Behind the Bastards - Part Two: The Last Days of L. Ron Hubbard
Aired: 2019-06-06
Duration: 01:16:48


=== Trust Your Girlfriends (03:45) ===

[00:00:00]  This is an iHeart podcast.
[00:00:02]  Guaranteed human.
[00:00:04]  When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
[00:00:13]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:00:15]  He is not going to get away with this.
[00:00:17]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:00:19]  We always say that.
[00:00:21]  Trust your girlfriends.
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[00:00:25]  Trust me, babe.
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[00:00:36]  I'm Lori Siegel, and this is Mostly Human, a tech podcast through a human lens.
[00:00:41]  This week, an interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
[00:00:44]  I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to the products we put out in the world.
[00:00:51]  An in-depth conversation with a man who's shaping our future.
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[00:01:07]  Hey, it's Nora Jones, and my podcast, Playing Along, is back with more of my favorite musicians.
[00:01:12]  Check out my newest episode with Josh Grobin.
[00:01:15]  You related to the Phantom at that point.
[00:01:18]  Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
[00:01:20]  That's so funny.
[00:01:21]  Share with me each night, each morning.
[00:01:29]  Listen to Nora Jones is playing along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:01:37]  What's up, everyone?
[00:01:38]  I'm Ego Modem.
[00:01:39]  My next guest, it's Will Farrell.
[00:01:43]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:01:46]  He goes, just give it a shot.
[00:01:48]  But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:01:55]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:01:57]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
[00:02:04]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:02:06]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:02:07]  There's a lot of life.
[00:02:09]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:02:19]  What's again, Elronning, my Hubbards.
[00:02:22]  It's part two of Elrond Hubbards death episodes.
[00:02:26]  My guests, as with last time, Abe Epperson, Michael Swain.
[00:02:30]  None of you will have noticed the joke in that, but I pointed to the wrong person.
[00:02:33]  It did not translate visually.
[00:02:35]  Hilarious.
[00:02:35]  Another thing that's not going to translate visually is me getting ready the next product I'm going to throw during this episode.
[00:02:41]  I'm tired of the bagels.
[00:02:42]  So Robert took out his big knife and now he's stabbing the plastic of a many, many Kleenex boxes.
[00:02:49]  He pulled one off.
[00:02:50]  I'm going to be throwing Kleenex boxes and I'm going to throw the first one.
[00:02:53]  And it went to the window.
[00:02:54]  Right between us.
[00:02:55]  Right between us.
[00:02:56]  It went to the windows and to the wall.
[00:02:58]  Yeah.
[00:02:59]  And if you know the rest of that song, you know why we need so much Kleenex.
[00:03:02]  We got a 10-pack.
[00:03:04]  Dragon a 10-pack of throwing that is a lot of Kleenex.
[00:03:08]  Hey, we'll throw all of them by the end of this episode.
[00:03:10]  I thought you were going to pop open one of those bad boys and throw individual Kleenex, but that's not as impactful.
[00:03:15]  That does not have the impact of throwing a whole box of Kleenex.
[00:03:18]  Is it important to you that the box be filled with Kleenex, or could it just be a box with a similar weight?
[00:03:22]  I think I'm just going to throw a lot of stuff over the course of the rest of my career.
[00:03:26]  Understood.
[00:03:28]  I like tossing.
[00:03:28]  I like throwing.
[00:03:30]  Both good things.
[00:03:31]  Both fun.
[00:03:32]  Get some salads in here for you.
[00:03:34]  I would love to toss some salads.
[00:03:36]  Hello, everyone on the early morning commute.
[00:03:40]  Welcome to Robert and the pig and the other pig.
[00:03:44]  It's your drive time zoo.

=== The Phantom Plot Twist (15:26) ===

[00:03:46]  You know what?
[00:03:46]  I hate drive time zoo shows.
[00:03:48]  Another two.
[00:03:49]  Yeah.
[00:03:51]  That was a good one.
[00:03:52]  Sophie, who cleans up in here?
[00:03:53]  Is it me?
[00:03:54]  Oh, it's you.
[00:03:55]  Sophie.
[00:03:56]  Well, she's got a sad feeling.
[00:03:58]  Already established the joke, so this is going to keep happening.
[00:04:02]  And there's no way to stop it.
[00:04:03]  I can't.
[00:04:05]  I can't overexaggerate your lack of enthusiasm.
[00:04:08]  So far, you pick pretty easy things to clean up.
[00:04:10]  When it evolves to throwing confetti, oh, this Christmas.
[00:04:13]  I'm just going to throw ornaments.
[00:04:16]  Shatter them against the walls.
[00:04:18]  Just push flats everywhere.
[00:04:19]  Just push pins everywhere.
[00:04:22]  Push pins.
[00:04:23]  Like a home alone that you bullets.
[00:04:26]  Just whatever.
[00:04:26]  Just bullets.
[00:04:27]  It's just awesome.
[00:04:28]  I'd think someone who's barefoot so much of the time wouldn't want to scatter pointy things around the ground.
[00:04:33]  Okay.
[00:04:34]  No, it's got those counts.
[00:04:35]  Yeah.
[00:04:36]  It's fine.
[00:04:38]  It's fine.
[00:04:38]  You know what else is fine?
[00:04:40]  L. Ron Hubbard's career.
[00:04:41]  I disagree.
[00:04:42]  Oh, I can't wait to see.
[00:04:43]  Oh, it's just fine.
[00:04:44]  I might agree with that by the end.
[00:04:46]  Oh, of course it's fine.
[00:04:47]  I mean, now, Abe, you do quite a lot of directing on your own.
[00:04:50]  So I think you might pick up some tips and try to get some from the master.
[00:04:53]  My next set?
[00:04:54]  Oh, it's going to be bad.
[00:04:56]  Because this is a masterclass right now.
[00:04:58]  This is a masterclass right now.
[00:05:00]  Everyone who listens to this episode will be qualified to direct a Hollywood production.
[00:05:04]  Yes.
[00:05:04]  It just takes this much.
[00:05:06]  The L. Ron Hubbard film school.
[00:05:07]  The L Ron Hubbard film school behind the best.
[00:05:10]  It really does only take that much if you also have millions and millions of dollars.
[00:05:14]  Like literally infinite money.
[00:05:17]  Now, life on the run is not good for anyone's health.
[00:05:19]  Despite his vast wealth and the opulent surroundings of the La Quinta ranch where he hid out in Southern California, by early 1977, Hubbard's lifestyle was catching up with him again.
[00:05:28]  Ann Rosenblum, who trained to be a messenger during this period, was horrified by his appearance when she first met him.
[00:05:33]  Quote, the first night I was there, I didn't talk to LRH since he was busy, but I saw him.
[00:05:37]  He had long, reddish-gray hair down past his shoulders, rotting teeth, and a really fat gut.
[00:05:41]  He didn't look anything like his pictures.
[00:05:43]  The next day I met him, he was doing exercises in his courtyard and called me over.
[00:05:46]  I was nervous meeting him.
[00:05:47]  I was really surprised that I didn't feel this electric something or other that I was told happens when you are around him.
[00:05:53]  So these were in the last days before the FBI Dragnet closed down around Mary Sue Hubbard and all of L. Ron's people with the Guardian's office.
[00:06:01]  And Mary Sue became extra protective of her husband during this period.
[00:06:04]  Her dogs, which were said to be clear, guarded him at all times.
[00:06:07]  If they barked at you, it was a sign that you were secretly committing crimes against the Hubbards or had done so in a past life.
[00:06:12]  Oh, that's not going to stoke his paranoia.
[00:06:14]  Anytime the dog barks, that mailman is an agent who opposes the church.
[00:06:20]  What happens when the dog barks at him?
[00:06:22]  Yeah.
[00:06:23]  Oh, I don't think the dogs stay around if they bark at him.
[00:06:26]  Yeah.
[00:06:27]  They just have new dogs on deck.
[00:06:29]  That dog toy is a suppressive person.
[00:06:31]  Who knew?
[00:06:33]  Now, L. Ron continued to innovate his tech during this period.
[00:06:36]  His main interest was the purification rundown, which he viewed as a cure for drug addiction.
[00:06:41]  This was an evolution of Hubbard's GUK vitamin treatment, which we talked about during the first three-parter.
[00:06:46]  Today, the purification rundown is a popular Scientology treatment that involves massive doses of vitamins in a sweat lodge.
[00:06:51]  In Oklahoma, it killed four people over the course of three years.
[00:06:54]  Hubbard developed this treatment based on what he believed were the effects of LSD on the body.
[00:06:58]  According to Jim Kalki, one of Hubbard's longtime helpers, quote, all the information came from one person who had taken LSD once.
[00:07:05]  That was how he did his research.
[00:07:07]  What's it like?
[00:07:08]  It's pretty chill, dude.
[00:07:10]  All right, it's going in the puddle.
[00:07:12]  This is my shit right here.
[00:07:14]  Honestly, it was good.
[00:07:16]  Now, Hubbard became convinced that the purification rundown was going to cure all of the world's drug addictions.
[00:07:21]  He decided this achievement had clearly earned him a Nobel Prize, and he wrote out an order to his PR officer authorizing the expenditure of unlimited funds to win him the Nobel Prize he so clearly deserved.
[00:07:32]  He didn't get a Nobel Prize.
[00:07:33]  Oh, really?
[00:07:34]  Turns out it's kind of hard to bribe those guys.
[00:07:37]  I can't say that.
[00:07:37]  It's canon.
[00:07:40]  I do think, you know, if the listeners of this podcast want to get me a Nobel Prize, I will do drugs off of it.
[00:07:48]  Would you rather get a Nobel Prize for stopping all drug use, you personally?
[00:07:53]  Yeah.
[00:07:54]  Or just have listeners send you some drugs.
[00:07:56]  Oh, I would rather get the Nobel Prize.
[00:07:58]  Okay.
[00:07:59]  I've got a blacksmith, so I'd take the Nobel Prize to my blacksmith and have it forged into a crack pipe.
[00:08:04]  And then I would begin smoking.
[00:08:05]  And I got a Nobel Peace Pipe.
[00:08:07]  Nobel Peace Pipe.
[00:08:10]  If you want to see me throwing some stuff, you give me some crack in a Nobel Peace Pipe.
[00:08:14]  It comes with a cash prize as well, I think, the Nobel Peace Prize.
[00:08:19]  And you know where that cash prize is all going to be spent?
[00:08:21]  Yeah.
[00:08:21]  Under a bridge filling up that pipe.
[00:08:24]  You're going to get shivved for your golden pipe.
[00:08:28]  So that's gone.
[00:08:30]  That's what happens under bridges.
[00:08:33]  It's not going to be great.
[00:08:35]  Now, Hubbard transferred from La Quinta to a hideout in Sparks, Nevada after the FBI crashed down on Operation Snow White.
[00:08:42]  All contact with the Guardian's office and the Hubbard family was suspended, and LRH relied on his child messengers to deliver his words to and from church leadership.
[00:08:50]  On May 25th, 1977, Star Wars launched to a world of unsuspecting moviegoers.
[00:08:56]  Here we go.
[00:08:57]  It made, conservatively, all the money and changed both Hollywood and the world forever.
[00:09:02]  Now, I don't know if L. Ron Hubbard ever actually saw Star Wars.
[00:09:05]  I kind of doubt it because he was a horrible narcissist who probably never read or watched anyone else's science fiction.
[00:09:10]  Right.
[00:09:11]  But it's possible.
[00:09:12]  I know he read a lot of Harlan Ellison who's my favorite sci-fi.
[00:09:15]  He definitely were like personal friends, and I guess, you know, you feel the guilt or like you have to.
[00:09:21]  You imagine the one person who could get along with L. Ron Hubbard.
