit they deserve. Yeah. You know what I mean? Because he's so wacky, people are like, oh, this motherfucker. Well, no, he's a draw.

Oh, he's a huge draw. I mean, there's no two ways about it. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is I think that people don't respect the movie as much, like people that are real connoisseurs of film. That's a fantastic science fiction movie. And what's it called? The Edge of Tomorrow.

When did it come out? It's really good. Three years ago, maybe four? Something like that. Wow. It's a great movie, man. I agree. I feel like if someone with no controversy attached to them was the star of that movie,

it would have been critically acclaimed. It's an amazing film. It doesn't have any holes in it. It's really good. Well, I'll tell you, there's controversy attached to him, isn't there? There's a little bit. Yeah. If you said there wasn't, you'd be glib.

Don't be glib. Well, I know he works out. When he got a house in Beverly Hills, I put the gym in. I got the equipment for the gym in that house. Well, he's a winner. I mean, he's just a winner. And he attributes a lot of those winning attitudes to Scientology. Yeah.

I mean, a lot of his focus and the way he looks at things. That's what I always think of or used to think of before I started researching it finding all the wacky stuff But before I knew what Scientology was I thought of it as being like I thought of Dianetics, right? I thought Dianetics was sort of like Anthony Robbins unlimited power like oh This is like a guideline for getting your shit together, and yeah, and that's what I've always wanted to do my whole life I've always feel like I wish I was more disciplined I wish i got my shit together more maybe i need to read more books and so i'd read anthony robbins and i read dianetics i thought they were kind of the same thing back in the day well anthony robbins did steal some things from scientology there's no

two ways about it no and um there's also another thing called est yes i've heard that that used some i know a guy who's in that right now. Is that a cult too? It is, but I mean. They're a little bit more. Look, I don't know too much about it, but I know that there are some people who've done it who felt they had a lot of good wins out of it. Okay. Well, that's the thing, right?

Like when you look at a guy like Tom Cruise, it's kind of undeniable that that guy is very successful, very driven, motivated, right? Yeah, but don't forget it wasn't just Scientology that did it for him. I mean, he was- He is a talented individual. I remember the first one he did about, he was a kid at the Valley Forge Military Academy. I forget what it's called now. Yeah, TAPS. TAPS, yeah.

And when I saw that, I thought, man, I like this guy. Well, he was in that Ponyboy movie too, right? What the fuck was that called? Outsiders. Yeah, he was in that too. He's a great actor. Yeah, and he did one with Paul Newman where he was a pool shark. Remember that?

Color of Money, one of my favorite movies. No, I mean, there's no two ways about it. And individually, I mean, I met him many times. He's a nice guy. So does he have any knowledge of all this stuff when he sees all this disconnection? And if he's a nice guy doesn't he step in and go hey dave we gotta fucking cut this shit listen i can't imagine that he doesn't know about it i can't imagine that so he just like a guy like you separated from your family it's beyond his control it's with lrh he would never do anything to go against dave why is that he considers david to be the top spiritual being on this planet. Look at this.

Saluting each other. Yep. Jesus. Are they in the military? Pardon me? Are they in the military? Are they? Yeah. No. So why are they saluting each other? I'm just curious. What the fuck's going on there? When I see you in the morning,

we're saluting from now on. We're going to salute each other. Fuck it. If he could do it. Yeah. How does that work? Could anybody salute anybody? Is that rude? Is it like cultural appropriation? It's like a person walking around with a Pocahontas outfit on.

Can people get mad at you? No, anybody can salute another person. You might see somebody going off on a plane and say, hey, have a good trip. Yeah, but you would do it like almost in tongue in cheek. A jest. Hey, you fucking animal. I love you. Okay, so the C organization is a military type organization.

And you would salute people in the military. But it's just non-ironic saluting outside of the military just seems awful odd. Yeah. And, you know. Well, there's a lot of things odd about it, but for whatever reason, it's kept on going. Yeah. Well, I think that's one of the reasons why. That man right there, Tom Cruise.

