The Psychosemantic Podcast

It's seven o'clock. Do you know where your freedom is? Someone had told me there's this cult and they'll make anything possible in your life. I was deeply convinced.

That we were going to save the world. It was a transcendent experience. You feel euphoric. Everything you do for endless choices of years depends on what you do with and in Scientology.

They sell it all in the beginning as something quite logical. You take on a matrix of thought that is not your own. It's so strong that it sticks you like glue. Very suggestible. You just don't see it happening to you.

You justify so much. There is no logical explanation other than faith.

Do you ever think, Mr. Hubbard, that you might be quite mad? Oh, yes. The one man in the world who never believes he's mad is a madman. I know words. I have the best words.

I have to. Okay. So I guess since we've already started talking about it, we are talking about going clear Scientology and the prison of belief. Allegedly. We'll just say allegedly randomly.

It's all right. They're not coming for us. Okay. But at least we got it there at the very beginning and then we'll say it at the very end to cover our bases. Right.

Because, yeah, I had been wanting to watch this. I'm always fascinated by cults and religions by other names. And I...

You know, I knew the sideway, the, the peripheral version. Yeah. You know, there's a little bit of that, you know, I followed a little bit about the, a little bit about the lay Remy. I don't always mispronounce her last name.

Leah Romani. Yeah. And same kind of deal. They're trying to silence her. And it's like, well, she literally backed up everything. She interviewed all these former members. It's the oldest trick in the book. Oh.

You're saying bad things about me. It must not be true. I'm like, it's over five people, dude. Yeah, it is so many people. And you can't make that up. You can't make it up.

We're seeing similar tactics in, you know, Duncan McLeish and I usually do a documentary around Christmas time. We did Tickled and Mr. Morgan.

Which, Mr. Oregon, if you hadn't seen, that was by the same people that did Tickled. Okay, hold on. I think that sounds fair.

It was like this antique furniture company that had some deal with a towing company. And then it just became this big, bigger thing.

Oh, is that threatening intimidation and yeah. Oh wow. Hospitals and other shit. Is that the one from New Zealand? I think. Okay. I will check it out. And.

You know, in college, I was in a creative writing class, and people wrote down a topic that they weren't very familiar with, and then they passed it all around the room, and everybody took the thing out.

And whatever it was, as long as it wasn't their own thing, they had to write about it. That's a nice prompt. Yeah. I got Scientology. Oh, man.

Was that in the 2010s? It was. I wanted to write about it my final year of high school. My grandmother was my mentor. She was a former teacher. And...

We could not find anything. We're using all the EDU library searching sites, you know, article searching sites that aren't going to, you know, that generally...

Even before we were using VPNs, those were pretty good at going through the already over-filtered Google search results, and we couldn't find anything, you know, except we couldn't even find other former members other than like the...

first five mainstream ones people often you know cite and i was just like but now you know post 2013 you can find so much more you can find all these people coming forward hey i was approached

I was even more just saddened by the ones who are. Like, Singer Beck is a Scientologist. I already knew about Jennifer Lopez. That's what caused her divorce. I knew about Will Smith because he had said...

i go to the same church as travolta and cruz so let's connect the dots let's let's call a spade a spade but then it's like man i had no idea about all these other ones no wonder they've been silent or had an unusual career with you know

powerful people making it happen it's it's sad really sad it it is and i i was a little uh i i was all similarly having not a whole lot of info that came up during my searches so I was coming up on my deadline so I went downtown to the Scientology Center oh my god

And I walked in and I was there until they asked for money. I had I so I had another former family member.

I say forward because she's since divorced that cousin of mine, but she's awesome. But she said she almost got recruited and she hurt. She went to like a wasn't Texas, but some matter like California Institute and.

could you not like she heard someone laughing in another room and she's like yes it's it's a ponzi scheme it's a con game it's the it's the usual why is there someone in another room laughing while they're feeding me this stuff about aliens

oh man you know and it is weird go ahead sorry it is weird though because they they it seems like all the famous people they they have a similar trait and that is they come to you when a beloved person in your family has died

so that's they get you when you're weak and vulnerable but also i i know most of us when we think of l ron hubbard's adaptation battlefield earth we think yeah what a piece of one of the

best bad movies of all time you know just terrible movie but i had i had no idea that the reason those stupid klingon planet of the apes type aliens were called cyclos i thought that was just

Stupid, but they're actually called Cyclos because L. Ron Hubbard hates psychologists because they call him out on his bullshit. I thought, oh, even worse. He got a man.