[00:09:24]  Of course it's Harlan Ellison.
[00:09:26]  It's just weird that if you seems to really like sci-fi.
[00:09:32]  Yeah.
[00:09:32]  He may have to.
[00:09:33]  How could he resist?
[00:09:35]  It's hard to like, I don't know if he ever saw it, but he definitely paid attention to its financial success.
[00:09:40]  From July to December of 1977, while hiding out in Sparks, Nevada, he worked feverishly on the screenplay for a feature film, Revolt in the Stars.
[00:09:48]  This was a dramatization of one of the...
[00:09:49]  Oh, Star Wars.
[00:09:50]  Yeah, it's a war that does occur in the stars.
[00:09:54]  A Star Wars, if you will.
[00:09:55]  Yeah, a Star War, if you will.
[00:09:56]  This was a dramatization of one of the highest-level Scientology training courses, the OT3 Information, or Operating Thetan.
[00:10:03]  It's going to give that shit away?
[00:10:04]  Yeah, you had to pay $100,000 for that.
[00:10:06]  There's actually some weird stuff regarding that, which we'll get to here.
[00:10:09]  So the rough plot was that an evil space dictator, Xenu, murdered 76 planets worth of aliens, sucked in their frozen ghosts to Earth, and blew them up with nuclear bombs strapped to volcanoes.
[00:10:18]  Frozen is such a great word choice.
[00:10:20]  Frozen ghosts.
[00:10:21]  Ghosts are water vapors.
[00:10:23]  Ghosticles!
[00:10:25]  And they all have swords.
[00:10:26]  You can freeze a ghost.
[00:10:28]  Forged in mortar.
[00:10:29]  Oh my God.
[00:10:30]  I just figured out how we can solve global warming.
[00:10:32]  All right.
[00:10:34]  The people least likely to believe in global warming are also probably going to be the most superstitious people in the country.
[00:10:39]  So I'm going to guess global warming deniers also have a high tendency to believe in magical thinking.
[00:10:45]  You convince them that if the ice caps melt, all of the ghosts will be freed.
[00:10:50]  Ooh.
[00:10:51]  I think we have a plan here.
[00:10:52]  Then we got a problem.
[00:10:53]  And then we got a plan.
[00:10:54]  And we got to cool down the world to keep the ghosts frozen.
[00:10:57]  Yes.
[00:10:58]  Dictators need to never stop doing whatever drug they did as a child.
[00:11:02]  Right.
[00:11:02]  And there are ghosts in the North Pole.
[00:11:04]  There are ghosts in the North Pole, and they will kill us if we don't freeze them.
[00:11:08]  These are the myths of our time that we need to embrace that will help us.
[00:11:12]  It's like that.
[00:11:12]  I saw a post where someone, some anti-vaxxer was talking about how you can actually make vaccines safe if you rub a potato on the vaccine injection site.
[00:11:20]  And it's like, yeah, okay, just tell them that.
[00:11:22]  Tell them that.
[00:11:23]  Yeah, vaccinate your kids and rub them with a potato.
[00:11:25]  That's right.
[00:11:27]  Just release all of Dan Aykroyd's books.
[00:11:30]  Ten years later, the potato flu decimates the population of North America.
[00:11:36]  Hot potatoes.
[00:11:39]  That will be the last Fox News Chiron before everyone dies.
[00:11:42]  Potatoes are too hot.
[00:11:44]  We come to potato, and the round is over.
[00:11:47]  Oh, boy.
[00:11:48]  Potato versus ghost.
[00:11:49]  Now, if you paid attention to anything I've said about L. Ron Hubbard over the last five hours or so of podcasts about the fucker, you know that he's literally incapable of giving up on any single idea he ever had.
[00:11:59]  Now, y'all remember Excalibur, the book Hubbard claimed to have written in 1938 that he said was so profound it caused people to commit suicide instantly after reading it.
[00:12:08]  How I know the words Excalibur from is that.
[00:12:12]  Yeah, it's like the Monty Python, the funniest joke that you can't see.
[00:12:16]  But with psychology, philosophy.
[00:12:18]  The second you go mad, right?
[00:12:20]  I said, would that be good?
[00:12:22]  That's not a feather in your cap.
[00:12:24]  You're like, this guy read my book and committed suicide right after?
[00:12:28]  I think that means it's super good.
[00:12:30]  I kind of want that Comic-Con panel.
[00:12:32]  We have today, George R. Martin and the guy who wrote the book that makes everyone kill themselves.
[00:12:37]  My name is L.
[00:12:41]  So 40 years after his claims about Excalibur started, Hubbard made the same claims about the OT3 course materials.
[00:12:48]  Scientologists weren't exposed to the Xenu story until they were several years and thousands of dollars into the religion already.
[00:12:53]  That's because, according to Hubbard, learning the story of Xenu would cause death in a matter of days.
[00:12:58]  According to Tony Ortega, a former Scientologist who's now an activist against the church, quote, if we follow his logic, his intention in writing it was to produce a film that, if shown to the world, would kill off all the non-OT3 part of the population.
[00:13:10]  Oh, man.
[00:13:12]  Film genocide.
[00:13:13]  The biblical flood.
[00:13:15]  Yeah.
[00:13:15]  For everyone who's not, hasn't paid me enough money to be at this level.
[00:13:20]  He's going to make a movie to kill everybody.
[00:13:22]  He's going to make a fucking passion of the Ron.
[00:13:25]  I'm firmly convinced, and of course there's no way to prove, that at every step, a large chunk of him knows.
[00:13:32]  And it's probably the thing he's most proud of.
[00:13:35]  Look at how I built a billion-dollar empire on nothing.
[00:13:38]  I'm proud of that.
[00:13:39]  So I don't think he wrote it thinking this will kill everyone, but it's still every detail of his life is better if you assume he believed his own bullshit.
[00:13:47]  It is.
[00:13:48]  Yeah, I think he started to at a certain point.
[00:13:51]  You don't know how you don't mix it up to somebody.
[00:13:53]  You don't make the kids search for gold for months on like cramped sailing vessels if you don't really believe they might find some.
[00:14:01]  And some of the paranoid shit he did, you're like, well, that's not fabricated.
[00:14:05]  He's really grappling with paranoia.
[00:14:07]  Yeah, he's definitely paranoid.
[00:14:09]  I imagine like little L. Ron, Lil Ron.
[00:14:11]  Yeah.
[00:14:12]  Like going to the ice cream truck and like saying to the guy selling the ice cream, like, you know that popsicles are ghosts.
[00:14:18]  And he goes, really?
[00:14:20]  He's like, oh my God, that worked.
[00:14:22]  I know what my life is.
[00:14:25]  Oh, God.
[00:14:26]  I do like to think about like what would happen if this movie was made and did what Hubbard said it would do and like everyone who watched it killed themselves because you have conversations with your friends where they'd be like, you know, there's that new movie that makes everybody kill themselves.
[00:14:39]  You want to go see it?
[00:14:40]  Well, yeah, I kind of do.
[00:14:42]  I do.
[00:14:43]  I like, I love life, but also I have the AMC movie pass.
[00:14:47]  I got to use it on something.
[00:14:49]  I got to use it on something.
[00:14:50]  And I am dying to know the details.
[00:14:52]  There's nothing going on.
[00:14:53]  I got to know this anymore.
[00:14:55]  Yeah, let's watch the murder movie.
[00:14:57]  Also, what a weird experience if you came into the room late and everyone is dead.
[00:15:03]  But there's one person and you're like, ew, you're an OT3 in Scientology.
[00:15:07]  I did not know that.
[00:15:09]  And they're like, I know.
[00:15:10]  I'm sorry.
[00:15:11]  So another thing that Ortega notes in his article about Revolt in the Stars is that John Travolta is still to this day expressing a desire to make the movie into a major Hollywood production, which may mean that John Travolta secretly wants to commit mass planetary genocide.
[00:15:26]  At the very least, he knows that fact.
[00:15:28]  Yeah, the idea that John Travolta is trying to wipe out all life on Earth that's not Scientology is now my favorite conspiracy theory.
[00:15:34]  Right.
[00:15:35]  Yeah.
[00:15:36]  I also believe that now, probably thanks to the popularity of this podcast, some group of nerds who I will love forever will find this and shoot it on their phones and send it to us.
[00:15:48]  Bastard's pants, the 40%.
[00:15:51]  Please make the movie that kills everyone.
[00:15:54]  Basically, he just thought of the ring.
[00:15:55]  Yeah.
[00:15:56]  The ring, but for everyone.
[00:15:57]  For everyone, yeah.
[00:15:58]  And just as sort of future payment to whoever does shoot Revolt in the Stars, I'm going to throw another box of Kleenex.
[00:16:05]  All right.
[00:16:06]  Mazeltop.
[00:16:07]  Number three.
[00:16:08]  That's a Scientology thing, right?
[00:16:09]  Yep, I think so.
[00:16:11]  Ortega apparently read through the script for Revolt Among the Stars, which I think you can find if you really look for it.
[00:16:16]  And he summed up its plot this way.
[00:16:18]  Quote, in the script Hubbard wrote from the movie, the character Rawl, clearly based on Hubbard himself, takes on the might of various two-dimensional characters with single-syllable names, Chi and Min, who have wandered out of an episode of Flash Gordon.
[00:16:29]  The screenplay apparently ends on these lines, as the evil Xenu is strapped into a prison inside of one of the volcanoes he previously bombed to murder space ghosts.
[00:16:38]  Wetting his dry, cracked lips, Zenu looked up at the doctor, some terror showing in his glazed eyes.
[00:16:43]  These devices keep one alive forever?
[00:16:46]  Don't talk, snapped the doctor.
[00:16:47]  A guard stepped forward.
[00:16:49]  Don't talk to the prisoner.
[00:16:50]  Despairing, Zenu rolled his eyes.
[00:16:52]  How long is forever?
[00:16:53]  No one answered.
[00:16:54]  No one knew.
[00:16:57]  Well, yeah.
[00:16:58]  What?
[00:17:00]  The fuck are you even talking about?
[00:17:02]  I mean, it sounds like I've been to film school.
[00:17:07]  There's quite a bit of scripts that are suspicious of this type of writing.
[00:17:12]  By the way, when your movie Revolt Among the Stars comes out, everyone's going to refer to it as rats.
[00:17:17]  So good luck with that.
[00:17:20]  Now, Hubbard's dream was to make the movie himself and add George Lucas to his list of accomplishments alongside aviation pioneer, treasure hunter, prophet, and surprisingly good at sex.
[00:17:29]  This gradually expanded into a desire to add a whole film production wing to the Church of Scientology, the Cinna Org.
[00:17:36]  A 10-acre ranch around La Quinta was purchased, codenamed Monroe, and turned into housing for the production staff for L. Ron Hubbard's new film company slash cult.
[00:17:44]  The studio was built on a 140-acre grapefruit farm that the church also purchased.
[00:17:49]  Cool.
[00:17:49]  How do you give notes when you're in a cult?
[00:17:52]  Like, if everyone acting in it and producing it is on set?
[00:17:55]  There are no notes.
[00:17:56]  Yeah.
[00:17:57]  You do what he tells you.
[00:17:59]  I actually think the set's a little gaudy right now.
[00:18:02]  That's suppressive, dude.
[00:18:03]  That's suppressive.
[00:18:04]  That's your biggest suppression.
[00:18:05]  So for the movie kills everyone, though, like, does the screenplay just like paralyze them?
[00:18:10]  Or is it the, like, what stage is the magic, like, kill yourself?
[00:18:14]  Well, all of these people are OT3, so they can handle it.
[00:18:16]  So they can do whatever they're like.
[00:18:17]  I bet his plan was to do the opposite.
