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March 31, 2026 90 mins

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A cult doesn’t feel like a cult on day one. It feels like answers, belonging, and a plan for your life. Then the rules tighten, your world shrinks, and leaving starts to look unthinkable. We sit down for a candid Q&A about what people get wrong about cults, how we each ended up inside Scientology, and why “I’d never join one” ignores how recruitment and coercive control actually work. 

We also go deep on the part outsiders rarely see: the cost of getting out. We talk about fear of being intercepted and “recovered,” the panic of having no resume or education that fits the real world, and the grief of Scientology disconnection cutting you off from family. We share how becoming parents changed how we understood our upbringing, and why the outside world felt strangely safer than we were ever taught to believe. 

Listener questions take us into the weeds: NXIVM and why “religious” cover matters, the way Scientology manages doubt with formulas and fake stats, internet filtering and information control, and what it’s like to walk past an org years later. We also open up about nightmares, trust after trauma, and the recovery tools that helped us start building a life that’s actually ours. 

If you want more survivor stories and real-world recovery conversations, the Cult Survivor Series is coming next. Subscribe, share this with someone who needs it, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_02 (00:25):
Hey everybody.
Welcome back to Blown for Good.
Welcome to another episode ofScientology Exposed.
Today we are going to do a QA,and I'm joined by my lovely
wife, Claire.

SPEAKER_03 (00:37):
Hey, hey, everybody.
Good to see you this fineSunday.
Yes.

SPEAKER_02 (00:47):
And um and she will have subsequent episodes as
well.

SPEAKER_03 (00:52):
And um Yes, I'm in fact I'm recording an another
episode this coming Tuesday.
So, yep, we'll keep it going.

SPEAKER_02 (01:00):
Awesome.
Love it.
Um, we've got uh I stole a uh alittle booksh a little uh
nightstand from the guestbedroom for this guy right here.
Um we still haven't found out.
I think it's a million dollars,but we still haven't found out
what you gotta get.

SPEAKER_03 (01:18):
Yeah, it's uh planet Platinum Meritorious.

SPEAKER_02 (01:21):
Platinum meritorious.
So if some if an eagle-eyed uhGoogle Foo out there can uh find
out what platinum meritorious, Ithink it's a million bucks.
It could be more, it could befive million, I don't know, but
it's sitting here now, so itdon't matter how much whoever
spent on it, we gots it.
Um there is a story of this.
I should probably f dig it up,but I think a guy named Mark

(01:44):
Ebner in California, he wasdriving around in LA on his
scooter, and somebody, either heor somebody found it on the side
of the road.
It was in a trash pile.

SPEAKER_03 (01:57):
Oh, I thought it was in a storage unit.
I think the story is on Mike'sblog of how he kicked because he
he had this before we did.

SPEAKER_02 (02:05):
Yeah, but it was in a storage unit, but then they
emptied the storage.
Somebody bought it and just waslike, I don't need this, and
they just dumped all the stuff.

SPEAKER_03 (02:12):
I mean, you literally will not find a
heavier paperweight than thatslump of lard right there.

SPEAKER_02 (02:18):
It's the top is all steel, but the bottom is solid
granite or solid, it's some sortof stone.
And it's very heavy.
Heavy.

SPEAKER_03 (02:27):
It's like 80 pounds.

SPEAKER_02 (02:29):
Yeah, it's a lot.
Anyway, it's here now.
We also got all kinds of othergood stuff.
We've got a metal record, right?
We've got a record, one of theCST vaults, the ones where they
dig everything and they put itin the mountains so no one can
get to it in case there's anuclear war.
Um, and even then, I don't knowhow you get to it because they
got it all locked up in there,but somehow everybody's just

(02:50):
gonna be able to stumble uponthis very highly secured
facility that there's no wayinto.
Um, but we also got a nickel, apage, a stainless steel page of
something.
We've got all kinds of goodies.
We got an e-meter.
We'll do our hands on it either.

SPEAKER_03 (03:07):
We'll do some show and tell series.
How about that?

SPEAKER_02 (03:09):
Yeah, I want to open up the e-meter and show
everybody how the kids builtthem.

SPEAKER_03 (03:14):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (03:14):
Because Sea Org kids built these e-meters for the
most part for many, many years.
And when you open one of, it'sall plastic on the outside, but
when you open it up, there'ssome there's some cheese a rama.
There's some there's some cheesein there.
Super cheese.

SPEAKER_03 (03:28):
I worked on e-meters.

SPEAKER_02 (03:29):
Oh, here we go.
Somebody found it.
It's 2.5 million for platinummeritorious.
I was kind of half right becauseI said it's a million or five.
I was right in the middle ofthat.
2.5.

SPEAKER_03 (03:40):
Thank you for your getting your Google Foo on, as
Mark says.

SPEAKER_02 (03:42):
Oh, yeah, other Trevanans got it too.
He says uh Platinum Meritorious2.5 million, according to the
talk page.

SPEAKER_03 (03:49):
Of the bank list.
Nice.

SPEAKER_02 (03:51):
Okay, guys.
Well, I'm sorry, whoever paid ituh his name, their names are
right on it.
Richie and Amy Akunto.
Sorry for uh that they had topay$25.5 million for that.
Now I got it for$50 in shippingsitting in my my storage, my uh
studio here.

(04:11):
Um well, what do we got?
How exactly are we gonna dothis?
You got questions?

SPEAKER_03 (04:16):
Yes.
So what we're gonna talk abouttoday is uh essentially this
will be a prologue to the startof the Cult Survivor series that
we'll be doing periodically tofill in gaps while my wonderful
host that I'm a co-host for hereis out of town.
Um but yes, so I would say frommy perspective, the reason this

(04:40):
is important to me personally isbecause um hearing other
people's stories from othercults was a huge part of my
recovery and gaining perspectiveon my experience and and my what
I lived through, our sharedexperiences, what we went
through.
Um, because before hearing otherstories from other cults, you

(05:04):
know, in the in the aftermath ofescaping, I was more like, ooh,
shut that door, pretend likenothing ever happened for the
last 30 years of hell, and justfocus on rebuilding a life,
which is fine in and of itself,but um it's not really the best
approach to recovery, I came tofind out.

SPEAKER_01 (05:25):
Yeah.
Okay.

SPEAKER_03 (05:28):
There you go.

SPEAKER_01 (05:30):
Exciting.

SPEAKER_03 (05:31):
He wonders why I say there you go.
Come on now.
Anyway, so yeah, we're gonna betalking about some just basic
cult survivor QA questions.
If anyone in chat has questionsto add, feel free to do so.
Um and again, it just, you know,it's all about perspective and
coming to terms with experiencesand um and also I will say from

(05:56):
when we did the Mormon Storiespodcast, that was so eye-opening
on the many parallels.

SPEAKER_02 (06:02):
Yeah.
They the the the cult stuff thathappens in Scientology is not
unique to scient the Scientologycult aspect.
There's all kinds of other cultsthat do all the same stuff and
they got the same exactplaybook.
And there's there's tons ofthings that talk about this all
over the interwebs.
But uh it for Scientologists,when they hear the stuff that

(06:25):
other cults do, that they think,oh, those they so that
Scientologists go, well, yeah,that's definitely a cult, and
then they go, Well, Scientologydoes that too.
Then it kind of goes like, oh,shoot, how's that work?

SPEAKER_03 (06:37):
Yeah, the uh cognitive dissonance starts to
wear off, and you and whenyou're reflecting on, hmm, you
know, that sounds an awful lotlike my experience.

SPEAKER_02 (06:47):
Yeah, somebody says, the collab with John was great,
and now LDS is suing him.
I did not know that.

SPEAKER_03 (06:54):
I did not know that either.

SPEAKER_02 (06:56):
I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 (06:57):
Darn.

SPEAKER_02 (06:57):
Gotta get some research on them.

SPEAKER_03 (06:59):
Trevanon, drop us a line, fill us in.
Hopefully, it's not because ofour episode.
I don't know why it would be.

SPEAKER_02 (07:04):
Come on.
Trevanon's here.
He said going clear wasinstrumental for a lot of LDS
members, including John Dylan.

SPEAKER_03 (07:10):
Yep.

SPEAKER_02 (07:10):
Um, okay.

SPEAKER_03 (07:11):
One of my favorite all-time books of um cults is
Educated by Tara Westover.
Uh, just a really, really goodbook.
I loved it.

SPEAKER_02 (07:23):
Okay.

SPEAKER_03 (07:24):
Yep.

SPEAKER_02 (07:25):
Well, let's get into the questions.

SPEAKER_03 (07:26):
Sounds good.
So when people hear the wordcult, what do you think they get
wrong most often?

SPEAKER_02 (07:33):
I think they think that a cult, you gotta um, you
know, there's weird practices orthere's there's some kind of
devil worship or certain thingslike that.
I think that most people, that'swhat they think.
It's funny though, inScientology, though, when you're
growing up and when you do thatcourse that we talked about last
week, the Hubbard QualifiedScientologist course, you get

(07:56):
sort of um they give you ideasof things that you can say in
response to when somebody says,isn't it a cult?
And that the one I remember isthey say, Oh, isn't Scientology
in a cult a cult?
And then you go, Well, you uh asa Scientologist, you say, Well,
you know, uh cult comes from theword culture, which means a

(08:16):
group of people that have uh thesame ideas and moral beliefs and
you know stuff like this.

SPEAKER_00 (08:22):
So yeah, Scientology could be considered a cult if
you use that definition.

SPEAKER_03 (08:26):
Wow.
No, the response I was trainedon to that question was this Do
you always believe what you readin the newspapers?

SPEAKER_02 (08:35):
Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_03 (08:37):
Question with a question.

SPEAKER_02 (08:38):
I think most people would think um that it's just
not something that there's uhever it's not an everyday thing.

SPEAKER_03 (08:46):
Right.
And I think the initial reactionto that question is from an
individual in the real world.
Oh, I would never join a cult.
Sure.
But you know, the but that'sthat's um overlooking some of
the dynamics that come into playthat cults prey on of how to

(09:07):
lure people in.
Like obviously for us, we werenever I never had a choice.
I was born into it, you neverhad a choice, you were brought
in at age six.
So it's different for us, buteven from the adults we've
talked to, it was very gentle atthe outset.
It wasn't it wasn't some, youknow, extreme.

(09:28):
Nobody joining Scientologythinks that they're joining an
extremist group.

SPEAKER_02 (09:33):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (09:33):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (09:34):
Okay, here's another one.

SPEAKER_03 (09:36):
If someone asked you how did you end up in
Scientology, what's theshortest, honest answer you
could give?

SPEAKER_02 (09:42):
I just say I my mom got into it when I was little,
so she got me into it.

SPEAKER_03 (09:47):
Yep, same.
I I mean not same, but I wasborn into it.
My mom got into Scientologythrough her brother when she was
17 years old while she waspregnant with me.

SPEAKER_02 (09:59):
Yeah.
And and also um where we worked,most of the people that we
worked with and around were alsogrew up in it, or they were born
into it.
There was only a few of theolder people that were there.
Most of them got in it when L.
Ron Hubbard was running it andthey worked directly with him,

(10:22):
or they knew him, or they wentto one of his lectures in the
50s or the 60s.
So those sort of people were alot of those people, and and and
even those people, a lot of themwere children of people that
were in it as well.
So it's kind of like the uh thegroup where we worked, many of

(10:43):
the people had been in fordecades and decades and decades.
It wasn't like they'd just werein it for a few weeks or a few
years.