We know he's a con artist, but I didn't know it was just so diabolical and just to where, you know, people, all these other scientists have put him on the spot. And he just again, he's basically was a mobster.

Yep. Didn't want to, didn't want to, wanted to get lots of money and not pay money back. You know, what did that one 13?

13 year younger woman that he stole from the church of Satan guy or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. And it's so funny to make money is to start a religion. Totally. I, I had no idea that.

The Church of Satan is another one I'm still just like going through is like so many people were attracted to it at one point or another, and some of them weren't even actual Satanists. But yeah, then go Scientology.

It's just so wild how they basically use diction that you would expect in any other kind of clergy, and then they just are basically, it's almost like...

But at the wording alone, I don't know why anyone would fall victim to it. It just sounds like extortion. But again, when you just keep peppering it, keep sugarcoating it more and more, then you're going to have all these...

you know victims but it is just so sad how the the number one way they do like all cults is okay if you leave we are gonna cut off your whole family leaving you with zero support and

it's just it's an ongoing issue there's so many people who are like i don't you can't say this word or that word because then they'll disown me if i say i'm queer they'll disown me if i say i'm this or that they'll

give me a slap on the wrist like okay guys well religion's supposed to help not prosecute so and this isn't even a religion but but we play one on tv

I play one on TV, but were you familiar with Alex Gibney? No, not really. This was my first awareness of him. And I read that thing you had sent me.

but I knew about, I knew about Enron. I knew about the casino Jack thing growing up. I have since seen Enron. Don't worry guys, but I'd heard of the WikiLeaks one. We still secrets, but.

Yeah, Gonclair was the first one I saw all the way through, and I was like, whoa, that's a good... Yeah, I mean, his list of things were...

Taxi to the Dark Side, I've been meaning to see, but it came out in 07 where I was just tired of all the war propaganda, so the good...

legit good war movies and documentaries passed me by. So timing was everything. But yeah, both my sister and I saw The Inventor, which was about, you know, con artist Elizabeth Holmes.

Oh, right. Blood testing is like my word and same kind of deal. And I found it doing some digging. I had no idea that he had a his father was.

journalist frank gibney who was best known for doing the five gentlemen in japan which was known for humanizing the japanese post-world war ii

Yeah, that's pretty cool. I mean, we still got xenophobia going on, but I was like, man, so he came from a pretty important background and I can't believe he's in his seventies. He does not look at him. No, no, he doesn't. I think I...

Before this, looking through his list of films, because I said I was unfamiliar with him, I had seen Gonzo, The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Oh, swoopy. Okay.

I really recommend Zero Days, which used to be on Showtime a bunch, talking about StocksNet, which was the self-replicating malware that the US and Israel...

released on an Iranian nuclear facility. So he doesn't hold any punches. He did Wiseguy, which was about the making of The Sopranos. Agent of Chaos, I recommend. That's a two-part miniseries.

on the russian troll bot farm and okay oh he's got something called musk that's to be uh not out yet i will definitely see that uh the

The Crime of the Century is about the big pharma companies. But so, yeah, the last one I would have seen would have been the Showtime one, NMEs, the President, Justice and the FBI.

He did Catching Hell, which was about the Chicago Cubs trying to reach the World Series. So he has done more than just scandals and political unfoldings. But as I said, you got to dig for his catalog.

Pretty much all about the research. He leaves it up to them to market his stuff. 1980 to present. Yeah. Putting stuff out. Just when you thought it was only Errol Morris.

he's produced death row stories and how to fix a drug scandal and others might have seen the 2018 robin williams documentary he did come inside my mind he's done stuff for the rolling stones yeah

I want to see the Sinatra one he did as well as the Janis Joplin 2015 one but yeah others might have seen his 30 for 30 soccer stories special

and the Armstrong lie. Oh, he did a 30 for 30 or 30 in there. Well, that, that ESPN doc series. Yes, sir. What that was. Okay. Yep. Cool. And yeah, I mean,

I wouldn't say that this was overhyped, but this documentary was very well always spoken of. So I knew that I was going to enjoy it whenever I got to it. And it was really cool seeing Jason...