[00:18:20]  Let the movie come out, no one dies, and then say, see, you're all Scientologists, so you don't even know it.
[00:18:25]  And you got to pay me 40 grand.
[00:18:27]  40 chess, I see.
[00:18:30]  Now, yeah, so they buy several different giant ranches to add to the already giant ranch and turn into a film production studio.
[00:18:39]  Now, according to the book, Barefaced Messiah, quote, lights, dollies, cameras, and a vast range of technical equipment were all moved into the new studio.
[00:18:45]  Hubbard took to wearing a cowboy hat, suspenders, and a bandana, which he imagined gave him an artistic mian appropriate to a film director.
[00:18:52]  The Cinna Org was to cut its teeth making simple promotional films illustrating various situations in which Scientology could be used beneficially.
[00:18:59]  Hubbard wrote all the scripts and knew exactly what he wanted.
[00:19:02]  Constantly biting into a raw grapefruit.
[00:19:04]  He just carries it all times.
[00:19:06]  Throwing grapefruits.
[00:19:07]  This is like he's Hunter as Thompson right now.
[00:19:10]  He is.
[00:19:11]  Hunter would be shooting at people.

=== Uncovering Disturbing Patterns (07:29) ===

[00:19:12]  Right, right.
[00:19:12]  Yeah, Hunter would have absolutely shot at people.
[00:19:15]  Yeah, but he's using cameras.
[00:19:17]  So Hubbard knew what he wanted, but found out that it's really hard to make movies.
[00:19:23]  It's just kind of a difficult thing to do.
[00:19:26]  And so his first productions did not all go well.
[00:19:28]  Now, some of this had to do with the fact that the random assortment of people who'd found the Church of Scientology compelling did not all possess the incredibly specific technical know-how necessary to make films.
[00:19:38]  Now, I want to note that this had been true of L. Ron Hubbard's Navy, too, and they'd sort of faked it until they'd made it.
[00:19:44]  But it turns out that the same strategy does not work with movie making, thus answering forever the age-old question, is it harder to captain a boat or man a boom mic?
[00:19:52]  It's harder to man a boom mic.
[00:19:54]  Apparently.
[00:19:55]  Easier to get random people to be part of a Navy.
[00:19:58]  Well, there's no, because you can drop depth charges and say you hit something.
[00:20:03]  And that's fine.
[00:20:04]  When you're shooting a movie, if you don't get the scene, it's not in the footage.
[00:20:08]  They listen to it and say, this is shitty sound.
[00:20:11]  Yeah.
[00:20:13]  So the church put out a call to any members of the faith who had even vaguely relevant experience in the film industry.
[00:20:18]  The best they could do was Adele and Ernie Hartwell, championship ballroom dancers who had taken a few courses and were told that the Cinna Org would be their path into the Scientology elite.
[00:20:26]  They were not impressed upon their arrival to the Cinna Org.
[00:20:29]  Ernie later recalled, I was absolutely shocked to see everyone ranning around in shorts, ragged clothes, dirty and unkempt.
[00:20:35]  They put us in a little three-room shack on the edge of the ranch.
[00:20:38]  We go inside and what a mess.
[00:20:39]  The place was overrun with bugs and insects.
[00:20:42]  Adele said, quote, the main thing I disliked was that when we first got there, we were programmed on the lies we had to tell.
[00:20:47]  If we ran into one of our friends, we had to tell a lie to them and say that we were just there for a vacation.
[00:20:51]  We were schooled on how to get away from process servers, FBI agents, and any government officials or any policemen who want anything to do with Hubbard.
[00:20:58]  Welcome to our production company.
[00:21:00]  Here's what you say to the FBI.
[00:21:03]  I bet just it being in California, there's a fair chance.
[00:21:08]  Some of these people probably would have gone to film school if they weren't broke from spending all their money on the Church of Scientology.
[00:21:13]  I mean, they came from everywhere, though.
[00:21:15]  Sure.
[00:21:15]  He just moved them to like, you just had to go wherever you were.
[00:21:18]  But they have all the money.
[00:21:20]  Send some people to film school.
[00:21:21]  Yeah, what great voices were squashed out by L. Ron Hubbard's movie making enterprise.
[00:21:27]  Hey, I want to see these cult people's movies.
[00:21:31]  I do desperately want to see these cult people's movies.
[00:21:33]  You know what else I want to see, or at least listen to?
[00:21:36]  The fine products and services that have advertised on our show and our program.
[00:21:40]  Oh, I love those.
[00:21:41]  I want to see them, but kind of fingers crossed that.
[00:21:43]  I'll just close my eyes and imagine.
[00:21:45]  Yeah, our ads are randomly generated a lot of the time, so it is possible the Church of Scientology will advertise.
[00:21:50]  If so, I'm actually fine with that.
[00:21:53]  If they advertise on this episode, totally down.
[00:21:56]  I'm not.
[00:21:58]  I'm okay with it.
[00:22:00]  I don't know.
[00:22:01]  If listening through all this, an ad for the Church of Scientology makes you decide, you know what?
[00:22:06]  Yes, this is true.
[00:22:08]  You clicked on this and you're like, but the ad really resonated.
[00:22:12]  Yeah.
[00:22:13]  All right.
[00:22:14]  Products!
[00:22:20]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
[00:22:24]  Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
[00:22:27]  You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
[00:22:30]  And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
[00:22:34]  We always say, trust your girlfriends.
[00:22:38]  I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends, oh my God, this is the same man.
[00:22:43]  A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
[00:22:48]  I felt like I got hit by a truck.
[00:22:50]  I thought, how could this happen to me?
[00:22:52]  The cops didn't seem to care.
[00:22:54]  So they take matters into their own hands.
[00:22:57]  I said, oh, hell no.
[00:22:58]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:23:01]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:23:05]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:23:07]  Trust me, babe.
[00:23:08]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:23:18]  What's up, everyone?
[00:23:19]  I'm Ego Modern.
[00:23:20]  My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
[00:23:27]  It's Will Farrell.
[00:23:31]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:23:34]  I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
[00:23:39]  I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
[00:23:42]  I'm working my way up through it.
[00:23:43]  but I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
[00:23:46]  He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
[00:23:51]  Yeah.
[00:23:51]  He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
[00:23:54]  And he's like, just give it a shot.
[00:23:55]  He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:24:04]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:24:06]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
[00:24:14]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:24:15]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:24:17]  There's a lot of luck.
[00:24:18]  Listen to Thanks Stat on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:24:27]  In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal.
[00:24:33]  The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.
[00:24:38]  This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.
[00:24:42]  You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
[00:24:45]  I doctored the test once.
[00:24:47]  It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case.
[00:24:50]  I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for.
[00:24:54]  Sunlight's the greatest disinfectant.
[00:24:57]  They would uncover a disturbing pattern.
[00:24:59]  Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
[00:25:01]  Greg Olespi and Michael Marancini.
[00:25:03]  My mind was blown.
[00:25:05]  I'm Stephanie Young.
[00:25:07]  This is Love Trap.
[00:25:08]  Laura, Scottsdale Police.
[00:25:10]  As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
[00:25:15]  Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges.
[00:25:21]  This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona.
[00:25:26]  Listen to Love Trapped Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:25:36]  10-10 shots fired.
[00:25:38]  City Hall building.
[00:25:39]  A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene.
[00:25:43]  From iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios, this is Rorschach.
[00:25:48]  Murder at City Hall.
[00:25:49]  How could this have happened in City Hall?
[00:25:51]  Somebody tell me that.
[00:25:52]  Jeffrey Hood did it.
[00:25:54]  July 2003.
[00:25:55]  Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
[00:26:00]  Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
[00:26:03]  And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
[00:26:12]  Everybody in the chamber's ducks.
[00:26:14]  A shocking public murder.
[00:26:16]  I scream, get down, get down.
[00:26:18]  Those are shots.
[00:26:19]  Those are shots.
[00:26:19]  Get down.
[00:26:20]  A charismatic politician.
[00:26:21]  You know, he just bent the rules all the time, man.
[00:26:24]  I still have a weapon.
[00:26:26]  And I could shoot you.
[00:26:29]  And an outsider with a secret.
[00:26:31]  He alleged you.
[00:26:32]  A victim of flat down.
[00:26:34]  That may or may not have been political.
[00:26:35]  That may have been about sex.
[00:26:38]  Listening to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app.

=== Bending the Rules (15:58) ===

[00:26:41]  Apple Podcasts are wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:26:50]  We're back and Sophie is actually leaving the room.
[00:26:53]  She's about to open the door, which is bad for sound quality, but good for what I like to call cinema verite, a term I invented for podcasts being true.
[00:27:01]  We're really peeling back the podcasting curtain here.
[00:27:05]  You invented that term.
[00:27:06]  I did invent that.
[00:27:07]  The term loosely affiliated with podcasts.
[00:27:10]  Yeah.
[00:27:11]  Hence the word cinema and curtain.
[00:27:14]  Well, you know, the main goal when you make a podcast is to just broadcast to everyone else that, yes, you should also have a podcast.
[00:27:22]  You should have a podcast.
[00:27:23]  I won't rest till there's as many podcasts as there are people.
[00:27:26]  I want there to be twice as many podcasts as people.
[00:27:28]  And until there are, I will continue to throw cleaners.
[00:27:30]  Cleaners podcast.
[00:27:32]  Very important, right?
[00:27:33]  I laugh, but it hit me in the throat.
[00:27:37]  Well, you know what they say about throats, Michael.
[00:27:39]  Products and services?
[00:27:41]  It's the laziest part of the body.
[00:27:42]  That's true.
[00:27:44]  All right.
[00:27:44]  We're back.
[00:27:45]  Well, there's peristalsis.
[00:27:47]  So, L. Ron Hubbard, autour director, was still desperately afraid of being brought in by a surprise police raid.
[00:27:53]  A souped-up Dodge dart with a full tank of gas was kept on standby 24-7 outside of his production facility.
[00:28:00]  Just fucking run, Carr.
[00:28:02]  The director has a like, I feel like everything you've said so far is applicable only to L. Ron Hubbard or Roman Bolansky.
[00:28:10]  Every day, put a Philly cheese steak on the dashboard and replace it the next day.
[00:28:14]  I might have to go anywhere.
[00:28:16]  He's like, it occurs to me that we should just have a table of disguises.
[00:28:22]  They literally did.
[00:28:24]  All right.
[00:28:25]  All right.
[00:28:26]  Now, I don't know if any of y'all are aware of this, but autour directors are not known to be mentally healthy people at the best of times.
[00:28:32]  L. Ron Hubbard might have given a guy like Stanley Kubrick a run for his money in the crazy pants category.
[00:28:36]  Stanley Kubrick finished movies, though.
[00:28:39]  He did finish movies.
[00:28:40]  Adele first met Hubbard when she was working in the wardrobe department and heard him start to scream at a group of his underlings.
[00:28:46]  Quote, this is a quote of Hubbard directing.
[00:28:48]  Oh, I can't wait.
[00:28:50]  You dirty goddamn sons of bitches.
[00:28:51]  You're so goddamn stupid.
[00:28:52]  Fuck you, you cocksuckers.
[00:28:54]  It seemed to go on for several minutes.
[00:28:55]  I had something in my hand and it fell to the floor.
[00:28:57]  I said, who in the world is that?
[00:28:59]  They said it was the boss.
[00:29:00]  We weren't allowed to use the name Hubbard for security reasons.
[00:29:02]  You mean the leader of the church speaks like that? I asked.
[00:29:04]  Oh, yes, was the reply.
[00:29:06]  He doesn't believe in keeping anything back.
[00:29:08]  Yeah, this is straight out of the book of USC School of Cinematic Arts, actually.
