Leaving A Cult - Q&A

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.

Transcript

Welcome And Studio Relics

SPEAKER_02 0:25

Hey everybody. Welcome back to Blown for Good. Welcome to another episode of Scientology Exposed. Today we are going to do a QA, and I'm joined by my lovely wife, Claire.

SPEAKER_03 0:37

Hey, hey, everybody. Good to see you this fine Sunday. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 0:47

And um and she will have subsequent episodes as well.

SPEAKER_03 0:52

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 1:00

Awesome. Love it. Um, we've got uh I stole a uh a little booksh a little uh nightstand from the guest bedroom 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 1:18

Yeah, it's uh planet Platinum Meritorious.

SPEAKER_02 1:21

Platinum meritorious. So if some if an eagle-eyed uh Google Foo out there can uh find out what platinum meritorious, I think it's a million bucks. It could be more, it could be five million, I don't know, but it's sitting here now, so it don'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 Ebner in California, he was driving around in LA on his scooter, and somebody, either he or somebody found it on the side of the road. It was in a trash pile.

SPEAKER_03 1:57

Oh, I thought it was in a storage unit. I think the story is on Mike's blog of how he kicked because he he had this before we did.

SPEAKER_02 2:05

Yeah, but it was in a storage unit, but then they emptied the storage. Somebody bought it and just was like, I don't need this, and they just dumped all the stuff.

SPEAKER_03 2:12

I mean, you literally will not find a heavier paperweight than that slump of lard right there.

SPEAKER_02 2:18

It's the top is all steel, but the bottom is solid granite or solid, it's some sort of stone. And it's very heavy. Heavy.

SPEAKER_03 2:27

It's like 80 pounds.

SPEAKER_02 2:29

Yeah, it's a lot. Anyway, it's here now. We also got all kinds of other good stuff. We've got a metal record, right? We've got a record, one of the CST vaults, the ones where they dig everything and they put it in the mountains so no one can get to it in case there's a nuclear war. Um, and even then, I don't know how you get to it because they got it all locked up in there, but somehow everybody's just gonna be able to stumble upon this very highly secured facility that there's no way into. Um, but we also got a nickel, a page, 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 3:07

We'll do some show and tell series. How about that?

SPEAKER_02 3:09

Yeah, I want to open up the e-meter and show everybody how the kids built them.

SPEAKER_03 3:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:14

Because Sea Org kids built these e-meters for the most part for many, many years. And when you open one of, it's all plastic on the outside, but when you open it up, there's some there's some cheese a rama. There's some there's some cheese in there. Super cheese.

SPEAKER_03 3:28

I worked on e-meters.

SPEAKER_02 3:29

Oh, here we go. Somebody found it. It's 2.5 million for platinum meritorious. I was kind of half right because I said it's a million or five. I was right in the middle of that. 2.5.

SPEAKER_03 3:40

Thank you for your getting your Google Foo on, as Mark says.

SPEAKER_02 3:42

Oh, yeah, other Trevanans got it too. He says uh Platinum Meritorious 2.5 million, according to the talk page.

SPEAKER_03 3:49

Of the bank list. Nice.

SPEAKER_02 3:51

Okay, guys. Well, I'm sorry, whoever paid it uh his name, their names are right on it. Richie and Amy Akunto. Sorry for uh that they had to pay$25.5 million for that. Now I got it for$50 in shipping sitting in my my storage, my uh studio here. Um well, what do we got? How exactly are we gonna do this? You got questions?

Why Cult Survivor Stories Matter

SPEAKER_03 4:16

Yes. So what we're gonna talk about today is uh essentially this will be a prologue to the start of the Cult Survivor series that we'll be doing periodically to fill in gaps while my wonderful host that I'm a co-host for here is out of town. Um but yes, so I would say from my perspective, the reason this is important to me personally is because um hearing other people's stories from other cults was a huge part of my recovery and gaining perspective on my experience and and my what I lived through, our shared experiences, what we went through. Um, because before hearing other stories from other cults, you know, in the in the aftermath of escaping, I was more like, ooh, shut that door, pretend like nothing ever happened for the last 30 years of hell, and just focus on rebuilding a life, which is fine in and of itself, but um it's not really the best approach to recovery, I came to find out.

SPEAKER_01 5:25

Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 5:28

There you go.

SPEAKER_01 5:30

Exciting.

SPEAKER_03 5:31

He wonders why I say there you go. Come on now. Anyway, so yeah, we're gonna be talking about some just basic cult survivor QA questions. If anyone in chat has questions to add, feel free to do so. Um and again, it just, you know, it's all about perspective and coming to terms with experiences and um and also I will say from when we did the Mormon Stories podcast, that was so eye-opening on the many parallels.

SPEAKER_02 6:02

Yeah. They the the the cult stuff that happens in Scientology is not unique to scient the Scientology cult aspect. There's all kinds of other cults that do all the same stuff and they got the same exact playbook. And there's there's tons of things that talk about this all over the interwebs. But uh it for Scientologists, when they hear the stuff that 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, Scientology does that too. Then it kind of goes like, oh, shoot, how's that work?

SPEAKER_03 6:37

Yeah, the uh cognitive dissonance starts to wear off, and you and when you're reflecting on, hmm, you know, that sounds an awful lot like my experience.

SPEAKER_02 6:47

Yeah, somebody says, the collab with John was great, and now LDS is suing him. I did not know that.

SPEAKER_03 6:54

I did not know that either.

SPEAKER_02 6:56

I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 6:57

Darn.

SPEAKER_02 6:57

Gotta get some research on them.

SPEAKER_03 6:59

Trevanon, drop us a line, fill us in. Hopefully, it's not because of our episode. I don't know why it would be.

SPEAKER_02 7:04

Come on. Trevanon's here. He said going clear was instrumental for a lot of LDS members, including John Dylan.

SPEAKER_03 7:10

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 7:10

Um, okay.

SPEAKER_03 7:11

One of my favorite all-time books of um cults is Educated by Tara Westover. Uh, just a really, really good book. I loved it.

SPEAKER_02 7:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 7:24

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 7:25

Well, let's get into the questions.

What People Misread About Cults

SPEAKER_03 7:26

Sounds good. So when people hear the word cult, what do you think they get wrong most often?

SPEAKER_02 7:33

I think they think that a cult, you gotta um, you know, there's weird practices or there's there's some kind of devil worship or certain things like that. I think that most people, that's what they think. It's funny though, in Scientology, though, when you're growing up and when you do that course that we talked about last week, the Hubbard Qualified Scientologist course, you get sort of um they give you ideas of things that you can say in response to when somebody says, isn't it a cult? And that the one I remember is they say, Oh, isn't Scientology in a cult a cult? And then you go, Well, you uh as a Scientologist, you say, Well, you know, uh cult comes from the word culture, which means a group of people that have uh the same ideas and moral beliefs and you know stuff like this.

SPEAKER_00 8:22

So yeah, Scientology could be considered a cult if you use that definition.

SPEAKER_03 8:26

Wow. No, the response I was trained on to that question was this Do you always believe what you read in the newspapers?

SPEAKER_02 8:35

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_03 8:37

Question with a question.

SPEAKER_02 8:38

I think most people would think um that it's just not something that there's uh ever it's not an everyday thing.