SPEAKER_03 (10:49):
Yeah.
I would also comment that Ithink a good portion of the
adults that we knew that got inas, you know, either late teens
or young, you know, early 20s,uh, were lured in by
Scientology's front groups,specifically like through
Narcanon, their drugrehabilitation program.
Um anyway, yeah.

(11:10):
I always it was alwaysfascinating to me.
Um, I didn't really realize itin the moment, but I always had
this curiosity like, how didthis person get in as a
grown-ass adult?

SPEAKER_02 (11:24):
Yeah.
Well, in in hindsight, yeah.
Right.
That's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_03 (11:28):
In in hindsight, I had I knew I had the curiosity,
but you know, reflecting back onit, now I understand what that
curiosity stemmed from betterthan I did in the moment.
Uh how did your understanding ofyour upbringing change over
time?
I know my answer to this.
Mine dramatically shifted themoment we had our first son.

SPEAKER_02 (11:50):
Totally.
Yeah.
We we when we were kids, um, wehad a very hands-off uh approach
from our parents.
Uh and um we were sort of leftto our own devices for the most
part.
But um I think I couldn'timagine doing half the things my

(12:11):
mom did when I was a kid.
I couldn't imagine uh raisingour children that way.
Like just it it it's on anotherlevel of incomprehension because
um, you know, when I was eightyears old, I was out till
midnight hanging out onHollywood Boulevard and running
around Hollywood, and it waslike okay.

(12:33):
No one batted an eyelash.
I w there were no phones backthen.
There were no uh cellular phonesback then.
So there was no way uh you weregonna be able to find your kid
in the middle of the night.

SPEAKER_03 (12:45):
It's a miracle you weren't kidnapped or worse.

SPEAKER_02 (12:47):
Well, no, it's Hollywood, man.
It's not it wasn't that bad.

SPEAKER_03 (12:50):
I don't know I've listened to enough true crime
podcasts, and I'm saying it's ait's a miracle.

SPEAKER_02 (12:54):
I dodged a bullet here and there.

SPEAKER_03 (12:56):
Sure, you absolutely did.
I didn't dodge many bullets, buthey, I'm still here anyway.
Still here kicking.
But yeah, um, and so yeah, so itshifted dramatically when our
first son was born.
Um, because I think up up untilthat point, it's not that I

(13:16):
thought it was okay.
I just was like, well, that'sthe path that they chose and we
escaped.
So, you know, I I mean I caneven remember initially in the
first few months defending mymom to her older sister who

(13:37):
thought it was complete nonsensethat she wouldn't talk to us and
it disconnected from us.
And I said, you know, I I Iunderstand her perspective
though.
Uh again, you know, shedding thelayers of you know,
understanding of the coercivecontrol leverage and so on and
so forth.
Anyhow, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (13:58):
Okay.

SPEAKER_03 (14:00):
Um, at what point did you begin to see your
experience differently, if atall?
I I think for me that's still awork in progress with
everything, every book that Iread, every podcast I listen to,
uh, it continues to shift.
Um and certainly in continuingto help people start new lives,

(14:22):
that has also impacted me justknowing that our experiences
were by no means unique and thatthe Scientology has continued to
abuse people in the last almostwhat 21 years since we escaped.
It's only gotten worse.

SPEAKER_02 (14:39):
Yeah, the things uh there were things that they were
doing at the time when we werethere, which were outrageous and
were horrible, and then we sortof um we were only really aware
of what was being done to C orgmembers, the billion-year
contract folks, um, at the onelocation where we were posted,

(15:00):
and a few other locations wherewe traveled to here and there
for for our Sea Org jobs.
But when we started when weescaped, and then we started
hearing from ex-members, not theC org members, just ex uh
Scientologists and how muchmoney they paid for, you know,
nonsense or how much was stolenfrom them where credit cards

(15:24):
were opened in their names, andthen Scientology just maxed them
all out.

SPEAKER_03 (15:28):
And the amount of abuse in destroying families
even outside of the Corganization as well.
Um, and even particularly to me,like hearing from people who
worked at the organization, likethe class five organization
level.
So the people who were onfive-year contracts or two and a
half year contracts, yeah, whatthey had to live through had not

(15:51):
having their lodging providedand also sometimes like very,
very low pay, like making thatlife work somehow, some way.

SPEAKER_02 (16:03):
It's sort of I thought we had it bad, but then
I realized that everyone inScientology has it bad except
for maybe the richy rich folks.
And even to some extent, theykind of get worked over the the
coals as well.
And sometimes even though theydo they have a certain amount of
wealth, they're asked to givewell in excess of what they

(16:26):
could afford, even.
Right.
So it's not just the poorScientologist that's just giving
everything they have toScientology.
That was what I'd consider mymother.
I would consider my mother alow-income Scientologist.
Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 (16:41):
If you if your mom was low income, my mom was dirt
poor.
You guys had a house.
We never lived in the We renteda house.

SPEAKER_02 (16:48):
Okay, okay.
Well, there you go.
Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 (16:50):
An 800 square foot house.

SPEAKER_02 (16:53):
Whatever.
It was a house.

SPEAKER_03 (16:55):
Yeah, I know.
I've got to be a good one.

SPEAKER_02 (16:56):
We had a one-bedroom apartment.
Circling back, not even onebedroom studio.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (17:00):
No, I get it.
I've never been a believer thatit's productive to uh do trauma
comparisons.
Yeah.
So it's all good.
My bad.

SPEAKER_02 (17:09):
It's all good.
Um okay.

SPEAKER_03 (17:12):
Um next question.
All right.
Did you have fears aboutleaving?
If so, what were they?
We so I would I would set thisquestion up because I know we're
both gonna answer differently.
With the fact that even thoughyou and I had been married for
13 years, how many times did wetalk about leaving?

SPEAKER_00 (17:33):
Never once.

SPEAKER_03 (17:34):
Never once.
Never once.
Other than that time you told methat if I divorced you, you were
gonna be an oil stain on thehighway.
No grease spot.
Grease spot.
Okay.

SPEAKER_02 (17:47):
It's grease spot.

SPEAKER_03 (17:48):
Grease spot.
It's grease spot.
Grease spot on the highway.
And and that I was like in mymind at in that moment.
I remember it.
I remember where you werestanding.
It was a Sunday, we were gettingready to go into work, and you
said that.

SPEAKER_02 (18:01):
And that's why I'm saying the grease spot is the
key phrase that that cementsthat, not oil stain.

SPEAKER_03 (18:07):
Okay, why?

SPEAKER_02 (18:08):
Um just it's the it's the phrase, it's the
phraseology of it.

SPEAKER_03 (18:12):
The phraseology of it.

SPEAKER_02 (18:13):
Anyway.

SPEAKER_03 (18:14):
But I remember thinking in that moment, like,
what does that mean?
Is he saying he's gonna hurthimself?
Yeah.
Okay, go ahead.
You answer that question.

SPEAKER_02 (18:27):
I didn't have any fears besides um I didn't know
what was gonna happen.
That was a little bit ofunknown, but I had pretty much
decided that this place is themost miserable place that you
could possibly be.
And I was making a bet on myselfthat I could do better outside

(18:47):
of this place than in thisplace.
And so I kind of went all in.
I was I was the only thing Ireally was worried about was was
them catching me.
That was the only fear that Ihad when escaping was how are
they gonna catch me?
I wasn't really afraid of the umI don't think I was really that
afraid of what was gonna happenafterwards, besides them

(19:10):
tracking me down and dragging meback.
But um besides that.
Yeah, besides that.
Besides being kidnapped and andthat is the picture put into
captivity.
And that's that's by design.
Everybody who does escape, theyeither tell tall tales about
them, about how horribly they'redoing, or they do track that
person down and capture them andbring them back.

(19:32):
And it's called being uhrecovered is the word.
If somebody's blown and thenthey're recovered, that means
they're now back and they theycan't escape.

SPEAKER_03 (19:42):
So I think that was recovered, is far more
politically correct thankidnapped and put under lock and
key, right?
Imprisoned, kidnapped andimprisoned is the reality.
Recovered is the word they use.

SPEAKER_02 (19:54):
Do you want to do the next question?

SPEAKER_03 (19:55):
Well, I didn't answer this one yet.

SPEAKER_02 (19:56):
I know, I was just wondering if you were ever gonna
do that.

SPEAKER_03 (19:59):
Oh well, now that you've said that, I think I'll
take my sweet time.

SPEAKER_00 (20:04):
As as normal.

SPEAKER_03 (20:06):
I did have I did have fears about leaving.
Oh, wow, he's being feistytoday, folks.

SPEAKER_00 (20:11):
Everybody's like, you gotta be nicer to Claire.
I've been married for 33 years.

SPEAKER_03 (20:15):
34 almost.

SPEAKER_00 (20:16):
34 and change.

SPEAKER_03 (20:18):
Yeah.
I had fears.
Yes, I had a lot of fears.
I did not think it would bepossible.
First of all, uh same as you, II was I thought the chances of
me escaping without beingintercepted were next to none.
Um and after you escaped and Istarted to try and figure things

(20:38):
out, I realized there's no wayI'm gonna do this without help.
It's just not gonna bephysically possible.
Um, and and my ideas about howto do it were so lame that I
would have absolutely beencaught.
I mean, I was gonna hide insomebody's yard, random
backyard, and hem it, you know.

SPEAKER_00 (20:56):
I I like that I like the fact that she was gonna
sleep in movie theaters alongher route.

SPEAKER_02 (21:01):
That was to me, that was the best of all.
Like, you're gonna go into amovie theater and go to sleep at
the popcorn guy's gonna findyou.

SPEAKER_03 (21:11):
For anyone who's listening who doesn't know
understand this, let me justexplain real quick.
Because it's it so I was going,I had a motorcycle, but it was
not registered to drive on theroad.
So I was gonna, you know, borrowsomebody's plate from another
motorcycle somehow without beingseen.
I don't know how that was gonnawork.

SPEAKER_02 (21:28):
Also, most of the motorcycles on the property were
not registered to drive on theroad.
So you could have stolen a plateoff another motorcycle and it
would have done you just as goodas the plate.

SPEAKER_03 (21:40):
You didn't even have a plate.
No, my bike was never registeredto drive on the road.
And also in retrospect, like,why was I so bothered about
having a plate at all?
Like, even if I got pulled over,I could you know, obviously,
this is me looking back going,Well, yeah, if I tell the police
I'm escaping from a dangerouscult, like they're not gonna
give me a ticket, you know.

SPEAKER_00 (22:00):
Yeah, but they're gonna be like, this is uh this
is uh says you're driving an ElDorado here.
Uh you seem to be on a two-wheelmotorcycle.

SPEAKER_03 (22:08):
Is this a stolen vehicle?
Yeah.
Anyhow, so I was gonna ride out,try to ride out the gate without
being stopped somehow, some way,and just start driving to Kansas
City, which you know on amotorcycle, and I was even
trying to figure out would Ihave enough money with$200 to
pay gas from California toKansas City?
Again, it's psychotic thinkingback on it.

SPEAKER_02 (22:30):
It was January, yeah, and she was gonna drive
through the Rockies.

SPEAKER_03 (22:35):
I didn't even know what the Rocky Mountains were in
that moment.
That's how clueless I was.

SPEAKER_00 (22:39):
To be fair, two weeks before that, I had pretty
much planned to do the samething.

SPEAKER_03 (22:45):
We were slim on options.
Anyhow, back to this point.

SPEAKER_00 (22:48):
My bike was registered.