[00:29:12]  You goddamn sons of bitches.
[00:29:15]  Adele's first big job was makeup assistant on a Hubbard flick called The Unfathomable Man.
[00:29:20]  It was a modest project, covering the entire history of the human race from the beginning of time to the modern era through the eyes of L. Ron Hubbard.
[00:29:28]  I'm sorry.
[00:29:29]  It's a great title.
[00:29:30]  What a title.
[00:29:32]  You can't even think of it.
[00:29:33]  What's the first thing you think?
[00:29:34]  Well, he's a man.
[00:29:35]  Well, I can think of a man.
[00:29:37]  No, you can't.
[00:29:38]  Not this guy.
[00:29:40]  Adele's recollections make it sound rather surprisingly like a Sam Raimi flick.
[00:29:44]  Quote, did he ever like those films to be bloody?
[00:29:46]  It was enough to make you sick.
[00:29:48]  We'd be shooting a scene and all of a sudden he'd yell, stop, make it more gory.
[00:29:51]  We'd go running out on the set with all this carrot syrup and food coloring and we'd just dump it all over the actors.
[00:29:56]  Then we'd film some more and he'd stop it again and say, it's still not gory enough.
[00:30:00]  Then we'd throw more blood on them.
[00:30:02]  Well, he's competing with the Bible.
[00:30:05]  So he's got to matches.
[00:30:06]  Every religion needs to match a certain level of gore just to keep our interest up.
[00:30:10]  Just imagine him at Monitor and when they nail how much blood?
[00:30:14]  He's just...
[00:30:15]  Yes.
[00:30:17]  This will bring Scientology to the masses.
[00:30:19]  Okay, now pour some blood on me.
[00:30:22]  Okay, now we can continue.
[00:30:23]  Get the disguises.
[00:30:26]  The movie included a scene where an FBI office was bombed.
[00:30:29]  This was understandably L. Ron Hubbard's favorite part.
[00:30:31]  He jerked off.
[00:30:34]  He grew a little overenthusiastic and had so much blood dumped on his actors that their clothing stuck to their bodies and had to be cut off by the wardrobe people.
[00:30:41]  Hubbard made up for his general lack of knowledge of how to make movies by being an incredibly persnickety asshole.
[00:30:47]  According to Barefaced Messiah, quote, when the Cinna Org was shooting in the studio, all the sets had to be cleaned and scrubbed with special soap every morning before Hubbard arrived, and the messengers would go around with white gloves to assure it had been done properly.
[00:30:58]  Hubbard had a director's chair that no one else was allowed to sit in, and as he was walking around the set, a messenger would follow close behind him, ready to put the chair underneath him if he chose to sit down.
[00:31:07]  One unfortunate girl got the positioning wrong by a few inches, and as the Commodore sat down, he horse on the floor.
[00:31:13]  Yes, it's a slapstick comedy.
[00:31:15]  Until you learn that, like, she was swiftly beaten to death.
[00:31:18]  Yeah, she was put in Scientology's prison.
[00:31:21]  Right, of course.
[00:31:22]  That's not real, is it?
[00:31:23]  Yeah, it's real.
[00:31:24]  Oh, they provided.
[00:31:25]  She was tortured, yeah.
[00:31:26]  And you know, well, it's worth it if the work stands up to the test.
[00:31:31]  That's why we have an Academy Award for cleanest set.
[00:31:35]  That's very key to filmmaking.
[00:31:37]  Wait, is it really?
[00:31:37]  No, no, no, yeah.
[00:31:38]  And all this specs is Nobel Peace Prize material.
[00:31:42]  I just love that he's like, you know, directing a movie.
[00:31:44]  You keep the set clean, you place the chairs correctly.
[00:31:48]  You have a lot of blood.
[00:31:49]  Movies.
[00:31:50]  Movies.
[00:31:53]  Now, the numerous stories that Hubbard tried to film all had grand narratives, usually starting at the very beginning of galactic history.
[00:31:59]  One film, The Problems of Life, was about a young couple who felt their existence lacked meaning.
[00:32:03]  They asked for advice from a psychiatrist who was played as a violently insane person.
[00:32:07]  They next asked help from a scientist who was also violently insane.
[00:32:11]  Then they found a Scientologist who was a perfect being of pure contentment.
[00:32:14]  Keema Douglas, an artist and Scientologist who spent time with Hubbard during this period, noted, quote, The trouble was that he wanted to make movies that would take over Hollywood, but they were terrible, really terrible.
[00:32:23]  The crew would have to do scenes over and over again before he was satisfied.
[00:32:27]  Occasionally, the day would end up with a fine, well done, everyone, but more often there were tantrums and he'd storm off the set screaming that it had better be right tomorrow.
[00:32:35]  Hold on, Hubbard.
[00:32:36]  Fix it!
[00:32:37]  Fix it!
[00:32:38]  We do it better to fix it!
[00:32:39]  More blood!
[00:32:40]  Or more beatings for you all!
[00:32:42]  I've got to go have sex surprisingly adroitly.
[00:32:45]  This better be a movie when I get back.
[00:32:49]  All the while, as L. Ron Hubbard painstakingly acquired roughly the amount of expertise one would receive in the first semester of film school, he was raising money to make Revolt in the Stars a reality.
[00:32:59]  He succeeded in putting together millions of dollars to make the film and funneled it through a production company called A Brilliant Film Company.
[00:33:05]  Tragically, Hubbard was as bad at running a production company as he was at everything that wasn't infiltrating the federal government.
[00:33:11]  A brilliant film company went bankrupt, and Revolt in the Stars was never more than a few costumes in an unbelievably bad screenplay.
[00:33:18]  I'd still pay a lot to see those costs.
[00:33:19]  I'd also pay a lot to see those costumes.
[00:33:22]  Someone's got those costumes, you know.
[00:33:24]  Someone's got they are like religious artifacts now.
[00:33:27]  Right.
[00:33:28]  There's a church of Scientology where there's a case like you'd see an arc light and you're like, it's that thing we never made.
[00:33:35]  And they all still have the blood on them, and it's still unsure of whether or not it's the fake blood or the real blood from the beatings.
[00:33:41]  And when they cut them out of the clothes, they just stabbed them.
[00:33:44]  Yeah, you know there were some scissors accidents on that.
[00:33:47]  In late 1978, a few days after Mary Sue Hubbard and 10 other top Scientologists were indicted for their rampant crimes, L. Ron Hubbard collapsed while filming a very stupid movie in 120-degree heat.
[00:33:57]  He recovered, but it had become abundantly clear to everyone that the ranch in Southern California and the strenuous life of an auteur film director were not suited for the ailing old man.
[00:34:05]  Now, during this time, L. Ron Hubbard continued to receive regular auditing sessions.
[00:34:09]  His auditor was a fellow named Mayo, and Mayo grew increasingly unsettled about the revelations he received from the great prophet of Scientology as he recovered from heat stroke.
[00:34:17]  Quote, from Mayo.
[00:34:19]  He revealed things about himself and his past which absolutely contradicted what we'd been told about him.
[00:34:23]  He wasn't taking any great risk because I was a loyal and trusted subject and had a duty to keep such things confidential.
[00:34:28]  It wasn't just what I discovered about his past.
[00:34:30]  I didn't care where he was born or what he had done in the war.
[00:34:33]  It didn't mean a thing to me.
[00:34:34]  I wasn't a loyal Scientologist because he had an illustrious war record.
[00:34:37]  What worried me is that when I saw things he did and heard statements he made that showed his intentions were different from what they appeared to be.
[00:34:42]  When I was with him, messengers often arrived with suitcases full of money, wads of $100 bills.
[00:34:47]  Yet he had always said and written that he never received a penny from Scientology.
[00:34:51]  Who would ask to see it?
[00:34:51]  The messenger would open the case and he'd gloat over it for a bit before it was put away in a safe in his bedroom.
[00:34:56]  He didn't really spend much.
[00:34:57]  I guess it was getaway money.
[00:34:59]  I didn't mind the idea of him having money or being rich.
[00:35:01]  I thought he had done tremendous wonders and should be well paid for it.
[00:35:04]  But why did he have to lie about it?
[00:35:06]  I slowly began to realize that he wasn't acting for the public good or for the benefit of mankind.
[00:35:10]  It might have started out like that, but it was no longer so.
[00:35:12]  One day we were all talking about the price of gold or something like that, and he said to me, very emphatically, that he was obsessed by an insatiable lust for money and power.
[00:35:20]  I'll never forget it.
[00:35:21]  Those were his exact words.
[00:35:22]  An insatiable lust for money and power.
[00:35:26]  I love gold!
[00:35:30]  Jesus.
[00:35:30]  Yeah.
[00:35:31]  Also, because if you're at that level where you're the boss's auditor, You must have already been exposed repeatedly to the fact that the purpose of auditing is not to keep it confidential.
[00:35:43]  The purpose of auditing is to have dirt on people.
[00:35:46]  I don't know how this guy didn't walk away with a portion of the gold is what I'm getting at.
[00:35:51]  He may have.
[00:35:51]  Hey, guess what, boss?
[00:35:53]  I have a recording now, you idiot.
[00:35:56]  You dying old idiot.
[00:35:58]  I think the guy you put in that job is the guy you know is never going to betray you.
[00:36:02]  Right.
[00:36:02]  And he didn't while Hubbard was alive.
[00:36:04]  Eventually, it seems like he... came clear.
[00:36:07]  I'm sure it was a process so all the pieces didn't align, but hearing this quote now, you're like, if you felt this way then, you could have walked away with a chunk of that gold, probably.
[00:36:17]  You could have walked away with one of those suitcases of dirty $100 bills.
[00:36:20]  Because if there's anything Hubbard's going to respond to, it's blackmail.
[00:36:23]  Yeah.
[00:36:24]  Yeah.
[00:36:24]  After a couple months of convalescence, Hubbard was healthy enough to get back to directing movies.
[00:36:29]  Naturally, he made his auditor an actor.
[00:36:31]  Quote, he walked around with an electric bullhorn, yelling orders through it, even if the person was only a few feet away.
[00:36:37]  The crew were in a constant state of fear.
[00:36:39]  He'd say he wanted a certain set built and describe it.
[00:36:41]  Everyone would work in a frenzied state to get it done, often through the night, not stopping for meals and praying it would be right and that they would not get into trouble.
[00:36:48]  When he arrived to begin shooting, he invariably decided he didn't like it.
[00:36:52]  It had been altered.
[00:36:53]  He wanted it blue, not green.
[00:36:55]  Some of the crew would be sent to RPF, Scientology Prison, and others would be running around trying to find some blue paint.
[00:37:00]  Then he'd want to know why it was blue and not yellow.
[00:37:04]  Have you seen the Star Wars documentary?
[00:37:07]  Yes.
[00:37:07]  Empire Dreams, where he can't pronounce his own gungens.
[00:37:13]  Gungens.
[00:37:14]  Gungens.
[00:37:15]  George, you wrote this.
[00:37:16]  You wrote this.
[00:37:17]  Yes.
[00:37:18]  It's poetry.
[00:37:18]  It rhymes.
[00:37:19]  There's a weird synergy in the fact, did you hear about the plot?
[00:37:23]  Lucas released details of the plot he was going to do if he had done 7, 8, and 9, and it involved tiny creatures that live in your blood called the Wills.
[00:37:33]  He loves tiny creatures living in your blood.
[00:37:36]  It's Beatons, dude.
[00:37:38]  They are the same.
[00:37:40]  Lucas, now that he has officially, I guess, traded Star Wars to, quote, white slavers.
[00:37:47]  Not totally inaccurate in his description of the Disney Corporation.
[00:37:50]  It doesn't mean that one of them is on the right side.
