The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 281: Mike Rinder—I'd Like to Buy a Vow

Episode Date: November 8, 2022

Bestselling author Mike Rinder drops by to discuss his new memoir, A Billion Years: My Escape From a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientoloty, his time in "the hole," and how he went from saving the world withscientology to saving the world from scientology. 

The ocean moves us. Surfing a wave or savoring the view. The ocean delights us as playful otters restore coastal kelp forests. The ocean connects us. Visit Monterey Bay Aquarium.org slash connects. Okay. We're laughing because Chuck just said, what do you want to talk about in the preamble?

And I said, well, what if we talk about the amazing interview we just conducted? That's probably a good idea. I'm going to go with it. It's the way I heard it episode number 281. and not to overstate it. But yes, this was a very good interview. And I say that, not because Chucker, I asked amazing questions, although I think we did okay.

You did better than I did, yeah. Yeah, well, you know, that's kind of why it's the way I heard it. With who? Mike Crowell. Yeah, Mike Crow. Got it. Our guest is another Mike. Mike Rinder, he's been making the rounds

because he's written an extraordinary memoir called A Billion Years. A billion years refers to the term that C-O-G members in the Church of Scientology pledge to serve a billion years. The name of this episode is I'd like to buy a vowel, V-O-W, because I think it rhymes nicely with the title of the book, and you'll hear how it pops up in our conversation. But, Chuck, this was a good one, man, really. I could have listened to that guy talk for three hours.

It's been a long time coming, and regular listeners know I've had to be in my bonnet with Scientology for a long time. This was gratifying on damn near every level. It really was. We've had Spanky Taylor on before, who knows Mike Rinder very well. And she's been telling me for a long time that he's such a wonderful guy, and he proved to be just that. He's got that charming Australian accent, which makes it really jacked up because he says vowel, and you think, vow or vowel?

I didn't know what he was talking about, but we worked it out. He's on the podcast because he's spent most of us. life, not just in Scientology, but way, way, way, way, way up the food chain. He and David Miscavage were basically connected at the hip for a long time. He got in Scientology at a very young age. He worked on the Apollo, which was the ship that El Ron Hubbard, the flagship, yeah. His book is amazing. And I'm just going to tell you right now, if you've ever been interested and why people believe what they believe and how they get pulled into cults and organizations and bad jobs and bad relationships. Well, it happens a little bit at a time, and nobody knows it better than this guy.

He somehow escaped Scientology. He has become a jagged little pill and a huge thorn in their side. He's on a mission. Big time. He's on a mission. His book is a memoir. It's also a cautionary tale. It's a pleasure to listen to, and it's fun and horrifying to read at the same time. But it's also really gratifying to talk to somebody who knows that when you're going through hell, the best thing you can do is keep going.

Keep going. And he punched through. He came out the other side. He's got an amazing story to tell, and he's telling it everywhere, 60 minutes. CBS. Like I said, he's making the rounds, and he was kind enough to make sense. some time for us and say some very nice things. It's nice to connect the dots between him and Spanky and you, Chuck. I mean, we all have our weird little connection with this thing. I felt like the

conversation brought it full circle. Absolutely. And I think we ought to just get right to it because it's good. It's nonstop and it's rapid fire. So let's do it. I'd like to buy a vow. Episode number 281 gets going right after this. Well, people are still raving, raving, I tell you, about my mother's performance in the latest Pure Talk commercial. And if you haven't seen it, I encourage you to give it a look on my Facebook page and read the comments. They're hysterical. In this commercial, you'll not only see Peggy Rowe gently criticizing her oldest son for his longstanding and well-established commitment issues. You'll learn about the latest offer from Pure Talk, which includes unlimited talk, text, and data for just 30.

$3499 a month with no contracts and no commitments of any kind. You can see why I love these guys. If, on the other hand, you have better things to do with your time, then watch my mom and me be impossibly charming together, then allow me to remind you, here, without all the cleverness and charm, that unlimited talk, text, and data on a blazing fast network for just $3499 a month really is an unmitigated bargain from an American wireless company that keeps all their customer service in this country, supports our veterans in a meaningful way,

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podcast interview that I have actually been looking forward to. That is some high cotton, Mike Rinder. Thank you so much for saying that. Although I don't know when a Scientologist,

a former Scientologist, tells you that he watches your show religiously, it's difficult to know how to take that. That is a very good point. That is a very good point. Yeah.

Well, that was religiously after I left. I wasn't watching TV when I was there in the Seorg. It was after I left. Did they even allow TVs on the Apollo? Oh, no. No TVs on the Apollo. Even subsequent to that, like when we arrived at the Fort Harrison, there were TVs in all the rooms because it was a hotel.

Yeah. But we weren't allowed to watch them. Amazing. I think we've officially begun. Ross, you want to hang around? welcome to stay. I mean, you look so comfortable there. I hate to wake you up, but you're... Thanks, Ross. Thanks, Ross. Ross later. Ladies and gentlemen, weighing in from a recumbent posture.

His audio is not recorded, Mike, so we'll just have to imagine what Ross sounds like. Yeah. Just as well. So, yes, Mike Rinder, we have officially begun. You're here for a number of reasons, all of which are really, really personal to me. But it started with Spanky, and I understand and she actually said some kind words to you about me. Do tell. Yeah, well, Spanky says kind words about everyone, Mike. So I just don't want your head getting too big. Fair enough.

Because she is one of the kindest people that I have ever had the pleasure to know. And I know she has worked with and for you or however you want to characterize it for a long time. And even before she sort of said, anything about your interest or thoughts about Scientology. She said, oh, I just got to tell you, he is just the nicest man. He is just the nicest man. He's so wonderful. And you can imagine Spanky's voice saying that.

And it's just like she would like walk over hot coals for you. Well, there's no need for that. But I will tell you this. The feeling's mutual. I always just thought she was the sweetest, nicest. naturally decent person. The reason I kicked this hornet's nest when I heard her story is that I just, I mean, I can't abide a bully in any of the many forms they come in and to see someone like Spanky on the receiving end of just the impossible weight and all of the certainty that just

crushed her. It just made me angry. And then when I saw you and when I saw Alex Gibney's film, I just thought, you know what? I don't need trouble in my life, but when the dust settles, we're all going to be weighed and measured. And I don't want to be on the wrong side of this one. So that's why you're here. I assumed almost zero relative risk in shaking the tree. but you have picked an enormous fight with a giant adversary. And I want to start where you want to start. You've written an amazing book. It's called a billion years.

You're making the rounds talking about that. But you're doing so much more. In my view, you're laying out a path for people to break free of this prison. And it really does strike me as that a prison. Well, Larry Wright quite correctly, subtitled Going Clear, Scientology, the Prison of Belief. And that is what Scientology is. It is a prison with bars built out of the words of El Ron Hubbard, who has managed to encase people in a way of thinking and a belief system that holds them in place. and causes them to do things that are not really in their best interests.

I guess that's probably a pretty good definition of what a cult is or what a high-control group is. It's when you can be persuaded to do things that are clearly not in your best interest, whether it's handing over money, whether it's devoting your life, whether it's doing things that are not in your basic nature, when you can persuade people to do those sort of things, you are controlling their mind and they are effectively imprisoned.

And, you know, I was saying to Chuck before we started, the tragedy of a story like Spankies or my story or anybody's story is not just us and what's happened to us, it's the fact that it is continuing to this day because the organization cannot change because it is all based on the writings of Elrond Hubbard and he's long gone. So nobody can change that.