Beggy or Behe or however you say his name. I only recognize him from Californication.

Oh, nice. Yeah, I was thinking I hadn't seen Chicago PD yet, but I knew it was like, yeah, I know that name. He was in some sitcoms. Yeah, Monkey Shines. Yeah, just a character actor. And then he kind of vanished. And unfortunately, that was because of that.

Yeah. You might have seen him in G.I. Jane. Oh, he was in G.I. Jane? Yeah, he's one of the other hotheads who comes around. Oh, okay. Then, yeah.

definitely saw him as another that guy but yeah same kind of deal and

His story was definitely heartbreaking. I thought ER actress Sherry Springfield did a pretty good narration. And that's just it. They had some really good actors doing the narration of some of the testimonies to bring it to life.

Yeah. I mean, it's, I don't even know where, well, I guess we have already started, but it's just, I remember genetics.

When I was younger, I remember it being around and being a book. And then just kind of Scientology became one of those things that people kind of joked about a little bit.

nobody knew as much about, but it was a church. We only just knew bad Travolta movies. We didn't know anything else. Why was it banned? So, yes, you're right. We were the reactive state.

Kind of like I would see people do a dish on Canada, but not give a reason why. I'm like, why? Is it because you think they're cheap? They got good health care. You seem like nice people. Why am I going to hate on Canada? But yeah.

With Scientology, I mean, they pretty much promoted this unofficially. Just the minute you do the whole, you can't watch this. It's like, okay, I'm going to watch this. Yeah, it was like the Catholic Church. Pre-advertising.

Oh, yeah, Spotlight. Yeah, Dogma. Or Golden Compass. Oh, yes. Oh, my God. I had a...

stuck up teacher and assistant who already didn't want to see that I'm like you haven't seen the movie yeah but it has religious beliefs how do you know that there's plenty of books that don't share the same religious beliefs that was one of those if I had to do an argument all over again

It's kind of where I get when I see people who go, I don't like zombie movies. I'm like, and yet you've watched all the Evil Dead and Phantasm movies. Give me a break. It's just, what do you think that is? I don't want to be political. Then why are you watching Platoon?

everything's political everything is political especially if it's a historical event or having good cop bad cop come on man and so yeah they did some pretty much free advertising and as like

Yeah. Who am I going to trust? Infamous church that I've heard mild things about or the guy who did Enron, the smartest guys in the world. Yeah, I'm going to trust a claim documentary guy because.

Trust me, if a documentary has so many glaring inaccuracies, it's not going to be seen by many, or you'll just see so many comparisons. Now, yes, you've got to take some of that with a grain of salt, because anybody can...

edit wikipedia after all and glamorize their wikipedia page but i'm like yeah no it if it

If it's just if the person being accused says they didn't do a good job. Now I got to hear the accuser. And what David Miskevich and.

plenty of other people declined to speak to the documentarian, so they could have had a chance. Yeah, I mean, Maureen Dowd...

the new york times nothing post covered it so yeah i mean i was seeing posters for it everywhere and i just lucked out like it came to hbo pretty quick i i recorded watched it and i i kid you not dude i

i consider myself a pretty stoic guy i felt pretty sad inside but it was more than just you know it got me it was also like no you did a good thing this was a real samaritan's help

Yeah, it's like any other sort of victim. As soon as some people shine some light on it, it makes some people feel less alone and more confident in being able to speak up.

about their abuses bingo bingo bingo uh i do definitely want to write oh i i want to look up more on lawrence wright he's worked for the new yorker uh but

His book was the main source of this. I know that in response, Alex Gibney adapted his book, The Looming Tower, which was about the Twin Towers.

all the various other profiling and ineptitude by the feds uh so uh it was kind of a one-two punch it's like okay once we do this we're gonna adapt your other buck and

I definitely want to look up some of his other nonfiction because he's also done another one called Remembering Satan, A Tragic Case of Recovered Memory, and just a bunch of other stuff, including...

uh one on camp david and other stuff on al-qaeda and his most recent one is the plague year america in the time of covid so they're definitely trying to do engrossing stuff and

But yeah, I totally think the 2015 Peabody Award for this and Best Documentary Screenplay is very well deserved because like it really does.