SPEAKER_03 (22:49):
My plan was because I knew, well, first of all, I
had no money, so it's not like Icould go stay in a motel or
something.
But second of all, um, I knewthat if I did stay in a hotel,
they would be checking hotelsfor my name, and that would be a
way that they would track medown.
So my solution in that momentbefore I was able to figure out
how to contact you was oh, as asour son would say when he was

(23:12):
real little, I know an idea.
I'll just get a$6 movie ticketor whatever it was, and I'll uh
I'll go to the night showing andI'll just sleep in the back of
the movie theater.
And then I'll wake up in themorning, go brush my teeth in
the bathroom and get back on mybike and keep going.

SPEAKER_00 (23:29):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (23:29):
It wasn't it wasn't a terrible plan.

SPEAKER_00 (23:31):
You guys don't know about the AMC Stubbs live in
plan.
Where they offer a free showerin the morning.

SPEAKER_03 (23:39):
Uh anyway, but other than that, my biggest fears were
losing my family, yeah, and thatI had never uh had any life
outside Scientology, never had ajob, had no education, had no
resume, um, and that uh it wouldmean literally a complete fresh

(24:03):
start with absolutely nothing.
That was that was scary.

SPEAKER_02 (24:07):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (24:08):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (24:09):
Okay, I think we sub substantially answered that
question.

SPEAKER_03 (24:12):
We sure did.
What do you think peopleunderestimate about what it
costs to leave?

SPEAKER_02 (24:18):
I think the the main um the main cost that people
underestimate is the family.
You're gonna lose if you're inuh uh if you're specifically,
and this is in relation toScientology, other cults have
different flavors of this, butin Scientology if you escape or

(24:39):
you blow, as the uh uh to usethe Scientology parlance, um if
you uh escape withoutauthorization, um and then you
don't come back, then you it istheir policy that you should be
declared a suppressive person.
And if if you're declared asuppressive person, then you

(25:00):
don't get any contact with yourfamily.
It's not like you can only seethem on holidays or family.
No, you're you're supposed tohave no contact with your family
from that point forward.

SPEAKER_03 (25:11):
Aaron Ross Powell Right.
Like literally, I'm sure thatthat our families, respectively,
as of right now, have destroyedall photos of us, have re
removed all memories of us, um,have tried to literally write us
out of their history.

SPEAKER_02 (25:28):
Yeah, you know, I don't um I'm seeing, I'm reading
the comments.
Sorry.
Go ahead and keep going.

SPEAKER_03 (25:35):
No.
Um they've written us out oftheir history.
That's what I was saying.

SPEAKER_02 (25:38):
Yeah, but but they did that the second we left.
I know.
And they and also um they don'treally have any choice in that
either.
They they could say it's uh it'sa Sophie's choice.
They could say, no, we're gonnatalk to Claire.
Your family could have said no,we're still gonna talk to
Claire.
Well then that means thatScientology could easily go to

(26:02):
your other siblings and say,okay, you can't talk with your
parents anymore because yourparents picked Claire, or if one
of the siblings said, I stillwant to talk to Claire, then
they would have said to thefamily, Hey, listen, you can't
talk to the sibling anymorebecause they're siding with
Claire.
So it really is, unless youpre-game it and everybody uh

(26:24):
knows what the story is and howwe're gonna do this, then
there's not really a way toescape Scientology, and then
your family don't somehow becomeinvolved if they're in
Scientology.

SPEAKER_04 (26:37):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (26:37):
If your family is completely outside of
Scientology and you leave,you're mostly you you could be
golden.
They might try to, you know,talk smack about you on the
interwebs, or they might have todo something else because they
don't they don't have thatleverage.
They don't have the familyleverage to use on you.

SPEAKER_04 (26:54):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (26:55):
But in the case of Sea Org members, that's probably
less often the case than most,because most of the time your
parents are Scientologists, yourfriends and family are
Scientologists.
If you're in the Sea Org.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (27:08):
And in our case, and in our case, we were already so
isolated away from our family.
Like, I don't know, I talked tomy mom maybe once or twice a
year on the phone with somebodylistening.

SPEAKER_02 (27:21):
Yeah, but we did have we had just seen them uh
two weeks before I escaped.
And that was sort of the impetusthat was I was like, oh, it was
sort of that's how I kind of gotto this place was I was like,
oh, they're messing over theScientology, they're messing
with the Scientologists too.
It's not just the Sea Orgmembers, they're messing with
everybody up in this place.
Yep.
And I'd also been to all theseorganizations that were empty,

(27:44):
these new ideal organizations,which 21 years later, they're
still all empty.
Um so yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (27:53):
Yeah, let me show you this comment because I think
this is a good one.
Amy says, I've lived this.
Control goes public, not juststaff and C organization.
One adult answers for anotheradult's actions.
Rules aren't equal.
If you're not a celebrity,you're expected to yield.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (28:09):
Yeah.
And even like Leah, when sheleft, she kind of told her whole
family, hey, this is how this isgoing down.
And it is funny to me thatpretty much the entire family,
for the most part, was like,sure.

SPEAKER_04 (28:24):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (28:24):
Like they weren't like, you can't do this.
No.
They were like, Yeah, let's go.
Yeah.
I I mean, there was a few ofthem that were like, oh, you
know, but it was like, come on.

SPEAKER_03 (28:37):
Which says a lot because obviously, I I mean, to
me, that says that the onlyreason they were still there was
because of Leah.

SPEAKER_02 (28:47):
Well, yeah.
And and also, if Leah was gonnaleave and they went with her,
they knew the nonsense.
They that's another thing.
Uh some people will say, Oh, Ididn't know this was happening,
or I didn't know that washappening.
Everybody in Scientology knowswhen somebody goes rogue, they
get declared and you can't talkto them.

(29:07):
There's no Scientologist that'sbeen in Scientology for any
amount of time, uh uh over ayear, who does not know that
suppressive persons are bad andyou can't speak to them.

SPEAKER_04 (29:20):
Yep.

SPEAKER_02 (29:21):
And so it's when it happens and somebody's like, oh,
I didn't know they were doingthat.
It's like, oh, sure, come on.
You knew that.
Okay, let's do the next one.
And also, I'm just gonna saythis.
Uh um, I think Mitch, it'sMitch.
Is Mitch in here?

SPEAKER_03 (29:37):
Yes, he is.
He says, Hi, Mitch.

SPEAKER_02 (29:40):
Oh, you know what, Mark, you used to borrow my
motorcycle when I went to LA.
You always returned a gased up,but maybe a little overspray
from the sets department.
Now, when you say motorcycle,did he have a TW at the base?

SPEAKER_03 (29:54):
I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 (29:55):
I thought he had a Harley.
I don't remember ever borrowingMitch's motorcycle.
Not that I didn't.

SPEAKER_03 (30:00):
Right.

SPEAKER_02 (30:01):
But I I don't remember.

SPEAKER_03 (30:03):
Hate to break it to you folks, but when you've had
that little sleep, there's a lotthat kind of comes to the city.

SPEAKER_02 (30:07):
But also, I always sort of had a motorcycle most of
the years for many of the years.

SPEAKER_03 (30:13):
Maybe it was when you were not allowed to drive
your motorcycle.

SPEAKER_02 (30:17):
No, but then they they wouldn't why would they let
me drive Mitch's motorcycle?

SPEAKER_03 (30:19):
Well, they wouldn't let you, but didn't doesn't mean
you couldn't.

SPEAKER_02 (30:23):
I mean, I don't know.
We'll they'll put this in thecracker liquor category.
I don't remember it, but itcould have happened.

SPEAKER_03 (30:30):
Um Thanks for joining us, Mitch.
Good to see you here.

SPEAKER_02 (30:34):
Um here you go.

SPEAKER_03 (30:35):
Okay.
What kept you in longer than younow wish you had stayed?
Uh I mean, definitely family.
Family Family's the most fear oftheir the leverage and control
that they already had over us.

SPEAKER_02 (30:53):
Um I think my biggest thing was that I never
really I mean, I went toScientology schools for the most
part.
And and I know I didn't get pastlike kind of middle school, kind
of in the real world worth ofeducation.

SPEAKER_04 (31:11):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (31:12):
So my biggest fear was that I wouldn't be able to
do anything without a highschool uh diploma.

SPEAKER_03 (31:20):
Yes.

SPEAKER_02 (31:20):
I didn't think you can't even join the military
without a high school diploma.
You need at least that to evensign up for the military.
So um and then I realized thatwasn't really actually that big
of a deal.
Um for me at least.
I mean it could be for somebodyelse, but for me, I because I

(31:41):
had already done so much andworked so many hours on so many
things.
Um I like to bring this up asthe it's the 10,000 hours thing.
So if you do something for10,000 hours in most areas, if
you've done that and producedproducts and practiced a certain

(32:02):
trade or work function for10,000 hours, you are then you
could be deemed an expert inthat subject.

SPEAKER_00 (32:10):
Right.

SPEAKER_02 (32:10):
And I'd done 10,000 hours on you know eight
different things.
So I was like, I'm pretty sureI'll be fine.

unknown (32:17):
Yep.

SPEAKER_02 (32:18):
What's one year?
If you're working 120 hours aweek, 52 weeks, yeah, so you're
getting in 5,000 a year justright there, right?
Yeah, you're getting in 5,000 ayear.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, that's 5,000 hours, morethan 5,000 hours in one year.
So 15 years.

SPEAKER_03 (32:38):
Yeah, I mean good, yeah.
Yeah, we we already we did awhole episode on the math of the
C organization's schedule, butyeah, absolutely.
Um, and I I would say too, I hadI had the same.
I mean, my family moved to theUS when I was 13 and I never
went back to school.

SPEAKER_01 (32:56):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (32:57):
So, you know, I had zippo zippity dip dip for
education.

SPEAKER_01 (33:04):
But you read a lot of books.

SPEAKER_03 (33:05):
I did.

SPEAKER_01 (33:06):
Read a lot of books.
She read a lot of books.

SPEAKER_03 (33:10):
I read the whole um, there was a whole list of books
of oh, this is the American uhfiction list, you know, or
American books list.
Uh I read all of those too,because I was like, oh, I need
to work on my American educationfrom home.

SPEAKER_01 (33:25):
Oh boy.

SPEAKER_03 (33:27):
Some of those were really, really depressing, by
the way.
Anyhow.
The Dearling.
Danielle Steele.
No, no, not Danielle Steele.
The Dearling, I freaking criedso hardcore.
That was one of the saddestbooks I've ever read.
Uh looking back, how did theexperience impact your mental
health, sense of self, andrelationship with and trust in

(33:49):
others?

SPEAKER_02 (33:49):
Wow.
Where'd these questions comefrom, babe?
That's a lot.

SPEAKER_03 (33:53):
Yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_02 (33:54):
Looking back, how did the experience impact your
mental health, sense of self,and relationship with trust in
others?
Um Well, I sort of I sort of umstarted with a very clean slate
because I was told byScientology that everybody was
uh they were drug dealers and uhcriminals and thieves, and

(34:19):
everybody in the outside worldwas evil and only the good
people were in there.
So I was like, well, if thosewere the good people and these
are the bad people, they'regonna be really bad.
And then I was like, oh no,they're a way better.
I I remember I would tell thisto people all the time when they
would ask me, people thatweren't in Scientology.
Right.
And I would say, think of theworst person you've ever had an

(34:42):
experience with in your lifethat has attacked you out of
your whole life.
And I'll be like, that's whatbeing in the Sea Org is at the
Int life, at the Int base, everyday.
Yeah.
And when you get to the outsideworld, you might run into one of
those people once a year.
And they're not, and they're noteven as bad as anyone there.
So it's sort of like it's a verycrazy thing to be in a place

(35:05):
where they say everybody outsideof here is evil and out to get
you.
And you're you're you're like,but you guys are evil and out to
get me.
What?
Calling the kettle black.
Yeah, no, I don't think to thisday, I mean, I've met people
that are menacing, and I've metpeople that cause trouble, and

(35:25):
I've met people that are, youknow, outrageous.
But in the most of those cases,they're not as bad as a regular
Sea Org Scientologist.