People need to understand that, I think, in a really fundamental way. So much, and by the way, I was thinking as you were talking of a great book, I've got it around here somewhere called Why People Believe Weird Things. It was written by Michael Shermer. It touches on a lot of what you just said. But this idea that you need to be persuadable, and at the same time, you come face to face

with a person who's a very strong persuader, that seems to be the fertile ground. And Elron Hubbard wrote his book decades ago. He was a very strong persuader, obviously. and the stars just seem to line up. And as we talk, I just want to be mindful of the fact that it's so easy from the outside to pull back the curtain and look at this cult and look at these people who have just made this crazy, crazy, crazy decision to believe these crazy, crazy, crazy things. But it's not like that at all.

No one ever thinks they're crazy. No one ever thinks they're in a cult. So as we talk, I want to try and understand what it was about Hubbard that struck so many people as so reasonable. And how, like a frog in the boiling water, so many otherwise discerning people suddenly found themselves with a one-way ticket to Crazy Town? Well, that's absolutely something that I tried, from my perspective at least, to describe in the book as well as, as I could. What was I thinking? How did I come to believe this crazy shit? But I want to say something, Mike, that often comes up, which is, you know, people in cults, they're all like incapacitated in some fashion or stupid or not very bright to have gotten involved in something like that. It is

actually the opposite. Like, you look at someone like Spanky and Spanky is a one. wonderful, smart, driven, intelligent woman who her defining feature is her kindness. And one of the things that traps people in Scientology is the idea that you can help not just yourself, but you can help other people. The whole planet. The whole everybody. The species. Yeah.

Exactly. And this is something that you. you find with the run-of-the-mill Scientologist, yes, you can look at them and go, well, these people are really pretty out there, they're pretty crazy, this stuff they believe is really out there. But the core of those people is that their belief is based on the idea that they're going to help other people. They're not evil people who are intent on enslaving and controlling other people. They think they're helping them.

The enslaving and controlling comes at the top, and that's kind of the case in a lot of cults. We had a wonderful episode on the aftermath with a survivor of Jonestown, and she's now a police captain in San Francisco, and just an incredible woman, and what an amazing story she has. Her whole family got involved with that because they believed that they were helping their community. and Jim Jones, of course, was kind of reveling in the power that he had over people, but the people that were participating in his people's temple thing, they were nice people who thought they were helping the world, and that's the same with Scientology, and it's the same with Jehovah's Witnesses and whatever other, like, organizations there are out there.

And I think that that's something that people need to really think, about before they pass judgment on, oh yeah, that guy's a cult member. It's critical. I'll take it a step further. I remember Chuck and I used to work for a United artists. We saw a lot of movies when we were kids. I remember seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time. And when the Nazis were on the screen, I remember thinking to myself, you know, you don't need any exposition at all. All you need to do is show me the arm band, show me the asshole. And that's it. it, right? So, like, as if all of the members of the Nazi party looked in the mirror and saw

the evil that I saw in Indiana Jones. And by the way, every other clip that's ever run on any newsreel, you can see him goose stepping and Zig Heiling, and you just look and you shake your head and go, wow, you know, they just chewed their way right out of hell. They're the embodiment of evil. But they looked in the mirror too, and they didn't see anything like that. They saw saviors. Right. That's the first big thing that I try and remember when I talk about all of this stuff. Nobody inside Scientology or J.Ws or the Nazi party or any other cult group or organization sees themselves as anything other than enlightened. Absolutely correct. But then there is one other difference that I would point out, Mike, which is there is always a percentage of those

people who are sociopaths. And those are the people that rise to the top of such organizations, and those are the people who look in the mirror and they see themselves as saviors, but they have absolutely no conscience. They actually don't care about anybody other than themselves. And tell me you've read the sociopath next door. Oh, I was just about to say, you recommended a book that I'm going to get. And I recommend every person I've ever talked to. And on my blog and in the book that I just wrote, read The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout. It is a brilliant, easy to understand, simple explanation of something that many people run into and are unaware that that's what they're dealing with.

And that book was a revelation to me, Mike, because I worked for David Miskavich, who is clearly a sociopath. Elrond Hubbard, who maybe was a borderline sociopath, probably was, but had some redeeming qualities to him. And when I read that book, I went, oh, my God, A, I'm not crazy. what I thought was going on really was going on and B, I'm not the only person in the world that's had this experience. I thought I was like had run into the unicorn of the universe

who was this sort of bizarre creation that nobody would understand. And I read that book and I went, oh, if you know what this personality type is, you absolutely understand what it's like at the top of Scientology working for David Miskavich. So, yes, I definitely read it. What a nightmare you are to these people. I mean, people come and go from all sorts of churches and organizations all of the time.

And many times they don't have flattering things to say. But you were, what, third from the top, were close to it? Yeah, I was the international spokesperson for Scientology for two decades. I was on the board of directors of the Church of Scientology International from when I helped create it until I escaped in 2007, you know, like 30, 25 years. So, yes, I was in a very senior position. As you will know from my book, I was brought into the world of Scientology at a very young age. I joined what was called the C organization, which is like the inner,

circle of Scientology and you sign a billion year contract to pledge yourself for eternity to achieving the aims of Scientology. That's where the name of the book comes from. Sure. But probably more significantly and more significantly with respect to the book, I brought two children into that world. And those two children remain there to this day. and the book is actually addressed to them

with the hope that one day they will actually be able to read it and know who I am or was and maybe they'll read it after I passed on. Who knows? But it's important and it's important to me and I lay out in the beginning of the book why do I keep going?

Well, it's really because of that because I want them to have the freedom to think for themselves. And it's my belief at this point, Mike, the only way that that will happen, the only way to break them out of the prison is to blow up the prison. I think the reason your book is number one is because you're taking a very big swing and you're trying to correct a very great wrong,

but you're doing it in a very personal way. This is micro and macro at the same time. You're taking a big swing at a tax-exempt organization that uses taxpayer money and dedicates it exclusively to a wing within the organization whose sole purpose is to harass and attack. People need to understand that. But here you sit estranged from your kids.

and that estrangement goes right to the very heart, I think, of what is so troubling and so personal to so many other people who are estranged from their family. For whatever reason, you've tapped into an enormous thing that's also an intensely small and personal thing. And here's a question no one has ever asked you before. I listened to you on Patrick Bet, David, I listen to you on Megad Kelly, I listen to you on C.B.B. BS this morning. I listened to you on 60 Minutes, Australia. Boy, you've been busy. Well, look, man, I don't, you've probably been interviewed by a lot of people who think they know you. Yes. And you've probably answered every conceivable question. But what's on my mind right now is how does it feel to be really under the microscope talking so intimately about something so

personal that has the ramifications to literally change thousands of people's lives. I mean, it's deadly serious what you're in the midst of right now. And I just wonder how that feels on a day-to-day basis for you. Well, you're right, Mike. Nobody has ever asked me that question before. Like, I thought you were joking. I thought you were going to give me some, like, you know, routine question everybody asks all the time. No, no, no. I went for it, man. I was going to ask you where that Emmy came from, but I'm saving that. Tell us about Zinu, right? Yeah, yeah, right.