SPEAKER_03 8:46

Right. And I think the initial reaction to that question is from an individual in the real world. Oh, I would never join a cult. Sure. But you know, the but that's that's um overlooking some of the dynamics that come into play that cults prey on of how to lure people in. Like obviously for us, we were never I never had a choice. I was born into it, you never had a choice, you were brought in at age six. So it's different for us, but even from the adults we've talked to, it was very gentle at the outset. It wasn't it wasn't some, you know, extreme. Nobody joining Scientology thinks that they're joining an extremist group.

SPEAKER_02 9:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:34

Okay, here's another one.

SPEAKER_03 9:36

If someone asked you how did you end up in Scientology, what's the shortest, honest answer you could give?

SPEAKER_02 9:42

I just say I my mom got into it when I was little, so she got me into it.

SPEAKER_03 9:47

Yep, same. I I mean not same, but I was born into it. My mom got into Scientology through her brother when she was 17 years old while she was pregnant with me.

SPEAKER_02 9:59

Yeah. And and also um where we worked, most of the people that we worked with and around were also grew up in it, or they were born into it. There was only a few of the older people that were there. Most of them got in it when L. Ron Hubbard was running it and they worked directly with him, or they knew him, or they went to one of his lectures in the 50s or the 60s. So those sort of people were a lot of those people, and and and even those people, a lot of them were children of people that were in it as well. So it's kind of like the uh the group where we worked, many of the people had been in for decades and decades and decades. It wasn't like they'd just were in it for a few weeks or a few years.

SPEAKER_03 10:49

Yeah. I would also comment that I think a good portion of the adults that we knew that got in as, 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 drug rehabilitation program. Um anyway, yeah. I always it was always fascinating to me. Um, I didn't really realize it in the moment, but I always had this curiosity like, how did this 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 on it, now I understand what that curiosity stemmed from better than I did in the moment. Uh how did your understanding of your upbringing change over time? I know my answer to this. Mine dramatically shifted the moment we had our first son.

How We Ended Up In Scientology

SPEAKER_02 11:50

Totally. Yeah. We we when we were kids, um, we had a very hands-off uh approach from our parents. Uh and um we were sort of left to our own devices for the most part. But um I think I couldn't imagine doing half the things my mom did when I was a kid. I couldn't imagine uh raising our children that way. Like just it it it's on another level of incomprehension because um, you know, when I was eight years old, I was out till midnight hanging out on Hollywood Boulevard and running around Hollywood, and it was like okay. No one batted an eyelash. I w there were no phones back then. There were no uh cellular phones back then. So there was no way uh you were gonna 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 a it'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, but hey, I'm still here anyway. Still here kicking. But yeah, um, and so yeah, so it shifted dramatically when our first son was born. Um, because I think up up until that point, it's not that I thought it was okay. I just was like, well, that's the path that they chose and we escaped. So, you know, I I mean I can even remember initially in the first few months defending my mom to her older sister who thought it was complete nonsense that she wouldn't talk to us and it disconnected from us. And I said, you know, I I I understand her perspective though. Uh again, you know, shedding the layers of you know, understanding of the coercive control 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 at all? I I think for me that's still a work in progress with everything, every book that I read, every podcast I listen to, uh, it continues to shift. Um and certainly in continuing to help people start new lives, that has also impacted me just knowing that our experiences were by no means unique and that the Scientology has continued to abuse people in the last almost what 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 were there, which were outrageous and were horrible, and then we sort of um we were only really aware of what was being done to C org members, the billion-year contract folks, um, at the one location where we were posted, and a few other locations where we traveled to here and there for for our Sea Org jobs. But when we started when we escaped, and then we started hearing from ex-members, not the C org members, just ex uh Scientologists and how much money they paid for, you know, nonsense or how much was stolen from them where credit cards were opened in their names, and then Scientology just maxed them all out.

SPEAKER_03 15:28

And the amount of abuse in destroying families even outside of the C organization as well. Um, and even particularly to me, like hearing from people who worked at the organization, like the class five organization level. So the people who were on five-year contracts or two and a half year contracts, yeah, what they had to live through had not having their lodging provided and also sometimes like very, very low pay, like making that life work somehow, some way.

SPEAKER_02 16:03

It's sort of I thought we had it bad, but then I realized that everyone in Scientology has it bad except for maybe the richy rich folks. And even to some extent, they kind of get worked over the the coals as well. And sometimes even though they do they have a certain amount of wealth, they're asked to give well in excess of what they could afford, even. Right. So it's not just the poor Scientologist that's just giving everything they have to Scientology. That was what I'd consider my mother. I would consider my mother a low-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 rented a 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 one bedroom studio. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:00

No, I get it. I've never been a believer that it's productive to uh do trauma comparisons. Yeah. So it's all good. My bad.

Parenthood Reframes The Past

SPEAKER_02 17:09

It's all good. Um okay.

SPEAKER_03 17:12

Um next question. All right. Did you have fears about leaving? If so, what were they? We so I would I would set this question up because I know we're both gonna answer differently. With the fact that even though you and I had been married for 13 years, how many times did we talk about leaving?

SPEAKER_00 17:33

Never once.

SPEAKER_03 17:34

Never once. Never once. Other than that time you told me that if I divorced you, you were gonna be an oil stain on the highway. 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 my mind at in that moment. I remember it. I remember where you were standing. It was a Sunday, we were getting ready 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 cements that, 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 hurt himself? 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 of unknown, but I had pretty much decided that this place is the most miserable place that you could possibly be. And I was making a bet on myself that I could do better outside of this place than in this place. And so I kind of went all in. I was I was the only thing I really was worried about was was them catching me. That was the only fear that I had when escaping was how are they gonna catch me? I wasn't really afraid of the um I don't think I was really that afraid of what was gonna happen afterwards, besides them tracking me down and dragging me back. But um besides that. Yeah, besides that. Besides being kidnapped and and that is the picture put into captivity. And that's that's by design. Everybody who does escape, they either tell tall tales about them, about how horribly they're doing, or they do track that person down and capture them and bring them back. And it's called being uh recovered is the word. If somebody's blown and then they're recovered, that means they're now back and they they can't escape.

SPEAKER_03 19:42

So I think that was recovered, is far more politically correct than kidnapped and put under lock and key, right? Imprisoned, kidnapped and imprisoned 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 feisty today, 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.

Fears And Plans For Escaping

SPEAKER_03 20:18

Yeah. I had fears. Yes, I had a lot of fears. I did not think it would be possible. First of all, uh same as you, I I was I thought the chances of me escaping without being intercepted were next to none. Um and after you escaped and I started to try and figure things out, I realized there's no way I'm gonna do this without help. It's just not gonna be physically possible. Um, and and my ideas about how to do it were so lame that I would have absolutely been caught. I mean, I was gonna hide in somebody'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 along her route.

SPEAKER_02 21:01

That was to me, that was the best of all. Like, you're gonna go into a movie theater and go to sleep at the popcorn guy's gonna find you.

SPEAKER_03 21:11

For anyone who's listening who doesn't know understand this, let me just explain real quick. Because it's it so I was going, I had a motorcycle, but it was not registered to drive on the road. So I was gonna, you know, borrow somebody's plate from another motorcycle somehow without being seen. I don't know how that was gonna work.