SPEAKER_03 (35:37):
Not even close.
Yeah.
I mean, we have met some really,really incredible people since
getting out.
And I, you're right, you bringup a good point though, because
we had our expectation was setby Scientology, was so bad.
Yeah, that then when we'reoutside in the real world, and

(35:58):
you're like, these people aregreat.

SPEAKER_00 (36:00):
I like these people.
Yeah.
Everyone is so.
Where are the bad guys?
Yeah, everybody is so.

SPEAKER_03 (36:04):
They're not here.
Yeah, everyone is so, so nice.
Like the the people we workedwith initially when we first got
out, 201 were just incredibly.

SPEAKER_02 (36:17):
And then we started to learn, like, ah, hmm.
I see what I see what's happenedhere.

SPEAKER_04 (36:22):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (36:23):
But yeah, no.
And even since we've left,sometimes the people that we've
seen or we've interacted with,sometimes those people were
like, oh, they've gone a littlewild.
And then you go, like, they werein Scientology too, though.
So Scientology kind of honespeople in to the most sort of I

(36:46):
I don't know, the worst versionof themselves, I'd say.
They try to mold you into that.

SPEAKER_04 (36:52):
Right.

SPEAKER_02 (36:52):
So that you are you're a destruction machine
when it comes to get to gettingrid of barriers in Scientology's
way.
Right.

SPEAKER_03 (37:02):
Like the ideal sea org member would be likened to
an Android.

unknown (37:05):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (37:06):
Like just follows orders with no processing of,
you know, right, wrong,indifferent, anything, just get
it done.

SPEAKER_02 (37:14):
And no care for the destruction and all that.
Like some of these Seorgmembers, even when you hear
about things like where they hada Seorg member in Los Angeles
that charged up somebody'scredit cards, it's not a thing.
Like if they charged$100,000 tosome elderly woman's, it
wouldn't it's not a it's not abig deal.
To them.
Because it's good forScientology.

(37:36):
So it's good.

SPEAKER_03 (37:37):
So of course she's gonna have to deal with this and
she's gonna pay and she's gonnahave a horrible it's gonna be
But to them it's a good thingbecause they got their stats up
and they made it go right.
And yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (37:48):
And if and if it's good for you and you're in
Scientology, then it's good foreverything.

SPEAKER_03 (37:53):
There's no It's the greatest good for the greatest
number of dynamics.

SPEAKER_02 (37:57):
And that's sort of warped thinking where you're not
um you're not taking intoaccount someone else's feelings
and the repercussions and allthe things that are happening
from your actions.

SPEAKER_04 (38:09):
Right.

SPEAKER_02 (38:10):
That's a totally learned Scientology thing.
Yeah where they're just likenothing else matters except for
what you're doing in the hereand now.

SPEAKER_03 (38:18):
Yeah.
Like I used to get in troubleall the time for being too
empathetic, which was calledworker-oriented.

SPEAKER_04 (38:25):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (38:25):
All the time.
You're like, oh, you know, uh Imean, to me, it was just
logical, like, oh, this personis messing up because they're
not sleeping.
Oh, you're worker-oriented.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (38:36):
That was like the You're like, the person's a
proofreader.

SPEAKER_03 (38:40):
Yeah.
They're falling asleep whileproofreading.

SPEAKER_02 (38:42):
They're supposed to make sure the right words are in
the right place and they'resleeping while doing that.
Probably not a good situation.

SPEAKER_03 (38:52):
Yep.

SPEAKER_02 (38:53):
Okay.
Next.

SPEAKER_03 (38:56):
What has healing or recovery looked like for you?

SPEAKER_02 (39:00):
Why am I always the first one who asked?

SPEAKER_03 (39:02):
Because I'm the one reading reading the question.
If you want to read thequestion, go right ahead.

SPEAKER_02 (39:06):
Um, I think just talking about it is good to talk
about what happened and to kindof sort of figure out that, you
know, who was cause over whatthings that were bad and that
sort of thing.
And and also just realizingthat, yeah, you probably should,
we probably should have decidedto leave earlier.

SPEAKER_04 (39:27):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (39:28):
Why didn't we?
And then kind of go through allthese things.
But for me, I used to havenightmares pretty consistently
until I wrote my book.
And then once I finished, andeven when I was writing the
book, I had crazy, crazynightmares about being back
there again at the InternationalHeadquarters of Scientology in

(39:49):
Gilman Hot Springs, California.
And um and then since then, Ivery, very rarely have them
anymore.
Every once in a while I'll havea weird one.
Um, but I've been I've done aton of weird stuff with
cognitive dreams and stuff likethat.
So I usually just take over inthe in the dream and I just kind
of go hog wild and jack thingsup.

SPEAKER_03 (40:11):
But um Jack things up.

SPEAKER_01 (40:13):
I don't play by the rules.

SPEAKER_03 (40:15):
I've tried a bunch of different things too.
My therapist told me to trybecause I have nightmares too.
But in my case, my nightmaresstarted when I was four years
old.
And um they've gotten better, Iwill say, especially now with
really focusing on gettingeverything out in my book.
Um, I I I didn't when you Iyou've said that many times that

(40:37):
your nightmares stopped when youwrote your book.
And I to me, I guess I still hadso much to unpack in the process
of writing my book that I didn'tnecessarily think that that
would be true for me.
Um, but it has been gettingbetter, which is really good.
Um, I mean, I'm sure I'll stillhave them periodically, but up

(40:57):
until like, you know, but again,nightmares have been my life
since I was four years old.

SPEAKER_02 (41:03):
So um You know, I was talking to a person that was
at the imp base and who's not rehas never talked publicly and
never really done anything.
But um I was like, hey, have youdid you ever have dreams of
flying at the same time?

SPEAKER_03 (41:19):
I ha I did.

SPEAKER_02 (41:21):
And he did.
And one of the things that Ilearned in my cognitive uh deep
dive uh cognitive dreaming, umflying in a lot of cases, not
with everybody, with a lot ofpeople that have flying dreams,
they're they're trappedsomewhere and they can't get
what?
Yeah, you didn't know this.

SPEAKER_03 (41:40):
I did not.

SPEAKER_02 (41:42):
Okay, listen.
People that have flying dreamsare usually trapped, and it's
their way of their brain beinglike, you need to get the F out
of here.
Okay, so you need to fly away.

SPEAKER_03 (41:54):
I'm gonna respond to that, and then I'm gonna tell
you something else I learnedthat's similar to that.
Okay.
I had such vivid dreams when Iwas like five and six of flying,
like so vividly, yeah, that Iremember one day I was like, I
don't know, it felt pretty realin the in the dream, and I
actually tried it.

(42:14):
Not really, you know, it justfell flat on my face.
I was like, oh well, it was anice thought.
But you know, the other thingthat um that you reminded me of
with that, that's veryinteresting.
Very interesting.
Um so I was talking to somebodywho was in uh also a former
member.
She she wasn't at theheadquarters or in the C

(42:34):
organization, but um, she hadbeen brought up Mormon, heavy
duty, and went through all kindsof stuff and then ended up in
Scientology.
Anyhow, we were just rambling,talking for like four hours
straight catching up.
And do you have I told youbefore that I used to get
tonsillitis all the time when Iwas in the cadet org?

(42:56):
So she told me that that is asign of your voice being
silenced and taken away fromyou.

SPEAKER_01 (43:01):
Okay.

SPEAKER_03 (43:02):
That's crazy to me.

SPEAKER_01 (43:04):
Sure.

SPEAKER_03 (43:05):
There you go, folks.
That was some deep rabbit holesto go down.
Isn't all of them?
Healing and recovery.
Yeah, we I think no, there'smore.
Okay, you read it now.

SPEAKER_02 (43:14):
Are there things people often misunderstand about
experiences like yours?

SPEAKER_03 (43:20):
Um, just the complexity and the nuance of of
many of the different aspects ofit.
And, you know, it's not obviousat the at the outset that we
were both bore, you know, thatwas our childhood, uh, that I
was born into it, that you gotin at six.
Um so, but but even for peoplethat don't, um, right now I'm

(43:42):
reading the new book by SarahEdmondson and Nippy Ames, A
Little Bit Culty, and I reallyappreciate that they're kind of
diving into that perspective,like, you know, the stigma that
people tend to associate withthose who have ended up in a
cult and to just kind of work.
Walk that back, like, hey, thiscan happen to anyone in many

(44:03):
different forms.
And it doesn't mean that they'restupid or gullible or naive or
anything.
Many of the people that getlured into cults are incredibly
smart, really um empathetic,really want to help people.
So I think that, you know,breaking that down and helping

(44:24):
people understand that just loveand support and understanding is
really, really important foranyone who's been in a cult.

SPEAKER_02 (44:34):
Yeah, I would say before Going Clear came out,
people would, if somebody foundout, they would be like, Oh, I
heard m somebody said you werein Scientology, and you'd be
like, okay, yeah.
And they go, like, isn't thatthat Tom Cruise thing?
That's what Tom Cruise does,right?
That was sort of what everybodythought.

SPEAKER_04 (44:50):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (44:51):
When after Going Clear came out and other shows
like Leah's show and otherthings started coming out, pe I
think people have a little teenybit more of an understanding
about some of the things that goin there.
And it's not just, oh, that'sthe thing Tom Cruise does.
But um Yeah, I think there's somuch even when we talk to

(45:11):
people, we do a podcast or we doan interview with somebody on
their channel, and they're like,Oh my gosh, uh now I have you're
like, yeah, if you had 50questions you had when when I s
when I got here, and now Ianswer all those 50s, now you
have a hundred more questions.
Because it's like, what?
The the the the crazy trainseems to go on for a long time.

(45:33):
It's hard to find the caboose ofthe the crazy train when you're
doing with Scientology.

SPEAKER_03 (45:37):
Have we gotten to the caboose yet?
I don't know.
We've not there's we can neverget there.

SPEAKER_00 (45:40):
There's so many cars are crazy.

SPEAKER_03 (45:43):
We keep finding other rooms in the in the trains
we're s in the things we'restill working on.
If you could okay, you're gonnaread it.

SPEAKER_02 (45:50):
I was going to.
If you could say something toyour younger self, would you?
What would you say?

SPEAKER_03 (45:57):
I would.
I would just um just from youknow.
It's gonna be hell, but there'sa light at the end of the
tunnel.

SPEAKER_00 (46:08):
What are you gonna say?

SPEAKER_03 (46:09):
I'm so sorry for what's coming.
It's awful and dark andmiserable, and a lot of things
are gonna feel like you arecompletely broken, but you're
not.
I would say going.

SPEAKER_02 (46:24):
Don't forget that USB stick on the ironing.
Don't forget that.
That had some good stuff on it.

SPEAKER_03 (46:31):
See, folks, you cannot just not love the humor
here.

SPEAKER_02 (46:35):
I don't know.
That was all of them, by theway.
That was the last question.

SPEAKER_03 (46:39):
Yay! All right, awesome.
So we'll do some questionsanyhow.
So I'm super excited about thisnew series coming.
Special shout out and thanks toClara for the inspiration and
all the help.
And uh, we really hope you enjoyit.
Tune in next week for thepremiere of the first episode.
And yeah, if there's topicsyou'd like to cover, people

(47:02):
you'd like me to interview, dropa comment and let me know, and
we'll add that to the growinglist.
But I think it's gonna be a lotof fun.