Tell us about Zeno. Right, great. Yeah, exactly. How does it feel? It feels very a heavy burden in one respect. I feel a great responsibility to make sure that I get things right and that I do justice to all of the people who I know who are victims and have been victimized by this organization and make them feel like they have a voice that maybe they don't have the opportunity to go on Megan Kelly or Patrick Beck, David,

or wherever, that I represent them well. And I say the things that are important to them and that they know. There is a great feeling of, I've got to make sure that I, do those people justice? Because it may be the only justice that they feel they're going to get is to at least have someone explain things like they would like to explain them or express a perspective like they would like to express. On the sort of flip side of the responsibility comes the satisfaction

of knowing that some people are being. helped by the work that I do. I hear from them routinely. They're always so incredibly appreciative and thankful and so kind and nice. You know, I bump into them at the supermarket or when I, on a plane or wherever. And that is intensely gratifying. And, you know, I talk in the book about one of the other big attractions of Scientology is that it offers you this huge worldview of you're involved with something that's really important, really important to mankind. And when you leave or escape, you lose that. And I have replaced that. You know, I said to someone on one of these programs, like I was saving the world with.

Scientology, now I'm seeking to save the world from Scientology. I think that was on the CBS Morning Show. And that pretty much summed it up. Like I went, okay, yeah, I've sort of replaced my dedication and fervor to achieving the aims of Scientology with a dedication and fervor to exposing the abuses of Scientology so that I can stop what I know is going on to people who have no way of doing anything about it. Isn't it funny how something so enormous can come down to a preposition, with or from? Did you die from COVID or with COVID?

Right. I mean, it's like the biggest ideas in the world often hinge on just the small, thing. And that leads me to want to ask, are there any small things in Scientology, or are they all big things? I think when I talked to Spanky, I wound up calling that episode the crushing certainty of Scientology. I love stories like this. Seven years ago, a guy named Ben Still was a musician. He had zero interest in running a food company, but he was annoyed that so much imported meat was being deceptively marketed and labeled as domestic and decided to fix the problem. The result was a company called Good Ranchers. It's a completely honest, totally transparent meat company that deals directly with American farms and ranches and promises to deliver high-quality American-grown meat for a fair price.

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delivered. If you could eat a steer, if you could eat a cow, don't take a chance on a foreign ranch, get good ranchers now. Hey-haw! And really, Mike, the reason this podcast is called the way I heard it is because I don't know. The minute I become certain about a thing, I become suspicious of my certainty. And it felt like, you know, when I read through the early stuff and when I looked at Alex's documentary, which everybody should watch, by the way, the thing that always rose to the top was there was just no room for debate, there was no room for skepticism, anybody in contact with somebody who didn't fall in line was disconnected. So just the complete, all-encompassing total unwillingness to engage with anyone who doesn't share your certainty, that's not a small thing. But it's

seems to inform every chapter of your book and every conversation I've ever had about this. Well, you're exactly right. A defining characteristic of Scientologists is their certainty. They are absolutely certain, and it is hammered into Scientologists, that there is one path, only one, and it is the path that was forged by Elron Hubbard through the fire. of, you know, 75 million years ago and everything else, and that only by following exactly what he said, can you achieve spiritual salvation for yourself, but also save the planet?

And on top of that is the idea that if you fail to do exactly as he says, you will not get the results that are promised by Hubbard. Hubbard promised that with a 100% perfect application of his technology, which is what he called his scripture, his babblings, you will receive absolutely 100% guaranteed results. And Hubbard had another defining, or interesting thing.

He talked about everything. I mean, he was an expert about everything. From window washing to how to cure cancer, to how to run a business, to like anything and everything, he expressed his particular view of things. And this is something that, you know, I write about in the book,

one of the earliest things in my life was learning this concept of Do what Ron says that Hubbard has the answers for everything. Mike, seriously, for everything. Yeah. Like you hurt yourself, you've got the cane teeth. Like, whatever it is, he's got an answer. And all you have to do is study and learn what Hubbard said about it,

and you will have the answer too. And this is the certainty that Scientologists have and display to the world is the certainty founded in the idea that El Ron Hubbard has the answers to all of life and they are the only answers

that actually work and that only Scientologists have those and all the other poor individuals on planet Earth who remain uninformed or ignorant of the brilliance of Elron Hubbard, the Wag world, as it's called in

Scientology. Wog? Wog. Wog. W-O-G. Does it stand for something, or is it just a... It's an old expression that the colonial British used to use to describe the, you know, locals in India or whatever country they were colonizing. They called them worthy oriental gentleman or wags. Oh, the great unwashed.

Didn't Hubbard believe that he was reincarnated from Cecil Rhodes? Yes, Cecil Rhodes. Yeah, I write about that in the book too. Before you went into the certainty, you ask if there are small things in Scientology. Yes. And there are, and this is what part of the genius of Hubbard was. To take small, workable, agreeable things, and present them,

and he plucked them from all over the place, philosophical writings and, you know, other religions and this and that, and present them as this is his stuff. And so, you know, they're a little practical things that anybody could agree with at the beginning stages of Scientology, and that's what gets you involved and hooked.

And the sort of mantra is, well, if this piece of technology from Ron works for you, look for the rest. What else is there that might work for you? His technology works all the time. It's wonderful. You know, get involved. And so there are all these little things. And, you know, even down to practicing how to communicate to someone. Scientology claims that it has, or Hubbard claims.

he had developed the technology of communication. Well, you know. Good one. And Scientologists will tell you they've got the technology of communication. And it's something that's practiced a lot and you drill about it and all sorts of things in Scientology to, quote, teach you how to communicate effectively. And there is some value to that. And people learn things and experience some like, oh my God, I feel better about. about being able to talk to my wife,

or I'd feel better about being able to talk to my kids, because they sort of practice. And, you know, whether it is all good or not, there is also an enormous confirmation bias that exists in Scientology, where everybody is telling everybody else how wonderful everything is. Right.

And if you're not on the wonder scale, of how amazing everything is, there's something wrong with you. And there are all these explanations in Scientology and they're not pretty. If you're not experiencing these remarkable gains and wins and advances in Scientology... You're doing it wrong.

Not only are you doing it wrong, you may well be a suppressive person, which is an enemy, or you may be what's even worse than a suppressive person, a degraded, being. Oh, a DB? A DB. That's how they get you. You could fall into that category and nobody wants to fall into that category. So I know I give very long-winded answers, Mike. I'm sorry. Oh, it's good. No,

look, I love it. You said what I was kind of hoping you would say. Not that I've got any of this mapped out, but there are small things. I don't know that I would agree that, you know, communicating with your spouse or your kids is a small thing. But before you get to that, if he shows you a better way to tie your shoes, if he shows you a better way to get a cork out of a bottle, if he shows you a better way to your point to wash a window, and these simple, simple techniques start to line up, trust develops, right? Yes. And then so suddenly when you start talking about, look, let's talk about how you communicate with your kids, well, you've got my attention because you just did me right on these four or five other things that came before it. What comes after that, God only knows,

but that's the importance of a small thing. It's the rung on the ladder that gets you to the big thing. And then you start spending money. Then you start getting your reactive mind straightened out. Then you start getting rid of these, what do they call them, Thaitons, whatever they are. Body Thetons. Yes. The money starts to change hands and now you got yourself a business and so forth and so on. Right. And that is not a... small thing. Now, the reason I ask you about that is because the title of your book is a billion years. And a billion is not a small number. It's a big number. It's a very big number. So you don't come out of the gate and ask somebody to sign a billion year contract. And just quick sidebar,

if you'll indulge me, in my goofy world, I sign a lot of contracts. And 25 years ago, I was signing contracts over at Discovery that had language in them that appeared to have been written by a human being. And today, when I look at these contracts, I basically am giving them the right to use the work product in some way. Well, that way is now defined as you agree that the work product will be assimilated all over the world and in any other world throughout the universe known and unknown on planets discovered and yet to be discovered. And it's longer than a billion years. Mike, it's in perpetuity. It's in perpetuity in the known galaxy.