SPEAKER_02 21:28

Also, most of the motorcycles on the property were not registered to drive on the road. So you could have stolen a plate off another motorcycle and it would have done you just as good as the plate.

SPEAKER_03 21:40

You didn't even have a plate. No, my bike was never registered to 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 dangerous cult, 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 El Dorado here. Uh you seem to be on a two-wheel motorcycle.

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 a motorcycle, and I was even trying to figure out would I have enough money with$200 to pay gas from California to Kansas City? Again, it's psychotic thinking back 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 same thing.

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 I could go stay in a motel or something. But second of all, um, I knew that if I did stay in a hotel, they would be checking hotels for my name, and that would be a way that they would track me down. So my solution in that moment before I was able to figure out how to contact you was oh, as as our son would say when he was real little, I know an idea. I'll just get a$6 movie ticket or whatever it was, and I'll uh I'll go to the night showing and I'll just sleep in the back of the movie theater. And then I'll wake up in the morning, go brush my teeth in the bathroom and get back on my bike 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 shower in the morning.

SPEAKER_03 23:39

Uh anyway, but other than that, my biggest fears were losing my family, yeah, and that I had never uh had any life outside Scientology, never had a job, had no education, had no resume, um, and that uh it would mean literally a complete fresh 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 people underestimate 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 in uh uh if you're specifically, and this is in relation to Scientology, other cults have different flavors of this, but in Scientology if you escape or you blow, as the uh uh to use the Scientology parlance, um if you uh escape without authorization, um and then you don't come back, then you it is their policy that you should be declared a suppressive person. And if if you're declared a suppressive person, then you don't get any contact with your family. It's not like you can only see them on holidays or family. No, you're you're supposed to have no contact with your family from that point forward.

SPEAKER_03 25:11

Aaron Ross Powell Right. Like literally, I'm sure that that our families, respectively, as of right now, have destroyed all 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 of their history. That's what I was saying.

The Hidden Cost Of Leaving

SPEAKER_02 25:38

Yeah, but but they did that the second we left. I know. And they and also um they don't really have any choice in that either. They they could say it's uh it's a Sophie's choice. They could say, no, we're gonna talk to Claire. Your family could have said no, we're still gonna talk to Claire. Well then that means that Scientology could easily go to your other siblings and say, okay, you can't talk with your parents anymore because your parents picked Claire, or if one of the siblings said, I still want to talk to Claire, then they would have said to the family, Hey, listen, you can't talk to the sibling anymore because they're siding with Claire. So it really is, unless you pre-game it and everybody uh knows what the story is and how we're gonna do this, then there's not really a way to escape Scientology, and then your family don't somehow become involved 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 to do something else because they don't they don't have that leverage. They don't have the family leverage 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, your friends 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 to my mom maybe once or twice a year on the phone with somebody listening.

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 impetus that was I was like, oh, it was sort of that's how I kind of got to this place was I was like, oh, they're messing over the Scientology, they're messing with the Scientologists too. It's not just the Sea Org members, they're messing with everybody up in this place. Yep. And I'd also been to all these organizations that were empty, 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 just staff and C organization. One adult answers for another adult'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 she left, she kind of told her whole family, hey, this is how this is going down. And it is funny to me that pretty 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 of them 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 only reason they were still there was because of Leah.

SPEAKER_02 28:47

Well, yeah. And and also, if Leah was gonna leave and they went with her, they knew the nonsense. They that's another thing. Uh some people will say, Oh, I didn't know this was happening, or I didn't know that was happening. Everybody in Scientology knows when somebody goes rogue, they get declared and you can't talk to them. There's no Scientologist that's been in Scientology for any amount of time, uh uh over a year, who does not know that suppressive persons are bad and you 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 doing that. It's like, oh, sure, come on. You knew that. Okay, let's do the next one. And also, I'm just gonna say this. Uh um, I think Mitch, it's Mitch. 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 borrowing Mitch'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 lot that 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 the cracker liquor category. I don't remember it, but it could 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 you now wish you had stayed? Uh I mean, definitely family. Family Family's the most fear of their the leverage and control that they already had over us.

Why We Stayed So Long

SPEAKER_02 30:53

Um I think my biggest thing was that I never really I mean, I went to Scientology schools for the most part. And and I know I didn't get past like kind of middle school, kind of in the real world worth of education.

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 high school 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 even sign up for the military. So um and then I realized that wasn't really actually that big of a deal. Um for me at least. I mean it could be for somebody else, but for me, I because I had already done so much and worked so many hours on so many things. Um I like to bring this up as the it's the 10,000 hours thing. So if you do something for 10,000 hours in most areas, if you've done that and produced products and practiced a certain trade or work function for 10,000 hours, you are then you could be deemed an expert in that 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 sure I'll be fine.

unknown 32:17

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 32:18

What's one year? If you're working 120 hours a week, 52 weeks, yeah, so you're getting in 5,000 a year just right there, right? Yeah, you're getting in 5,000 a year. Does that make sense? Yeah, that's 5,000 hours, more than 5,000 hours in one year. So 15 years.

SPEAKER_03 32:38

Yeah, I mean good, yeah. Yeah, we we already we did a whole episode on the math of the C organization's schedule, but yeah, absolutely. Um, and I I would say too, I had I had the same. I mean, my family moved to the US 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 uh fiction 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 education from 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 cried so hardcore. That was one of the saddest books I've ever read. Uh looking back, how did the experience impact your mental health, sense of self, and relationship with and trust in others?

SPEAKER_02 33:49

Wow. Where'd these questions come from, 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 um started with a very clean slate because I was told by Scientology that everybody was uh they were drug dealers and uh criminals and thieves, and everybody in the outside world was evil and only the good people were in there. So I was like, well, if those were the good people and these are the bad people, they're gonna be really bad. And then I was like, oh no, they're a way better. I I remember I would tell this to people all the time when they would ask me, people that weren't in Scientology. Right. And I would say, think of the worst person you've ever had an experience with in your life that has attacked you out of your whole life. And I'll be like, that's what being in the Sea Org is at the Int life, at the Int base, every day. Yeah. And when you get to the outside world, you might run into one of those people once a year. And they're not, and they're not even as bad as anyone there. So it's sort of like it's a very crazy thing to be in a place where they say everybody outside of 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 this day, I mean, I've met people that are menacing, and I've met people that cause trouble, and I've met people that are, you know, 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 bring up a good point though, because we had our expectation was set by Scientology, was so bad. Yeah, that then when we're outside in the real world, and you're like, these people are great.

SPEAKER_00 36:00

I like these people. Yeah. Everyone is so. Where are the bad guys? Yeah, everybody is so.

Trust And Mental Health Afterward

SPEAKER_03 36:04

They're not here. Yeah, everyone is so, so nice. Like the the people we worked with 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 happened here.

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 little wild. And then you go, like, they were in Scientology too, though. So Scientology kind of hones people in to the most sort of I I don't know, the worst version of 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 getting rid 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 Seorg members, even when you hear about things like where they had a Seorg member in Los Angeles that charged up somebody's credit cards, it's not a thing. Like if they charged$100,000 to some elderly woman's, it wouldn't it's not a it's not a big deal. To them. Because it's good for Scientology. 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 gonna have a horrible it's gonna be But to them it's a good thing because 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 for everything.

