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Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams, let's break or handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Do you love movies? Well, I have the podcast for you. Hey there, this is Mike D from movie Mike's movie podcast Your Go to source for all things movies. Each episode explores a different movie topic plus spoiler free reviews on the latest streaming and movies in theaters. You'll also get interviews with actors and directors to take a look behind the scenes of your favorite movies. Listen to new episodes of movie Mikes Movie podcast Every Monday on the Nashville podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Bobby Bones from the Bobby cast. We are Nashville's most listened to music podcast in depth interviews with your favorite country artists, plus the biggest songwriters and producers in Nashville, all from the comfort of my own home so it gets a little more laid back. They're sharing stories behind the biggest songs in country music and personal stories that you will not hear anywhere else. So if you love country music, I think you will love this podcast. Listen to the Bobby cast on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcast. Hello friends. I'm Robert Evans, and this is once again behind the ******** the show that tells you everything you don't know about the very worst people in all of history. Now, this is part two of our epic three-part series on L Ron Hubbard. If you haven't listened to part one, I recommend doing that. Now, for those of you who are back for Part 2, you're listening to this the day after part one is dropped, but we are recording them all in one terrible marathon, one fell swoop. So you're at us in the point. If this were an actual marathon, this is about mile 5, where you're starting to feel good, you've hit a stride, you're happy with the. Progress. But midway through, this is when we're going to hit our wall, and it's just going to break us both as human beings and as creative artists. So that should be really exciting for all you people. And then the third episode, we won't even be human beings. We'll just be shattered. Remnants of souls hanging on to me. Coffins? Yeah, in grams. In a meat packing. Anyway. You ready? Ready. Let's do this. So people regularly message me on Twitter to suggest new candidates for episodes of this podcast. Sometimes their suggestions are spot on, and I do appreciate them. But I get a lot of people who will suggest ****** people like Ben Shapiro or Rand Paul or Brett Kavanaugh. And I'm not going to do an episode under these people because while they're ****** they're all kind of lame, like they're not interesting in a bad way. We all know the ways in which they're bad, like Brett Kavanaugh. Everyone who thinks he's bad understands everything about him is a ****** person. That's public knowledge. I like to cover people. You are ****** and exceptional. And that's why I picked L Ron Hubbard this week, because I really do think we talked about this a little in the first episode. I think he may be the greatest con man who ever lived. So today is a story about we, we ended the last episode with the establishment of Dianetics as a science is kind of how he built it. You can think of like anyone, Jordan Peterson, he's like that sort of guy where he, you know, normally the guy like it that gets six months, a year of prominence or so, right where everybody loves their new pop philosophy book. And then we just sort of shovel them into the coal fire of our culture and forget about them and move on. Another year someone else will come up and we'll all be obsessed with that for a little while. L Ron Hubbard avoided letting that happen to him, and this episode is the story of how of how he fought against falling into obscurity. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you want to become a guru and then transmit that gurness into starting your own world religion, this is the first class you've got to take on that because Ron Hubbard is the master. Well, there's that's why that movie is called the Master. I just got it. Really? Just got it. OK, so within two months of publishing Dianetics, more than 500 different Dianetics groups had started across the United States. Elron Hubbard began offering classes in Dianetics that were like 200 fifty $500.00 apiece and holding, you know, conferences established different centers in different States and whatnot. Foundations, he called them, and the money started pouring in. Hubbard's work developed a rapid fan base who blanketed newspapers with angry letters when they provided critical commentary. It was sort of like an early example of what? You know, happens every time anyone insults anybody. Popular, yes, like the 1st edition of the Elon Musk's Internet hate mob was L Ron Hubbard's fans of Dianetics sending angry letters to the New York Times. One of the heads of Hubbard's Troll Brigade was a political science professor from Massachusetts named Frederick Schuman. And one letter to the New York Times, he wrote history has become a race between Dianetics and catastrophe. Dianetics will win if enough people are challenged in time to understand it now. The reason that people thought this was so important. Was because Elrond Hubbard had claimed that Dianetics was not just a path to personal betterment, it was a way to cure people of mental illness, of psychopathy, and but also it was a way to, if everyone did Dianetics, if everybody became clear, Hubbard said, there'd be no more war. And this was, again, you're talking about 1950. The specter of nuclear extermination has just arisen for the first time. So people are freaked out that, like, we're going to murder the whole species, which we probably will at some point. Hubbard is claiming with Dianetics, we can denuclearize the world. We can. All live in peace. You know, this is what will save humanity from the darkness of the Cold War. And America ate it up. For the first time in his life, L Ron Hubbard became the focus of national attention, which is clearly what he'd wanted his entire life. Yeah. So suddenly he was being interviewed by a lot of journalists and newsmen. And of course, they asked him about his childhood and his background. And this is when he was held, all of them about I was a blood brother of the Blackfoot tribe, flew across the country, found gold. What was the Pirates of the Caribbean? What's your life if you were to write like a a Twitter post tomorrow. That becomes the Bible of the world 6 months later for some crazy piece of Internet alchemy. Suddenly, suddenly everybody's talking to Caitlin Durani and wants to know like would you grow up? What's the lie you choose to tell. I mean, I'm just such an honest person that I can't even make up a lie. You're never going to have your own religion with that attitude. I know. I think the closest thing I would would be that I'm from Punxsutawney, PA, the home of the Groundhog, of course. In it but. The truth is that I'm from a town about 20 miles away. But it's just easier to say, yeah, I'm from punks at time. That's not even a lie. That's like, that's like growing up in Mesa and claiming you live in Phoenix. Like it's you're just making it easy for somebody. I'm just so brutally honest that I can't even fathom lying. Let me tell you how I do it, what my life would be. OK, so Abu Baker al Baghdadi, the founder of ISIS, probably dead, right? So I would just lie and say I killed him because I was over in Iraq. Around that time. So there's a kernel of truth. It's easy enough to make up the rest of the lie and nobody who doesn't Fact Check is going. That would be my life if this was the Internet wasn't here. It would be easier. The Internet exists, would be easy to prove it wrong. But if there's like 1950, I could probably lie and and make people believe that it's so hard to Fact Check and be pre Internet. There's everyone's just like, I guess he was a blood. I'm not going to ask a Blackfoot Indian about whether or not they have Blood Brothers, right? Talk to somebody who's not white. No, Sir. This is the New York Times. Although, in fairness, the New York Times, they were actually very critical of Hubert I just I picked the name of the newspaper and I slandered the Gray lady. Let's get back to the story before I commit slander again. So L Ron Hubbard started, in addition to lying about his background, claiming that all of his years of work as a trashy sci-fi writer and his globetrotting adventures were all research. You know, this was him studying human psychology and the human mind in order to develop his revolutionary new philosophy. All of his, you know, his travels, his adventures that were not real were him studying history. In ancient cultures, to figure out the kernels of truth, he told Parade magazine that he'd had a child with his new wife, Sarah Hubbard, which was true. He claimed that the child was the world's first Dianetics baby. He claimed to have protected her from noise and even parental conversations in order to keep her from developing any Ingrams. As a result of this, he said she'd started talking at three months and crawling at four months. Oh no. So it's gonna get terrible. Neglected as baby by, like, not talking to it or paying attention. Well, if I know anything about babies, it's that they thrive when isolated and neglected. Yes, I think that everyone says that about babies. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. That's why most cradles are just dark rooms in the basement. That's how you raise a kid. Just a few months after the debut of Dianetics onto the world stage, L Ron Hubbard introduced Sonia Bianca as the world's first clear. He claimed that she had quote full and perfect recall of every moment of her life and then brought her out in front of an audience to prove it. Unfortunately, Sonia was just a 21 year old physics major who did not have perfect recall of her entire life, so the audience immediately started asking her stuff like what did you have for breakfast on October 3rd 1942, what's on page 122 of Dianetics? And she couldn't answer any of this stuff. You just get like an improv actor to be like, Oh yeah, I had that omelette. Someone to lie, right? Yeah. At one point Hubbard turned his back and someone asked her what color his tie was and she couldn't even answer that. This is like it it it's a debacle, this first attempt to reveal a clear, but it teaches Hubbard a powerful lesson, which is never, ever put yourself in a position where people can prove you're wrong. Like if you're going to hold events and stuff you got to stage, manage that **** so that it goes exactly the way you want. He would be more careful in the future. He did come up with insane Dianetics logic to justify why she hadn't been able to perfectly recall everything. He said that when he called her up and asked her to come out, and now the word now had frozen her in present time and temporarily interrupted her. Perfect. Memory. That makes sense to me. The mental gymnast. I'm back on board. So the whole event was a debacle, but it hardly put a dent in the progress of Dianetics. In less than a year, the new science had made enough money to buy a four and a half $1,000,000 mansion in Los Angeles so Hubbard could manage his new operation in style. It was the old California governor's mansion, which is weird because the capital's not in Los Angeles. I don't know why we had a governor's mansion in LA, but he bought it. All that money attracted attention from the government and from the media. There were, from this point on, kind of regular looks into him from the FBI and stuff. Just because, like, he's making a lot of money, he's not paying taxes on a lot of it. Is being very shady with it. Barbara Kay worked with him. At this time. She was a PR assistant for Mr Hubbard. She later noted in interviews that quote, he was having a lot of political and organizational problems with people grabbing for power. He didn't trust anyone and he was highly paranoid. He thought the CIA had hitmen after him. We'd be walking along the street and I would ask, why are you walking so fast? He would look over his shoulder and say you don't know what it's like to be a target. No one was after him. It was all delusion. Good. Barbara would go on to have an affair with Hubbard, who'd since lost interest in his second wife. The two worked closely together and often travel together so the great leader could administer the far-flung chunks of his burgeoning new empire. At one point, he leased an apartment at the Chateau Marmont for them to share. In order to reassure Barbara of their relationship, Ron walked her through the apartment and said, this is your closet, this is your dressing table, this is your toothbrush. Two days later, she found all of her possessions that she left in the apartment on the bag at her desk, L Ron Hubbard's wife, Sarah, and their baby had moved to Los Angeles, and Hubbard had put them up in the apartment he'd rented for himself and Barbara. Later in the day, he apologized to her, called his wife a ***** and said I miss you. Then he asked her to have dinner with him and his wife that night. With his wife present? Yeah. Yeah. He he wanted to have dinner with him so she wouldn't think that he was having an affair with Barbara. OK, all right. I understand. In her interviews with Russell Miller, Barbara admitted that she felt almost uncontrollably drawn towards L Ron Hubbard. She would get ****** him a lot for being a creep. But, quote, I was completely infatuated. I remember I said to my roommate, we had a small apartment in Beverly Hills. If I ever tell you I am marrying this guy, I want you to tie me up and not let me out the door because he's a lunatic. But I didn't trust myself. Not to do it because I was so enchanted by him. Being with him was like watching a fascinating character playing a role on a stage. I was never bored with him. He was a magical, delightful man, a great raconteur, very bright and amusing, and a very gentle, patient and sweet lover. Well, he has learned to ****. She she she says he's learned to **** and she clearly recognizes he's a nut, so she has no reason to lie about this. I'm going to guess he learned how to ****. All good on him, so everyone's good news. L Ron Hubbard learned to ****. All right, that's a T-shirt. That's a T-shirt. Someone do some art for our L Ron Hubbard learned to **** shirt so we can get really sued by the Church of Scientology. Like ludicrously sued. I'll run Hubbard condoms, maybe. L Ron Hubbard dental dam. That's the one. Oh, wow. Yeah, he was a gentle lover. That's what dental dam says. Here's Barbara again. At the time, I recognized early on that he was also deeply disturbed. Some of the things he told me were really bizarre, but I never knew what to believe. He said his mother was a lesbian and that he had found her in bed with another woman, and that he had been born as the result of an attempted abortion. He talked a lot about his grandfather, who could really hold his liquor, and played a fiddle with the head of a ***** carved on the end. But he never talked about his father and never once mentioned he had children. I did not know he had a son until I read it in the newspapers years later. There's a lot in that paragraph too. It also wasn't the fiddle guitar. I think it was a guitar. OK, it was a guitar. Lying about his instruments. You may have forgotten what kind of instrument with a weirdly racist carving his grandfather had. I don't know. I'm going to give him a pass on that one that's so close to the truth that it counts as honesty out of L Ron Hubbard's mouth. I don't even know what to say about the part of what this makes me think is that maybe he did think that his mom had tried to abort him, heard no evidence of this, but he seems to be obsessed with the idea, so maybe he thought that I don't know. Well, also like he was, as we heard in in Part 1, like. The beloved, like baby, like everyone loved him and the family. So like what that it does seem, and I think it's become clear that he had a persecution complex. There's a part of him that wanted to be haunted, that wanted the government after him. So he may have just had a really happy family life and wanted to invent like this dark back story for himself because his real life was kind of boring. At one point, Barbara went with him to San Francisco, and they attended a welcoming party at the House of a local Dianetics list who adored El Ron Hubbard. Barbara caught the great man in the kitchen, making out with the host's wife. When they got back to the hotel, she refused to sleep with Hubbard, and he shouted. They're all against me. Oh yeah. By the winter of 1950, Dianetics had grown way, way too fast for its britches. Hubbard had established too many schools and too many places, and they couldn't cover their own bills. He'd also hired way too many people. Doctor Winter, the guy who helped make Dianetics look legitimate, left the organization after several people developed psychosis during auditing. 