SPEAKER_02 (47:09):
Okay, here's some questions.

SPEAKER_03 (47:11):
All right, Japan A Green Cables.
Question With all the bad pressScientology has gotten
throughout the years, do youhave ideas on why groups like
Nexium that rip off Scientologycan still be successful?
Uh well, I wouldn't exactlycount Nexium as successful given
that Keith Rainier is in prisonfor the rest of his life at this
point.

SPEAKER_02 (47:30):
Well, yeah, but the only thing he really screwed up,
besides all the evil things hedid in getting caught, was that
it wasn't a religion.
Right.
That's the main thing that hedidn't do.
Yeah that kind of Scientologyhaving the religious cloaking,
yeah.
Scientology is able to get awaywith so many things.

SPEAKER_03 (47:50):
And they were working on that for decades
before they finally before theyfinally Chris Shelton and I are
actually going to do an episode.
There's a book that I have up inmy um in our now voluminous
materials that is literallycomparing Scientology to
paragraphs from the Bible.
It is uh it's from the 70s.

(48:12):
It's I'd never seen it before.

SPEAKER_02 (48:14):
Wasn't that the one that Mary Sue wrote?

SPEAKER_03 (48:15):
Yeah.
It's crazy.
You want to know who was anauditor?
Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_02 (48:23):
Well, L.
Ron Hubbard said he was otherthings as well.

SPEAKER_03 (48:26):
Well, I know, I know.
Anyhow.

SPEAKER_02 (48:28):
Mary Sue was written out of everything anyway.
Yeah.
They made her disappear.

SPEAKER_03 (48:31):
That's the other thing that's fascinating about
it, too.
It's written by Mary SueHubbard, who to a current
Scientologist, they'd be like,Who?
She's literally beenphotoshopped out of all the
photos and just vanished.

SPEAKER_02 (48:43):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (48:44):
Anyhow, yeah.
So there you go.
All right.

SPEAKER_02 (48:47):
There's more.
There's more.

SPEAKER_03 (48:49):
Okay.

SPEAKER_02 (48:49):
I think there was more.
I saw one.

SPEAKER_03 (48:51):
Okay.

SPEAKER_02 (48:51):
I only uh Oh, there's a vacation question.

SPEAKER_03 (48:54):
Question.
Do you ever take a vacation?
Yes, we do.
We are strong vacation advocatesof the yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (49:00):
At least twice a year, usually.

SPEAKER_03 (49:01):
Yeah, maybe once a year.

SPEAKER_02 (49:02):
Sometimes twice.

SPEAKER_03 (49:03):
Sometimes twice, yeah.
But especially for us, I and Iknow Mark will agree with me on
this.
Our perspective has been that nomatter, yes, we work hard all
the time with multiplebusinesses and our three kids,
and just always uh, you know, wehave worked really hard since we
from the moment we got out.

(49:25):
But with our kids, we decided nomatter what, even if we can't
afford it, we'll figure it outto take them on vacation.
Because for Mark and I both, thefew core memories from our
childhood that were positive hadto do with vacations.
And we wanted to create that forour for for our kids.

(49:45):
I mean, now they're 20, 18, and13, and they have been all over
the world.
We visited my family in the UK,we went to France, Mexico.
They they are well traveled.
And they've been to a lot ofplaces.
So yeah, we absolutelyintentionally force ourselves to
take time for our kids.

(50:07):
How do you think your storywould have been different if if
the two of you had not beenposted at Gold Base for so long?
Like if you were there just longenough to meet each other and
marry.
Well, we almost did meet eachother before we were even in the
sea organization that fatefulday in January 1989, but it
never happened.
I don't know.

(50:28):
I I don't if I hadn't ended haveended up at gold, I don't think
I would have lasted nearly aslong in the sea organization.
The physical obstacles of howhard it was to escape from that
property really added a lot ofyears on to my stay in the sea

(50:49):
organization.
How about you?

SPEAKER_02 (50:52):
Um I don't know.
That's a weird question for me.
I think um because I don't it'shard to try to re-rewrite what
would have happened at whatpoint, but then I would what
maybe I wouldn't have met you,and then maybe so it's sort of
like I just am like it is whatit is.
What happened happened, and umthere's probably a million wulda

(51:16):
coulda shoulda's.

SPEAKER_03 (51:17):
And you know, I was just watching this show, what's
it called?
Uh Dark Matter about parallel umrealities and at every major
change, like a version of yousplits off into another world.
This is what this questionreminds me of.
Like, oh, there's anotherversion of us that got out like
14 years ago, and we have, youknow, anyway, it's it's kind of
funny.

SPEAKER_02 (51:37):
Yeah.
It's definitely um there I don'treally have um what is it?
There is no space for theregrets I will remember to
forget.
That's what I think.

SPEAKER_03 (51:51):
Is that a depeche mode lyric?

SPEAKER_02 (51:52):
It sure is.

SPEAKER_03 (51:55):
How did I know?

SPEAKER_02 (51:57):
Um oh here's a whole bunch of starred ones.
Oh, and I did we did get us somesuper chats, so I have to I have
to read those here.

SPEAKER_03 (52:03):
Okay, nice.
Uh Anthony, do you thinkMiscavige felt any grief
whatsoever when he heard his daddied?

SPEAKER_02 (52:10):
Well, I don't.
No, we already know he what hewould have thought because at
one point um when the privateinvestigators were watching that
that David Miscavige had hiredto watch his dad, he was
reaching for something in hispocket at the supermarket, and
they thought he was having astroke.
He was trying to like he wasfumbling and trying to get his

(52:33):
phone out of his shirt pocket orsomething, and they were like,
Oh, we think he's having a heartattack.
And they got the Scientology onthe phone, and supposedly it was
Dave Miscavige who was on thephone with them, and he said, if
it's his time, because they theprivate PIs were like, should we
intervene?
And they were like, if it's histime, it's his time.
So I don't think um I don'tthink he worried at all.

(52:56):
There were stories about at whenat the end base when his sister
got in trouble, or DavidMiscavige has a twin sister,
Denise, Denise and David.
Um, when she was getting intotrouble and things were
happening, he was like, Oh,she's making me look bad.
And it's always everything aboutwhen you got somebody who might

(53:16):
possibly be a narcissist, it'salways me, me, me.
Everything is always about me,me, me, me, me, me.
So he literally was thinkingthat everybody around him that
it was in his family were makinghim look bad.
So I don't think that he wouldhave been uh crying.

SPEAKER_03 (53:35):
No, and I will say uh we will have some material
coming up that has never neverseen the light of day before
that will dive deep on therelationship between David
Miscavige and his father, RonMiscavige Sr.
So hit that subscribe button andget your notification for when
that will be coming.

SPEAKER_00 (53:54):
Yeah, here's another another super chat.

SPEAKER_03 (53:56):
It's also oh thank you.
When Joseph Smith Oh, whatJoseph Smith or L.
Ron Hubbard, a worse person?

SPEAKER_01 (54:04):
Oh, was Joseph Smith.

SPEAKER_03 (54:06):
That would be a question I would explore with
John Delyn.
I don't have enough informationabout Joseph Smith to answer
that.
But you know with that.

SPEAKER_02 (54:15):
You could probably err on saying that they both had
four.
They were both really badpeople.
Yeah, but weren't necessarilygood for the greatest uh number
of humans.
Oh dear.
What's this one?

SPEAKER_03 (54:28):
Okay.
Um hello there, Mr.
Headley.
If it's not too much for you,can you please tell us about
one, maybe two of the nightmaresthat you had after escaping?
Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 (54:37):
Oh jeez.

SPEAKER_03 (54:38):
Um I'll answer that if you don't want to.

SPEAKER_02 (54:40):
Well, no, I had one where um I was I can't remember
exactly what had happened, butDavid Miscavige was at the
supermarket.
And um and I was with the boys,and then somehow he had the
boys, and then I was like, whatthe hell?
And then it's mainly um, it wasmainly they took the kids.

SPEAKER_03 (55:02):
Yes.

SPEAKER_02 (55:03):
And that was my new thing.
I wasn't worried about me beingback there anymore.
It was that somehow they got thekids there, and then I would be
like, what?

SPEAKER_03 (55:11):
That's that is a common theme in mine, is
somehow, and they're so vividlyreal too.
That's that's what makes itdisturbing.
And you know, you can ask Mark,there's been a couple of times,
unfortunately, that I woke upscreaming and he's like, Hey,
hey, wake up, wake up.
Um, but for me, it was alwaysvividly that somehow I ended up

(55:34):
back there.
And and a few it has varyingversions, but um uh oftentimes,
like uh when my oldest son wasyounger, it would be that
somehow he was with me and I hadto hide him and somehow figure
out how to get out of there allover again, but keep him out of
sight and make sure they didn'tfind him, and very elaborate and

(55:57):
disturbing.

SPEAKER_04 (55:58):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (56:00):
Question
have doubts, even if they aredismissed quickly?
Oh, it's incredibly common.
There's even a policy calledhang up at or a thing called
hang up at doubt.
Like there's a doubt formula inScientology.

SPEAKER_00 (56:14):
There's a condition of existence.
It's called the condition ofdoubt.
That's doubt.
And it's so common.
It's very common.

SPEAKER_03 (56:21):
Yeah, it's so common, in fact, for somebody to
not be able to make the decisionthat they want to stay in
Scientology, that there's evenextra tools and extra steps that
they have to fix that, to makesure that they handle that doubt
and they do.

SPEAKER_02 (56:34):
And here's a crazy thing is that as part of whether
you should stay in Scientologyor leave Scientology, they have
this step, which is to examinethe statistics of the group one
is trying to remain in or torejoin.

SPEAKER_00 (56:50):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (56:50):
And the statistics are what the all the false
nonsense that they say at theirevents of all the things that
they say they're doing and thewe have this many million
members.
And so Scientology has a way todetermine if you should stay in
Scientology, and the way theydeal with that is they stack the

(57:11):
deck for themselves with themembers.
So the members are like, butthey're doing so many amazing
things.
I should definitely be part ofthis.
And then if you knew that theyweren't doing much of anything,
it would be a lot easier toleave for Scientologists because
they wouldn't believe the thingsthat Scientology says they're
doing.
So they had a I I saw this.

(57:32):
Uh apostate Alex uh got the uhcopy of the audio of uh the
March 13th of the R.

SPEAKER_03 (57:38):
I saw that.
I haven't listened to it yet.

SPEAKER_02 (57:39):
And they're doing the F E B C trainings which are
going out.

SPEAKER_03 (57:44):
Which is like it's like the highest level of um
Scientology organizationaladministrative training that
somebody can do in Scientology.

SPEAKER_02 (57:52):
Now we haven't discussed this.
How many times have they donethis in the past?

SPEAKER_03 (57:57):
I don't know.
I want to say ten?

SPEAKER_02 (57:59):
At least ten times.
They've done this exact samething.

SPEAKER_03 (58:03):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (58:03):
And they train up all these people and they send
them to all their organizations.
And because they've essentiallytrained these top-notch managers
at at the Florida, at theClearwater Florida flag land
base, they're basically gonna goback to their organizations and
they're just gonna it's gonna bethe statistics or the graph
paper will be up the wall,across the ceiling, and down the

(58:26):
other side with how many andguess what, guys?
Spoiler alert, ain't nothinggonna happen.
They've done this so many times.
Yeah.
And they I wanna say they do itabout every 10 or 15 years.
They have a new wave of allthese people, and they tell
everybody, this is it.
This is it.
You're gonna you get ready forthe big expansion that's coming

(58:49):
up.
It never happens.
The FEBC guys, the flagexecutive briefing course, or
whatever it's called.
Is that what it is?
The flag executive briefingcourse?