Tick along at a ticking pace. It did not feel like two hours. That's how engrossing it was. Yeah, it went by so fast. I don't know if you know this because you said you haven't.

watched it or read it yet but i'm wondering if the remembering satan thing is about that psychologist that creepy psychologist and the woman who was a child when he started working with her let's see

It could be possible. It's from 94. There was like a psychologist that was quote unquote helping a woman.

uncover her buried memories about being abused by satanists that looks like the one yeah erica and julian graham had a serious accusation abuse against their father paul and graham who was a respected deputy in washington does that sound it

That sounds familiar. And he did a lot of therapy where like they would lay naked together and they got married. If it's not, this is a totally separate thing, which I can, I can, I've got it written down somewhere.

It looks like documentary I saw. It's if it's not, it's at least one side of the same coin. I mean, but yeah, Paul Ingram false memory case. So it sounds like, yeah, be the one.

That's that sounds like it's a fascinating and terrifying and sad story. Hey, all the more power to him because there's plenty of docs where. You've seen you might like where.

They kind of have that clumsy ending because there's not much more left to say. There's other ones which I think are fine and bringing awareness. And there's others where sometimes they give the...

the guy who caused it too much spotlight. So, I mean, this one was pretty neat because it's like, yeah, you've heard all these other reported stories about Hubbard. He's dead. We don't have to hear anyone, you know, at the Church of Scientology's take.

it's just no great they're just gonna feed us more lies and they wouldn't have done an interview anyway that's how secretive they are so the whole fake news is like well

We reached out to you. We did all the journalism tactics. So yeah, sure. Fake news. You can keep doing the oldest trick in the book. And Tom Cruise tried to tell us with that speech in the firm.

that they you know they get you in they get you comfortable they give you the life that you want and then as soon as your kids are in private school they let you in on the the secret that you're

It just shows the irony, too. It's like, just because I play one on TV doesn't mean I'm actually a good person. Look at Dean Cain. Oh, God. I'm Superman, and now I'm an ICE agent. Sure, that's totally what your mother wanted.

superman from uh that alternate universe and peacemaker yes yes yes indeed uh so i mean yeah and

Yeah, they did good with the video clips and other docs that they cited. And I just felt like, again, it was good that they didn't just stick with celebrities. It's like, no, guys, this is anybody, everybody.

just random middle-class people rich people uh poor people anybody was pretty much victimized by this organization and yeah so i

That's just it too. It wasn't just sticking with just the elites. It was saying, hey, anybody can be taken advantage of by these guys. And I think that's just it. There's been so much non-listening, but there's also just been too many trustworthy people.

I mean, I remember my grandmother, bless her soul, rest in peace, lost her mind when she saw Newt Gingrich say we're going to be on the moon in 2018. And she's like, look at all those people in the backgrounds, you know.

you know clapping so i think that's just it a lot of people do just like to believe hey they can't be that dumb it's like a lot of people are just not listening they just love the fuck around and find out of it all you know just yeah

Their celebration when they finally achieved tax-exempt status so they didn't have to pay those billions of dollars in back taxes. Terrible. That looked like... charlie kirk's memorial with a few less fireworks jesus christ ah fuck charlie kirk sorry sorry not sorry fuck you yeah i mean

dying doesn't make you a better person that's just it too and charlie kirk was a good wake-up call i i unfriended so many people and i was happy for it everyone's like oh that sucks i'm like no that's good

I had no idea. These guys were all just tumors just developing on my skin, basically. It's like for everyone to just... take a speaker and then say oh i only take the parts i like like hold on hold on a minute will willful ignorance come on and

I just have seen it with the Jordan Peterson stans, and I've seen it with all the other Karens. It's like, no, stop it, stop it, stop it. And how about the fact that he says, oh, blacks shouldn't be given the same education, but...

Oh, I'll take Candace Owens because she agrees with me. It's just like that amount of toxicity and acting like he's a good man. He had some good points. I just unfriended so many people. I was just like, and...