[00:37:53]  I think for the good of everyone, he may as well buckle down and make Revolt Among the Stars.
[00:37:59]  I think Lucas is the man to do it.
[00:38:01]  He's the only man to do it.
[00:38:03]  He's the only man to finally make Revolt Among the Stars reality.
[00:38:06]  I'm holding Chekhov's Kleenex box in my illustrated point about filmmaking, which is that you should always throw Kleenex at the walls.
[00:38:14]  Yeah.
[00:38:16]  It's like a bullhorn.
[00:38:19]  As Chekhov's tools go, that one didn't stretch the tension out, but sure.
[00:38:22]  It did not.
[00:38:23]  It did not.
[00:38:23]  I didn't go to film school.
[00:38:24]  Yeah.
[00:38:25]  He got a dude in the case of Hubbard.
[00:38:27]  Don't let that stop you.
[00:38:29]  Yeah, don't.
[00:38:29]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:38:30]  We got five more of these Kleenexes that I got to toss, and I'm starting to realize I may not have that much anger.
[00:38:35]  So some of these tosses are going to be less impactful than the others.
[00:38:38]  That's all right.
[00:38:39]  Just where we are right now.
[00:38:40]  Can't not toss them.
[00:38:42]  They can be sad Kleenex.
[00:38:43]  Tossing boxes.
[00:38:45]  Sad Kleenex.
[00:38:46]  All right.
[00:38:46]  Let's get back to the thing.
[00:38:49]  Here's Mayo again talking about L. Ron Hubbard as a director and being an actor under him.
[00:38:53]  Quote, when I was trying to be an actor, I'd have to do the same line over and over again.
[00:38:56]  It was never right.
[00:38:57]  It was too loud, too quiet, too intense, not intense enough.
[00:39:00]  Then he'd scream, why aren't you doing it enthusiastically?
[00:39:03]  He'd end up stamping off, screaming that it was all impossible and that no one would do what he said.
[00:39:07]  One of the main reasons why he got sick, I think, was that he had so many failures and so much frustration and upset over the movies.
[00:39:13]  Everyone was tiptoeing around waiting for explosions.
[00:39:16]  So, yeah, because this man is someone who just tells people how he wants the world to be and it just happens.
[00:39:22]  And in filmmaking, they have to like create it for themselves.
[00:39:25]  They have to act.
[00:39:26]  It's the one thing, like, he gets through his whole life doing that, basically.
[00:39:29]  Right.
[00:39:30]  And it works with his private navy, but it can't work with filmmaking, which is.
[00:39:34]  Force the audience to think the movie's entertaining.
[00:39:37]  Yeah.
[00:39:37]  You have to make an entertaining movie.
[00:39:39]  Yeah.
[00:39:40]  Yeah.
[00:39:40]  Nor can you get the thing that's in your head absolutely perfect every time.
[00:39:45]  Like by every performer.
[00:39:47]  So.
[00:39:48]  But also as an actor, I mean, come off it, Mayo.
[00:39:51]  I had to say the line a bunch of times.
[00:39:53]  That's that's the process of acting for film.
[00:39:56]  You get the feeling, though, that it was like literally for days at a time sometimes.
[00:39:59]  Yeah.
[00:40:00]  And it was like he would just say more enthusiastically, less like he doesn't know how to direct you.
[00:40:03]  Like he's not sitting down like, let me walk you through your motivation here.
[00:40:07]  You have to understand why it's wrong.
[00:40:08]  He was just shouting, no, it's not right.
[00:40:11]  Well, as an example, a very basic rule of directing is it's widely frowned upon to just say, do this emotion.
[00:40:19]  Like that's the most basic directing.
[00:40:22]  I also love that notes.
[00:40:24]  His notes are basically go in a direction, go in the opposite direction.
[00:40:29]  Like these ambiguous definitions of what he wants.
[00:40:32]  That sounds real clear to me.
[00:40:34]  That sounds like a guy with vision.
[00:40:35]  If only he had been a YouTube personality and just said, fuck it, I will be all the parts and I will shoot this in my room.
[00:40:41]  He would be a huge hit on YouTube if he were alive and younger today.
[00:40:46]  For sure.
[00:40:46]  That would be, he would own that place.
[00:40:49]  He would be one of those channels you end up on when you're three clicks away from a decent, good, God-fearing video.
[00:40:56]  And he would be convinced to watch.
[00:40:58]  I'm just going to guess here, convincing millions that the Holocaust didn't happen.
[00:41:01]  Yeah.
[00:41:02]  You see that kind of cultism and tribalism in like Twitch streamers and stuff.
[00:41:06]  It's pretty.
[00:41:07]  Oh, he would be so good at Twitch.
[00:41:09]  He would Twitch it up.
[00:41:10]  He'd be incredible.
[00:41:11]  Now, I do want to note as we get to this point that I think the story, like the fact that L. Ron Hubbard finally failed when he tried to stumble into filmmaking is proof of something important, which is that the U.S. Navy and all navies are a bunch of pansy waste, little, little, little wuss factories.
[00:41:29]  Okay.
[00:41:29]  Okay.
[00:41:30]  Hollywood is where shit really gets done.
[00:41:32]  So suck on it, fucking aircraft carrier wimps.
[00:41:36]  We got our prop guns.
[00:41:37]  We're pretty good at you.
[00:41:39]  We're pretty close to the ocean right now, so I'm a little nervous.
[00:41:43]  What are they going to do?
[00:41:43]  They can't make a movie.
[00:41:44]  That's what this proves.
[00:41:45]  Well, we've also infiltrated Coast Guard, much like L. Ron Hubbard.
[00:41:49]  Yeah, take it, Coast Guard.
[00:41:51]  Fucking movies is what's hard.
[00:41:53]  Yeah, that's the real.
[00:41:55]  That's the message here.
[00:41:57]  Not these people have their cushy wars, their easy jobs on submarines.
[00:42:03]  What's hard is movies.
[00:42:05]  Yeah.
[00:42:05]  Well, that's what we can all agree is what we do is the most important best.
[00:42:09]  The most important and the most difficult job.
[00:42:11]  I would like to see anyone in the goddamn Navy toss a fucking Kleenex box.
[00:42:16]  See, I expected you to grab that Kleenex box and you grab that one.
[00:42:19]  So now you have to go to jail.
[00:42:22]  That's how this works.
[00:42:24]  Fun fact: all of Hollywood's dolly industry, the things that move cameras in space kind of thing, that was all adopted from Navy technology for putting bombs into planes.
[00:42:36]  We've been reverse infiltrated by some Navy mouthpiece.

=== Navy Kleenex Chaos (03:30) ===

[00:42:40]  Navy?
[00:42:40]  You're in the pocket of Big Navy, aren't you?
[00:42:42]  I am.
[00:42:44]  Big Navy.
[00:42:44]  It's crucially different from old Navy.
[00:42:46]  Yes.
[00:42:47]  New Navy.
[00:42:49]  Sorry, Navy.
[00:42:50]  I'm not really that sorry.
[00:42:52]  It's fine.
[00:42:52]  You've got boats.
[00:42:53]  You're fine.
[00:42:54]  Now, eventually, the stress of running the Cinna Oregon, dealing with the brutal California desert climate, as well as his growing fear that the FBI was closing in on him, forced L. Ron Hubbard to make what would become his very last move to a tiny farming town called Hemet, California.
[00:43:07]  Oh, boy.
[00:43:08]  I've spent lots of time in Hammond.
[00:43:09]  Oh, you've got a nice little lake.
[00:43:10]  Why?
[00:43:11]  Camping.
[00:43:11]  Camping.
[00:43:13]  Well, around Hemet area.
[00:43:15]  I love camping.
[00:43:16]  And you know what else I love?
[00:43:18]  No.
[00:43:18]  Products.
[00:43:19]  Oh.
[00:43:20]  Services.
[00:43:20]  Every time.
[00:43:21]  Just those two things.
[00:43:22]  No other room for love in my life.
[00:43:24]  Oh, boy.
[00:43:24]  Just product and service.
[00:43:25]  As a comedian, the rule of three is not being fulfilled is going to just kill me this whole break.
[00:43:31]  Well, too bad.
[00:43:33]  I couldn't help it.
[00:43:33]  I gotta help you.
[00:43:35]  Condiments?
[00:43:38]  I hope by chance you get a condiment.
[00:43:40]  I really, I hope it.
[00:43:41]  I hope it's a condiment, too.
[00:43:43]  Goober's that had for goobers, peanut butter, and jelly and wonderful.
[00:43:46]  Condiments!
[00:43:53]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
[00:43:57]  Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
[00:44:00]  You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
[00:44:03]  And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
[00:44:06]  We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
[00:44:10]  I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends.
[00:44:14]  Oh my God, this is the same man.
[00:44:16]  A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
[00:44:21]  I felt like I got hit by a truck.
[00:44:23]  I thought, how could this happen to me?
[00:44:24]  The cops didn't seem to care.
[00:44:27]  So they take matters into their own hands.
[00:44:29]  I said, oh, hell no.
[00:44:31]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:44:33]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:44:38]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:44:40]  Trust me, babe.
[00:44:41]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:44:50]  What's up, everyone?
[00:44:51]  I'm Ago Modern.
[00:44:52]  My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network, it's Will Farrell.
[00:45:03]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:45:07]  I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
[00:45:12]  I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
[00:45:14]  I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
[00:45:18]  He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
[00:45:23]  Yeah.
[00:45:24]  He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
[00:45:26]  And he's like, just give it a shot.
[00:45:28]  He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:45:36]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:45:39]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
[00:45:46]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:45:48]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:45:49]  There's a lot of luck.
[00:45:51]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:45:59]  In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal.
[00:46:06]  The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.

=== Clayton Eckard Scandal (14:34) ===

[00:46:11]  This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.
[00:46:14]  You doctored this particular test twice, Ms. Owens, correct?
[00:46:18]  I doctored the test once.
[00:46:19]  It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case.
[00:46:23]  I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for.
[00:46:26]  Sunlight's the greatest disinfectant.
[00:46:29]  They would uncover a disturbing pattern.
[00:46:31]  Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
[00:46:33]  Greg Olespi and Michael Marancine.
[00:46:36]  My mind was blown.
[00:46:38]  I'm Stephanie Young.
[00:46:39]  This is Love Trap.
[00:46:41]  Laura, Scottsdale Police.
[00:46:43]  As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
[00:46:47]  Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges.
[00:46:54]  This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona.
[00:46:59]  Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:47:08]  10-10 shots five, city hall building.
[00:47:12]  A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene.
[00:47:16]  From iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios, this is Rorschach, murder at City Hall.
[00:47:22]  How could this have happened in City Hall?
[00:47:24]  Somebody tell me that.
[00:47:24]  Jeffrey Hood did.
[00:47:26]  July 2003.
[00:47:28]  Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
[00:47:33]  Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
[00:47:36]  And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
[00:47:44]  Everybody in the chamber deducts a shocking public murder.
[00:47:48]  I scream, get down, get down.
[00:47:50]  Those are shots.
[00:47:51]  Those are shots.
[00:47:52]  Get down.
[00:47:52]  A charismatic politician.
[00:47:54]  You know, he just bent the rules all the time.
[00:47:56]  I still have a weapon.
[00:47:58]  And I could shoot you.
[00:48:02]  And an outsider with a secret.
[00:48:03]  He alleged you.
[00:48:06]  That may or may not have been political.
[00:48:08]  That may have been about sex.
[00:48:10]  Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:48:23]  We're back!
[00:48:24]  So, L. Ron Hubbard moved to Hemmett, California, in secret.
[00:48:27]  His location was known only to a handful of people within the church.
[00:48:30]  For the next six years, the number of people Hubbard interacted with regularly wouldn't be enough to make up two full baseball teams or basketball teams, whichever one's smaller.