So, like, the language always matters to me. I got to give them credit. They just went right for a billion. It's a good number. And everybody who works in Seorg signs it. Yes, absolutely. My children signed that contract when they were 10. And I was proud of it at the time.

But now you've breached your deal. You breached your deal, Mike Grin. What are we going to do with you? You had 99 million plus years left. Yeah. Yeah, I had a lot to go. I wasn't eligible for a pension for a long, long time. Okay.

Sorry for the schizophrenic hopscatching, but you worked directly with Elron Hubbard. You were on the boat. You were swabbing decks. You were in his presence. Yes. That must have made you very, unique among the other congregants. Well, yeah, as time went on, there were less and less people.

And, you know, even before he died, he was a recluse and he only had like three people with him. So in a motorhome, right? In a motor home, yep. Well, there was actually only two people with him. One of them was not even there. But the number of people who, someone asked me this the other day, how many people are left? to, you know, still alive who may have worked directly with Elrun Hubbard in the Sea Organization. I don't know, maybe a hundred. Like, it's not that many. And so because of that, I worked with him on the Apollo a little, and then I worked with him more when he moved to La Quinta in California. And after we came off the ship, people asked me so, what was Hubbard like?

and he was certainly a larger than life character. He was a big personality. There was no doubt when he walked into a room. You didn't have to be looking at the door to know that some big thing had come into the room. And he was a storyteller. That was his forte. His strength and his defining characteristic

was his ability to tell stories. He told so many stories that in the end he believed his own bullshit stories. And he was proud of the fact that he was a storyteller. And he told stories for a living before he started Dianetics and Scientology.

He told stories about himself to make a living. Like he presented himself as all sorts of things that he really wasn't in order to kind of increase his status and get more books sold and get deals with publishers and blah, blah, blah. And then he started doing that same routine

with Dianetics and Scientology. And he bullshitted his way through his, like he's got 3,000 lectures, Mike, that are recorded and treated as sort of gospel in Scientology. These are the words of El Ron Hubbard. He wrote a bunch of books, but he also delivered all these lectures. These lectures are rambling, storytelling. And the stories that he tells in these lectures,

one day he'll say he was here doing that, and then the next day he'll say he was somewhere else doing something else. And, you know, they're internally inconsistent. They're also very inconsistent with reality. And that's actually what prompted, Larry right to write his book going clear was when he was interviewing Paul Haggis for the New Yorker article that he did prior to that book, Tommy Davis, who was then the spokesperson that was dealing with him from Scientology.

He replaced you, right, Tommy? Yeah, yes, exactly. Started telling him all these outrageous stories about Elron Hubbard's accomplishments and exploits. And Larry kind of went, you know, I'm not, this, it doesn't match up with any reality that I know. And Tommy Davis got indignant and said, well, if this isn't true, then the whole basis of Dianetics and Scientology is false. And Larry went, well, that's worth looking into. And that, truthfully, is the basis of him then going and continuing his research. and digging and digging and digging.

And if you know Larry Wright, there is one thing about Larry Wright, he is the most relentless, persnickety, incredibly... Pedantic? Perfect. Yeah, pedantic makes it sound bad.

My connotation of pedantic is always that that's something that's over-the-top wrong. Yeah, he's just the most thorough person in the world when it comes. to digging into what happened here, where's the documents, let me piece this story together. And if you read his book, his book is a masterpiece of gathering together and finding what the real story was and what the real truth was. And that exposed Hubbard as a bullshitter. We mentioned earlier Martha Stelts book. There was another book that had an enormous impact on me,

which I mention in my book, which is Russell Miller's unauthorized biography of El Run Hubbard, bare-faced Messiah, because Russell Miller was very similar to Larry Wright, a researcher, a guy who, he went and found Hubbard's school friends from when he went to primary school and his aunts and uncles and people that Hubbard had claimed, you know, I was a brother of the Blackfeet tribe,

and he went and tracked the people down and found and, you know, yeah, there was no record and the people in the Navy. And he did all of this research. And his book is a wonderful book. I highly recommend it to anybody that has an interest in Scientology or Hubbard. Because when I read it, I went, you know what? He's actually captured the man while exposing the bullshit. he has also made clear that he has some real deal of respect for the fact that this guy was the consummate storyteller.

Yes. And he managed to palay that into making millions by starting, first of all, a self-help, mental health organization group thing with Dianetics and then a religion with Scientology. But that's the line, Mike. this isn't the landmark forum. This isn't a Tony Robbins get together. This isn't Werner Earhart and Est and all of that stuff. It's of that.

But then he jumps into a religion. Then he gets tax-exempt status. Now we're in a whole different world, right? It's kind of like, as you describe this guy, I'm a storyteller. Sometimes I'm a bullshitter. I like to memorize lots of quotes from famous people, and I'll string them together in many cases

to create the illusion of a deeper level of intelligence than I actually possess. I've done that my whole career. That's what a host does. He creates the illusion of competence and deep knowledge in short bursts where it really isn't. I know that.

And I was talking to a buddy last night who went to Vegas and saw David Blaine. And he's saying, Mike, you just can't believe it. You just can't believe the stuff this guy does. And I said, well, look, he's a magician. Of course, he's very good at it. But here's the thing. You know, if David Blaine says, I'm from another planet, okay, I am of a different species.

And that's why I can push the needle through my arm. That's why I can hold my breath for nine and a half minutes. That's why I can jump off an 80-story roof and land in a pile of cardboard and be fine. If you start pointing to something outside of you as the proximate cause of your abilities, then you're no longer a bullshitter. then you're a con man. And if you get tax exempt status on top of that, Katie bar the door.

Now a lot of people are going to make a lot of money. Yes. And there's an interesting thing. I don't know if you've watched The Vowl, and now the season two of the vowel, about Keith Riniere and Nexium. Oh, V-O-W. V-O-W.

I thought it was like the vowel, like the letter E. It's unbelievable. That's my mongrel accent. Okay. My wife gives me a hard time about it all the time. Say the word law. I say law. She says, no, law.

Like the thing, you know, the thing that the police come on. Yeah, that's what I said. Law. No, that's lore. You're saying lore like folklore. No, it's law. Anyway, that's, yeah. I'd like to buy a bowel.

Exactly. And mine are very long. Right, right, right. And sometimes have ours in them. Yes, exactly. She says, you put ours where you're not supposed to and you take them out where they're supposed to be. What's wrong with you?

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In any event My point about the vowel The vowel was that Keith Reneery stole a lot from Hubbard A lot If you watch that series, it is remarkable And now I've become pretty good friends With Mark Vecente and Sarah Edmondson

Two of the main protagonists in that show And like they use even the same terminology, the technology and suppressives and going up the level. I mean, it's like both of them told me, oh yeah, Keith Rennary studied Scientology. He studied Elron Hubbard about how you go about creating, because it's very similar in many respects to the Scientology, you're never a victim, you're going to be cause of your own life and all this sort of shit. his big mistake, however, was he didn't become a religion.