The fact that they hit you with the oldest trick in the book. Oh, so you're glad he's dead. Like, irrelevant. Not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about what he stood for. I'm not talking about the death, but let's be honest. When you're...

acting like a martyr when you are acting like i know everything trust me there's going to be a vigilante down the road and then let's be honest there's going to be another bag who takes his place so i was just like whatever man

Not going to spend any more time on this. Please unfriend me. Otherwise I'll block you right now here right now. Better to find out now, you know, uh,

Because, yeah, there's going to be somebody else that's going to fall into the vacuum. I take the parts I like. I'm like, I take the parts I like. So you're just going to look.

If your next door neighbor was a Nazi, you'd just look the other way. Come on, man. Just don't do that. But he shoveled my driveway. Yeah, that is what I'm also getting real sick of. And I'm sure...

There might have been plenty of Scientologists like that, too. It's like, well, he treats me nice. That doesn't mean he treats anybody else nice. And if you hear, oh, just sacrilege.

What's the other one they do? Just... Rumors! I'm like, how's it a rumor? I just told you this just happened to me.

Well, just because it happened to you. Yeah, yeah. He's not like that in real life. He's just like that online.

online's not real life that's what i hate too they'll do the whole oh he's got they'll do a bill murray he's got different sides of um or they'll do the whole it's like or they go into borderline slut shaming mode well you had it coming like whoa whoa

What? Scuttlebutt, Scuttlebutt, hearsay, hearsay is like, no, no, and no. So, yeah, Scientology was kind of just the oldest trick in the book. It's the typical...

you know, the bully must be right. And it's like, but yeah, the people they all interviewed and the other testimony was neat. I dug out they actually showed some exterior modern day footage of the church.

And how, again, I could see why other people could easily be fooled into thinking it's just like any other cathedral. You know.

i mean i guess in one way most churches are just tax shelters for somebody but yeah that was the most aggravating part that really was it's just like it still is tax exempt it's like uh

A lot of things wrong with this. It's not a religion. And, you know, when religions want to get involved in politics, then they should lose their tax-exempt status and become a political organization.

One of my pals who was at the movie convention said that he's had some pals who have had Scientologists, celebs, especially like Travolta, kind of have a good PR team.

and so I'll take this with a grain of salt, but I believe it, that they will go online and basically omit any celebrity signing stuff. So if so-and-so had a, I refuse to sign stuff or get the fuck out of here, they'll take stuff like that down.

Millions of dollars later. I could see that. And Jason Begey talked about how that happened with one of his videos. That's right, he did. But it's just so sad how...

These mob enforcer equivalents are now in the form of celebrities, which should be a harmless thing with PR. Like, hey, man, there's someone making a ransom, you know, and coming out with this bogus story is now in the form of...

get the fuck out of here you know what should have just been a harmless bouncer is now literally just muscle for an entity and what was that uh spanky taylor who

was in the church. She wasn't famous, but she was public relations. Yeah, that's bad enough. Yeah. She was with the church for 17 years, I think it said. You got to really just.

If you're going to go into Merc mode, you really have to have just erased your soul to just be doing everyone's dirty work and. Fun fact, did you are you an X-Files fan?

Yeah, yeah. Fun mixture of horror. I don't know if I've seen everything, but I've seen lots of it. I was doing a fun rewatch of the whole thing, and there's a recurring character on both that and the sister show, Millennium.

where Lance Henriksen's a psychic going after supernatural serial killers, there was a character named Jose Chong, who basically starts off as a self-help author, and that leads to murder and all this utter deceit.

and that apparently was the writers stand in for a Scientology type Hubbard type oh just doing the usual dress it up you know so no one makes them remove the episode

Right, like the thing on the boys, if you're the boys. Yep, similar. Homelander is basically an alpha male. I know different.

Different character, different subplot, but I'm just saying. But still, yeah, he's, I mean, he feeds right into it. And then there's the, what was it? The Church of Whatever that was always offering Fresca. And...

claiming to help people fix their public images and get them back into the group and labeling people a toxic person. The minute you mix in the whole fixing your image, yeah, that could not be the most...

any more clear cut as Scientology Parallel. It sucks, though, too, how people know about it. But like you're saying, yeah, the 2000s and 2010s, it was screwed. I couldn't you could barely find any resources.

And now I'm seeing all these rumors about former deputies who are basically fixers for Scientology now, harassing celebrities or whistleblowers. I was really disturbed.