[00:48:38]  I think it's five people on basketball, right?
[00:48:40]  Well, there's on the court.
[00:48:41]  It's on the court.
[00:48:42]  There's more people in baseball teams.
[00:48:43]  There's more people in baseball teams.
[00:48:45]  That's also way more people than I know.
[00:48:47]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:48:48]  Curling team, I think.
[00:48:49]  A curling team.
[00:48:51]  Now, this life of seclusion and hiding out from justice suited Ron well.
[00:48:55]  According to Barefaced Messiah, quote, although he occasionally threw his food across the room when he believed the cook was trying to poison him, by and large, he was better tempered than he had been when he was trying to make movies.
[00:49:04]  He usually got up about midday, audited himself for an hour, and then dealt with whatever correspondence the messengers had decided he should see.
[00:49:10]  In the afternoons, he devoted several hours to taping lectures and mixing suitable background music.
[00:49:15]  In the evenings, he watched television and reminisced to a small but always attentive audience.
[00:49:19]  Did you say mixing?
[00:49:20]  Yeah.
[00:49:21]  So he spent all day making playlists and mixed tastes.
[00:49:24]  Yeah.
[00:49:24]  He probably would have edited his own podcast.
[00:49:26]  That's a good, harmless old man.
[00:49:28]  Yeah, that's like a cute messiah.
[00:49:32]  You know?
[00:49:32]  It's better than torturing people in your prison when they don't act right.
[00:49:36]  So filmmaking was the...
[00:49:38]  That's really what cracked the chestnut.
[00:49:40]  Yeah.
[00:49:41]  Really opened him up to, you know what, I'm just going to chill out.
[00:49:44]  I also can't believe he doesn't have someone tasting his food ahead of time at this point.
[00:49:48]  I just assumed he'd have the whole royal like groom of the stool to wipe his ass, you know, royal food taster to keep the poison out.
[00:49:57]  I want to know what tips him off.
[00:49:59]  Yeah, but if he's got a royal food taster, he doesn't get to throw his food across the room.
[00:50:02]  Well, he does.
[00:50:03]  I've proved his food.
[00:50:03]  He just has a throwing box.
[00:50:05]  Like you have Kleenex boxes.
[00:50:06]  Well, I do have toss and food.
[00:50:08]  Yeah, you make a plate for yourself and a plate to toss.
[00:50:10]  I throw food at Sophie when things aren't the way that I want.
[00:50:12]  Robert is filling a Kleenex box with food.
[00:50:15]  He's just shoving it full of food.
[00:50:18]  That's going to be tough to clean up when Sophie gets back.
[00:50:20]  We only have three left.
[00:50:22]  We'll leave it for her.
[00:50:22]  We'll leave it for her.
[00:50:24]  She loves it.
[00:50:24]  Pastor Johnson.
[00:50:24]  She does love it.
[00:50:26]  David Mayo was one member of Hubbard's small attentive audience in the nights.
[00:50:30]  He recalled many evenings with the Commodore, playing hillbilly songs on his guitar and lying about the years he'd spent as a troubadour in Appalachia.
[00:50:38]  Yeah, I think he was making up the songs as he went along.
[00:50:41]  Afterwards, everyone clapped.
[00:50:43]  Yes.
[00:50:44]  Hell yeah.
[00:50:45]  I desperately want to hear some of L. Ron Hubbard's improvised hillbilly songs.
[00:50:49]  I wanted to see that live.
[00:50:50]  There's no replacement there.
[00:50:52]  There's nothing that could have possibly a YouTube channel.
[00:50:54]  Yeah.
[00:50:55]  That is a good idea.
[00:50:56]  L. Ron Hubbard pretending to be a hillbilly, singing random songs.
[00:51:01]  Hey, y'all.
[00:51:03]  Hey, y'all.
[00:51:04]  Lil Nas X, help me out.
[00:51:07]  Zeno's coming to get you.
[00:51:10]  On the days when he went into town, Hubbard would wear a variety of absurd disguises.
[00:51:14]  A baseball cap with fake hair sewn onto it, stage makeup to alter the shape of his face, false eyebrows, and sideburns.
[00:51:20]  Hubbard was convinced he looked like a local.
[00:51:22]  No one else thought this.
[00:51:23]  Thankfully, the internet did not exist, and so no one in Hemmett recognized him either.
[00:51:28]  For six years, Hubbard's location was kept perfectly secret from the law, the government, and even his own wife and children.
[00:51:33]  Gradually, he pared down the number of Scientologists allowed to be around him.
[00:51:37]  David Miscovich, his former messenger and also at one point a cameraman, was often the only person in direct contact with L. Ron Hubbard.
[00:51:43]  Do you know if he worked on the movies?
[00:51:45]  Oh, yeah, yeah, that's what he was doing.
[00:51:46]  He was okay.
[00:51:48]  Like, that's part of bringing the guy who knows anything.
[00:51:52]  I need cameramen.
[00:51:53]  Hey, guy who used to be like a production messenger.
[00:51:57]  Now you're a cameraman.
[00:51:59]  Later, if you could beat some other guys up in a room, I guess you can have this.
[00:52:03]  Isn't that what happened with Musk?
[00:52:05]  We'll talk about Muscovich later.
[00:52:07]  He needs his own episode.
[00:52:08]  He needs his own three-parter, probably, to be honest.
[00:52:11]  Now, Hubbard did continue sending letters to David Mayo, his beloved auditor.
[00:52:15]  Mayo recalls these letters growing more and more unhinged as the months turned into years of isolation.
[00:52:20]  Quote: In the first paragraph of one letter, he said something like, You might think I've gone crazy, but I'm still okay.
[00:52:25]  Just believe what I say is true.
[00:52:27]  I remember thinking, God, whatever's coming must be pretty weird.
[00:52:30]  They called me mad and said on the outside of the envelope.
[00:52:33]  You actually got worried.
[00:52:36]  It was real demented stuff, berating psychiatrists and claiming they were the root of all evil, not just on this planet, but since time immemorial.
[00:52:42]  He had figured out that back at the beginning of the universe, psychiatrists screened evil on a particular star system.
[00:52:48]  When I read through it, I thought, My God, he is crazy.
[00:52:51]  He can exhort me to think he's not crazy, but this letter belies it.
[00:52:55]  Oh, I thought you were going to go.
[00:52:56]  What is the crazy way to say shit is crazy?
[00:52:59]  Fucking ass.
[00:53:00]  I thought you were going to go with like, yeah, this is kind of crazy because, like, who made the scientists?
[00:53:04]  Yeah, psychiatrists.
[00:53:06]  Psychiatrists invented evil in the beginning of time.
[00:53:10]  It's always got to be the beginning of time.
[00:53:12]  I wish we could know his origin of that.
[00:53:16]  I feel like he must have, at some point in his life, had one therapy session where he went, Yeah, I'm a little blue.
[00:53:22]  And they were like, You're a piece of shit.
[00:53:24]  And he was like, Well, I hate this.
[00:53:26]  I hate psychiatry.
[00:53:28]  Like, who hurt you, little L. Rod?
[00:53:30]  I will say that his hatred of psychiatrists is more proof that, like, as a man, even though he didn't spend that much time here, he was the living embodiment of Los Angeles.
[00:53:41]  Like, this city in a single man was all realities.
[00:53:46]  Completely in very hungry for power.
[00:53:48]  Yeah.
[00:53:49]  And kind of a terrible place to live.
[00:53:51]  It's so specific and consistent.
[00:53:53]  Like, it rubbed off on Tom Cruise.
[00:53:55]  He did that appearance where he famously said psychiatry is evil.
[00:53:59]  That was, it's such a core tenant.
[00:54:01]  And I don't know of any other religion that's like, also, the Lord saith, screw chiropractors.
[00:54:07]  Like, we hate them.
[00:54:08]  It's so-oh, no, Buddhism's really anti-chiropractic.
[00:54:12]  That's a hard line.
[00:54:13]  The poem Ozzy Mandias.
[00:54:15]  It's like, because Los Angeles itself is kind of a testament to that.
[00:54:18]  They're like, let's make a metropolis where in the desert.
[00:54:21]  Yeah.
[00:54:22]  And let's make 20 million people there.
[00:54:25]  Yeah.
[00:54:27]  How do we plan for this?
[00:54:28]  Don't plan.
[00:54:28]  We'll make it up as well.
[00:54:29]  No planning.
[00:54:30]  Okay, but we should at least have a network of trams and trolleys.
[00:54:33]  And no.
[00:54:35]  How do we one car for every person?
[00:54:37]  Okay, how do we get water?
[00:54:39]  We just steal it from this other state.
[00:54:42]  Take it from North people.
[00:54:43]  Now, everyone in town's feeling alienated and isolated by the plight of modern man.
[00:54:47]  Well, they should pay us.
[00:54:50]  We can fix that.
[00:54:53]  Here's what ails you.
[00:54:55]  Yeah.
[00:54:55]  Now, by 1982, Lafayette Run Hubbard's letters to David Mayo revealed a growing obsession with death.
[00:55:01]  The Commodore was 71 years old, in poor health, and as crazy as a bat on acid.
[00:55:06]  Hubbard was still canny enough to know that he had exactly one great achievement left in him.
[00:55:10]  O'Ron Hubbard was going to write the greatest science fiction series of all time.
[00:55:14]  The first entry in the new saga would be Battlefield Earth.
[00:55:18]  Hell yeah.
[00:55:18]  Saga of the year 3000.
[00:55:20]  Starting cut to him typing Firefly Pilot.
[00:55:25]  What?
[00:55:26]  What are you telling me?
[00:55:27]  That's why there's only one season.
[00:55:29]  Hubbard had not published a sci-fi story in more than 30 years at that point.
[00:55:33]  Battlefield Earth was a sprawling, 800-page epic.
[00:55:36]  He declared it the longest science fiction book ever written, which might actually have been true at the time.
[00:55:40]  I really have no idea.
[00:55:41]  Who cares?
[00:55:41]  What is that as a determiner?
[00:55:43]  That's most of it.
[00:55:44]  That is believable, though, because one thing L. Ron Hubbard can do is write incredibly long books and never edit them.
[00:55:50]  Not for a second.
[00:55:51]  This is his Finnegan's wake.
[00:55:53]  Yeah.
[00:55:54]  Yeah.
[00:55:55]  And as a sci-fi shortstory buff, just for the record, all of his short stories are mediocre.
[00:56:00]  Yeah.
[00:56:00]  Like he wasn't an amazing sci-fi shortstory.
[00:56:03]  He was an adequate short story.
[00:56:04]  Yeah, adequate.
[00:56:05]  He was at an age in which you'd buy a book that had 40 of them for a penny.
[00:56:09]  And that's what entertainment was.
[00:56:12]  He was like a mediocre Netflix series that you put, like, that's what his science fiction was.
[00:56:16]  Because those little magazines that would be full of stories were like Netflix.
[00:56:20]  Some of them you get some Arthur C. Clarks and it's like Bojack Horseman or whatever and it's brilliant.
[00:56:24]  And a lot of them are L. Ron Hubbard, which is like a cake topping show or whatever.
[00:56:28]  They were almost always like Flash Gordon.
[00:56:29]  Like he never had a grand sci-fi concept.
[00:56:31]  He put a cowboy in space and had him do cool shit.
[00:56:34]  Yeah.
[00:56:35]  Yeah.
[00:56:36]  This is heresy.
[00:56:37]  Yeah.
[00:56:39]  I've turned.
[00:56:40]  I looked out the window and I've gone clear.
[00:56:43]  Don't say that about L. Ron Hubby.
[00:56:45]  L. Ron.