So he was able to be prosecuted without hiding behind the protection of the First Amendment, which is almost absolute, honestly. I mean, it is so, you know, it's not just tax-exempt status. Tax-exempt status in the United States is the only thing. that confers on any organization a religious status. If you are tax exempt as a religious entity, that's the closest thing you can get to a government stamp of you are a religion because, you know, the First Amendment says the government and religion or church

are supposed to be very separate, not like in most of the other West countries in the Western world. So Scientology now has this sort of cloak that doesn't just keep it from having to pay tax. It keeps it from having to report or be in any way open to government oversight. There's no requirement for providing any information about how much money they're taking in or what they're spending it on. And it automatically confers the rights that are afforded to all religions in the United States based on hundreds of years of law that they basically can decide to do what they want to do and the courts and the government can't second guess it,

as long as it's not clearly in violation of a particular statute or law. law. So you can get away with enormous amounts of stuff because of that and make enormous amounts of money. You said early on in the show, Mike, brilliantly that Scientology is using your tax dollars to operate what is effectively an intelligence and destroy your enemy's arm. And that's true. I always say, look, if you're paying taxes in the United States, your tax dollars are literally subsidizing these abuses that are going on in Scientology, and they are going on to this day. And to be clear, we're talking about kidnapping. We're talking about illegal surveillance. We're talking about, you know, a long list of things that essentially, what's the

acronym, the internal organization that handles that. OSA, Office of Special Affairs. Jesus. And I was the head of that for like 20 years. And I'm telling you, and I'm telling your listeners, that the policies of El Rund Hubbard, the writings of El Rund Hubbard, dictate exactly what is to be done by this organization within Scientology. And there are like hundreds of Seog members who are part of this particular department of Scientology.

And his directives include, you know, you must destroy them utterly if they are an enemy of Scientology. You find out what they are seeking to protect. You threaten it. If they won't shut up, you cost them their job. They're a case offices. They're intelligent. agents, there are spies and plants. All of this stuff is all laid out in the writings of Elron Hubbard.

You can find it all over the internet on my blog everywhere. This is the actual policy of Scientology. Money is being spent. Millions of dollars a year are being spent to carry out these campaigns, to destroy people, to smear them and do all this sort of stuff. and they continue to have tax exempt status. And that's sort of my crusade at this point. And Leah is always on about it too.

Look, U.S. government, IRS, do something. This is crazy. There is supposedly a clause in the IRS regulations that says, one of the requirements for maintaining your tax exempt status is that you are not in violation of public policy. And public policy is this very, very vague, poorly defined term,

but it basically means you're not doing things that the general populace would find to be objectionable. How about, you know, spying on people or paying to steal their garbage or setting up cameras outside their house or paying for Google ads to smear them, that stuff is all accepted. Well, the problem is there is one Supreme Court case that defines what public policy is in the United States.

And it's a case called Bob Jones University, the commissioner, where Bob Jones University was a Christian university, and they were discriminating against applicants by race. And so the IRS revoked their exemption, and the Supreme Court said, well, the IRS had a right to revoke their exemption, they're in violation of public policy, they can continue to do whatever they want to do. They just can't be tax exempt doing it. So now the IRS and everybody has interpreted public policy to mean you have to be racially discriminatory in order to be in violation of public policy. Okay. Well, I'm off in the weeds, but no, no, no. But okay, so why couldn't they then take a similar approach with the gay thing.

I mean, from what I've read, Scientology doesn't exactly roll out the red carpet to the homosexual community, big time. Absolutely right, Mike. Absolutely. And I'm so happy to be talking to someone that actually thinks with these things and goes,

yeah, well, what about this? Like, that's good. See, we need people in Congress to start yelling at the IRS and saying, what are you people doing? Like, They got $3 billion or $4 billion over there. We could be collecting that and taxes from them

and preventing people from being abused. Let's get busy. Why don't you get on your crusader horse and start crusading for this? Mike, you mentioned before, you know, people being abused. Can you speak to our audience of the kind of physical and verbal abuse that you went through? Oh.

Just a taste. So they understand just how crazy this is. Well, I recommend that you watch going clear. because going clear will actually give you a little taste of what life in the hole was like. The hole was a prison that was created by the leader of Scientology or the current leader of Scientology, David Miscavich at a property in Riverside County, California, where senior Scientology officials, myself included, were locked up, the doors were barred, the windows were screwed shut,

Nobody could escape. We were there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, no shower. Food was brought in, you know, leftover food. We slept on the floor. There was no air conditioning. And this is in the desert. It gets very hot out there. Yeah, it does get pretty hot out there.

It does. Captain Obvious here, you know, with the really pressing comments. The Daily Act. was literally beating people up in order to get them to confess to enough bad stuff that it might satisfy David Miskavich. And I recount in the book a lot of examples of the physical things that happen, the punching and kicking and throwing ashtrays and objects at people. there was also the emotional torture that people go through and the humiliation. I mean, the humiliation is almost unthinkable to describe it.

The accusations that are made about people constantly and having them do humiliating things and keeping everybody in the higher echelons of Scientology on every. and not sure whether tomorrow you're going to be in the shit or tomorrow you're going to be okay, which is a pretty typical tactic of dictators and despots through history because they don't want any cabal forming that is going to overthrow them. So everybody's kind of like, who can I trust?

I can't trust anybody. It's a very, very abusive world. Chuck, I don't. know that you can really grasp in trying to describe it briefly just how insane this stuff is. I spent a lot of time trying to lay it out in the book without making it seem like this is just a horror story, but it is a horror story. You know, when I go back, I rewatch Going Clear and I look at Spanky and I hear the story of Spanky and what happened to her daughter.

I mean, that stuff is like, and it is all based. Everything sort of grows out of this fundamental idea that what is good for Scientology is what is good for you. Whether it is resulting in you looking like a skeleton because you haven't eaten for three months and slept, you know, four hours a night for a year on end, and you look like I did when John Sweeney interviewed me

on the BBC show. Right. That is, I'm thinking, yes, but there is a greater purpose. There is a larger thing. My well-being, my comfort, my happiness is not important in the bigger picture.

And this justifies so much terrible stuff. Oh my God. And then you add onto it the other big sort of trick that Hubbard played on the world, or at least on Scientologists, which is you are completely responsible for your own state. That it is because of whatever you have done in your past that you are suffering today. If I walk out the front door of my house right now and get run over by a car, Scientology's reaction to that is to sit me down in front of an e-meter and ask me when I ran over someone with a car, because I pulled that in.

And then charge you $300,000. Or $300,000. Or $300,000 or whatever it is. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So, look, I think it's important to point out to that we made this point at the beginning. we can't fall into the binary good guy, bad guy thing.

Like what you just said sounds like what Hubbard is pushing for is a level of personal responsibility among all of his adherents. And I applaud that. I think personal responsibility is good. But like every other good thing, you can take it too far. And that's the biggie. Like he gets you with the good thing. You don't want to be a victim.

Show of hands. Who wants to be a victim? Nobody wants to be a victim, right? Right. And then you ask a series of other questions. And now all of a sudden, you're way out there on the thin branches. And how in the hell did I get here? Look, Chuck, the big answer to your earlier question, and Mike tell me if I got this wrong,

but when you look at the hole and when you look at internal disciplinary measures, which basically is what that is, you really have to highlight the word in, internal because this isn't like escaping from the gulag. This isn't like getting out of Stalag 13. This isn't like going over the wall and running to freedom. When you get out of the hole, you know what you do? You go back to work. Yeah.