I know everyone was going back and forth. I do or don't believe the Neil Gaiman accusations. First off, I already believed because, you know, tons of people came forward like Bill Cosby and B Scientology connection. So I'm like,

Yeah. Oh, he has a Scientology. He had it. He used to be a Scientology member. So I'm like, yep. All these twisted, depraved sexual games. Yeah. Oh, Danny Masterson.

And he's like the best known kind and he's not serving anywhere near the time. So yeah, Neil Gaiman's dad, David Gaiman, was a prominent figure of the Church of Scientology working as the chief UK media spokesman.

Even though he had no affiliation, his father's leadership. So even though he was not known, he did just kind of come out with just like, yeah. But.

so he had a similar legal team that is for sure because now he's gone silent but um

Yeah. Masterson was just so disturbing because it was just one of those and same kind of deal. You had the new singer Lincoln Park and all these other people who were like, well, he was nice to me. And it's like, well, hold on guys. Same deal. Sure. They were nice to you.

That doesn't mean the other person's story is false. I just am so sick of that whole thing. It's like. Yeah. You know, Jeffrey Dahmer was nice to his neighbors. I mean, if I'll give you.

real life story equivalent so like we had this stupid gal who was accusing an art teacher of mine as being a perv i'm at there you know 24 7 i didn't see him raise his hand once to anybody

You know, I didn't see him abuse anybody. I didn't tell my sister. Yeah, that one crazy gal, you know, in high school, she's in this class. She's like, oh, yeah, she's she's something else.

She's saying all these theories that you can't even prove in any scientific nature. And then I look her up years later. And when...

the recent eclipse was happening and she starts trolling twitter i didn't even know she had a twitter account but just popped up in one of our feeds one day because of people you might know and she's a flat earther i'm like this all makes sense

But that's just it. A lot of people got to look at the background of everybody. If you're going to dig and profile, you better always be that objective. What was that document? Was it called Around the Curve? Is that the flat the flat earther documentary?

Let me see. I think it was. There was a really funny part. Yep. That's the one. Wow. Have you seen that one? I have not, but I'm going to now. It's on Tubi.

Okay. Yeah. I haven't seen it in quite some time, but there's a handful of different flat earthers and flat earth YouTubers and things like that. And there's one guy that's going to scientifically prove.

with this this experiment and uh yeah i i would definitely recommend checking that one out um but when you said she was a flat earther it made me think of that oh it's just

mind-boggling because it's like come on we've been over this time and again you know you're gonna go back to the moon is green cheese we're done man come on

Maybe the Scientologists will send us out into outer space to find Xenu and his DCA rocket ships. I mean, I already...

and that's just it like even like or don't like tom cruise the main issue i have is that he is a tool for them he is enabling them so you know i'd already seen you know most people just know the whole

He does his own stunts because he basically has all the money in the world that will cover insurance. But that's irrelevant. The main thing is I just saw people he was recruiting to be his wife. He broke their hearts.

he wasn't who Scientology picked. So I just, that's the other thing too. Scientology is also very old school. Like they do not like...

biracial couples and he was trying to seek out this one beautiful Israeli gal who had been on like homeland and her heart was broken. But there's a good side of the story. She matured and realized, hmm, there's a lot of fake people behind the curtain. Yeah.

he almost wanted dad was a psychologist right i didn't know about that part but i mean i'm just glad that mimi rogers fled this and she was the one who connected this whole thing so

Tom Cruise didn't escape it, but she did, fortunately. But it's also interesting how every celebrity who's escaped it, you kind of see how their career kind of drags. They do a lot of made for TV, direct to video festival stuff.

stuff that just isn't on anyone's radar and then they slowly make little comebacks and it's just it's just dog shit how basically that's the reason you won't once you're in that is the reason you won't lose because now they're gonna just

make lies or just basically extort your career yeah show business it's yeah i mean it's why they've got that that base in hollywood and they they're really interested in building that cloud building that power and that what i had noticed that they talked about that with l ron hubbard stuff with uh

Him trying to find the best way to, I mean, he was very upset with the psychologists that he had allegedly written trying to ask for treatment and they were denying him. And I think that probably fed into his.