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 into account someone else's feelings and the repercussions and all the 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 like nothing else matters except for what you're doing in the here and now.

SPEAKER_03 38:18

Yeah. Like I used to get in trouble all the time for being too empathetic, which was called worker-oriented.

SPEAKER_04 38:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:25

All the time. You're like, oh, you know, uh I mean, to me, it was just logical, like, oh, this person is 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 while proofreading.

SPEAKER_02 38:42

They're supposed to make sure the right words are in the right place and they're sleeping 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 the question, go right ahead.

SPEAKER_02 39:06

Um, I think just talking about it is good to talk about what happened and to kind of sort of figure out that, you know, who was cause over what things that were bad and that sort of thing. And and also just realizing that, yeah, you probably should, we probably should have decided to leave earlier.

SPEAKER_04 39:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:28

Why didn't we? And then kind of go through all these things. But for me, I used to have nightmares pretty consistently until I wrote my book. And then once I finished, and even when I was writing the book, I had crazy, crazy nightmares about being back there again at the International Headquarters of Scientology in Gilman Hot Springs, California. And um and then since then, I very, very rarely have them anymore. Every once in a while I'll have a weird one. Um, but I've been I've done a ton of weird stuff with cognitive dreams and stuff like that. So I usually just take over in the in the dream and I just kind of go hog wild and jack things up.

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 try because I have nightmares too. But in my case, my nightmares started when I was four years old. And um they've gotten better, I will say, especially now with really focusing on getting everything out in my book. Um, I I I didn't when you I you've said that many times that your nightmares stopped when you wrote your book. And I to me, I guess I still had so much to unpack in the process of writing my book that I didn't necessarily think that that would be true for me. Um, but it has been getting better, which is really good. Um, I mean, I'm sure I'll still have them periodically, but up 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 re has never talked publicly and never really done anything. But um I was like, hey, have you did 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 I learned in my cognitive uh deep dive uh cognitive dreaming, um flying in a lot of cases, not with everybody, with a lot of people that have flying dreams, they're they're trapped somewhere 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 dreams are usually trapped, and it's their way of their brain being like, you need to get the F out of here. Okay, so you need to fly away.

Recovery Nightmares And Strange Dreams

SPEAKER_03 41:54

I'm gonna respond to that, and then I'm gonna tell you something else I learned that's similar to that. Okay. I had such vivid dreams when I was like five and six of flying, like so vividly, yeah, that I remember one day I was like, I don't know, it felt pretty real in the in the dream, and I actually tried it. Not really, you know, it just fell flat on my face. I was like, oh well, it was a nice thought. But you know, the other thing that um that you reminded me of with that, that's very interesting. Very interesting. Um so I was talking to somebody who was in uh also a former member. She she wasn't at the headquarters or in the C organization, but um, she had been brought up Mormon, heavy duty, and went through all kinds of 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 you before that I used to get tonsillitis all the time when I was in the cadet org? So she told me that that is a sign of your voice being silenced and taken away from you.

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 holes to go down. Isn't all of them? Healing and recovery. Yeah, we I think no, there's more. 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 of it. And, you know, it's not obvious at the at the outset that we were both bore, you know, that was our childhood, uh, that I was born into it, that you got in at six. Um so, but but even for people that don't, um, right now I'm reading the new book by Sarah Edmondson and Nippy Ames, A Little Bit Culty, and I really appreciate that they're kind of diving into that perspective, like, you know, the stigma that people tend to associate with those who have ended up in a cult and to just kind of work. Walk that back, like, hey, this can happen to anyone in many different forms. And it doesn't mean that they're stupid or gullible or naive or anything. Many of the people that get lured into cults are incredibly smart, really um empathetic, really want to help people. So I think that, you know, breaking that down and helping people understand that just love and support and understanding is really, really important for anyone who's been in a cult.

SPEAKER_02 44:34

Yeah, I would say before Going Clear came out, people would, if somebody found out, they would be like, Oh, I heard m somebody said you were in Scientology, and you'd be like, okay, yeah. And they go, like, isn't that that Tom Cruise thing? That's what Tom Cruise does, right? That was sort of what everybody thought.

SPEAKER_04 44:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:51

When after Going Clear came out and other shows like Leah's show and other things started coming out, pe I think people have a little teeny bit more of an understanding about some of the things that go in there. And it's not just, oh, that's the thing Tom Cruise does. But um Yeah, I think there's so much even when we talk to people, we do a podcast or we do an interview with somebody on their channel, and they're like, Oh my gosh, uh now I have you're like, yeah, if you had 50 questions you had when when I s when I got here, and now I answer all those 50s, now you have a hundred more questions. Because it's like, what? The the the the crazy train seems to go on for a long time. It's hard to find the caboose of the 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 never get 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're still working on. If you could okay, you're gonna read it.

SPEAKER_02 45:50

I was going to. If you could say something to your younger self, would you? What would you say?

SPEAKER_03 45:57

I would. I would just um just from you know. It's gonna be hell, but there's a 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 and miserable, and a lot of things are gonna feel like you are completely 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 the way. That was the last question.

Listener Q&A And Live Reactions

SPEAKER_03 46:39

Yay! All right, awesome. So we'll do some questions anyhow. So I'm super excited about this new series coming. Special shout out and thanks to Clara for the inspiration and all the help. And uh, we really hope you enjoy it. Tune in next week for the premiere of the first episode. And yeah, if there's topics you'd like to cover, people you'd like me to interview, drop a comment and let me know, and we'll add that to the growing list. But I think it's gonna be a lot of 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 press Scientology has gotten throughout the years, do you have ideas on why groups like Nexium that rip off Scientology can still be successful? Uh well, I wouldn't exactly count Nexium as successful given that Keith Rainier is in prison for 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 he did in getting caught, was that it wasn't a religion. Right. That's the main thing that he didn't do. Yeah that kind of Scientology having the religious cloaking, yeah. Scientology is able to get away with so many things.

SPEAKER_03 47:50

And they were working on that for decades before they finally before they finally Chris Shelton and I are actually going to do an episode. There's a book that I have up in my um in our now voluminous materials that is literally comparing Scientology to paragraphs from the Bible. It is uh it's from the 70s. 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 an auditor? Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_02 48:23

Well, L. Ron Hubbard said he was other things 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 Sue Hubbard, who to a current Scientologist, they'd be like, Who? She's literally been photoshopped 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 advocates of 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 I know Mark will agree with me on this. Our perspective has been that no matter, yes, we work hard all the time with multiple businesses and our three kids, and just always uh, you know, we have worked really hard since we from the moment we got out. But with our kids, we decided no matter what, even if we can't afford it, we'll figure it out to take them on vacation. Because for Mark and I both, the few core memories from our childhood that were positive had to do with vacations. And we wanted to create that for our for for our kids. I mean, now they're 20, 18, and 13, 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 of places. So yeah, we absolutely intentionally force ourselves to take time for our kids. How do you think your story would have been different if if the two of you had not been posted at Gold Base for so long? Like if you were there just long enough to meet each other and marry. Well, we almost did meet each other before we were even in the sea organization that fateful day in January 1989, but it never happened. I don't know. I I don't if I hadn't ended have ended up at gold, I don't think I would have lasted nearly as long in the sea organization. The physical obstacles of how hard it was to escape from that property really added a lot of years on to my stay in the sea 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's hard to try to re-rewrite what would have happened at what point, 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 what it is. What happened happened, and um there's probably a million wulda 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 um realities and at every major change, like a version of you splits off into another world. This is what this question reminds me of. Like, oh, there's another version of us that got out like 14 years ago, and we have, you know, anyway, it's it's kind of funny.