Right? You go back to work. You never get out of the hole. Correct. You're in a small hole at the bottom of a much wider hole. You're in the hole, man. You're always in the hole. hole. That is so right, Mike. That is so exactly right. And yet, I watched you on CBS. Sorry, Chuck,

but you got to, I mean, their attorney is sitting there. I think it was David Axelrod. He's doing the journalism thing, right? Journalisming all over the place there. And she just looks square in the camera and says, nope, there is no hole. He's making it up. He's making the whole thing up. Now, what are we to do? Citizens trying to make sense of this. We, somebody's not just wrong. Somebody's like real wrong. Like grown up wrong. Yeah, somebody is being paid a lot of money to sit there and say those things.

Now, just think about this, Mike. How insane is it that CBS recorded that, I recorded that interview with Jim Axelrod a week before the release date of the book. And it was a great interview. like he pushed me, he asked me tough questions, he wasn't like just puffballing away, but it was a very honest interview that went on for two hours. It was supposed to air the day after the release of the book, the 28th of September. Scientology sent a delegation to CBS, including Manique Yingling,

and numerous threat letters and whatever else they did saying, you can't air this, this is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And eventually, my publisher was like not really happy about that because they had often an exclusive to CBS. You know, I could have gone on ABC, I could have gone on NBC or whatever, but they chose CBS partly because Simon & Schuster is a subsidiary of Paramount and so is CBS. Sure. So they went with the Sista Company. and they buckled to the pressure of Scientology and then the competing pressure of Simon Schuster going,

hey, wait a minute, what are you doing? And decided that their compromise was to have this lawyer come on about my book. Now, I actually wonder if this has ever happened before. If there has ever been a book, This is my personal memoir. It's a memoir. This is not supposed to be the encyclopedia of Scientology.

It's not even Larry writes, I'm a reporter reporting on here's something that I have researched, et cetera, et cetera. This is my memoir. This is my experiences in my life. And they had a lawyer come on. And not a Scientologist, by the way. and she made it very clear to Jim Axelrod, I'm not a Scientologist, I'm a practicing Catholic,

who came on to deny things that she knows nothing about. Like, she's never been to the hole. She doesn't have a clue what the hole is, but she got told, go out there and say, there is no such thing as the hole. Well, that was sort of a clever little weasel because the hole was disbanded

after it was exposed. So there is no such thing. Was there ever? Well, that question remains, I don't know how she would answer that one. And, you know, she also says, oh yeah, Mike Rinder, his only source of income is to attack Scientology.

Well, that's interesting, because there are a lot of the people that I've worked for and continue to work for to this day that have nothing to do with attacking in Scientology, But I tell you, who has made tens of millions of dollars, Monique Engling from Scientology. Yeah.

That's all she does. Chuck, what are we paying Mike for this interview? Laurel and Hardy Handshake. I gave you a discount rate, Mike. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. Only from my good friends. But we only get to use it for a billion years.

Okay, CBS interviews you for two hours. Yeah. Who owns the totality of that footage? And where is it? CBS. Did you ever think about, and I'm sure this would be illegal, but whenever I do interviews anymore, I don't care where I do them, whether it's for print or whether it's for, you know, why go on somebody else's podcast, I usually take out my phone and just hit record. Sometimes I'll actually sit it up and, you know, just to have my version of it. It's the truth cam.

I wish you'd been able to do that. I'd love to see, and I know people would love to see, not the edited version, but the conversation that you had with Jim Axelrod, I want to see that. It was a fascinating, it was like this conversation. It was actually a conversation. I mean, he had notes and stuff,

but he had actually read the book. Like he wasn't, like some of the interviews that I've done are clearly the people haven't read the book. They got like a couple of talking points and they just like jump in. in to tell us about Tom Groo's divorcing Nicole Nicole Kidman and blah blah blah what about Katie Holmes and all these people ask me about Katie Holmes

and I keep saying I don't have any clue about Katie Holmes that all happened after I left I just don't know anything about Katie Holmes well tell us about Katie Holmes anyway so it was a very interesting informative conversation and he similar to the conversation that I had with with Patrick Patrick Bet David. Patrick Bet David was challenging. He challenged me on a bunch of things and I love that. I loved it because it made me think about stuff and makes me go, hmm, you know, what is actually the point here? Is there something that I'm missing about it or is there something more important or is there some other angle about this? What are we doing here? Like I want to, I want to be as. open and as interested in finding out how things work as people are interested in finding out what I have to say. Like, I want to hear, I want to explore, I want to know more, I don't want to know less.

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things that you said repeatedly in there, when you first started to get the doubt in your head, you know, and you're being abused by the chairman of the board. He's physically abusing you. He's verbally abusing you. You say this multiple times in the book, but I'm still a Scientologist, you know? So there's this idea that you are still, like really, the problems, that started to come. The doubt that came into your mind was because of David Mischavich and not because of El Ron Hubbard. So my question to you, and you tell me if you've ever been asked this before, is if LRH were still alive, would you still be a Scientologist? Well, honestly, I got to tell you, sorry, Chuck. I have been asked that question before.

All right. Maybe once, twice. Once was good enough. My answer is I think I probably would, because I don't think the spell would have been broken enough for me to decide that I had to escape. Like the final straw, as you see in the book, was that crazy interview with John Sweeney and when he was doing his program for BBC Panorama.

And then ultimately, Miscavich saying, you're never coming back to the U.S. And the sort of thing that had held me there for so long was the obligation that I felt to my children and my wife. I did not want to abandon them. But he basically took that part of the equation out of my hands and I went, there's nothing left.

I mean, my life sucks. And it's all horrible and it's always bad. and it never seems to get better but the one thing that I was hanging on to Muscovich took away and if he hadn't done that I probably

would never have left and had I not left I wouldn't have gotten enough distance from the bubble think you know I call Scientology the bubble this bubble

think that I could then eventually, because when I first left, I still considered myself a Scientologist for many years. I was absolutely convinced that still the only hope for mankind was Scientology. It was just being screwed up by David Muscovich in the organization. And only with having enough distance was I then able to get a perspective about Hubbard himself and finally break that mind prison. Like the first one was the Seahog and being inside the organization.

I had to get out of the organization to get my brain washed enough to be able to recognize that there was, that Hubbard wasn't all that he had been cracked up to be. And as I said, Russell Miller's book really was sort of the thing that made that happen. And at that point, I then started to feel like, okay, now I can really start thinking for myself.

Do you remember the moment, the road to Damascus moment when the scales fall from your eyes? And it makes that audible click in your mind. I mean, I look back at my own life and those parapetias, right? they're big moments. I just wonder if there was one specific for you. Well, somewhere in the middle of that Russell Miller book was that was like, that was like the big, I went, I get it. I suddenly sort of thought to myself, I get it. I actually get what the deal was with L. Ron Hubbard now.

I actually understand that this was perhaps larger than life, but certainly not larger than mankind or, you know, godlike figure who made the most out of the single skill that he really possessed, which was storytelling. Telling stories. Yeah. And I went, you know, you look at it. back and you go and OT3, the great Zeno's story and the Wall of Fire, it's like, you know, pulp science fiction storytelling.