hatred of psychology and why there's so much anti-psychology and psychiatry stuff based in the religion bingo and uh i mean it a lot of the stuff does sound like a

a pulp fiction sci-fi writer just coming up with stuff out of his ass and naming it like JK Rowling would name stuff. That's the, that's the cover. That's the, it's the base. So I can't be cold on my bullshit because people just think I'm just, you know,

talking mumbo jumbo uh so i did just look up now they didn't go into any politicians but there are a bunch there are some canadians apparently and lo and behold sarah palin has a connection that's right of course the shitbag uh but uh martin o'malley and jeff stone from riverside county um

Brad Sherman. And again, the sides don't matter. Like they went for some very, very big people often in the Maryland area, Nevada.

And these are all throughout the 2010s, but trust me, you know, like any virus, Scientology spreads its wings here and there. It infects all kinds of other people.

When you look it up on Google, AI automatically generates our David Thomas, the former mayor of Palm Bay, Florida. So yeah, they're there. But like you say that it's just like the mosquito, which.

You've used every kind of spray, and it still stings you, and you're just looking for, what other solution can I use to get rid of this? Just the consolidation of power. I don't know how it would have kept going.

I mean, I guess L. Ron Hubbard was bound to die at some point, but it seemed like there was all that stuff about David Miscavich's... missing wife but it sounds like they just do that with lots of people is just keep them away from the public if it's not useful if it's not useful to the image

So, I mean, I have no idea if she's dead or if she's in that, what did they call it? The rehabilitation project force that's on the seventh floor of the Hollywood headquarters that that.

one woman escaped from after she found that they were mistreating her baby. Very heartbreaking stuff. But yeah, it made up for the stuff it was unclear on by just...

just making it clear we're not hypothesizing we're not speculating like this is just a vague report and whatever we could get from that witness you know yeah that's

it kind of just led into just uh the other just how this guy just communicated so i mean i think that is why it just really stood out instead of it could have easily just stood with just it could have been a lame

2020 or extra you know type clickbait article is like no it avoided that it went straight into and for those who don't have HBO Max you can find this on Tubi you can find it

on just about every other side on Prime. Yeah. It's a lot more available than I feel like they would like it to be. And it's fascinating. I mean, it's kind of like...

It's a good entry into the site. I mean, there was a decent amount of stuff that I had heard about here and there or read a little bit about here or there, but these were all firsthand accounts from people who had gotten out.

Yes. And I mean, especially Paul Haggis, similar thing, a winning filmmaker then makes a lot of duds, then comes out, basically gets canceled because of.

a lot of sexual mishaps and so we are definitely seeing a pattern where there's a lot of me too offenders they're into all this freaky and that kind of goes back to any cult where they're into all this taboo just

abnormal stuff where you're like dude you need to seriously get a see a psychologist you know david koresh jim jones yeah yeah ron hubbard

Koresh was definitely a kinky freak. Jack Parsons. It's just, yeah, that's, you know, sex, sex and money makes, makes the cult go round.

That's a deep cut. You're talking about the Arrowjet Guy Parsons chase. Wow. Yeah. He must have been breathing some of that liquid fuel. Something.

Wild times. It was the kinky 60s. So, yeah, I mean.

Obviously, it sounds like we would recommend checking out this documentary and we would not recommend Scientology. No, no, no. I've just been converted.

I'm just kidding. I'm one of those guys who watches The Matrix the wrong way.

They did talk about his sea organization and the billionaire contract and how he had told that one girl that he was in charge of a bunch of ships and that he said that he sank.

two Japanese subs, even though he was like firing on driftwood and that he accidentally attacked Mexico and was relieved of his duties when I was in the Scientology center and they were having me watch a documentary about him.

They just said that he could captain any ship on the sea. What the fuck? Yeah. Wow. I gotta see if I can find that essay that I wrote about going up there.

That's how you know it's a good doc, though. Like, you cannot take any clip out of this and, like, re-edit it or anything. It's like, no. Sit down. Watch the whole damn thing. And before you go, that sounds depressing. It's like, here's the thing.

You'll come away. You'll be thinking about this. You'll learn something. So I think I mean, Ken Burns just came out with his whole American Revolution and Amy Berg, I always pursue because she does similar material about.

scandals and abuse victims coming forth, not letting the man drag him down. I think Gibney has a similar approach in that he just does very good with the outlines and build up. You know what he's going to try and accomplish.

whatever time frame you give them. I never have any sense of I don't know where this is going and I'm not sure if I want to stick around. There's never.