SPEAKER_03 (58:57):
Yep.

SPEAKER_02 (58:58):
What are you looking for?

SPEAKER_03 (58:59):
Somebody was asking about this, and I was gonna
answer the question.

SPEAKER_02 (59:02):
Holy moly.
Um, anyway, yeah.
Um they they lie to theirmembers, and they and they kind
of it's always sort of like, butwe've got this big thing coming
up.
And then that big thing comesup, nothing happens, and they're
like, Well, you know whatthough?
David Miscavige figured out thekey that was messing this whole

(59:24):
thing up, and they did that withthe key to life and the life
orientation course and thegolden age of this and the
golden age of that, and thegolden age of this, and the
golden age.
No golden ages have ever doneanything.
Uh they've never the all thestatistics of Scientology have
continued to steep decline.
It's a golden age of shrinkage,the golden age of nonsense,

(59:46):
baby.
Um, okay, but but do but do youthink?

SPEAKER_03 (59:50):
All right, while you look, I'm gonna answer sweet and
salty's question.
Sweet and salty.
Sweet and salty is a check for$45 from April 2009 from
Kendrick Moxon to Claire Hetleywitness fee, which Mark has one
of these too.
We refused to ever even deposit.
This was during our lawsuit whenwe were put in deposition, and

(01:00:12):
we wanted nothing to do with it,so we laminated them.

SPEAKER_02 (01:00:15):
There's 90 bucks worth of cold, cold doleros
here.

SPEAKER_03 (01:00:19):
From 2009.
They're antiques.
So yeah, screw you, Ken Moxon.

SPEAKER_02 (01:00:24):
45 only.

SPEAKER_03 (01:00:26):
$45 per because by California law they were
required to pay us minimum wageto be in deposition.

SPEAKER_02 (01:00:34):
Which is kind of wild because we were getting
paid$45 for talking smack aboutthem.
That's how much we made in aweek there.

SPEAKER_03 (01:00:40):
I know the irony.
That's the other reason we nevernot only never deposited them,
but laminated them.
There you go.

SPEAKER_02 (01:00:48):
Oh, here's a great one.

SPEAKER_03 (01:00:49):
Comment.
I don't know what you're talkingabout.
This is the thing that's goingto change everything.
Oh, it's a poste Alex.
I was like, wait a minute, whatwhat?
Total expansion, folks, straightup and vertical.
Ignore all the other times itdidn't work.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (01:01:02):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (01:01:03):
This time it's different.

SPEAKER_02 (01:01:06):
Yeah.
In Scientology, one thing youcan master perfectly is
cognitive dissonance.

SPEAKER_03 (01:01:14):
Oh my God.
I know.
Like that you know it's a studyand perfection in Scientology.

SPEAKER_02 (01:01:20):
The people that were around when they did the F E B C
launches 10 years ago and then20 years ago, and then 30 years
ago, they're gonna be like,you've you're gonna be like, has
this happened?
Have we done haven't we donethis before?

SPEAKER_03 (01:01:36):
Am I having a sense of deja vu?

SPEAKER_02 (01:01:38):
Didn't we do this in the 80s?
And then we did it in the 90s,and then we did it in the early
2000s, and then we did it 10years ago.

SPEAKER_03 (01:01:45):
Um But if the tech is not working, something is
wrong.

SPEAKER_02 (01:01:50):
Yeah, it could be the tech.

SPEAKER_03 (01:01:52):
The tech.

SPEAKER_02 (01:01:53):
Yeah.
In Scientology, you're neverallowed to question L.
Ron Hubbard source, as they callhim in Scientology.
He's source of all the knowledgeand all the information they
have.
And um, and if something goeswrong in Scientology, it was
it's it's always assigned to theeither the misapplication or the

(01:02:15):
mis uh uh the mis the technologywasn't correctly applied in some
certain way, or you use thewrong technology.
It's never the technology iswhat's wrong.

SPEAKER_03 (01:02:27):
Right.

SPEAKER_02 (01:02:28):
And that's exactly what's wrong.

SPEAKER_03 (01:02:31):
Completely spoiler alert.
Yeah, Jackson's in the chat.
Hey Jackson, I have one of thosefrom your case too.
One of those checks.

SPEAKER_02 (01:02:38):
Yeah, they they started they started deposing
everybody else.
We we we knew.

SPEAKER_03 (01:02:44):
Yeah.
Crazy, crazy, crazy.

SPEAKER_02 (01:02:46):
Okay, anything else?
Oh, uh, that's uh apostate.
Alex, okay.
Um I don't know.
We got um oh yeah, common forthem to have doubts, yes.
Oh, here's a good one.

SPEAKER_03 (01:02:59):
Question Is there still a Scientology facility in
Denver?
If so, do you drive blocks awayfrom it just to avoid it?
Question from Glenda.
So yes, there is one.

SPEAKER_02 (01:03:09):
Have you ever been there?

SPEAKER_03 (01:03:10):
Um I've no.
I the last time I remember this.
So, Mark, answering yourquestion, Glenda, yes, there is
still one in Denver.
It's right by the um which fieldis that?

SPEAKER_01 (01:03:20):
Coorsfield.

SPEAKER_03 (01:03:21):
Coorsfield.
Um the last time I was so wewent to a baseball game there,
and Mark was like, Oh, I'll beright back.
I was with the kids.
The kids were like six and fourat the time, and he was like,
I'm gonna go pop into the Denverorg.

SPEAKER_00 (01:03:38):
I just said I was gonna get a hot dog.
I said I'm gonna go get a hotdog, or I might go buy the orc.

SPEAKER_03 (01:03:44):
Yeah, and I was like, Okay, well, go right
ahead.
I'm not gonna, you know, butfactor in.
It's not that I'm afraid ofthem.
It it gives me the heebiejeebies, absolutely.
I I avoid them if I can, but I'mnot afraid of them anymore, but
more so I would never take mykids anywhere close to something
like that.

SPEAKER_02 (01:04:03):
Yeah, uh to be fair, I did go get a hot dog, and I
did go to the org, and theyactually I got the receptionist
to take a picture of the case.

SPEAKER_03 (01:04:12):
Mark is such a troublemaker.
You've done this in multipleorgs and you did it in the Vegas
org as well.

SPEAKER_02 (01:04:17):
I've done it in Boston, Vegas, I've done it a
lot.
It kind of was my thing for alittle while.
I would go into the org, tellthem just use some
Scientologies, and then theyimmediately they let their guard
down and they'd be like, Hey,would you do me a favor and take
a picture of me set sitting uhst standing at the reception in
this brand new idealorganization?

SPEAKER_03 (01:04:36):
Yeah.
Which which side comment, by theway, that speaks to me the the
level of bullshit, excuse mylanguage in Scientology, and the
level of control that thelanguage involves.
You just speak their languageand they're like, oh yeah, sure,
we'll take a picture of you.
Yeah.
Like, oh, what about being ableto spot a suppressive person you

(01:04:57):
no?

SPEAKER_02 (01:04:57):
They can't.
They couldn't spot a suppressiveperson if it was biting them on
the uh ear.
Anyway, um, but I did do that.
I got a picture, and then Ithink I sent it to Tony or Tega
while we were.
I remember that.
While we were at the baseballgame, I said, Hey, look where I
just was.
Yeah.
But in Denver, um, I don'treally avoid it.

(01:05:20):
I don't really go to downtownDenver unless we're going to a
sh a show or we're doingsomething downtown.

SPEAKER_03 (01:05:25):
We prefer not to leave our zip code unless we
absolutely have to.

SPEAKER_02 (01:05:29):
But also, it's bone-dry empty.
There ain't nobody there.
Yeah.
The only way that thatorganization is able to pay the
bills is they charge for Rocky'sparking.

SPEAKER_04 (01:05:41):
Yes.

SPEAKER_02 (01:05:41):
Because their lot is always empty.
There's no Scientologists in it.
So they charge for parking.
You can it's right across thestreet from the ball field, uh a
block away, maybe.
Um, and so you can park thereand then just walk over to the
place.
And I think when you park there,you get a free uh way to
happiness back.

(01:06:06):
But um people have reported thisand it is a it's a i to the m as
as far as I know, they still doit.
It's not they never stop doingthis.
Right.
Which there's also legal thingsthat they could get lit up for.
You're supposed to havedifferent insurance if you got
people parking anyway.
That's a story for another day.

SPEAKER_03 (01:06:26):
Yep.

SPEAKER_02 (01:06:27):
Okay, here we go.
Here's a good one.

SPEAKER_03 (01:06:30):
Question Were you guys forced to buy insane
amounts of copies of BattlefieldEarth to get it to number one
best seller list?

SPEAKER_02 (01:06:37):
Well, when Battlefield Earth came out, I
don't think we were in the SeaOrg at that time.
We weren't.
But when the movie came out, wewere given money to see it three
times.
I famously went the first timeand was like, I'm pretty much
sure I'm not gonna have to sit Idon't want to sit through that
two more times.
I'm gonna definitely fall asleepif I have to watch that two more

(01:06:59):
times.
And I saw Gladiator on thesecond Battlefield Earth run.
I had to go to the bathroom, andI just happened to catch a
gladiator movie while I was inthe bathroom.

SPEAKER_03 (01:07:11):
You know what's funny?
I just for some reason I'venever really stopped to consider
this.
So you were the rebel.
I was, you know.

SPEAKER_02 (01:07:18):
Did you watch it all three times?

SPEAKER_03 (01:07:20):
I watched it all three times.
But it's funny because umimagine this, it's the movie
theater in Temecula.

SPEAKER_02 (01:07:29):
It was in Hammett.
I thought we went to the one inTemula.

SPEAKER_03 (01:07:31):
No, I went to the one in Temecula.
Oh, they took RTC for that'sright.
They took us to differenttheaters to make it not look so
obvious.
Um, but either way, so it's amovie theater full of RTC staff,
and I guarantee you, I mean, I sI slept easily through.
I mean, I remember maybe thefirst five minutes of the first
movie, and I think I slept theentire rest of the time.

(01:07:53):
But can you imagine being aperson out in the real world
walking into a movie theater andthere's just it's like a CM of
like these Scientologists arereally lining up for this thing.
Wow.
They'll be like, oh boy, thisdoes not look like a good movie.

(01:08:13):
This is a good one.

SPEAKER_02 (01:08:14):
This is a good one.

SPEAKER_03 (01:08:15):
Question Are public staff allowed access to the
internet as long as they don'tlook at negative Scientology
news, public staff.
Public staff.

SPEAKER_02 (01:08:26):
I think public and staff do get on the interwebs,
and I think you're pretty muchwarned against the evil SP
information that's out thereabout Scientology.

SPEAKER_04 (01:08:38):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (01:08:38):
And when they say evil, they mean Lord Zenu and
Body Thetans.
That's all that they want tokeep everybody from because that
is the core Scientology beliefsthat you're not supposed to know
about until you're at thatlevel.
There's not there's not reallyanything else in Scientology
besides the OT levels that theyguard with such secrecy, and

(01:09:04):
they don't want Scientologiststo find out about Lord Xenu and
the Body Fetans and their latesttour on sale now on the Boat for
Good website.
No, I've got to change the merchto 2026.
I just realized it's a 2025world tour that I have up.

SPEAKER_03 (01:09:20):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (01:09:21):
And not 2026.