SPEAKER_02 51:37

Yeah. It's definitely um there I don't really have um what is it? There is no space for the regrets 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 some super chats, so I have to I have to read those here.

SPEAKER_03 52:03

Okay, nice. Uh Anthony, do you think Miscavige felt any grief whatsoever when he heard his dad died?

SPEAKER_02 52:10

Well, I don't. No, we already know he what he would have thought because at one point um when the private investigators were watching that that David Miscavige had hired to watch his dad, he was reaching for something in his pocket at the supermarket, and they thought he was having a stroke. He was trying to like he was fumbling and trying to get his phone out of his shirt pocket or something, and they were like, Oh, we think he's having a heart attack. And they got the Scientology on the phone, and supposedly it was Dave Miscavige who was on the phone with them, and he said, if it's his time, because they the private PIs were like, should we intervene? And they were like, if it's his time, it's his time. So I don't think um I don't think he worried at all. There were stories about at when at the end base when his sister got in trouble, or David Miscavige has a twin sister, Denise, Denise and David. Um, when she was getting into trouble and things were happening, he was like, Oh, she's making me look bad. And it's always everything about when you got somebody who might possibly be a narcissist, it's always me, me, me. Everything is always about me, me, me, me, me, me. So he literally was thinking that everybody around him that it was in his family were making him look bad. So I don't think that he would have been uh crying.

SPEAKER_03 53:35

No, and I will say uh we will have some material coming up that has never never seen the light of day before that will dive deep on the relationship between David Miscavige and his father, Ron Miscavige Sr. So hit that subscribe button and get 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, what Joseph 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 information about 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 bad people. Yeah, but weren't necessarily good 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 nightmares that 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, but David 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, what the hell? And then it's mainly um, it was mainly 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 being back there anymore. It was that somehow they got the kids 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 vividly real too. That's that's what makes it disturbing. And you know, you can ask Mark, there's been a couple of times, unfortunately, that I woke up screaming and he's like, Hey, hey, wake up, wake up. Um, but for me, it was always vividly that somehow I ended up back there. And and a few it has varying versions, but um uh oftentimes, like uh when my oldest son was younger, it would be that somehow he was with me and I had to hide him and somehow figure out how to get out of there all over again, but keep him out of sight and make sure they didn't find him, and very elaborate and disturbing.

SPEAKER_04 55:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:00

Question: How common is it for a Scientologist to have doubts, even if they are dismissed quickly? Oh, it's incredibly common. There's even a policy called hang up at or a thing called hang up at doubt. Like there's a doubt formula in Scientology.

SPEAKER_00 56:14

There's a condition of existence. It's called the condition of doubt. 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 decision that they want to stay in Scientology, that there's even extra tools and extra steps that they have to fix that, to make sure 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 Scientology or leave Scientology, they have this step, which is to examine the statistics of the group one is trying to remain in or to rejoin.

SPEAKER_00 56:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 56:50

And the statistics are what the all the false nonsense that they say at their events of all the things that they say they're doing and the we have this many million members. And so Scientology has a way to determine if you should stay in Scientology, and the way they deal with that is they stack the deck for themselves with the members. So the members are like, but they're doing so many amazing things. I should definitely be part of this. And then if you knew that they weren't doing much of anything, it would be a lot easier to leave for Scientologists because they wouldn't believe the things that Scientology says they're doing. So they had a I I saw this. Uh apostate Alex uh got the uh copy 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 organizational administrative training that somebody can do in Scientology.

SPEAKER_02 57:52

Now we haven't discussed this. How many times have they done this 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 same thing.

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 essentially trained these top-notch managers at at the Florida, at the Clearwater Florida flag land base, they're basically gonna go back to their organizations and they're just gonna it's gonna be the statistics or the graph paper will be up the wall, across the ceiling, and down the other side with how many and guess what, guys? Spoiler alert, ain't nothing gonna happen. They've done this so many times. Yeah. And they I wanna say they do it about every 10 or 15 years. They have a new wave of all these people, and they tell everybody, this is it. This is it. You're gonna you get ready for the big expansion that's coming up. It never happens. The FEBC guys, the flag executive briefing course, or whatever it's called. Is that what it is? The flag executive briefing course?

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 their members, and they and they kind of it's always sort of like, but we've got this big thing coming up. And then that big thing comes up, nothing happens, and they're like, Well, you know what though? David Miscavige figured out the key that was messing this whole thing up, and they did that with the key to life and the life orientation course and the golden age of this and the golden age of that, and the golden age of this, and the golden age. No golden ages have ever done anything. Uh they've never the all the statistics of Scientology have continued to steep decline. It's a golden age of shrinkage, the golden age of nonsense, baby. Um, okay, but but do but do you think?

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 Hetley witness fee, which Mark has one of these too. We refused to ever even deposit. This was during our lawsuit when we were put in deposition, and we wanted nothing to do with it, so we laminated them.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:15

There's 90 bucks worth of cold, cold doleros here.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:19

From 2009. They're antiques. So yeah, screw you, Ken Moxon.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:24

45 only.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:26

$45 per because by California law they were required to pay us minimum wage to be in deposition.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:34

Which is kind of wild because we were getting paid$45 for talking smack about them. That's how much we made in a week there.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:40

I know the irony. That's the other reason we never not only never deposited them, but laminated them. There you go.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:48

Oh, here's a great one.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:49

Comment. I don't know what you're talking about. This is the thing that's going to change everything. Oh, it's a poste Alex. I was like, wait a minute, what what? Total expansion, folks, straight up and vertical. Ignore all the other times it didn't work. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:03

This time it's different.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:06

Yeah. In Scientology, one thing you can master perfectly is cognitive dissonance.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:14

Oh my God. I know. Like that you know it's a study and perfection in Scientology.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:20

The people that were around when they did the F E B C launches 10 years ago and then 20 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 done this before?

SPEAKER_03 1:01:36

Am I having a sense of deja vu?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:38

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 10 years ago.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:45

Um But if the tech is not working, something is wrong.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:50

Yeah, it could be the tech.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:52

The tech.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:53

Yeah. In Scientology, you're never allowed to question L. Ron Hubbard source, as they call him in Scientology. He's source of all the knowledge and all the information they have. And um, and if something goes wrong in Scientology, it was it's it's always assigned to the either the misapplication or the mis uh uh the mis the technology wasn't correctly applied in some certain way, or you use the wrong technology. It's never the technology is what's wrong.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:27

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:28

And that's exactly what's wrong.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:31

Completely spoiler alert. Yeah, Jackson's in the chat. Hey Jackson, I have one of those from your case too. One of those checks.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:38

Yeah, they they started they started deposing everybody else. We we we knew.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:44

Yeah. Crazy, crazy, crazy.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:46

Okay, anything else? Oh, uh, that's uh apostate. Alex, okay. Um I don't know. We got um oh yeah, common for them to have doubts, yes. Oh, here's a good one.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:59

Question Is there still a Scientology facility in Denver? If so, do you drive blocks away from it just to avoid it? Question from Glenda. So yes, there is one.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:09

Have you ever been there?