1 attendee turns out you can damage people by doing this. Yeah, have an untrained people try to do psychotherapy. It's a mixed bag. This lesson learned lesson well, no, it wasn't. Learn any lesson. This lesson flew way over everybody's head and still has one attendee of a dynamic center in Elizabeth, NJ. Noted quote. People had breakdowns quite often. It was always hushed up before anyone found out about. It happened to a guy in my course, a chemical engineer. They wanted to get him out of the school and I volunteered to stay with him in an adjoining building. He never slept her eight and was in a terrible state. No one could do anything with him, and in the end they took him off to an asylum. Yeah. Yeah, good. OK, so doctor winter leaves and a number of the people who had first think Campbell starts distancing himself from all of us at this point. A number of people who had been backers of Dianetics sort of step away after because Hubbard just immediately goes to like crazy guru, like right away because he's been waiting for this his whole life. Which guys? Campbell again. Campbell's the editor. The science fiction editor who was like a fan of his. Yeah. When Doctor Winner left, Hubbard announced that the doctor had been engaged in a scheme to take. For the foundation rather than just him being like, Nah, this isn't working out so he can't take accountability for anything. Oh good Lord, no, no, no, L Ron Hubbard take accountability for something that is not the story we are reading. Yeah, cool. Sounds like this is gonna end really well. So problems with Dianetics were compounded by Hubbard's problems at home. In 1951 his wife Sarah attempted suicide. Elron audited her afterwards and claimed to have recovered an Ingram that told him his wife suicide attempt had been caused by a phone call from Barbara about work related business. Hubbard interrogated Barbara about this and she actually wrote a record of the conversation in her diary and it's. Pretty fun ohh. Me, Barbara? You make a habit of instilling in grams too, don't you? That's fine. That's good behavior for the founder of Dianetics Hubbard. Isn't it exciting for you, being a pawn of such a grand chess board? You are playing for the world. Can you think of anything more exciting, Barbara? I don't give a good *** **** about the world. I want a single, gratifying human relationship. Yeah, Hubbard, you couldn't have one. You're an ambitious woman. You crave power. You're a Marie Antoinette. A Cleopatra. Lucretia borgia. You must have a Caesar or an Alexander. You get the idea. She told him he needed her more than she needed him. And he responded in 1939. I was very much in love with the girl. She felt that way too. When I knew she had a boyfriend coming up, I waited on the stairway with a gun, just for a moment. Then I said there are flies. I realized who and what I wasn't left. I told her I would leave her free to marry a Sharpie with a cigar in his mouth. From Muncie. IN. Would you like to be left free? So. Hubbard. I don't understand that either. This is just how Elron Hubbard responds to someone trying to break up with him. I guess I don't know. I could not find out what a Sharpie with a cigar in his mouth means as an insult permanent marker. I mean, I understand why Muncie IN is an insult. If there's any fans from Muncie IN let me know I've offended you. No, we do have a lot of Pittsburgh fans and I'm going to give another shout out to Pittsburgh. It has no bearing on this story, but not too far from Punxsutawney where I'm from. You're learning you're hurting. Yeah. So this seems to have prompted L Ron Hubbard to fire Barbara and break off the affair temporarily. Although he would try to reengage it a couple of times, his marriage, though, was already doomed at that point. His wife, Sarah, had begun to date a Diane ethicist named Miles Hollister, who she'd met when Hubbard had forced his mistress to go on a double date with him and his wife. And she brought miles along and his wife went up with miles. It's a messy tale. And Miles was apparently like a handsome, nice, intelligent guy. So Hubbard was obviously furious at all of this. Yeah, it was around this point in 1951 when L Ron Hubbard decided to start dragging his followers based on nothing really. He came to the conclusion that a mix of Benzedrine, which is a type of speed, insane doses of vitamins, and glutamic acid would help make auditing more effective. He called this chemical mixture GUK. According to his agent, you were supposed to take it every two hours for at least 24 hours. So it was like, really crazy doses of speed. Vitamins and taking enough would allow you to release the Ingrams within you without the need for an auditor. So that was Hubbard's claim. It didn't work out. Dynetics quickly abandoned this practice, but L Ron Hubbard never gave up on the idea of dosing people with absurd amounts of vitamins to gain unspecified. Did you need me too much? Beat 12. In the late 70s, after Scientology was established the church, he developed a variety of Scientology focused rehab centers. Narconon for drugs, criminon for crimes, just to name 21 treatment method used in these programs was the purification rundown, or still is. Which, yeah, is basically you sit in a sauna for days and take huge amounts of vitamins. Multiple people have died in these facilities for a variety of reasons. One Oklahoma facility lost four patients in the space of three years. So Yikes. Don't do that. Don't overdose on vitamins. Don't give people fatal doses of vitamins for no good reason. Yeah, but, you know, you should take fatal doses of. That's not the right way to introduce ads. You know, you should take the right amount of is the ads that we have. I'm going to eat a Dorito. You guys can, by the way, the, the simply organic white cheddar Doritos. Really good. Really tasty. Here's some ads that paid us. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. 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That's why I'm obsessed with my JBL headphones and speakers that help me reflect who I really am, from true wireless headphones to pulsing party boxes. Ohh yeah, party boxes guys. JBL has a wide and colourful range of products that help me feel myself when I wanna vibe my way. I literally record this entire podcast on my favorite JBL headphones. They are absolutely incredible. So JBL wants us all to listen on our terms living in the moment. Our moment unfiltered. The JBL podcast at jbl.com. And we're back. We're back in a I just ate a couple of white cheddar organic Doritos. Delicious. I'm not really focused on the organic thing normally. I can't imagine how organic would be different from normal Doritos because it's all very processed. But it's good. Yeah, I think it might just be that white cheddar is a flavor I like a lot. And these white cheddar Doritos are ******* fantastic. Yeah. Well, are the cool ranch? Are those white cheddar? Is that something different? It's cool ranch. I mean, what do you mean? Is that something different? Well, there's going to be cheese involved in the look, we have 3 bags of Doritos on the table right now. They've given us $0.00. We have three more bags than dollars we've gotten from the Doritos people. I should stop plugging them at this point. I'm now pushing 3 bags of Doritos towards Caitlin. They're all right here in front of me, uncomfortably so. You look uncomfortable. I'll explore these later. Explore is the right word for it. And you know who would have appreciated the adventurous taste of Doritos? Would it be El Ron Hubbard? It would be famed explorer L Ron Hubbard. This is not going to help our sponsorship, but we're off the rails now. **** it. I'll ****** it if. I'll do a whole podcast on how L Ron Hubbard would not have enjoyed the flavorful taste of Doritos if if the Doritos people get in touch with us. Is that good? OK, let's get back to this story. So when we last left, I'll Ron Hubbard. He broken things off with his wife and his his mistress and yeah, it's 1951. He tried to drug his followers, but it hadn't worked very well. And later in 1951 the New Jersey Board of Medical Examiners started what would become a decades long pattern of state and national agencies investigating L Ron Hubbard's activities. They accused his facility and Elizabeth of teaching medicine without a license, and they brought a suit against him. In response, Hubbard closed up shop because he knew he was going to lose and he sort of legal battle because he was 100% teaching medicine without a license and they left New Jersey. Everything he owned was shoved into the back of a black limousine and they drove to Los Angeles. Oddly enough, Greg Hemingway, youngest son of Ernest Hemingway, was one