[00:56:47]  So, the plot of Battlefield Earth was as dumb as it was shitty.
[00:56:50]  Johnny Goodboy Tyler, the protagonist, was one of the last human beings on Earth after an alien invasion destroyed civilization.
[00:56:57]  In the thousand years since, mankind regressed to a feral Stone Age level of development, while the evil aliens who now ruled the world mined it for its resources.
[00:57:04]  Hubbard's ego demanded that Battlefield Earth be an instant hit.
[00:57:07]  Thankfully, he had the resources of one of the world's wealthiest cults at his beck and call.
[00:57:11]  The Church of Scientology bought 50,000 copies of the book at launch and also poured millions into a PR campaign aimed at making it go viral.
[00:57:18]  Scientologists were ordered to buy two or three copies each at minimum.
[00:57:21]  Battlefield of Earth was just the prelude to Mission Earth, a 1.2 million word epic Hubbard intended to release in 10 parts.
[00:57:29]  Yeah, 1.2 million words.
[00:57:31]  And that has been written?
[00:57:32]  Oh, yeah.
[00:57:33]  Okay.
[00:57:34]  Or I was like, was he like pointing at the stands calling his shot?
[00:57:37]  Yeah.
[00:57:38]  The sequel, by the way, 1.2 million words.
[00:57:40]  He did that and then wrote it.
[00:57:42]  And then did it.
[00:57:43]  Yeah.
[00:57:44]  For some reference, I think Lord of the Rings trilogy at the top that has about 400,000 words total, something somewhere in that ballpark.
[00:57:50]  Three Lords of the Rings.
[00:57:51]  Three Lord of the Rings trilogy.
[00:57:51]  And you mean the entirety of the Lord of Rings?
[00:57:53]  So three Lord of the Rings trilogy.
[00:57:54]  Trilogies.
[00:57:55]  Yeah.
[00:57:55]  Yeah, we never think about how much goddamn time this guy spent in front of a typewriter.
[00:58:00]  That's one thing that is not all.
[00:58:02]  He did not write.
[00:58:03]  He wrote like fucking crazy.
[00:58:05]  At the end, it just says, screw Flanders over and over.
[00:58:10]  So, Hubbard actually wrote this monstrosity, or at least dictated it to someone else.
[00:58:15]  We don't really know.
[00:58:15]  But tragically, he did not live to see it released in its entirety.
[00:58:18]  On January 19th, 1986, L. Ron Hubbard sent out his last command, flag order number 3879, the Sea Org and its future.
[00:58:28]  In this order, the Commodore promoted himself to Admiral, published a glossy photo of himself in a new uniform, and, about five days later, died.
[00:58:37]  He did not die alone, but he was not surrounded by his friends or family either.
[00:58:40]  His doctor and lawyer were the only ones present.
[00:58:42]  Everything about his death was handled with the utmost secrecy, but the church could not stop the coroner from looking at the body.
[00:58:48]  The inquest found a bandage on his right butt sheet covering 10 fresh needle marks.
[00:58:52]  It also found traces of hydroxine in his blood.
[00:58:54]  The drug is most often prescribed as an anti-anxiety and anti-neurotic medication.
[00:58:59]  In other words, a psychiatric medication.
[00:59:02]  The church steadfastedly rejected the idea that L. Ron Hubbard had died with psychiatric medicine in his system.
[00:59:07]  They claimed that he took the medication as an antihistamine, which, sure guys.
[00:59:11]  Yeah.
[00:59:11]  Absolutely.
[00:59:12]  His butt gets famously congested.
[00:59:14]  His butt gets real congested.
[00:59:16]  L. Ron Hubbard was having antihistamine.
[00:59:18]  Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[00:59:19]  In a phone interview with the San Luis Obispo New Times, church spokesman Tommy Davis insisted he didn't take it as a psychiatric medication.
[00:59:25]  That's all.
[00:59:26]  It's one of those things that anti-Scientologists want to make an issue about.
[00:59:29]  And we're like, yeah, whatever.
[00:59:31]  And to emphasize the anger Tommy Davis expressed to the newspaper, I'm going to throw another one of these.
[00:59:38]  Yeah.
[00:59:38]  Oh, that one's good.
[00:59:40]  They were all going like he abused millions of people.
[00:59:42]  And we're like, as if.
[00:59:44]  Yeah.
[00:59:46]  Whatever.
[00:59:47]  Whatever.
[00:59:48]  The rank and file of Scientology were informed of their prophet's death three days later.
[00:59:53]  On January 27th, David Miscovich addressed 1,800 Scientologists at the Hollywood Palladium Theater.
[00:59:59]  He told them this.
[01:00:01]  At 2,000 hours, Friday, 24th, January, 1986, L. Ron Hubbard discarded the body he had used in this lifetime for 74 years, 10 months and 11 days.
[01:00:09]  The body he had used to facilitate his existence in this universe had ceased to be useful and, in fact, had become an impediment to the work he now must do outside its confines.
[01:00:17]  The being we knew was L. Ron Hubbard still exists.
[01:00:19]  Although you may feel grief, understand that he did not and does not now.
[01:00:23]  He simply moved on to his next step.
[01:00:25]  LRH, in fact, used this lifetime and body we knew to accomplish what no man has ever accomplished.
[01:00:30]  He unlocked the mysteries of life and gave us the tools so we could free ourselves and our fellow men.
[01:00:35]  Wow.
[01:00:36]  P.S.
[01:00:37]  He did some self-auditing and he found out he's even better than he thought he was.
[01:00:41]  So he's an admiral.
[01:00:42]  He's an admiral now.
[01:00:44]  I could not think of the hudsucker.

=== Hubbard Discards His Body (16:02) ===

[01:00:46]  Yeah.
[01:00:46]  Right.
[01:00:46]  You know the hudsucker proxy scene?
[01:00:48]  Sure, sure.
[01:00:49]  Yeah.
[01:00:49]  At 604, wearing hudsucker merged with the infinite.
[01:00:54]  That is a punch up.
[01:00:55]  He should have said merged with the inferno.
[01:00:57]  Well, he did leave us with a little bit of a eulogy to himself.
[01:01:02]  Because, of course, can't be finished with it.
[01:01:04]  Yeah, L. Ron Hubbard wasn't going to let someone else get the last word.
[01:01:07]  He wrote all the things.
[01:01:08]  There's no thing he couldn't have written that wasn't written.
[01:01:11]  And the elegy he chose was a song called Thank You for Listening from an album of Scientology songs titled The Road to Freedom.
[01:01:18]  Are we going to listen to it?
[01:01:19]  Yeah.
[01:01:20]  We are going to hear L. Ron Hubbard himself sing a motherfucking song.
[01:01:25]  Oh, dude.
[01:01:26]  He's going to tell me he can fuck and has a voice like an angel.
[01:01:29]  I hope this is a Bob, dude.
[01:01:31]  I hope this is a Bob.
[01:01:32]  All right, friends.
[01:01:34]  Without further ado, the voice of L. Ron Hubbard.
[01:01:41]  The boss!
[01:01:43]  Yeah!
[01:01:43]  Music's original, the boss!
[01:01:49]  Everybody!
[01:01:50]  Nice, Bridge!
[01:01:51]  For you to sin!
[01:01:52]  For you to sin!
[01:01:53]  Good to see you!
[01:01:54]  Oh, goddamn!
[01:01:57]  Yes!
[01:01:58]  Fuck yes!
[01:01:59]  Yes!
[01:02:00]  I'm right just for you.
[01:02:03]  When others hear this way, things they would argue for you.
[01:02:13]  It's the voice of like a dinosaur in a children's dress.
[01:02:17]  Sing what I believe.
[01:02:20]  I only give them facts.
[01:02:24]  If they believe quite otherwise, it still will have him back.
[01:02:33]  Yeah!
[01:02:35]  I love this song!
[01:02:37]  Yeah!
[01:02:38]  Except if you listen to the lyrics, they're bad shit in the sand.
[01:02:42]  Of course they are.
[01:02:43]  I'm going to toss a Kleenex box.
[01:02:45]  Yeah!
[01:02:46]  Hit the roof!
[01:02:47]  There are also no real instruments on this song.
[01:02:50]  That's my God of Wayne.
[01:02:52]  Yeah.
[01:02:52]  Karaoke pants.
[01:02:54]  Imagine all listening to this at a funeral.
[01:03:00]  But truth is truth, and if they then decide to live with lies.
[01:03:07]  That's their concern, not mine, my friend.
[01:03:12]  They're free to pantise.
[01:03:17]  Loves them, low-line.
[01:03:22]  It sounds like if the full house theme were about how you all should have believed me, you're all gonna suffer now.
[01:03:29]  This is good.
[01:03:30]  These are the notes to the full house.
[01:03:37]  A lot of musical interludes in between the vocals.
[01:03:40]  He's break dancing during this part.
[01:03:43]  He's got two guitars on him and he's doing a solo right now.
[01:03:46]  He's surprisingly good at break dancing and fucking.
[01:03:52]  Really, way too much instrumentals.
[01:03:54]  So much.
[01:03:56]  Okay.
[01:03:58]  Now, so that we can't get in trouble with copyright concerns, let's discuss linguistically, lyrically, musically, because you're both musicians, right?
[01:04:07]  Yes.
[01:04:07]  Yeah.
[01:04:07]  You're a rapper.
[01:04:09]  Oh, that's true.
[01:04:09]  Yeah, you're a rappist and you're part of Cody's band, right?
[01:04:12]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:04:12]  I consider it Cody's band, but I don't know that it is.
[01:04:16]  It's more like guys just showing up and which makes you as qualified as L. Ron Hubbard to talk about music.
[01:04:24]  Exactly.
[01:04:25]  But let's analyze this.
[01:04:28]  I was kicked out of that band.
[01:04:32]  No further comment.
[01:04:33]  That scans.
[01:04:33]  That's true.
[01:04:34]  That scans.
[01:04:34]  Yeah, so Cody's band.
[01:04:37]  He is a Prima Donna.
[01:04:38]  And we'll be listening to this episode.
[01:04:40]  And I want him to record my version of this song once I get a cult going.
[01:04:45]  Well, I was in charge of this.
[01:04:46]  Let's cover the song.
[01:04:48]  Let's cover this.
[01:04:49]  Let's cover this song.
[01:04:51]  I was in charge of cleaning the rehearsal rooms and the guys with the white gloves were not pleased.
[01:04:55]  They kicked me out of there.
[01:04:56]  So, Michael, your thoughts on thank you for listening and on L. Ron Hubbard's voice.
[01:05:01]  Let's start with your thoughts on his voice.
[01:05:04]  Abe already stole the best.
[01:05:06]  Like Abe gave me the image that stuck in my mind, which, yeah, it's like Barney the dinosaur singing to kids, but instead of teaching them how to wash their hands, he's saying, you're all living in a deluded fantasy world, children.
[01:05:20]  Soon you will get sick from this.
[01:05:21]  Do you understand?
[01:05:23]  But listen to my sweet candy.
[01:05:28]  The free two fantasy.
[01:05:32]  It also sounds like the guy in a barbershop quartet who's only there to hit the low note at the end and go, oh, baby.
[01:05:38]  And they're like, the three other guys didn't show up.
[01:05:40]  You got to sing the middle and high part.
[01:05:43]  Oh, do my best.
[01:05:45]  There's not a shot of that guy who hits that low note and everyone goes, oh, yeah, that low note part of the song.
[01:05:52]  God.
[01:05:52]  Abe, your thoughts.
[01:05:54]  Yeah, mine went immediately to the instrumentation because it's just, it's shouting something immediately.
[01:06:00]  Like from the get-go, it's the horns, like you were saying, Michael, they're like clearly fake horns.
[01:06:07]  Like someone got like my brother's Casio and is doing like French horn on it.