SPEAKER_03 1:03:10

Um I've no. I the last time I remember this. So, Mark, answering your question, Glenda, yes, there is still one in Denver. It's right by the um which field is that?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:20

Coorsfield.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:21

Coorsfield. Um the last time I was so we went to a baseball game there, and Mark was like, Oh, I'll be right back. I was with the kids. The kids were like six and four at the time, and he was like, I'm gonna go pop into the Denver org.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:38

I just said I was gonna get a hot dog. I said I'm gonna go get a hot dog, or I might go buy the orc.

Doubt Formulas And Fake Expansion

SPEAKER_03 1:03:44

Yeah, and I was like, Okay, well, go right ahead. I'm not gonna, you know, but factor in. It's not that I'm afraid of them. It it gives me the heebie jeebies, absolutely. I I avoid them if I can, but I'm not afraid of them anymore, but more so I would never take my kids anywhere close to something like that.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:03

Yeah, uh to be fair, I did go get a hot dog, and I did go to the org, and they actually I got the receptionist to take a picture of the case.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:12

Mark is such a troublemaker. You've done this in multiple orgs and you did it in the Vegas org as well.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:17

I've done it in Boston, Vegas, I've done it a lot. It kind of was my thing for a little while. I would go into the org, tell them just use some Scientologies, and then they immediately 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 uh st standing at the reception in this brand new ideal organization?

SPEAKER_03 1:04:36

Yeah. Which which side comment, by the way, that speaks to me the the level of bullshit, excuse my language in Scientology, and the level of control that the language involves. You just speak their language and they're like, oh yeah, sure, we'll take a picture of you. Yeah. Like, oh, what about being able to spot a suppressive person you no?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:57

They can't. They couldn't spot a suppressive person if it was biting them on the uh ear. Anyway, um, but I did do that. I got a picture, and then I think I sent it to Tony or Tega while we were. I remember that. While we were at the baseball game, I said, Hey, look where I just was. Yeah. But in Denver, um, I don't really avoid it. I don't really go to downtown Denver unless we're going to a sh a show or we're doing something downtown.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:25

We prefer not to leave our zip code unless we absolutely have to.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:29

But also, it's bone-dry empty. There ain't nobody there. Yeah. The only way that that organization is able to pay the bills is they charge for Rocky's parking.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:41

Because their lot is always empty. There's no Scientologists in it. So they charge for parking. You can it's right across the street from the ball field, uh a block away, maybe. Um, and so you can park there and then just walk over to the place. And I think when you park there, you get a free uh way to happiness back. But um people have reported this and it is a it's a i to the m as as far as I know, they still do it. It's not they never stop doing this. Right. Which there's also legal things that they could get lit up for. You're supposed to have different insurance if you got people parking anyway. That's a story for another day.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:26

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:27

Okay, here we go. Here's a good one.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:30

Question Were you guys forced to buy insane amounts of copies of Battlefield Earth to get it to number one best seller list?

SPEAKER_02 1:06:37

Well, when Battlefield Earth came out, I don't think we were in the Sea Org at that time. We weren't. But when the movie came out, we were given money to see it three times. I famously went the first time and was like, I'm pretty much sure I'm not gonna have to sit I don't want to sit through that two more times. I'm gonna definitely fall asleep if I have to watch that two more times. And I saw Gladiator on the second Battlefield Earth run. I had to go to the bathroom, and I just happened to catch a gladiator movie while I was in the bathroom.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:11

You know what's funny? I just for some reason I've never really stopped to consider this. So you were the rebel. I was, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:18

Did you watch it all three times?

SPEAKER_03 1:07:20

I watched it all three times. But it's funny because um imagine this, it's the movie theater in Temecula.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:29

It was in Hammett. I thought we went to the one in Temula.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:31

No, I went to the one in Temecula. Oh, they took RTC for that's right. They took us to different theaters to make it not look so obvious. Um, but either way, so it's a movie theater full of RTC staff, and I guarantee you, I mean, I s I slept easily through. I mean, I remember maybe the first five minutes of the first movie, and I think I slept the entire rest of the time. But can you imagine being a person out in the real world walking into a movie theater and there's just it's like a CM of like these Scientologists are really lining up for this thing. Wow. They'll be like, oh boy, this does not look like a good movie. This is a good one.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:14

This is a good one.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:15

Question Are public staff allowed access to the internet as long as they don't look at negative Scientology news, public staff. Public staff.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:26

I think public and staff do get on the interwebs, and I think you're pretty much warned against the evil SP information that's out there about Scientology.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:38

And when they say evil, they mean Lord Zenu and Body Thetans. That's all that they want to keep everybody from because that is the core Scientology beliefs that you're not supposed to know about until you're at that level. There's not there's not really anything else in Scientology besides the OT levels that they guard with such secrecy, and they don't want Scientologists to find out about Lord Xenu and the Body Fetans and their latest tour on sale now on the Boat for Good website. No, I've got to change the merch to 2026. I just realized it's a 2025 world tour that I have up.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:21

And not 2026.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:23

But it wasn't late 90s when they put out the whole net nanny software thing to stop pe to add filters, to stop public and staff from searching. Well, no.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:34

It wasn't to stop them, it was a filter. It just didn't allow it to happen, period. They had a program, uh they had a uh uh a marketing program that was for all Scientologists to set up an I am a Scientologist website.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:50

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:50

And in order to do that, you had to install the software on your Windows machine. And when you would install their software, it would install an internet filter on your computer unbeknownst to them that would block out any anti or bad Scientology sites. It talked about Lord Zenu and and the body thetans.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:10

And so And the idea of all these sites was that that they would flood this would create um an algorithm which would drown out all the negativity.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:21

Well, no, what the way that the internet in the early days of the internet, the more sites that pointed to a certain thing, that site that everything's pointing to would gain uh search results. And so Scientology was basically trying to get every single Scientologist to set up a s an I am Scientologist site that would lead back to Scientology's main site so that when you searched Scientology on Google or Yahoo or Jeeves or whatever it was at the time, um that it would lead to the Scientology site. Yeah. And they horribly mismanaged that. And I think even by the time they did all this, that's not exactly how the algorithm worked. And the the internet always figures out ways for you not to be able to game the internet. It's always doing that. So um Scientology and also there's not a number of Scientol, there's not enough there's not enough Scientologists to be able to successfully execute that plan because there's many, many more ex-scientologists that are talking about Scientology than there are still in scientists. That's the thing you've always got to know is that there's way more of us than there are of them. Yep. It's almost impossible for them to say more or do more than everybody else that's on the internet that's talking about Scientology and exposing what's happening with them. And you can pretty much get any kind of flavor of that you want between which kind of people you want to follow. They're talking about CDM.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:58