of the Dianetics who packed L Ron Hubbard stuff. Greg. Greg, Greg Hemingway. It's weird because Ernest Hemingway sounds like an author name. Like it. It's just has that, probably because they're in anyway. But it still has Greg. Like, as a father, you're really sabotaging your kid from following in your footsteps. Go by Gregory, I mean, you need more than one syllable. Even Gregory. I'd never read a book from A Gregory. That's such an untrustworthy name. No, I mean, I wouldn't. Yeah, Michael. There's a book name. Oh, come on, that's just too generic. Sorry for all you. Michael's out there. You wanna generic first name and then an exciting last name? Well, like Michael Crichton. Michael crighton. There you go. There you see exactly the most trustworthy writer. Yes, in in all of history. Didn't turn out to be crazy or anything. You know what? I'll forgive everything he did after Jurassic Park because of Jurassic Park. You and I are on the same page, but yeah, that was a not as bad a descent as this cheesy sci-fi author, but pretty rough. In case you don't know, Michael Crighton spent his later years writing a whole book about how global warming was a lie, and also writing one of the critics who badly reviewed his books into one of his novels as a pedophile and describing the critics small penis. Michael Creighton. Classy fella. Yeah. Oh, boy. OK, so the marriage of L Ron Hubbard and Sarah Northrop fell apart as he was fleeing New Jersey. He knew that there was going to be a divorce. And since he was now quite wealthy, there was a lot of money at stake in order to secure more favorable divorce terms. What do you think Elron Hubbard did in order to ensure that he would have the upper hand in the coming divorce battle? Well, he's not known for lying, so I don't imagine he did anything dishonest. So I would guess that, you know, he just parted with half of his money and assets. Amicably? No? Ohh shoot. Fun fact, he kidnapped his daughter Alexis and took her to Cuba. Yes, I remember this from going clear. Yeah boy. Well, he didn't immediately take her to Cuba. First he kidnapped her and paid a random nurse to take care of her for a month and then kidnapped his wife. Once the baby was already taken care of. He and two of his followers kidnapped his wife, physically forced her into the vehicle according to Bare faced Messiah, they grabbed her by each arm. One of them clamped a hand over her mouth and they bustled her out of the house, across the sidewalk and into the back of the car, which drove off its speed. Sarah fought like a cat in the back of the car, screaming and shouting at Hubbard. So in turn was shouting at her. At one point, when the car stopped at traffic lights, she tried to leap out, and thereafter Hubbard gripped her around the neck in a stranglehold while the argument continued. Yeah, OK, feminist icon I'll run over, kidnapped his wife. This is why I say it's shocking that I can't find any evidence of him being like a child molester, right, because it's like he's really seems like he really would have been molesting some kids, like. Ohboy OK, like, is it still a ***** ** ****? Still a monster. So once his wife was subdued in the back of the car, they drove to San Bernardino to try and find a midnight Doctor Who would declare Sarah legally insane. Unfortunately, and kind of shockingly, he couldn't find one, which I think you probably would be able to find a doctor willing to do that in LA now. You had L Ron Hubbard money, right? Apparently you couldn't back then. Alright, that's encouraging. So kudos, 1950s San Bernardino psychiatrists. You get a clear pass from behind the ********. Eventually, he promised to tell his wife where she could find their daughter if she signed a piece of paper claiming he hadn't abducted her just then. Wow, this guy. I'm starting to like him. It's just so consistent. Yeah, like, it's just so shockingly, consistently terrible. Well, I'll tell you where our kidnapped daughter is if you agree not to tell anyone that I just kidnapped you and strangled you and tried to declare you insane. I mean, I gotta say in 1951. Strangling probably wouldn't got him in much trouble. Probably. And it didn't. It sure didn't. He let her go after she signed the paper, but when she went to go find their baby, Hubbard had already had the child moved. In fact, he'd hired a couple who were against strangers to drive the baby across the country. The baby is just an afterthought and no point is he focused on this kid. It couldn't matter less to him. Sarah Hubbard filed a kidnapping complaint with the LAPD, but they assumed this was just a domestic dispute and decided not to get in the middle of things. So the LAPD. Getting it out of the park in 1951. Good job. Yeah, you guys don't get a pass. Psychiatrists of San Bernardino? Cool with you. **** the LAPD in 1951. LAPD today. If you want to sponsor the show, we can talk about it. In the meantime, while Sarah was trying to file a kidnapping complaint, L Ron Hubbard found a psychiatrist who was willing to diagnose him sane, which he had done just to sort of a precautionary measure. According to one of the men who helped him do all this, a Dianetics with the last name of Demill. Quote, he and I first went to a. The Christ, who didn't like the smell of it. He obviously thought he was being manipulated, so we just paid him $10 and left. Then we went to a prominent diagnostic psychologist of that era who did some projective testing on Hubbard and produced an upbeat, harmless report saying he was a creative individual upset by family problems and dissension, and it was depressing, his work and so forth. It was very bland, but Hubbard was delighted with it. The main value of it to him was that it didn't say he was crazy, so he could claim he had been given a clean bill of health by the psychiatric profession. OK. Next. He called the FBI to claim that miles Hollister, the man his wife was having an affair with, was a communist as well as armed and dangerous. He made several calls and reports to the FBI trying to get them to murder his wife's new lover by claiming he was an armed and dangerous communist. Next, L Ron Hubbard de Mille and his baby flew to Havana, Cuba. Hubbard put the baby in the care of two Jamaican women as soon as they arrived, who were also strangers. Strangers. Not with anybody who cares about it. No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not going to spend any time with his baby. He spent the time. And Cuba writing the draft of a sequel to his book on Dianetics and drinking huge quantities of rum so he couldn't be taking care of a baby then. No, he had to drink for several weeks straight and write a terrible book. Sarah did eventually file a writ with the LA Superior Court, and the news picked up the exciting story that the founder of America's newest cult psychological fad, whatever, had abducted his own child. As a result, L Ron Hubbard had to write in letter to his estranged wife. So I'm going to read you that letter now. This is to Sarah. This is to Sarah. Dear Sarah, I have been in a Cuban military hospital and I am being transferred to the United States next week as a classified scientist, immune from interference of all kinds. The while will be hospitalized probably a long time. Alexis is getting excellent care. I see her every day. She is all I have to live for. My wits never gave way under all you did and let them do, but my body didn't stand up. My right side is paralyzed and getting more. So I hope my heart lasts. I may live a long time, and again I may not. But Dianetics will last 10,000 years for the Army and Navy. Have it now. My will is all changed. Alexis will get a fortune unless she goes to you as she would then get nothing. Hope to see you once more. Goodbye. I love you, Ron. More truth? Yeah. No, 100% honest truth. Alexis is his daughter who he's not taking care of and instead drinking rum. Yes. And we'll later deny is his child and tells her when she comes to him in an adult that she was the illegitimate child of his wife. And I was going to ask about because he has kids from his first marriage with Paula. Do you know having five or six kids? Wow. Yeah. One of them, nibs I think was his nickname, was with the cult for a while and then left change his last name. The Wolf 100's nephew Jamie Dewolf does a lot of, I think he's like a motivational speaker and stuff. So a number of his kids have become big anti Scientology sort of voices. He didn't spend any time with them, so how could they have one of his kids committed suicide? Yeah, at least one. So Sarah filed for divorce and the