Yeah. And do you know, Mike, that Hubbard started, like he originally in Dynetics would say, well, I've done all this research, and I researched this, and I tried this out on 273 people in Savannah, Georgia at the blah, blah, blah, blah, and I did this, and I did it. And he didn't do any of that bullshit. Didn't do anything. He just, like, made stuff up as he went along. Yeah.

But later on in his life, after he discovered past lives, and there was a remarkable book by Hubbard that is still used by Scientology to this day called The History of Man or a History of Man. And, you know, this is a cold-blooded factual account of the last 76 trillion years of existence. since this is so bonkers this book, it is like, that's why Scientologists are derogatorily termed clams,

because he says that all people on this planet evolved, or their bodies at least evolved, and at one point they were clams sitting on the seashore, and they open and close, and they have tears coming down their eyes, and the opening and closing of the clam is now the jaw of a human, and if you go like this to someone, you can make them have a toothache.

In fact, their teeth can actually fall out from doing this to them. I'm serious. And that's why Scientologists are referred to as clams by anti-Scientologists. But Hubbard then, after all of this past life stuff came up, started saying, well, see, he has perfect recollection

of all of his past lives. Unlike others, who are, it's sort of dim, and you have to like struggle to try and find anything. He had perfect recall. And so he would start saying that his expertise on things was based on his experience in planets like 74 million years ago. And so he understands how computers work.

And he understands how to operate planets with a computer. And he understands how blah, blah, and this and that. And this has become accepted fact in the world of Scientology. So now Scientologists pay, I'm going to describe something to you and you're going to go, no, this got to be bullshit. No, it's got to be bullshit. Nope, it's absolutely true. Scientologists pay $5,000 to do what is called the Cause Resurgence Rundown.

The cause resurgence rundown consists entirely of running in a circle around a pole. This was developed from Hubbard's whole track, which is what past lives are called in Scientology, whole track research of how you align flows of your energy and that Thetons, spirits, when they had a traumatic experience used to go out and circle around stars

for hundreds of years going in a big circle until they had realigned their thing and so this now has become first of all it was a punishment program that we had at the gold base where we had to go out and run around a damn pole in a 110 degree like and just not stop

the only order in this process process is keep running. That's it. That's all they're allowed to say to you. Then they made this into a saleable item and Scientologists pay $5,000 to be told run around that pole. Sure, you're not going to give away that technology for nothing once you... Some days you get the pole, some days you get the hole. Some days you get both. From pole to hole. Oh, my God.

Well, again, though, as you say this, he's a great writer of science fiction. And had he stayed in that lane, he would be remembered probably as one of the most inventive minds to put pen to paper. Had Gene Roddenberry said, at the end of Star Trek, look, here's the deal. I come from the future. And what I've given you is a gift in the form of Enverbalt. entertainment, I've given you a peak, tens, hundreds of years, this is what's coming, my friends. Then, I guarantee you, many thousands of people would have said, yeah, I believe it. Of course I believe it.

I mean, it was so apocryphal. There was so much prescient in what he did. And then the next thing is just let's find a mechanism whereby money can change hands. will get you closer to the transporter awareness level or the phaser awareness level, right, and so forth and so on. And then you throw a little tax exempt on top of that and bob's your uncle. I mean, I'm not Monday morning quarterbacking.

I'm just looking at it and trying to unpack it. A writer of science fiction created a religion, and people stood in line to run around a poll. Yeah, it's remarkable. And it is remarkable how much money people are willing to pay. for this stuff. How hard was it for the lawyer to say the church is worth three, four billion dollars? Oh, I think that may be her last appearance. That was a terrible... I mean, she did not want to go there and good for Jim. Good for Jim for pushing. Yes, absolutely.

I put a tweet out and said, you know, thank you for at least pushing her to have to admit, finally, that Scientology does have billions of dollars. This is a really important thing. It's important for people to know that it's not just that they have tax exempt status, it's that there's a lot of money sitting there that could be gotten and used by someone to do something more beneficial with. And isn't a lot of it just in empty buildings? Oh yeah. So much real estate. It's become a real estate empire. I mean, Scientology, I say now is a business. masquerading as a religion. And probably it should more accurately be,

Scientology is a criminal organization masquerading as a fundraising business slash, you know, real estate empire pretending to be a religion. But it's crazy how much property they have. And the reason they have all that property now is because of Manique Yingling. Well, not strictly speaking. Maniq Ingling is the tax attorney for science.

The head of the tax attorney business for Scientology. And the IRS is one of the other things is you can't accumulate massive amounts of liquid assets or cash as an exempt organization. Because the theory of exempt organizations is they're supposed to be doing good for the... society at large that the government doesn't have to do. So we grant them tax exempt status because they're giving succor to people, they're helping the homeless, da-da-da-da, whatever. So if you accumulate too much money, you run afoul of the exempt organizations division of the IRS.

But if you buy property, the IRS is not allowed to say, well, these buildings are all empty because that is, encroaching on the polity of whether a religious organization can say what do they need their buildings for or not. And that's a violation of the First Amendment. So they don't go there. So you can buy thousands of empty buildings and say this is all, we need all this to minister to our parishioners. It's complete bullshit.

And the asset remains on the books of Scientology. They don't have to give it away to anyone. Don't you think there's an incredible opportunity for a congressperson, a senator, to really take it upon themselves? I get there's a couple of big obstacles, but to fix that loophole, to say that in the confines of a 501c3, no, you can't hide behind LLC's buying property in your name. I mean, Chuck, I don't know if you saw the aerial shot of clear water and the projected look of what's going. I mean, they're buying the city. They're buying the city. Right.

And that's just a small part of the overall global plan. That hasn't changed at all. It just seems like an enterprising congressman could make his bones on this thing. Oh, Mike, I couldn't agree with you more. And I believe that through A, the exposure that social media, has brought and the internet in general has brought, you know, information is poison to cults. It just is. It ultimately is what kills them. The incredible work that was done, first really by the St. Petersburg Times, then Larry Wright and Alex Gibney with Going Clear, and then our series on

the aftermath had a big impact. I think that we are changing. The public perception of Scientology is changing. It used to be people sort of went, I don't know anything about it. Isn't that the thing that Tom Cruise is involved in? Nowadays, it's more, yeah, we know about that

and we don't want to have anything to do with it. And, you know, there was a progression that you see always in society. You saw it with the civil rights movement. You've seen it with gay rights. to begin with, nobody wants to publicly come out in favor at the very beginning. It's all political figures of note

will be opposed to gay rights. Then it will slowly start changing and then you'll have people who, generally people won't say anything. Then you'll have some people come out in favor of it. Then by the end of the sort of cycle, it becomes, Politically opposite to, you can't now say you're opposed to gay rights.

That's death these days. Even if you are opposed to them, you can't come out and say it, but there are a bunch of people who will come out and use that as their platform. I believe we are reaching that tipping point where Scientology is going to become something that some enterprising politicians at a federal level, are going to latch on to as a cause that just like you said. Interestingly, I don't know if you've been watching this, but that mayoral race in Los Angeles

is for the first time taking the issue of Scientology as a political football. And Karen Bass and Richard, I can't even think of his name. Rick Caruso. Rick Caruso are like trying to outdo one another as to who can shit on Scientology the biggest as a plus. Interesting.