He's really good at editing. I never feel like there's any filler or lesser interviews. Yeah, this flew by for over two hours.

I didn't see, I can't think of any interview subject who looked disinterested or like they had to cut short for time.

No, no, they kept it going and they would come back when it was important for the story. They didn't just have the, yeah, yeah. It's definitely a more modern documentary style rather than.

extended cuts of a person sitting there in a chair yeah have a seat here exactly um is there anything else we need to add before we go

Yes, I got some fun trivia. So I guess some of it's from that article, some of the other stuff. So, yeah, this was back when.

Doc New York City was interviewing the premiere of this before it premiered on HBO. They went into, once again, just talking about how the documentary just brought to life the whole IRS's apparent inability to revoke their... tax exempt status and uh just uh it's so funny how uh

They did the whole fair game doctrine. That was the very same tactic that they were used to try and discredit the film. Right. Yeah, it's just Scientology's membership is apparently.

I'm going to take this with a grain of salt because, you know, this is 2015. There's bound to have been some change in fluctuation numbers, less than 50,000. And disclose that many other people had come forward.

and had the strength to leave an organization as a result of the doc. So I'm like, that alone is doing some good. It's already produced by HBO, but I wish it would be shown on some other documentary channel like...

Discovery or PBS, you know, just keep replaying it because if everyone can watch, I mean, my dad watches MLB and watches pretty much the Kinbergs baseball doc nonstop. If you can...

But that's the sign of a good doc. It gets even better with age. So documentary is just really a dying art because it seems like many people are more likely to watch a mockumentary.

given the current demographic and misinformation just not pay good attention so i'm just like yeah making a great legit great documentary is an art in and of itself you know so

It would probably make my top 20 in the last 10 years because there's plenty of them. Some of them are interesting because they were basically made for TVs. Others are hard to categorize because they're kind of more of a miniseries.

I think I'm going to be doing more documentaries over here. Haven't done a whole lot. Only done a handful over the years. A good documentary is also just hard to find because I used to be hesitant, especially in 2017 when there was this...

a lot of just very depressing ones. But now now I really value it more than ever is like one that I think you would like is it's on Hulu. It's

Vanderpump Rules are... Yeah, the Randall scandal. Love Loathing and Vanderpump. It's about this shady producer who exploited actors like Bruce Willis and...

racially discriminated and underpaid other people. He was a cousin of Jerry Bruckheimer, and he's just been, I thought he was just a harmless B-movie producer of stuff like Lone Survivor, Street Kings, and Narc, and he...

He basically showed his true colors by being an idiot and starring on his fiance's reality show. And that's where it became pretty clear. Yeah, he's a douchebag. Shameless plug. Start my own true crime history podcast.

I'll definitely be focusing on the Kennedy's entertainment scandals and just less talked about stuff that kind of, you know, internet trolls. Can't wait. I saw the...

the chat thread yes and i'm also trying to promote other people i mean because as you know we we both love i don't speak german you know and some of those other ones and

Those guys are just doing God's work and it just sucks how we're having to tell people, hey, no, like these guys, you know, yeah, they got a Patreon, but they're doing it just from the basis of their heart. They want to educate stuff that's not going to be talked about in any education.

yeah i mean and they were doing as much as they could for free for as long as they could yeah and it will eat up your time so i i haven't launched yet but i'm already working on the theme song and

Worst case scenario, maybe you gotta take an episode down. Whatever. Fuck them. Fight the power, damn the man, save the empire. Make it available on Patreon.

But fuck yeah, man. I really appreciate your time, dude. I'm glad you're doing good. I know work is always bitch. It's awesome.

It is. It is. And similarly, I know you've got a hectic schedule, so I'm...

I'm glad we found the time to get together and chat since sneakers, I think was the last thing we talked about. Yes, man. And really was a delightful episode because we were just talking about spy boobies and how everyone.

Everyone likes to dumb those down nowadays and it's like, stop. So we'll try to make this more, more of a frequent get together and I'll try to be smart enough to come on one of your shows.

he did what we all