court documents she filed revealed horrific details from inside their relationship. According to her, at one point Ron told her they couldn't get a divorce because it would be bad for his reputation. She says that he told her. Basically, you'll kill yourself if you really love me because we can't get divorced because it's the 50s. She also says that he regularly strangled her. She believed that he was insane and needed to be locked up in a mental asylum. Obviously she has a bias, but it's really hard to disagree with that statement. What a different world it would be if somebody had given L Ron Hubbard the help he so desperately needed. Now, Hubbard flew back from Cuba around this time, he wound up living with a millionaire Dianetics enthusiast named Purcell, who had gotten rich through something else and just loved Dianetics. Purcell wound up essentially taking over the business operations of Dianetics for a while and fixing everything ********* all of the damage Hubbard had done to the structure of it to make it profitable. And for a while, Wichita, KS, becomes the the center of Dianetics research. Yeah, Wichita. So they're doing research? Not really. Yeah. They just lie? Yeah. I mean, no writes a bunch of books about Dianetics to try to sell them to people and they teach classes. But no, I don't think they're doing much real research. When Sarah found out that Hubbard was in Wichita, she filed a petition asking to have his assets in Los Angeles placed into receivership. Hubbard responded by sending a letter to the Department of Justice. He described himself as basically a scientist. His exact words basically a scientist and accuse the Communists and their secret agent, his wife, of orchestrating a campaign to try and destroy him. He would later claim that his wife was a Nazi agent as well. He kind of switched between the two pretty much at will. And this is like McCarthy era good time to be accusing people of communism. It is proof of how nutty he sounded. He is constantly going to the FBI and claiming that all the people who are against him are communists and armed and stuff and the FBI immediately writes him off as a nut which the FBI. Not good at determining who was legitimately a threat to the country. Not on this. They went after a lot of innocent people, but even the 1950s FBI was like, this guy is ******* crazy. Like Joseph McCarthy is basically running the show right now, but this guy's a ******* lunatic. Alright, yeah, which like if the ******* FBI under J Edgar Hoover thinks you're too crazy to be credible about your anti communist conspiracy theories, you've got to be real crazy. You've got to be really got damn crazy. Yeah? Ah, OK. The good news is that Sarah Northrop eventually got both her divorce and her daughter back. And I, as far as I know. Hopefully Alexis had a good childhood. I really don't know much more about her at this point, but she went to live with her like an infant whenever she's a baby. Filled with bad engrams. Like holy **** holy ****. In exchange for getting her baby back. Though she agreed not to say anything bad about her ex-husband, L Ron Hubbard, he also made her write a statement. Or rather, he wrote a statement and then published it with her name attached to it and she didn't complain. That seems likely based on the actual wording of the statement. I'm going to read you the end bit of it. There is no other reason for this statement than my own wish to make atonement for the damage I may have done in the future. I wish to lead a quiet and orderly. Assistance with my little girl far away from the interpolating influences which have ruined my marriage. Sarah Northrup Hubbard interpolating is a word that L Ron Hubbard invented. Which is why people think he just wrote this and she wanted her baby back and it was the 50s and she was like, this is the closest version of Justice I can get. OK? Yeah. Interpolating and turbulent it's a perfectly cromulent word. Yeah, love it. By the end of 1951, Dianetics looked to be on its way out. A conference of Diane ethicists only drew 112 attendees, which is about about a year. What about what you could expect to get out of a fad pop psychology thing like this? Hubbard desperately pushed book after book, including Child Dianetics, but all of them failed to catch on. The book he wrote while drunk in Cuba did not see the same success as the original, which is really a tragic. Fanatics 2, dynetics 2. Yeah Dianetics are tremely Dianetics, dianetics harder? You could call it like a reverse Hemingway because he went to Cuba and got drunk to write, but was less successful. And I assume that's where Hemingway did all his good stuff. I don't know much about her. Probably a **** load. Yeah. I assume, you know, maybe it would have been better book if you had more cats, yeah. Yeah, it became increasingly clear to many people that L Ron Hubbard was not quite the genius they had thought, Perry Chapdelaine, a researcher at the Wichita Dianetics Foundation, said. Quote, The problem for many people involved in Dianetics was that they accepted every word Hubbard said as literal truth rather than a framework around which you could do things. I remember at a lecture one night, he told people that if they did this or that they would no longer need to wear glasses and that they would be able to throw them away forever. He pointed to a big bowl at the bottom of the steps leading up to the rostrum. At the end of the lecture, people were throwing their glasses into this bowl. Don Purcell, the millionaire who saved Hubbard's *** and saved Dianetics, was one of the guys who tossed their glasses into the bowl quote. Hubbard thought it was a great joke. He told me about it afterwards, making a snide remark about Purcell and describing how he took off his glasses, threw them into the bowl, and groped his way out of the lecture hall. Hubbard was laughing that people would do something like that just because of what he said. Of course it didn't work. Like everyone else, Purcell had a new pair of glasses in a couple of days. Yeah, I thought the story was going to end that like someone crashed on their way home because they couldn't see. That would have made sense. No, I mean everyone on the road was drunk in 1951, so they were limp when they hit anyway, right? Hubbard met and married his third and final wife, Mary Sue Whip. During this Wichita. She was like 18 and he was like 40. Something was it was kind of a bit of a creepy, but they stayed together the rest of his life and he may even have been faithful to her. Maybe not. Probably a couple of affairs in there, but he might have been. They were they were together the rest of his life. Well, sort of. She wound up taking the fall for him and going to prison, but that's a story for another day. Wichita is also where he first revealed the E Meter, a device he claimed could measure emotions and quote given auditor insight into the mind of his preclear. Hubbard announced this at a meeting in a Wichita hotel, right before he made the exciting announcement to a group of 80 that he had developed a new science, even better than Dianetics. A science that filled the few holes Dianetics had had and elevated it to a new level that was almost more than a science. He called this Scientology. Yeah, now I looked on Scientology. Dot org try and figure out what they had to say about this, and I actually found another reference to his totally real book Excalibur, because that's where they claim the name comes from. L Ron Hubbard began his studies of the mind and spirit in 1923, resulting in a manuscript entitled Excalibur in 1938. In this unpublished work that the word Scientology first appeared to describe what Mr Hubbard termed the study of knowing how to know, he decided against publishing the book for the fact Excalibur didn't contain any therapy of any kind, but was simply a discussion of the composition of life. Consequently, he said, I decided to go further. So now it's worth interesting. The author of Bare Faced Messiah found an earlier use of the word Scientology and like a German scientific study published like in the 30s. But it had nothing to do with any of this. Just worth noting. Someone else figured out the term first. Not really a big deal. Hubbard probably wasn't plagiarizing the obscure German scientist, but I thought that was interesting. So in the scientology.org write up of things, Scientology was immediately conceived of as a religion. The reality is that it was immediately conceived of. As a science, and it's real purpose was to protect Hubbard legally because he and Purcell had gotten into a fight at this point over the rights to Dianetics, Don Purcell. And he had a falling out. And so there was a giant legal battle waging over who was going to own the rights to Dianetics. So Hubbard created Scientology initially so he could keep making more books and selling more products under a thing that Purcell had no rights to. Yeah, and it was not a religion. At first. Hubbard claimed that while Dynetics had been about the body, Scientology was essentially focused more on the soul. Because he had, quote, come across incontrovertible, scientifically validated evidence of the existence of the human soul. So we're going to get into what Hubbard claimed in Scientology and how it changed from a way for him to dodge legal liability into a religion. But first consume. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. 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That's mintmobile.com/behind. Seriously, you'll make your wallet very happy at Mint Mobile. Com slash behind. In the 1980s and 90s, a psychopath terrorized the country of Belgium. A serial killer and kidnapper was abducting children in the bright light of day. His unspeakable crimes and the incompetence or unwillingness of the police to stop him brought the entire country of Belgium to the brink of revolution. From Tenderfoot TV in iHeartRadio this is la Monstra. A story of abomination and conspiracy that led to the demise of the entire institution of Belgian federal police and rattled the foundations of its government. A story about the man who simply become known as La Monster. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up you guys? It's your girl Betty who here? And you know this about me. It has always been very important to me to stand out and be authentically me, not only with my music, but my style and my vibe. And JBL really gets that. They know your headphones and speakers should look as original as the music you're listening to, or in my case, making. That's why I'm obsessed with my JBL headphones and speakers that help me reflect who I really am, from true wireless headphones to pulsing party boxes. Ohh yeah, party boxes guys. JBL has a wide and colourful range of products that help me feel myself when I wanna vibe my way. I literally record this entire podcast on my favorite JBL headphones. They are absolutely incredible. So JBL wants us all to listen on our terms living in the moment. Our moment unfiltered. The JBL podcast at jbl.com. We're back. We're talking about Scientology, the new science of the soul that L Ron Hubbard has just launched in order to avoid a court case or in order to protect himself from a court case to start a religion. This actually started Christianity because he hit a guy with his Camaro. And anyway anyway it was it was it was a mess. But it all worked out in the end. Yeah. Thank goodness. So Hubbard claimed to have discovered that human beings were driven by immortal and omnipotent beings called thetans. Now thetans, Trion millions of bodies over the course of eons, and so they're essentially these are mortal spirits that like guide our meat sacks. Dianetics had been about refiling bad memories in your brain to cure health problems. But Scientology? Is a way of waking your feet and up to the memories of its long, hidden existence in order to gain superpowers. Essentially, you're activating your thetan so that you can, you know, in clearing off all of the ******** that's tricked into thinking it's just a mortal being. Something like that. It's close enough. Perfect sense, yeah. According to Bare faced Messiah, thetans were obviously not restricted to this universe, and auditing sessions revealed innumerable accounts of space travel and adventures on other planets very similar to those found in the pages of astounding science fiction to which the founder of Scientology had so recently been contributing. One report described how a pre clear head arrived on a planet 74,000 years ago and battled black magic operators who were using electronics for evil purposes. So this is the point at which past lives become a real big part of L Ron Hubbard's philosophy, and they have electronic 74,000. Years ago? Well, yeah. The space aliens cause space because space and aliens and stuff. Aliens have been traveling in space all the time. Yeah, yeah. In July of 1952, L Ron Hubbard published the history of man. He called it, quote, a cold blooded and factual account of your last 60 trillion years. In it he promised that with Scientology, the blind will again see the lame walk the ill recover the insane, become sane, and the sane will become saner. Yeah, and if there's one man you should trust and how to become saner. It's the guy who kidnapped his own baby. Yes. You know, that says to me, sane, really stable guy, balanced man. You know, I've always really respected kidnapping as a discipline. And there's, yeah, it's a wonderful industry. It's a calling. It's an art form, really. A good solid kidnapping, basically. Science. The guy stealing babies out of a window. What are you doing? I'm basically a scientist. That's the T-shirt right there. I'll run Hubbard stealing a baby. We're gonna get some good T-shirt based lawsuits out of this and then I'll have to create a religion in order to maintain my rights to this show and then I'm going to fight you for those rights and then we're something bad's going to happen. You want a baby in Cuba, go right ahead, because that's where it's going, alright. Ohh boy abduction jokes. It's all good fun when, you know the kid got out. Yes, yeah, a lot of kids didn't get out of Scientology. Anyway, back to the story. So the history of man basically repackaged Hubbard's Dianetics ideas about Ingrams, but couched them in weird evolutionary terms. So now Scientologists didn't just have to worry about the traumas, you know they'd experienced as babies. They had to worry about the traumas that, deep back in time, their ancestors had experienced. Hubbard claimed that many engrams were caused by clams. Because our clam. Ancestors were locked in an eternal conflict between the hinge that opened and the hinge that closed. He claimed that the gesture of opening and closing your thumb and forefinger was unconsciously upsetting to people as a result of this. Are you getting? Yeah, do you have you have questions about that? That's not all clear. Our clam and clam. Clam sisters. It's like a Clamato clam. Ancestors fish, no clams specifically, specifically clams are we descended from? Absolutely OK, or at least spent time in clams. Oh, OK. Look at it. Yeah, OK. It's all internally consistent. Yeah, this all works out. And then the motion of of me clasping my thumb against my fingers is is upsetting, is what he's saying. Yeah, it upsets people if you just do this. Just walk around the street today and just do this at strangers, basically. Sock puppet. Basically sock puppet. Motions. If you live near El Ron Hubbard Blvd, just walk down at doing this. You'll really **** some people off. I live near the the whole Church of Scientology. I live near the Scientology like movie studio. Oh fantastic. Yeah, I'm like in this area that we're all that stuff is very well. If a Scientologist tries to abduct you, you know how to upset them. Just do the clam thing now. Hubbard did warn quote your discussion of these incidents with the uninitiated and Scientology can cause havoc. Should you describe the clam to someone you may restimulated in him to the extent of causing severe jaw pain. One such. Victim, after hearing about a clam death, could not use his jaws for three days. So how's everyone's jaw feel? You know what? It's starting all tired. Getting a little bit because I'm making so many good jokes about L Ron. My jaw is tired, but I've read through 16 pages this ******* nonsense. You know what doesn't tire your jaw out? And you know what? I'm not going to do a Doritos ad. Now, you could have had a Doritos ad Doritos people, but instead I'm going to shill for another product. Of the next product available, Lysol sanitizing wipes, that's what's good for you. You is Lysol sanitizer. Wipe yourself. Clean your threatens away. Clean your thetans away. Freebie Doritos. Anyway, back back to the tail. So there's an awful lot of lunacy in Scientology. I'm not going to go into tremendous detail about all of the different crazy things he said, because that could be a whole ******* ten part episode, but it is important that, you know, it didn't all come together at once. You know, I think most people's understanding of Scientology's actual beliefs comes from that South Park episode, which