And that is a massive change in the world. And I see that coming soon and hopefully some federal politicians will take this up because it's not just a vote getter. It's a good thing to do to save some people from real abuse and maybe also recover some money to the U.S. Treasury. That would be nice. How can there be something wrong with that? You know, it's amazing how many C-words are flying around in this conversation, from certainty

to cults, to communication, to Congress, to curiosity, and ultimately celebrities. I don't care about Katie Holmes. I'm not going to ask you about that. I've heard all the Tom Cruise stories. I know the John Travolta stories. I get the Kate Moss thing. Blah, blah, blah, blah. But what is it about the celebrity?

relationship that's so unique to Scientology. Is it the fact that they offer a new and better way to communicate that just resonates with so many people who are, I mean, let's face it, we're in the communications business. But if not that, what in the world is it? No, it is that, Mike. It absolutely is that. That is the pitch. But also recognize Hubbard in the 50s started the,

idea that Scientology needs to actively go after to recruit celebrities because they set the trends in society. If people see a celebrity involved in something, you know, they may become interested in it. They are a great way of reaching a lot of people with your message. And, you know, that was Spanky's world. Yes. Spanky was in the celebrity world in Scientology. And she She will tell you, yes, that's what we pitch to these people. We'll help you with your ability to communicate. Every artist wants to communicate better, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But good news.

There hasn't been any new big celebrity in Scientology since, geez, I don't know. Since more. Like, the only actual celebrity, big sort of name who has become prominent, in the last five years is Elizabeth Moss but she was raised as Scientologist she doesn't really count she wasn't brought into the world of Scientology

like John Travolta or Tom Cruise or Kirsty Alley were back in the 80s or 90s or whenever it was that they first got started they got hooked and brought in and became public faces of Scientology there ain't none happening that Timothy Shalamey

Anybody's agent at this point in Hollywood, if they even breathe the idea that they were going to get involved in Scientology, would tell them, get away, don't engage, do not. Or otherwise, I'm dropping you as a client. Then I've got to ask you, I'm going to break my word. What do you do if you're Tom Cruise's agent? Because Tom Cruise, I mean, it was Father's Son and Holy Ghost. It was Elron Hubbard. It was David Miscavage. It was Tom Cruise.

He's still such a huge part of that. And now you've got Top Gun, great movie, maybe the biggest movie star in the world. How is he being advised? And how is he going to balance the teachings of Hubbard with the demands of the 10% of the very business, the monstrous business that he's built? Well, if you'll note,

these days he doesn't talk about Scientology. In fact, he requires for junkers, for movies that there be no Scientology questions, and there is a black list of reporters who have done Scientology stories who are not allowed to interview him. So I write about it in the book about the battles over this

with Paramount and Pat Kingsley and his earlier representation, but also realize that he is like, you know, he's a CIA, you know, tent pole. He's not just a tent pole for Paramount. He's a CAA tent pole. And his partner, Paula,

is married to Rick Nesita, one of the three guys that run CAA. I mean, it's like he's, I think, seen the light that promoting Scientology and mixing it up with trying to promote movies is probably not good business. I think his agents are just, just telling him, good, good job.

When you stopped talking about Scientology, things started going good again, so don't do it anymore. That's what I think. Well, look, we're in the 90 minutes. I'm going to be respectfully your time. So I think a good place to land the plane is with another C word, which is courage. And all of this to me, I look at all the players we've talked about. And some of them are cowards, another C word, some of them are courageous.

Spanky was courageous. I think what you've done is courageous. I won't point out the cowards, but in the end, this thing has to tip. They all always do, sooner or later. So that's my last question. What has to happen? What has to happen for the wheels to come off the bus? The tax exempt status needs to be revoked,

because that will open the door to transparency about the finances and how much money is actually being spent on private investigators and how much money are they spending on all the things they claim to be doing to benefit the world, but really just PR PhotoOps. And once that stuff is exposed, that's the real beginning of the end. It'll take a while for this monster to be dismantled. When you've got that much money and that much property, it doesn't just go away overnight. But I think the thing will be that the internal...

world of Scientology starts to lose confidence and that certainty that everything that they're doing is right and everything that they're doing is above board and that they are being told the truth by David Miscavich

at these kooky events that he holds that where Scientologists get their news. That is what I think and Mike the sooner that happens the better because people are being hurt every day. You know, I think about what you said before. It's based on the box that Hubbard has put

himself in. He can't be a little bit wrong. It's not enough to say, okay, well, he's either exactly who he claimed to be or among the greatest deceivers to ever walk the planet. It can't be somewhere in between. He has to be the Messiah or the barefaced Messiah. And that's, you know, that's seems to be a pretty simple choice. The evidence demands a verdict. And you're contributing a critical part of that evidence, I think. Thank you so much. Thank you. Honestly, it's been a real pleasure talking to you guys, really, real interesting, informative. Thank you. We're just a couple of guys who have known each other like 45 years. And now we far as gumped their way into this really weird place. And look, I know there are a lot of other players out there, and I know you've talked to a lot of them.

But there's a long list of people who have done a lot of brave things over the years, but it's rare to find somebody who was occupying the position you were in to be sitting where you're sitting now. So I wish you the very best of luck with your family. I hope somehow or another, there can be a reconciliation. And I hope anybody out there, not to turn this into a PSA, but I think there's still a call. awareness network that's out there. This is not just Scientology. There's so many people who have bought in to the business of believing a weird thing. And that's okay. That's their business. But man, once your personal economy is wrapped up into it, you're just inches away from oblivion. Am I right, Mike? Is there still some general place out there where people can go to start a deprogramming process? Well, yeah, but don't say cult awareness network.

because Scientology took that over. Oh, that particular ones. Oh, that's right. Believe it or not. But there are plenty of them, Mike. And in fact, I started a foundation with a few other survivors from Scientology called the Aftermath Foundation.

We are devoted to helping people escape from Scientology and providing them with the resources that they need to be able to do that because many people who leave Scientology don't have any money, Some of them don't have driver's licenses. They don't have any friends anymore. They don't have anywhere to go.

And so we assist with that. But there are many organizations. Look, all you have to do is Google. You just have to Google cult, you know, whatever organization you were in. How long before they get Google, Mike? How long before they get Google? I mean, honestly, I was looking up your Australian 60 Minutes. And the very top.

that I clicked on was a Scientology hit piece on that. Yeah, and they pay for those ads and your tax dollars are subsidizing. Unbelievable. Paying for those ads. So, yeah. Criminal. There's another C word. If there's one last thing that I could say, Mike, that I would like, which is sort of

the message of my book overall, it's never too late to change. No matter what circumstance you may be in, you don't have to be in, you don't have to be in Scientology or in a cult, you can be in a bad relationship. You can be in a job you hate and whatever. You can change it. If I could escape Scientology when I was 52 years old and walk out the door with literally a briefcase, that was it. I had no money.

I had nowhere to go. I had absolutely nothing. Anybody can do it. And you can teach an old, new tricks. It is possible. I am living proof of the old dog that learn new tricks.

So have hope. And I hope my book informs people beyond I really wanted it to be something that whether you were in Scientology or a cult or whatever

you could learn something from it or see something or feel something about your own circumstance. So I just want everybody to know your life can be better. I hope you sell a billion copies. It's called a billion years by Mike Rinter.

Thanks, Mike. So do I. Thank you. Thanks so much. If you're done, please subscribe. Leave some stars ideally five. Five lousy. The ocean moves us, whether that's surfing a wave or taken in an inspiring view.

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