Yeah, look at this comment from Mitch.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:01

Meet a Scientologist CD ROM. Dave Bloomberg shit the bed with that one. Yeah, that was that and to be fair, that was actually, I'm pretty sure the one who announced it was Ronnie Miscavige.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:12

I remember Dave Bloomberg did one. There were probably two different iterations of it. I absolutely remember that Dave Bloomberg did one of them for sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:21

Well, either way, um it didn't.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:23

He was the head PR guy at the time. And yeah, it did not go well. Talk about backfire, like most things. Scientology are experts at shooting themselves in the foot. That's that they have proved that consistently over and over again.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:37

I didn't want to show this one, but it has factual information in it. I think it should be shared.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:41

Miscavige in the supermarket? Was he sat in the child seat in the cart? That's the only way he'd reach the upper shelves, surely. Alrighty there.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:51

If you go to the supermarket with Dave, you're getting things for him. That's there's no way around that. You're gonna there's that.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:56

Well, that's why he doesn't go to the supermarket.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:58

Probably why.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:59

Probably why.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:00

You know, he can't get his uh his uh what crispy cookie cereal from the top show.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:06

No.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:07

Um, I'm sorry. Are we short shaming? Is that what that is? Um I'm not.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:14

I just read the comment.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:20

Oh, here we go. That's a good one. Okay, question.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:23

How much of your background do your kids know and how do they feel about all of it? Yeah, um, we have been very open with them in an age-appropriate manner since um since they were real little. Um and they ask various questions. I think they understand the dynamics of it. Our oldest son let read your book. Our youngest son is one of my biggest champions on my book. He asks me all the time, so did you make progress on your book today, Mom? It's so sweet. Um They know it, they know enough.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:57

And they've also they've whenever we have people hang out, the kids are around. We don't like tell them, you know, go down to the basement.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:04

We're talking about put your earplugs in. No, no, that's not how we go outside and play.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:09

We're gonna talk about some crazy and nonviolent stuff.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:12

No, and and I've said I've said this story before, but it really I was very I was, as we say, on the struggle bus when my second son was born, it really overwhelmed with the emotions of like, what do I tell my kids when they realize that their grandparents are not in their lives? Because that what had personally impacted me at three, and I thought it was my fault. So I called Dr. Laura Schlesinger and she said, just always tell your kids the truth. And that way you you know that they will never go down that path. And I can say with certainty and conviction that our kids absolutely in a million years, um, they they know what our lived experiences were again in an age-appropriate fashion, but um they would never I mean Yeah, they're not gonna do any, they're not gonna do any of this.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:00

Look at look who's who look who's here.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:01

Dr. X in the house. Hi all, since childhood, growing up to your time in the SO in the C organization. How many courses do you think you have completed in Scientology? How many courses all up? Do you know? How many total expansions new tech BS has DM come up with and never done right? Yeah. Okay. That's yeah. Great question. That's a layered question. Number of courses.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:27

I would say that me, who I haven't done that a lot, I've probably done 10 or 15 Scientology courses that I had to do when I was there, when I was either when I was a kid or when I was in the Seorg. And almost all of those have never really been redone because they're basic courses that all Scientologists do.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:49

They may have No, they've been redone.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:51

Well, I understand. They redid the books that go with 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 same time, they're basically the same. They're teaching you the exact same thing. Yeah, no, the They moved commas around.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:08

And they added drills, the what do you do drills and all that stuff. They changed what's on the check sheet, but yes, you're right. The lectures are the same, or your reading is the same. For me, I would say I I'd that's a good question that I should know the answer to. I will look it up. It's at least 50. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:25

At least 50 for her. I didn't I did the course.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:28

You're not counting though your the the job hatting courses that you did. Sure. You did more than that.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:34

Treasury full hat, the this full hat. I'm counting that's probably 10 or 15. I didn't do that many.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:43

I I wasn't a big fan of doing them, so I did as little as I had to.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:46

I did I wasn't a big fan of doing them either. I did the bare minimum.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:51

I did the bare minimum.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:52

I did yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:53

I mean, one of those is car school that I did.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:56

I did car school too.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:57

I know, but that's a Scientology course on how to drive a car.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:01

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 did multiple times over. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:10

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 or two doesn't go by, where we don't get the most enormous care package for Dr. X.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:22

Oh, speaking of which, um, from the Comedy for a Cause uh Silent Auction, we had an SP shop basket that Dr. X and Dr. Paul won. Yeah. And um Dr. X very kindly said we could donate those items to our audience. Okay. So we don't have a giveaway set up for today, and I'm pulling a fast one on Mark with this. But if you're interested, drop a comment under this video.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:47

It's uh Why don't we do a proper drawing with the the tool and everything so it's fair?

unknown 1:17:53

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:54

We do it on no, we'll do it on the next one we do.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:56

Well, you're gonna be gone for a while. So I'm saying that if you are interested, we have a Leah Remini bobblehead, a Mike bobblehead, and I think a couple of SP bracelets. So if if you're interested, drop a comment and we'll just randomly pick some people who comment on this video to be the winners for that, since I forgot to tell you to set that up.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:18

And then how are you gonna notify that? How are we gonna know? Are we gonna do it in the video?

SPEAKER_03 1:18:21

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 1:18:29

You gotta pay attention and you gotta get in the comments because there's the the live ones, there's different than the live and the chat.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:38

Comment on this video after it's done. After it's done. Comment there for a chance to win one of those giveaways, courtesy of Dr. X and Dr. Paul.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:48

So generous.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:50

There you go.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:51

Okay, I think we do two more questions and then and then um we're good.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:55

Yeah, we'll sign off.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:57

Okay. Oh, here we go. No, that was the supermarket one. We did that. There was another one, a good one I saw. Oh, here's it.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:04

Okay. Harvey Denton's Toads question. How often did you get to go to the movies in the sea organization? Not very often, I'd imagine. Yeah, no. I mean, I can count on probably two hands in the 14, 13, 14 years that we were at the base that we went to the movies. And that includes the Battlefield Earth. It includes the time that we had to go see Far and Away.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:30

Oh, that's right. Far and away we had to go see.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:33

Yeah. And we also had to go see Pulp Fiction.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:36

I didn't what see, I we didn't get to go to see Pulp Fiction.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:39

I did.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:40

In RTC.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:41

No, I was it was in Golden Era Productions.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:43

Oh, I don't remember that at all. Because John Travolta was in it.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:47

That's sure not a Scientology movie.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:50

It's not. No. Um anyway, but no, so in the early 90s, I can remember sometimes if the organization's statistics were up, they would do a movie in one of the offices. Um, so it doesn't really count as going to the movies, but for example, that's where I remember seeing Silence of the Lambs. And then sometimes on Sea Org Day, uh, they would play movies.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:16

Yeah, they would always just whatever was on DVD. Yeah. It wasn't like you were going to see something flashy.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:21

So not very often. We had a huge uh huge huge like I mean, years of movies to catch up on when we got out.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:29

Yeah, we were watching three a day for a while.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:31

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:32

Um there was a good one in here. Um here we go.