did a pretty good job of summing it up, but he hadn't even invented all of this stuff yet. Everything about Xenu and that this was all added over time. It was definitely cobbled together. He did not. Just come out with suddenly this vision of how things had happened. Well, genius doesn't happen overnight, you know? No, and neither do ******** science fiction short stories in general. The story of Scientology is the story of L Ron Hubbard just making up things for 70 years and writing them down and now people have to pay attention to him because it's a religion. It's pretty great. He continuously expanded his claims of what Scientology could achieve in the book Scientology 8 to 8008. I don't know what that's a reference to, he bragged with this book. The ability to make one's body older, young. That will the ability to heal the ill without physical contact, the ability to cure the insane and the incapacitated as set forth for the physician, the layman, the mathematician, and the physicist. So anyone can use this science to heal the sick. Weird that we still have sick people. Shocking. Scientology proved to be a much better money making scheme than Dianetics had been. Hubbard moved to England and bought a gigantic Manor house. He built facilities there and was soon making more than $40,000 a week just at the English facility teaching auditors. There he was making millions and millions of dollars in the world. This marked the end of L Ron Hubbard's money problems. Money is just if your question is, how do they afford that for any other part of the next two parts of the story, it's just he's rich as **** like forever now. And this is one of those things he does not have any more money problems. Like, and this is because people are just buying into this religion and shelling out, buying the books, paying for, training all over. Most of whom probably aren't super committed because like, I've talked to a number of people in LA who did Scientology for years, so they probably spent a couple grand. But then they just left. But there's a lot more people like that than there are committed Scientologists. It's a good money making thing, which is what it's always been, but I'll give it to him for this. It was a very idiosyncratic organization at its start, and that initially caused some problems because he was bad at managing. But he really seems to have learned how to manage a really profitable, gigantic worldwide enterprise, which is not easy. So again, one of the reasons why it's hard to hate him as much as you should is he's really competent. Like, it's not like a guy who was just. Born Rich and does ****** things like an unnamed person we're all thinking of right now. You just born Rich and never has to work for his money and is prominent because Elron Hubbard was born poor and built a multibillion dollar religious cult. It's impressive. It's an impressive con. Probably the most impressive con on April 10th, 1953, L Ron Hubbard wrote to one of his higher ranking followers and suggested turning their science self-help empire into a religion. I await your reaction on the religion. Single in my opinion, we couldn't get worse public opinion than we have had or have less customers with what we've got to sell. Our religious charter would be necessary in Pennsylvania or New Jersey to make it stick, but I sure could make it stick. Not an accurate. It's stuck. Well, as someone from Pennsylvania, from Punxsutawney, specific from Punxsutawney for sure. People are, yeah, they're really impressionable there. So as the guy who defeated ISIS, I agree with you. In December of 1953, L Ron Hubbard incorporated 3 new churches, the Church of American Science, the Church of Scientology, and the Church of Spiritual Engineering, All in Camden, NJ, Jersey. Boy. In February of 1954, he incorporated the Church of Scientology in California. Over the course of 1954, he encouraged Dianetics Foundation franchise holders because that's how it had spread so rapidly. People were starting franchises to turn their businesses into independent churches. Yeah, interesting, right? Yeah. Really? It came together really well. Executives of the Hubbard Association of Scientologists were now ministers. Some even called themselves reverence. Just let people call themselves reverence. Whatever you want. Whatever. I've always wanted to be a reverend. Scientology wouldn't qualify as a religion for the purposes of tax exemption until 1993. This was a battle, the battle to get accepted like it took a long time. I'm not going to get into everything they had to do. It was. It was a ******* uphill. But starting in 1954, that's when he starts consistently saying this is a religion. This is the point at which Hubbard quit claiming to be a researcher and a scientist and started presenting himself to the world as Bonified wholly made basically a scientist. He's definitely a holy man, definitely a holy man. He of course drew government attention, particularly from the FBI. This made him grow more and more paranoid. He encouraged believers to attack anyone practicing Scientology outside of the church. Apostates were called squirrels and should be sued out of existence. The term squirrel is still used by the Church of Scientology. You can find YouTube videos called Squirrel Busters type that. Yeah, it's like guys with, like, GoPro cameras just like yelling Scientology nonsense. It's supposed apostate Scientologists. Yeah, I saw some of that in going clear. It's weird. It's really uncomfortable. It's like two people yelling about a video game that you don't know anything about. Like it's so technical and specific. Are you on tech? What are you talking about? Man, Hubbard advised Scientologists who were arrested heckling nonbelievers or apostates to immediately sue for $100,000 and claim religious persecution. He said the only proper response to any kind of challenge to the church was unrestricted warfare. Attack Attack, attack. Never stop attacking again, always be attacking. It works. Yeah, I mean it's it's the same social media strategy that the the president uses, like you never apologize for doing something bad. You always just attack new people. And if you get attacked for something you find like, it works. Yeah, yeah. Don't spend any time addressing problems, just attack. Really successful idea. So Hubbard figures this out in the early 50s and applies it to his religion. That's cool, yeah, the coolest. Throughout the late 1950s, auditing sessions and courses devolved from semi scientific discussions of Dianetics and to lurid stories of past lives as aliens and famous historic figures. One of Hubbard's followers were called. There was a good deal of rivalry as to who could dig up the most notable or extraordinary past life. Jesus of Nazareth was very popular. At least three London Scientologists claimed to have been covered incidents in which they were crucified and rose from the dead to save the World, Queen Elizabeth the first, Walter Raleigh, and the venerable bed. Are also popular. Funnily enough, I never met anyone who claimed to know anything about Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan or Pontius pilot. Which is if you're ever pretending to have fake lives, pretend to be someone cool, right? Yeah, no one wants to be a goody 2 shoes in the past. Yeah, Boo. Yeah, I was ******* gangus Khan. That's a cool past life. Yeah. Yeah. Now, the CIA had taken an interest in Hubbard in 1957, and the FBI had been on to him for a while, almost because of the hundreds of letters he'd sent them claiming people were communists. In 1960, L Ron Hubbard officially spooked the government when he urged his followers to do everything in their power to stop the election of Richard Nixon. OK, not on the wrong side of history there. Now, Nixon didn't win, probably for other reasons, because JFK was just such a charming *** ** * *****. But the whole escapade convinced Hubbard that he could use his cult to gain. Political power. In August of 1962, L Ron Hubbard wrote a letter to President Kennedy claiming that Scientology was the only way to train human beings for the rigors of Space Flight. Since Hubbard and his followers were all aware of their past lives as space travelers, they really were the best people to manage astronaut training. Yeah, definitely, absolutely. Totally. Again, logically consistent the US and NASA stands for Scientologists. He said in his letter to JFK quote Man will not successfully get into space without us. We do not wish the United States to lose either the space race or the next war. The deciding factor in that race or that war may very well be lying in your hands at this moment and may depend on what is done with this letter, courteously L Ron Hubbard. Spoiler Alert, we did get into space without them. Have we, though? I've seen those staged moon landing photos. See, I think the moon landing is staged, but I think it's because we really landed on Venus. Oh, that's an interesting theory. OK. And that's where cell phones come from and the government doesn't want you to know. I agree with that. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, back to L Ron Hubbard. In January of 1963, the FDA carried out a raid on the Church of Scientology. They didn't get much. It seems like one of those things where they basically cooked up a ******** reason because meters were labeled improperly and we're like making health claims they shouldn't make, but they used it as an excuse to send them, like, dozens of armed men and stuff to, like, raid a facility. It was like it was it was an overreach of force. It seems like they were expecting to find a cache of weapons. Or something crazy, because this cult seemed so crazy and they didn't. Church of Scientology was probably more on the right than the FDA was, although they were publishing misleading stuff, the raid seems to have been kind of ********. They read, you know, works from what was it Remington Winchester colt? And they're exactly he's got 3 guns. The whole thing increased Elron Hubbard sense of paranoia and persecution. In 1965, Hubbard introduced ethics technology to his new faith, which included conditions that could be applied to people when they had ethical lapses. 1 member who worked in Hubbard's English Manor as a Butler recalled. I was assigned a condition of emergency because I served him salmon for dinner. That was not quite fresh. I was shocked you had to go through a whole formula, write it up, and submit it with an application to be upgraded. Scientology developed new cadre of ethics officers who are basically secret police tasked with punishing the insufficiently. Dedicated or disloyal. Different penalties, including a condition of liability, could be imposed. Members in a condition of liability had to wear dirty Gray rags on their arms. They also couldn't, like, bathe and stuff. It was gross. Church members who screwed up too badly were declared suppressive persons. These people, Hubbard declared, were fair game to be destroyed by any means necessary. Now, Australia had been a hotbed of Scientologist activity. Australia. Australia. OK, yeah, alright, Hubbard brag that it was going to be the first clear continent. But in October of 1965, an Australian board of Inquiry published a report on Scientology and they wholeheartedly condemned the cult. So Australia basically kicked them out. They said it seemed so silly that people would think it was harmless, but that it's really ******* dangerous. Scientology is evil. It's techniques evil. It's practice, a serious threat to the community, medically, morally and socially. And it's adherence. Really deluded and often mentally ill. So Australia knows what it's talking about. Yeah, and they ban him. They basically ban side, or at least the state of Victoria, basically ban Scientology. And I hate to say it, but we owe a lot of that to Rupert Murdoch newspapers he owned, and he seems to have been personally involved and really pushing coverage of how crazy Scientology was, which is responsible for starting the investigation which got it banned. He gave them their first nickname, which is also the only nickname I'm aware of for them. Bunk homology didn't. Take off there. Rupert Murdoch's not great at naming things, no, but credit to a monster. He was in the right this one time in the ******* 60s England began to crack down more on Hubbard and Scientology as well. With the US, Australia and UK all clearly against him. L Ron Hubbard began to look for a new place to base his growing faith. His first instinct was Rhodesia. You heard of Rhodesia? Don't think so. I think it's Zimbabwe now. Rhodesia is the name. When a bunch of white people were ruling over the black majority pretty brutally, it was very much an apartheid state. There was a civil war. The people in charge got overthrown before that happened. He went to Rhodesia and basically promised to put a bunch of money into the local economy, and he wrote a new constitution for them that was meant to trick black people into thinking their votes mattered without actually letting them vote. Weirdly enough, Rhodesia actually kicked him out. They didn't want anything to do with them. Yeah, no, no, it's weird, you expect. To go even worse, but even the country of racists run by racists for racist and it's still like a major and far right white supremacist talking points today to talk about Rhodesia a lot. They didn't want anything to do with Ron Hubbard, so I guess props to Rhodesia. Once he got back from Africa, I'll Ron Hubbard began to cook up a scheme to escape all his myriad legal troubles. One of his friends recalled him saying, you know, John, we have got to do something about all this trouble we're having with governments. There's a lot of high level research that still has to be done, and I want to be able to get on with it without constant interference. Do you realize that 75% of the Earth's surface is completely free from the control of any government? That's where we could be free on the high seas sea, back to the boat, back to the boats. The high seas are exactly where L Ron Hubbard decided to go next. Quietly, carefully, he and his minions embarked upon what he called the C project. And we're going to hear about that C project on the next episode of behind the ********. Are you feeling Caitlin? I feel great. I feel I oh, man, I'm invigorated. My thetans are they're really charged up. And my, my Ingrams, or they're they're disappearing. For their Instagramming, but they are on their way out. What did you have for breakfast in 1942? Because of my many past lives, I definitely recall having some hotcakes. Hotcakes? Yeah, hotcakes. Well, I don't know what I'm trying to do. Plug your puggles. Speaking of Instagram, you can follow me there. And on Twitter. That was good. Thank you so much. At Caitlin Durante, spelled Caitlin. You can listen to my podcast right here on how stuff works. It is called the Bechdel cast, and we talk about the portrayal of women in movies. And yeah, follow us. They're at Bechtel cast BCHD ESL Speaking of the portrayal of women in movies, my Twitter is I write OK you can find thispodcast.online@behindthebastards.com. You can find us on Twitter at at ******** Pot on Instagram too, so check us out. If you're an angry Scientologist, you can yell at me there. I'm sure I got something wrong about your religion, because it's silly. That's the only religion I'll say that about, except for Zoroastrianism. Actually, I like Zoroastrianism, but it's cool as hell. Yeah, it's really neat, really cool imagery. Sorry, I don't know why I'm faked and insulted Zoroastrians there. I've gone mad reading all of this. This is what happens. 2 hours into the L Ron Hubbard podcast, we insult Zoroastrians for no reason. A religion that never did anything to hurt anybody said nothing. Oh no. You're implicated now, Caitlin. And you're all implicated for listening and be implicated in our Part 3. Boats. Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams, let's break or handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Hey guys, I'm Kaylee. Short on my podcast. Too much to say. I share my thoughts on everything from music to martinis, social media to social anxiety, regrets to risky text, and so much more. I have been known to read my literal diary entries on my show, and sometimes I do interviews with my crazy group of friends, so if you guys want to tune in, you can hear new episodes of too much to say every Wednesday on the national podcast network available on the iHeartRadio. With Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to him. It's Chuck Wicks from love country. Talk to Chuck where we bring you what's really happening in the country music family. We also if you love country, here's the deal. You love country music, you can be on the podcast. So if you're a fan, country music what you can call in anytime you like. I want to talk about this. Hulk Hogan called in. He's like Chuck Walker. I love your podcast. Jason Aldean, Jimmy Allen, Carly Pierce, Lauren Elena. Listen to new episodes of love Country. Talk to Chuck every Monday and Thursday on the Nashville podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to. Forecast.