[01:06:13]  I bet they somehow fucked that up though.
[01:06:14]  I bet they actually recorded because he had money, right?
[01:06:17]  He had so much money.
[01:06:19]  So I've never heard a recording that probably was recorded on actual instruments.
[01:06:23]  And because they're so bad at recording, like they're bad at filmmaking, they're very similar.
[01:06:29]  It sounds like a MIDI version.
[01:06:31]  You know how I like MIDI's, Michael.
[01:06:33]  MIDI's are my favorite.
[01:06:34]  The Boys Are Mac in Town is your favorite drug.
[01:06:36]  It's better than the original.
[01:06:38]  The MIDI versions.
[01:06:40]  But I wish, or maybe it was.
[01:06:42]  I mean, if this was studio musicians he hired, what a great thing to be on a fly on the wall for.
[01:06:48]  He clearly could have afforded it.
[01:06:50]  I feel like he didn't just because he was so scared that everyone was trying to murder him or secretly the FBI, which is why he didn't just like hire a real production company to make this movie.
[01:06:58]  It had to all be done in-house by Scientologist.
[01:07:01]  NAR-15 can fit in a guitar case.
[01:07:03]  Yeah, he's like, no musicians, no.
[01:07:04]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:07:07]  There's so many moments in this journey that we've been taking where it's just I want to know what that guy who was just told, all right, so you have to learn how microphones work.
[01:07:18]  He's like, ah, my last job was I worked at McDonald's.
[01:07:23]  In a lot of cases, I was a heart surgeon.
[01:07:24]  Like, this is just not at all my area.
[01:07:27]  Right.
[01:07:27]  I have no clue how to do this.
[01:07:29]  Well, it's going to have to be perfect or what?
[01:07:31]  He'll beat you.
[01:07:33]  You'll wind up in the torture prison we have.
[01:07:35]  I also.
[01:07:36]  Well, I guess I signed up and gave money for this.
[01:07:40]  I do feel like killing myself after listening to it.
[01:07:43]  That must mean it's the best song.
[01:07:45]  It must mean a song version of Excalibur.
[01:07:49]  It's so weird to me that a guy who could manipulate the emotions of millions of people and strike at something core in us, which is just, you know, like the hook to Scientology is, yeah, your life is a mess.
[01:08:01]  And they offer enough that seems believable at the base level that it hooks millions of people in.
[01:08:07]  And yet he doesn't understand tone at all.
[01:08:11]  Like, it's the bizarre.
[01:08:13]  The lyrics are ominous.
[01:08:16]  And the music is like Scientology is the soda that will finally refresh you, unlike all other sodas.
[01:08:23]  He doesn't like get how to manipulate people's emotions, and yet he does.
[01:08:28]  And yet he does.
[01:08:29]  Obviously, he gets it.
[01:08:31]  I did want to point out that he was only like pitchy.
[01:08:33]  He was pitchy a lot less than I expected.
[01:08:35]  Yeah.
[01:08:35]  He was pitchy maybe one or two once or twice.
[01:08:38]  He like flubbed a note, but I mean, he's got mediocre pipes.
[01:08:43]  Yeah.
[01:08:44]  I'm saying thoroughly mediocre pipes.
[01:08:46]  The main thing that made it sound bad, I thought, was that he cut everywhere.
[01:08:51]  It sounds like the melody lines like falling down the stairs.
[01:08:55]  I know exactly what that is.
[01:08:57]  It's called a noise gate, and they probably had it set to the bottom.
[01:09:00]  Too high, too high, because they don't know what's going on.
[01:09:03]  So they just, anytime the microphone is like, oh, there's no signal, it just there's no tail.
[01:09:08]  It's a bunch of lawyers and spies trying to work audio equipment.
[01:09:12]  Also, if the noise gate was off on this track between every line, you'd hear him go, ah, when he like breathes in as a 71-year-old cryptkeeper.
[01:09:23]  Cast me on one last breath of air because any moment is the final one.
[01:09:29]  Call me the Commodore.
[01:09:33]  Well, I think that's our legally mandated commentary over that song.
[01:09:36]  Fair use.
[01:09:37]  Write your satires.
[01:09:38]  And you know what I have to say about fair use?
[01:09:40]  Yeah.
[01:09:41]  I'm going to chuck my last Kleenex box.
[01:09:44]  That's number 10, baby.
[01:09:46]  The floor is covered in throw-in bagels and throw-in boxes of Kleenex, a couple of torn-up pieces of earlier scripts that I read earlier.
[01:09:54]  What fun.
[01:09:54]  I dropped the top of my water bottle on the ground.
[01:09:57]  I wanted to help out.
[01:09:58]  Thank you.
[01:09:59]  We always leave it a mess because I'm a problem, like L. Ron Hubbard.
[01:10:04]  And once this show takes off enough, I will absolutely buy a compound in Southern California and force people to make movies.
[01:10:11]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:10:12]  You'll be your lead movie maker.
[01:10:13]  No, You'll be piloting boats.
[01:10:18]  The Navy guys I bring into the cult, they'll be making the movies.
[01:10:22]  I assume you started this show to have a big track record, educate everyone on people way worse than stuff you plan to do later, so they know it's not so bad.
[01:10:31]  Or I might try to take it to the nth level.
[01:10:33]  No way to know.
[01:10:34]  I didn't finish Wild Wild Country, but I'm I'm on board with creating a cult city in the middle of nowhere.
[01:10:39]  I really want to see what your battlefield earth is.
[01:10:42]  Oh yeah, I want to know what you think happened right at the beginning of the universe and how it relates to you.
[01:10:47]  I'm a psychiatrist.
[01:10:50]  I wish we could get cults to just assemble, make a movie based on their beliefs and then disassemble.
[01:10:55]  Yeah, I want to see all of them.
[01:10:57]  I wish all movies were made by cults.
[01:10:59]  In a way they are.
[01:11:00]  In a way it is propaganda all of it.
[01:11:03]  Yeah, Would have said it's true.
[01:11:06]  Yeah.
[01:11:07]  Including this.
[01:11:09]  Well, yeah, I mean, this is absolutely propaganda aimed at getting me a compound somewhere in the Northwest and a religion.
[01:11:15]  Get indoctrinated people with just a giant glowing Dorito on a spindle that turns out.
[01:11:22]  Filming everyone at all times.
[01:11:24]  And turrets of bagels.
[01:11:27]  Dry bagels.
[01:11:28]  Oh, that's your cult would be nice because if you fuck up the set or Robert changes his mind, he wanted it blue, now he wants it green, he just throws a bagel at your head.
[01:11:38]  Like, it could be worse.
[01:11:40]  I will throw bagels a lot.
[01:11:42]  Also, if you're hungry, just eat the compound because it's made of bagels and chips.
[01:11:46]  Big real rat problem.
[01:11:48]  Yeah, we can.
[01:11:48]  Oh, yeah.
[01:11:49]  You got your five-rat quota already within three seconds.
[01:11:53]  They're huge.
[01:11:54]  They eat so many carbs.
[01:11:59]  These bagel-fed rats are becoming too strong, Robert.
[01:12:03]  They're threatening to overtake the compound.
[01:12:05]  Somebody's been feeding them whey protein, so they've been working out as well.
[01:12:10]  So they're like swollen, nervous rats in your car.
[01:12:14]  Well, we found a dead rat with a bunch of puncture needles in its butt.
[01:12:18]  We think it's the rat you.
[01:12:20]  We think they have a cult sound.
[01:12:22]  Also, the rat has a t-shirt that says the Joe Rogan podcast.
[01:12:27]  We're fucked.
[01:12:28]  We're so fucked.
[01:12:30]  Oh, God.
[01:12:31]  Oh, God.
[01:12:32]  Okay.
[01:12:33]  Plugs.
[01:12:34]  Pluggables.
[01:12:35]  Yeah.
[01:12:35]  Yeah.
[01:12:37]  Both he and I, Michael Swave and Abe Epperson, we have a little thing called Small Beans, which you can see on Patreon.
[01:12:45]  We do videos and podcasts for ourselves.
[01:12:48]  And there's a bunch of other great podcasts on that network.
[01:12:51]  You can access it by going to patreon.com/slash smallbeans.
[01:12:58]  And yeah, we're doing another show.
[01:13:00]  I don't know.
[01:13:00]  We said this last episode.
[01:13:02]  I can't even remember.
[01:13:03]  Oh, yeah.
[01:13:03]  It's the double down in case you only wanted to hear about the last part of the last part of L. Ron Hubbard's life.
[01:13:10]  Yeah, we're launching a new show called Off Hours that is going to be basically the whole production team are people who used to work at a site called Cracked.
[01:13:18]  No, what was that?
[01:13:21]  Was that for me?
[01:13:22]  It was a napkin fulfillment site.
[01:13:24]  You know, they like would refill all the paper towels and soap dispensers.
[01:13:29]  But they also ran a web series.
[01:13:32]  And similarly, a lot of people who worked on that show are now working on our new show called Off Hours, which will involve four friends sitting around talking about pop culture.
[01:13:40]  Well, that's legally distinct.
[01:13:42]  Legally distinct and a good antidote for behind the bastards.
[01:13:46]  Yeah, it gets you down.
[01:13:47]  Come listen to some mindless bullshit that we won't find out for 20 years was actually evil.
[01:13:52]  Yeah.
[01:13:53]  Movie yoga.
[01:13:54]  Your cult gets going.
[01:13:55]  Exactly.
[01:13:55]  Let's get that cultural dipstip.
[01:13:57]  Well, everybody build a cult.
[01:14:00]  All right.
[01:14:00]  We for sure are.
[01:14:02]  We for sure are.
[01:14:03]  Shut us up.
[01:14:03]  Yeah.
[01:14:04]  We're like, everybody build a cult.
[01:14:05]  Okay, I'm leaving.
[01:14:07]  Well, this has been Behind the Bastards.
[01:14:09]  I've been Robert Evans.
[01:14:10]  My Twitter, Instagram, at BastardsPod, website, findthebastards.com.
[01:14:15]  T-shirts, TeePublic.
[01:14:16]  I have another podcast.
[01:14:17]  It could happen here.
[01:14:18]  It's sad.
[01:14:21]  Goodbye.
[01:14:33]  When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
[01:14:41]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[01:14:44]  He is not going to get away with this.
[01:14:46]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[01:14:48]  We always say that.
[01:14:49]  Trust your girlfriends.
[01:14:52]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[01:14:54]  Trust me, babe.
[01:14:55]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:15:05]  I'm Laurie Siegel, and this is Mostly Human, a tech podcast through a human lens.
[01:15:09]  This week, an interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
[01:15:13]  I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to the products we put out in the world.
[01:15:20]  An in-depth conversation with a man who's shaping our future.
[01:15:23]  My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.
[01:15:26]  Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
[01:15:35]  Hey, it's Nora Jones, and my podcast, Playing Along, is back with more of my favorite musicians.
[01:15:40]  Check out my newest episode with Josh Grobin.
[01:15:43]  You related to the Phantom at that point.
[01:15:46]  Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
[01:15:48]  That's so funny.
[01:15:50]  Sherry stay with me each night, each morning.
[01:15:58]  Listen to Nora Jones's Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:16:06]  What's up, everyone?
[01:16:06]  I'm Ago Mode.
[01:16:08]  My next guest, it's Will Farrell.
[01:16:12]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[01:16:15]  He goes, just give it a shot.
[01:16:16]  But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[01:16:23]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[01:16:26]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hanging in there.
[01:16:33]  Yeah, it would not be.
[01:16:35]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[01:16:36]  There's a lot in life.
[01:16:37]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:16:44]  This is an iHeart podcast.
[01:16:47]  Guaranteed human.