SPEAKER_03 (01:09:23):
But it wasn't late 90s when they put out the whole
net nanny software thing to stoppe to add filters, to stop
public and staff from searching.
Well, no.

SPEAKER_02 (01:09:34):
It wasn't to stop them, it was a filter.
It just didn't allow it tohappen, period.
They had a program, uh they hada uh uh a marketing program that
was for all Scientologists toset up an I am a Scientologist
website.

SPEAKER_00 (01:09:50):
Yep.

SPEAKER_02 (01:09:50):
And in order to do that, you had to install the
software on your Windowsmachine.
And when you would install theirsoftware, it would install an
internet filter on your computerunbeknownst to them that would
block out any anti or badScientology sites.
It talked about Lord Zenu andand the body thetans.

SPEAKER_03 (01:10:10):
And so And the idea of all these sites was that that
they would flood this wouldcreate um an algorithm which
would drown out all thenegativity.

SPEAKER_02 (01:10:21):
Well, no, what the way that the internet in the
early days of the internet, themore sites that pointed to a
certain thing, that site thateverything's pointing to would
gain uh search results.
And so Scientology was basicallytrying to get every single
Scientologist to set up a s an Iam Scientologist site that would

(01:10:44):
lead back to Scientology's mainsite so that when you searched
Scientology on Google or Yahooor Jeeves or whatever it was at
the time, um that it would leadto the Scientology site.
Yeah.
And they horribly mismanagedthat.
And I think even by the timethey did all this, that's not
exactly how the algorithmworked.

(01:11:05):
And the the internet alwaysfigures out ways for you not to
be able to game the internet.
It's always doing that.
So um Scientology and alsothere's not a number of
Scientol, there's not enoughthere's not enough
Scientologists to be able tosuccessfully execute that plan

(01:11:26):
because there's many, many moreex-scientologists that are
talking about Scientology thanthere are still in scientists.
That's the thing you've alwaysgot to know is that there's way
more of us than there are ofthem.
Yep.
It's almost impossible for themto say more or do more than
everybody else that's on theinternet that's talking about

(01:11:48):
Scientology and exposing what'shappening with them.
And you can pretty much get anykind of flavor of that you want
between which kind of people youwant to follow.
They're talking about CDM.

SPEAKER_03 (01:11:58):
Yeah, look at this comment from Mitch.

SPEAKER_02 (01:12:01):
Meet a Scientologist CD ROM.
Dave Bloomberg shit the bed withthat one.
Yeah, that was that and to befair, that was actually, I'm
pretty sure the one whoannounced it was Ronnie
Miscavige.

SPEAKER_03 (01:12:12):
I remember Dave Bloomberg did one.
There were probably twodifferent iterations of it.
I absolutely remember that DaveBloomberg did one of them for
sure.

SPEAKER_02 (01:12:21):
Well, either way, um it didn't.

SPEAKER_03 (01:12:23):
He was the head PR guy at the time.
And yeah, it did not go well.
Talk about backfire, like mostthings.
Scientology are experts atshooting themselves in the foot.
That's that they have provedthat consistently over and over
again.

SPEAKER_02 (01:12:37):
I didn't want to show this one, but it has
factual information in it.
I think it should be shared.

SPEAKER_03 (01:12:41):
Miscavige in the supermarket?
Was he sat in the child seat inthe cart?
That's the only way he'd reachthe upper shelves, surely.
Alrighty there.

SPEAKER_02 (01:12:51):
If you go to the supermarket with Dave, you're
getting things for him.
That's there's no way aroundthat.
You're gonna there's that.

SPEAKER_03 (01:12:56):
Well, that's why he doesn't go to the supermarket.

SPEAKER_02 (01:12:58):
Probably why.

SPEAKER_03 (01:12:59):
Probably why.

SPEAKER_02 (01:13:00):
You know, he can't get his uh his uh what crispy
cookie cereal from the top show.

SPEAKER_03 (01:13:06):
No.

SPEAKER_02 (01:13:07):
Um, I'm sorry.
Are we short shaming?
Is that what that is?
Um I'm not.

SPEAKER_03 (01:13:14):
I just read the comment.

SPEAKER_02 (01:13:20):
Oh, here we go.
That's a good one.
Okay, question.

SPEAKER_03 (01:13:23):
How much of your background do your kids know and
how do they feel about all ofit?
Yeah, um, we have been very openwith them in an age-appropriate
manner since um since they werereal little.
Um and they ask variousquestions.
I think they understand thedynamics of it.

(01:13:44):
Our oldest son let read yourbook.
Our youngest son is one of mybiggest champions on my book.
He asks me all the time, so didyou make progress on your book
today, Mom?
It's so sweet.
Um They know it, they knowenough.

SPEAKER_02 (01:13:57):
And they've also they've whenever we have people
hang out, the kids are around.
We don't like tell them, youknow, go down to the basement.

SPEAKER_03 (01:14:04):
We're talking about put your earplugs in.
No, no, that's not how we gooutside and play.

SPEAKER_00 (01:14:09):
We're gonna talk about some crazy and nonviolent
stuff.

SPEAKER_03 (01:14:12):
No, and and I've said I've said this story
before, but it really I was veryI was, as we say, on the
struggle bus when my second sonwas born, it really overwhelmed
with the emotions of like, whatdo I tell my kids when they
realize that their grandparentsare not in their lives?
Because that what had personallyimpacted me at three, and I
thought it was my fault.

(01:14:33):
So I called Dr.
Laura Schlesinger and she said,just always tell your kids the
truth.
And that way you you know thatthey will never go down that
path.
And I can say with certainty andconviction that our kids
absolutely in a million years,um, they they know what our
lived experiences were again inan age-appropriate fashion, but

(01:14:55):
um they would never I mean Yeah,they're not gonna do any,
they're not gonna do any ofthis.

SPEAKER_02 (01:15:00):
Look at look who's who look who's here.

SPEAKER_03 (01:15:01):
Dr.
X in the house.
Hi all, since childhood, growingup to your time in the SO in the
C organization.
How many courses do you thinkyou have completed in
Scientology?
How many courses all up?
Do you know?
How many total expansions newtech BS has DM come up with and
never done right?
Yeah.
Okay.
That's yeah.

(01:15:22):
Great question.
That's a layered question.
Number of courses.

SPEAKER_02 (01:15:27):
I would say that me, who I haven't done that a lot,
I've probably done 10 or 15Scientology courses that I had
to do when I was there, when Iwas either when I was a kid or
when I was in the Seorg.
And almost all of those havenever really been redone because
they're basic courses that allScientologists do.

SPEAKER_03 (01:15:49):
They may have No, they've been redone.

SPEAKER_02 (01:15:51):
Well, I understand.
They redid the books that gowith those courses and but but
but in the But no, they I mean,even the student hat and they
redid all those courses.
I understand, but at the sametime, they're basically the
same.
They're teaching you the exactsame thing.
Yeah, no, the They moved commasaround.

SPEAKER_03 (01:16:08):
And they added drills, the what do you do
drills and all that stuff.
They changed what's on the checksheet, but yes, you're right.
The lectures are the same, oryour reading is the same.
For me, I would say I I'd that'sa good question that I should
know the answer to.
I will look it up.
It's at least 50.
Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (01:16:25):
At least 50 for her.
I didn't I did the course.

SPEAKER_03 (01:16:28):
You're not counting though your the the job hatting
courses that you did.
Sure.
You did more than that.

SPEAKER_02 (01:16:34):
Treasury full hat, the this full hat.
I'm counting that's probably 10or 15.
I didn't do that many.

SPEAKER_03 (01:16:42):
Okay.

SPEAKER_00 (01:16:43):
I I wasn't a big fan of doing them, so I did as
little as I had to.

SPEAKER_03 (01:16:46):
I did I wasn't a big fan of doing them either.
I did the bare minimum.

SPEAKER_00 (01:16:51):
I did the bare minimum.

SPEAKER_03 (01:16:52):
I did yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_02 (01:16:53):
I mean, one of those is car school that I did.

SPEAKER_03 (01:16:56):
I did car school too.

SPEAKER_02 (01:16:57):
I know, but that's a Scientology course on how to
drive a car.

SPEAKER_03 (01:17:01):
Yeah, I would say fifty to a hundred easily for me
is is my answer to that.
Thank you for that, Dr.
X.
Including ones that I didmultiple times over.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (01:17:10):
It's very generous of you, Dr.
X.
Thank you.
Yes.
And I've gotta say it.
Dr.
X, I it it doesn't go a month ortwo doesn't go by, where we
don't get the most enormous carepackage for Dr.
X.

SPEAKER_03 (01:17:22):
Oh, speaking of which, um, from the Comedy for a
Cause uh Silent Auction, we hadan SP shop basket that Dr.
X and Dr.
Paul won.
Yeah.
And um Dr.
X very kindly said we coulddonate those items to our
audience.
Okay.
So we don't have a giveaway setup for today, and I'm pulling a

(01:17:42):
fast one on Mark with this.
But if you're interested, drop acomment under this video.

SPEAKER_02 (01:17:47):
It's uh Why don't we do a proper drawing with the the
tool and everything so it'sfair?

unknown (01:17:53):
Right.

SPEAKER_02 (01:17:54):
We do it on no, we'll do it on the next one we
do.

SPEAKER_03 (01:17:56):
Well, you're gonna be gone for a while.
So I'm saying that if you areinterested, we have a Leah
Remini bobblehead, a Mikebobblehead, and I think a couple
of SP bracelets.
So if if you're interested, dropa comment and we'll just
randomly pick some people whocomment on this video to be the
winners for that, since I forgotto tell you to set that up.

SPEAKER_02 (01:18:18):
And then how are you gonna notify that?
How are we gonna know?
Are we gonna do it in the video?

SPEAKER_03 (01:18:21):
No, there so if you comment under the video, I can
respond to that and say you won,send me an email and claire it.

SPEAKER_02 (01:18:29):
You gotta pay attention and you gotta get in
the comments because there's thethe live ones, there's different
than the live and the chat.

SPEAKER_03 (01:18:38):
Comment on this video after it's done.
After it's done.
Comment there for a chance towin one of those giveaways,
courtesy of Dr.
X and Dr.
Paul.

SPEAKER_02 (01:18:48):
So generous.

SPEAKER_03 (01:18:50):
There you go.

SPEAKER_02 (01:18:51):
Okay, I think we do two more questions and then and
then um we're good.

SPEAKER_03 (01:18:55):
Yeah, we'll sign off.

SPEAKER_02 (01:18:57):
Okay.
Oh, here we go.
No, that was the supermarketone.
We did that.
There was another one, a goodone I saw.
Oh, here's it.

SPEAKER_03 (01:19:04):
Okay.
Harvey Denton's Toads question.
How often did you get to go tothe movies in the sea
organization?
Not very often, I'd imagine.
Yeah, no.
I mean, I can count on probablytwo hands in the 14, 13, 14
years that we were at the basethat we went to the movies.
And that includes theBattlefield Earth.

(01:19:26):
It includes the time that we hadto go see Far and Away.

SPEAKER_02 (01:19:30):
Oh, that's right.
Far and away we had to go see.

SPEAKER_03 (01:19:33):
Yeah.
And we also had to go see PulpFiction.

SPEAKER_02 (01:19:36):
I didn't what see, I we didn't get to go to see Pulp
Fiction.

SPEAKER_03 (01:19:39):
I did.

SPEAKER_02 (01:19:40):
In RTC.

SPEAKER_03 (01:19:41):
No, I was it was in Golden Era Productions.

SPEAKER_02 (01:19:43):
Oh, I don't remember that at all.
Because John Travolta was in it.