Recoveries Giveaways And Closing Plugs

SPEAKER_03 1:20:35

This is all right. Question How do they choose who to recover and who to just let go? Yeah, that's a really good question. I think that really depends on a few factors. Number one, the flavor of the day. Uh, you know, kind of just what's the general consensus. There have been periods, for example, you know, throughout the last 40 years, sometimes they'll just be like, hey, if you want a GTFO, there's the door, get out.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:01

Um, but also it really depends on what the person knows. That's what I was gonna say and how close they've been to David Miscavige.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:08

Yeah. It's really what they know. What information do they know and they have direct knowledge of that could pose a threat to us legally or law enforcement or liability, any of those things, they kind of go, if this person doesn't know they were in a post that they weren't exposed to anything that was kind of a little bit spicy, then they might just be like, whatever. We're not we don't care about that. That's not a big deal. And if their whole family wasn't in either, if they were just that none of their family were in, it's just like we're not gonna ever get this person back.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:40

Yeah. By the way, just to clarify one thing on the giveaways, we're not gonna give away the whole basket. We'll give away the items in the part it out. Yes. So there will be so again, comment on the video on YouTube, underneath this, not it doesn't count in the live chat, but we have a few different items. So we appreciate you being here and comment for your chance to win.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:02

I would love to win the basket. That's comment.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:04

Yeah. Yes. Just wanted to make sure that was clear since uh that that comment made me realize it was the information I think we're missing out on, which has been in here in the comments now. Oh, okay. Let's see. Yes, Tim Tams must be in the fridge, in my opinion. Ooh, Cadbury chocolate is good, and I live right near their factory. I drive past it every morning and night. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:30

Okay, we've not been putting Tim Tams in the fridge.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:32

We haven't. Do we need to go to cramming?

SPEAKER_02 1:22:34

I don't I think the fact that um Dr. X sends us so many packages of Tim Tams, it would be impossible for us to put them in. We'd have to get another refrigerator. You guys have no idea how big these boxes are when they come out.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:47

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 1:22:58

This is the best. Are you ready?

SPEAKER_03 1:22:59

I'm ready. Mark, I think you said once Religious Technology Center were made to watch internal affairs and no way out.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:08

Is this true?

SPEAKER_03 1:23:09

Of course it's true. Not only, I mean, you know me, internal affairs is a movie I had to watch.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:17

Her post was director of internal affairs.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:20

My post was not no.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:21

But you were over internal affairs.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:23

No, I was internal executive.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:25

Oh, internal executive.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:26

Yeah, but I did have to watch internal affairs, the movie, I think eight to ten times.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:33

If you don't know, guys, that's the one with Richard Gere.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:36

I didn't even consider that in answer to the question because it was an assignment that we had to do. And I that movie, I'm sorry, I did 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 1:23:52

David Miscavige literally considered that education for religious technology.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:59

For religious technology center. Finding sleeper agents. I mean, yeah. Anyway, I have that in my book.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:09

He thought what was going on in the movie, Internal Affairs, was happening in Religious Technology Center, and that his staff could be pop could be basically compromised because they were sleeping with people that were in gold or other. He would say you're sleeping with the enemy.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:30

I know, but you're it's mixing two different concepts. The reason he was having them watch intern having us watch internal affairs and no way out is because it reve it talked about the operation of internal affairs in the military and in the police and so forth, and that was our art series eight of how we were supposed to become the Inspector General Network of Scientology or the Internal Affairs of Scientology was watching these movies. I mean, it it sounds ridiculous, and it is. Okay. There you go.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:04

There seems to be a uh a Cadbury's and craft rift in the uh comments.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:09

Okay, leave it alone. Okay dokie. Well not here for this, folks. I love I love the uh enthusiasm, the passion, yeah.

unknown 1:25:18

The passion.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:19

Very cool.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:20

Here we go. I agree with this comment. Whole horse.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:24

This is the most complicated giveaway the BFG channel has ever had. LOL. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:31

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 the middle.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:36

It was my fault, folks. I got broad shoulders, I got thick skin, I own it. Dr. X showed up, and it reminded me that I had forgotten to let Mark no.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:48

Okay, this is a great comment.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:49

Improvised.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:50

Because we're talking about a lot of things about uh people escaping and people being recaptured.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:55

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:56

We have someone in the comments who used to be the security chief at the international headquarters. Yep. And he says that during his time, I can't remember even one person not being tracked down. The last count of the numbers I chased down was over three hundred and fifty people between nineteen eighty-two and nineteen ninety-six. That is wild, guys. Three hundred and fifty people that escaped, and then they went on a hunt and they found out where they ended up.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:32

And in a lot of cases, they brought those people back.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:35

Yeah, I should have clarified in my comment that people at the at the headquarters where we worked, they were always tracked down. Like Jackson is saying. I was talking about, or actually, even in the early days, Matt Pesha's told a story at the headquarters in the 70s, but that was well before. Anyhow, either way, yeah, that's some crazy, crazy numbers right there.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:57

Okay. I think we're good.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:59

Sounds good.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:00

I think we did it. We did all the things.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:02

We did it. Yay.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:03

It was a lot. We did it though. We took it, we answered them. There were questions, we've we read them.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:09

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:10

We talked about different things.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:11

Yeah, we did.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:12

We clicked off all the boxes.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:14

We did. Um forget to tune in next week for the premiere of Cult Survivor Series episode one.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:22

Um And I am gonna try to set it up so that I can join in maybe. We'll see.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:27

Awesome. That way people don't think that I have locked you in the basement or something.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:30

Yeah, or that I've got another stint at the battered husband shelter. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:36

People, it drives me bonkers when he does this. I'm sorry. Of all the things, I can I can tolerate everything. But he the reason look at the look on his face. He knows it gets under my skin. So that's why he does it.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:49

It's fun. We like to do the things, we mess around. Um, okay, guys, thank you very much. Um, if you uh if you want to get any 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 an inordinate amount of people that are watching, but not subscribed. It's free to subscribe. We don't charge, we don't have memberships, we don't have any of that. You just say subscribe. And there's a new thing I found out from all the YouTubers. There's a hype button. You got to push the hype button.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:26

Oh.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:26

If you want to get the video, if you want to hype up the video, you push the hype button. Okay. You can subscribe, you can like, you can hit the bell notification, you can hype. There's so many, so much work for you to do besides just watching. That's going to help us out and get this message tomorrow.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:41

Very demanding. Oh, before I forget, shameless plug for my Substack. Claire Headley 101 on Substack is where I'm announcing news of my book coming out later this year. Lots of uh news and announcements will be coming there. Thank you to everyone who has already shown up there. I greatly appreciate it. And I will add the Substack link to the video description as well.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:02

Perfect.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:02

There you go.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:03

Till next time, guys. People always think. If you'd like to help support the channel, feel free to check out the merch store link in the description. We have Hail Xenu. Xenu is my homeboy and BFG branded mouse pads, shirts, mugs, all sorts of other stuff in there that helps us to bring you new content on a regular basis. You can also pick up a copy of my book, Blown for Good Behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology in hardback, Kindle, and Audible versions as well. There's also a link to our podcast, and you can get that on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you'd like to watch another video, you could click on this link right here, or you could click on this one here, or you can click on the subscribe button right here. Thanks a lot until next time.