Oh, yeah. People look at him and go, this guy's in it. He's a winner. Well, now, here's what L. Ron Hubbard said, that we should get celebrities in because they are opinion leaders. And what do you do with an opinion leader? You want to be like that person. Right. And if an opinion leader is a Scientologist, well, I'm going to try this out.

I'm going to try out Scientology. What's John Travolta like? Very nice guy. Seems like a nice guy. I met him once. He's literally a nice guy. So there's something those guys are getting out of it. Yeah.

John Travolta and Kirstie Alley and people like that, they get auditing and they get pampered and they don't have to follow money rules. So for them, it's almost like they're a part of a gang or something. You're in a clique. You're in a clique. Okay, you're in a clique. Everybody kisses your ass.

It's nice. Nobody wants to piss you off. If you get pissed off like Leah, well, with Leah, she saw shit go on and shelly was not there with david when he were at tom cruise's wedding and she said to tommy davis where's shelly and tommy davis says listen you don't have the fucking rank to ask that question oh you gotta get a higher rank i thought that was like whatever that was a figure of speech okay if he would have said look at shelly's off doing a correction, that's why she's not here, Leah might still be in Scientology.

Oh, so a correction program is Shelley fucked up? That's right. And everybody in Scientology knows sometimes Sea Org member isn't seeing. If you say, well, doing a correction program, they'd go, oh, okay. And that would be it. So the mistake was they disrespected leah and she's she's very fiery not a little bit really fiery yeah she's from brooklyn she's very fiery she's a great person too okay she's you know how i met leah how'd you meet her

i was in celebrity center in what's called the president's office and i was there for some event many years ago is there an election no so how does someone get to be president no it's just you're given the post of the president of that organization oh okay yeah it's just granted now leah comes walking out of this room and she said i got the part i said what do you mean you got the part she said i got the part i says who are you she says my name is leah i got the part in this new show called the king of queens hey congratulations you gave her a hug that's how i met her the day she got the part and we've been good buddies ever since i met her real close to that time as well yeah i'm good buddies with kevin james oh and kevin james was you know obviously the lead of the king queens and uh he's a stand-up comic we came up together

and uh you know i'd always uh i was like she's what is she a scientologist or something it's like yeah she's all focused she does a lot of scientology shit he goes get the fuck out he goes yeah but he's a funny man he's a very very funny guy. He's a very funny guy. He's hilarious. Yeah. And he just was like, oh, I don't know what the fuck's going on. And that was it. He didn't talk about it. She didn't talk about it.

I know. And the show went on no matter what. Yeah. They're both professionals. Great show. I enjoy it. And I watch very little TV. But that was a show.

And I could pick it up any time and watch it. Another thing I can watch is the Eagles beating the Giants meltdown at the Meadowlands. I don't know. You ever see that? No. Well, the Eagles are down three touchdowns. They come back and win in the last 13 seconds. I'm originally from Pennsylvania. Okay.

You're reminiscing now? Is that what's going on here? Yeah. A little change of pace, you know, to break the tension here, you know. There's no tension. I know that. So listen, Ron, good luck with this book. It's called Ruthless.

People can get it everywhere. You know, I'm an eternal optimist, and I would hope that one day you'd be able to speak to your kids, and one day you'd be able to speak to your son, and everybody could work this out. I would hope for the same thing, and I guess I'm starting to lose hope on that matter because the years are going by now. I've been out for like five years and I don't know what's going to change it other than maybe enough people speaking out and them dropping that disconnection policy. Talk to Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise, holler at me. Let's do a podcast, buddy.

Come on in here. Let's straighten this whole bullshit out. Yeah. Thank you, Ron. Appreciate it, buddy. Okay. Thank you. Hey, thanks a lot for Yeah. Thank you, Ron. Appreciate it, buddy. Okay. Thank you. Hey, thanks a lot for having me on. My pleasure. I appreciate it.

How long were we on?