SPEAKER_03 (01:19:46):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (01:19:47):
That's sure not a Scientology movie.

SPEAKER_03 (01:19:50):
It's not.
No.
Um anyway, but no, so in theearly 90s, I can remember
sometimes if the organization'sstatistics were up, they would
do a movie in one of theoffices.
Um, so it doesn't really countas going to the movies, but for
example, that's where I rememberseeing Silence of the Lambs.
And then sometimes on Sea OrgDay, uh, they would play movies.

SPEAKER_02 (01:20:16):
Yeah, they would always just whatever was on DVD.
Yeah.
It wasn't like you were going tosee something flashy.

SPEAKER_03 (01:20:21):
So not very often.
We had a huge uh huge huge likeI mean, years of movies to catch
up on when we got out.

SPEAKER_02 (01:20:29):
Yeah, we were watching three a day for a
while.

SPEAKER_03 (01:20:31):
Yep.

SPEAKER_02 (01:20:32):
Um there was a good one in here.
Um here we go.

SPEAKER_03 (01:20:35):
This is all right.
Question How do they choose whoto recover and who to just let
go?
Yeah, that's a really goodquestion.
I think that really depends on afew factors.
Number one, the flavor of theday.
Uh, you know, kind of justwhat's the general consensus.
There have been periods, forexample, you know, throughout
the last 40 years, sometimesthey'll just be like, hey, if

(01:20:58):
you want a GTFO, there's thedoor, get out.

SPEAKER_04 (01:21:01):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (01:21:01):
Um, but also it really depends on what the
person knows.
That's what I was gonna say andhow close they've been to David
Miscavige.

SPEAKER_02 (01:21:08):
Yeah.
It's really what they know.
What information do they knowand they have direct knowledge
of that could pose a threat tous legally or law enforcement or
liability, any of those things,they kind of go, if this person
doesn't know they were in a postthat they weren't exposed to
anything that was kind of alittle bit spicy, then they

(01:21:30):
might just be like, whatever.
We're not we don't care aboutthat.
That's not a big deal.
And if their whole family wasn'tin either, if they were just
that none of their family werein, it's just like we're not
gonna ever get this person back.

SPEAKER_03 (01:21:40):
Yeah.
By the way, just to clarify onething on the giveaways, we're
not gonna give away the wholebasket.
We'll give away the items in thepart it out.
Yes.
So there will be so again,comment on the video on YouTube,
underneath this, not it doesn'tcount in the live chat, but we
have a few different items.
So we appreciate you being hereand comment for your chance to

(01:22:01):
win.

SPEAKER_00 (01:22:02):
I would love to win the basket.
That's comment.

SPEAKER_03 (01:22:04):
Yeah.
Yes.
Just wanted to make sure thatwas clear since uh that that
comment made me realize it wasthe information I think we're
missing out on, which has beenin here in the comments now.
Oh, okay.
Let's see.
Yes, Tim Tams must be in thefridge, in my opinion.
Ooh, Cadbury chocolate is good,and I live right near their

(01:22:26):
factory.
I drive past it every morningand night.
Wow.

SPEAKER_02 (01:22:30):
Okay, we've not been putting Tim Tams in the fridge.

SPEAKER_03 (01:22:32):
We haven't.
Do we need to go to cramming?

SPEAKER_02 (01:22:34):
I don't I think the fact that um Dr.
X sends us so many packages ofTim Tams, it would be impossible
for us to put them in.
We'd have to get anotherrefrigerator.
You guys have no idea how bigthese boxes are when they come
out.

SPEAKER_03 (01:22:47):
Our kids and all of our neighbors and all of our
kids' friends, they all love Dr.
X and Dr.
Paul.
They all know about them.
Every single one.

SPEAKER_00 (01:22:58):
This is the best.
Are you ready?

SPEAKER_03 (01:22:59):
I'm ready.
Mark, I think you said onceReligious Technology Center were
made to watch internal affairsand no way out.

SPEAKER_02 (01:23:08):
Is this true?

SPEAKER_03 (01:23:09):
Of course it's true.
Not only, I mean, you know me,internal affairs is a movie I
had to watch.

SPEAKER_02 (01:23:17):
Her post was director of internal affairs.

SPEAKER_03 (01:23:20):
My post was not no.

SPEAKER_02 (01:23:21):
But you were over internal affairs.

SPEAKER_03 (01:23:23):
No, I was internal executive.

SPEAKER_02 (01:23:25):
Oh, internal executive.

SPEAKER_03 (01:23:26):
Yeah, but I did have to watch internal affairs, the
movie, I think eight to tentimes.

SPEAKER_02 (01:23:33):
If you don't know, guys, that's the one with
Richard Gere.

SPEAKER_03 (01:23:36):
I didn't even consider that in answer to the
question because it was anassignment that we had to do.
And I that movie, I'm sorry, Idid really disliked the Richard
Gere character in that movie.
It made me like, anyway,whatever.
Blah blah blah blah blah.
I'll stop talking about it.

SPEAKER_02 (01:23:52):
David Miscavige literally considered that
education for religioustechnology.

SPEAKER_03 (01:23:59):
For religious technology center.
Finding sleeper agents.
I mean, yeah.
Anyway, I have that in my book.

SPEAKER_02 (01:24:09):
He thought what was going on in the movie, Internal
Affairs, was happening inReligious Technology Center, and
that his staff could be popcould be basically compromised
because they were sleeping withpeople that were in gold or
other.
He would say you're sleepingwith the enemy.

SPEAKER_03 (01:24:30):
I know, but you're it's mixing two different
concepts.
The reason he was having themwatch intern having us watch
internal affairs and no way outis because it reve it talked
about the operation of internalaffairs in the military and in
the police and so forth, andthat was our art series eight of
how we were supposed to becomethe Inspector General Network of

(01:24:53):
Scientology or the InternalAffairs of Scientology was
watching these movies.
I mean, it it sounds ridiculous,and it is.
Okay.
There you go.

SPEAKER_02 (01:25:04):
There seems to be a uh a Cadbury's and craft rift in
the uh comments.

SPEAKER_03 (01:25:09):
Okay, leave it alone.
Okay dokie.
Well not here for this, folks.
I love I love the uh enthusiasm,the passion, yeah.

unknown (01:25:18):
The passion.

SPEAKER_03 (01:25:19):
Very cool.

SPEAKER_02 (01:25:20):
Here we go.
I agree with this comment.
Whole horse.

SPEAKER_03 (01:25:24):
This is the most complicated giveaway the BFG
channel has ever had.
LOL.
I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_02 (01:25:31):
All you have to do is tell me ahead of time, and
I've got it all set up.
You spring it to me in themiddle.

SPEAKER_03 (01:25:36):
It was my fault, folks.
I got broad shoulders, I gotthick skin, I own it.
Dr.
X showed up, and it reminded methat I had forgotten to let Mark
no.

SPEAKER_02 (01:25:48):
Okay, this is a great comment.

SPEAKER_03 (01:25:49):
Improvised.

SPEAKER_02 (01:25:50):
Because we're talking about a lot of things
about uh people escaping andpeople being recaptured.

SPEAKER_03 (01:25:55):
Yep.

SPEAKER_02 (01:25:56):
We have someone in the comments who used to be the
security chief at theinternational headquarters.
Yep.
And he says that during histime, I can't remember even one
person not being tracked down.
The last count of the numbers Ichased down was over three
hundred and fifty people betweennineteen eighty-two and nineteen

(01:26:19):
ninety-six.
That is wild, guys.
Three hundred and fifty peoplethat escaped, and then they went
on a hunt and they found outwhere they ended up.

SPEAKER_03 (01:26:31):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (01:26:32):
And in a lot of cases, they brought those people
back.

SPEAKER_03 (01:26:35):
Yeah, I should have clarified in my comment that
people at the at theheadquarters where we worked,
they were always tracked down.
Like Jackson is saying.
I was talking about, oractually, even in the early
days, Matt Pesha's told a storyat the headquarters in the 70s,
but that was well before.
Anyhow, either way, yeah, that'ssome crazy, crazy numbers right

(01:26:56):
there.

SPEAKER_02 (01:26:57):
Okay.
I think we're good.

SPEAKER_03 (01:26:59):
Sounds good.

SPEAKER_02 (01:27:00):
I think we did it.
We did all the things.

SPEAKER_03 (01:27:02):
We did it.
Yay.

SPEAKER_02 (01:27:03):
It was a lot.
We did it though.
We took it, we answered them.
There were questions, we've weread them.

SPEAKER_03 (01:27:09):
Yep.

SPEAKER_02 (01:27:10):
We talked about different things.

SPEAKER_03 (01:27:11):
Yeah, we did.

SPEAKER_02 (01:27:12):
We clicked off all the boxes.

SPEAKER_03 (01:27:14):
We did.
Um forget to tune in next weekfor the premiere of Cult
Survivor Series episode one.

SPEAKER_02 (01:27:22):
Um And I am gonna try to set it up so that I can
join in maybe.
We'll see.

SPEAKER_03 (01:27:27):
Awesome.
That way people don't think thatI have locked you in the
basement or something.

SPEAKER_02 (01:27:30):
Yeah, or that I've got another stint at the
battered husband shelter.
Oh my god.

SPEAKER_03 (01:27:36):
People, it drives me bonkers when he does this.
I'm sorry.
Of all the things, I can I cantolerate everything.
But he the reason look at thelook on his face.
He knows it gets under my skin.
So that's why he does it.

SPEAKER_02 (01:27:49):
It's fun.
We like to do the things, wemess around.
Um, okay, guys, thank you verymuch.
Um, if you uh if you want to getany of this uh These happy Davy
dolls or BFG merch or whatever,it's in the description.
It's right there in the video.
You don't even have to go far.
Also, we still have this aninordinate amount of people that

(01:28:12):
are watching, but notsubscribed.
It's free to subscribe.
We don't charge, we don't havememberships, we don't have any
of that.
You just say subscribe.
And there's a new thing I foundout from all the YouTubers.
There's a hype button.
You got to push the hype button.

SPEAKER_03 (01:28:26):
Oh.

SPEAKER_02 (01:28:26):
If you want to get the video, if you want to hype
up the video, you push the hypebutton.
Okay.
You can subscribe, you can like,you can hit the bell
notification, you can hype.
There's so many, so much workfor you to do besides just
watching.
That's going to help us out andget this message tomorrow.

SPEAKER_03 (01:28:41):
Very demanding.
Oh, before I forget, shamelessplug for my Substack.
Claire Headley 101 on Substackis where I'm announcing news of
my book coming out later thisyear.
Lots of uh news andannouncements will be coming
there.
Thank you to everyone who hasalready shown up there.
I greatly appreciate it.
And I will add the Substack linkto the video description as
well.

SPEAKER_02 (01:29:02):
Perfect.

SPEAKER_03 (01:29:02):
There you go.

SPEAKER_02 (01:29:03):
Till next time, guys.
People always think.
If you'd like to help supportthe channel, feel free to check
out the merch store link in thedescription.
We have Hail Xenu.
Xenu is my homeboy and BFGbranded mouse pads, shirts,
mugs, all sorts of other stuffin there that helps us to bring
you new content on a regularbasis.

(01:29:24):
You can also pick up a copy ofmy book, Blown for Good Behind
the Iron Curtain of Scientologyin hardback, Kindle, and Audible
versions as well.
There's also a link to ourpodcast, and you can get that on
Apple, Spotify, or wherever youlisten to podcasts.
And if you'd like to watchanother video, you could click

(01:29:45):
on this link right here, or youcould click on this one here, or
you can click on the subscribebutton right here.
Thanks a lot until next time.
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