MARCUS PARKS
But the thing is is that the Scream soundtrack, the original Scream soundtrack had fucking Nick Cave on it. It was great!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I remember those, man. Soundtracks used to be different.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. We did a whole No Dogs episode on it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what you really should do for me one day? You should do something about The Crow soundtrack.
MARCUS PARKS
That was in it, that was part of it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The Crow soundtrack is still one of my favorite albums of all time.
MARCUS PARKS
Me too. It's not an album, it's a compilation.
BEN KISSEL
Fucking idiot.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fucking...
BEN KISSEL
Hey, fucking moron.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I hope Scientology crushes you. I hope they crush you. I hope they tear apart your personal life, I hope they tear apart your business life.
BEN KISSEL
No!
MARCUS PARKS
It's fine, they could. It's still just not gonna make The Crow soundtrack an album.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm enturbulated. Do I have my pan flute music? Do we have my pan flute music? Cause I'm already enturbulated.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I understand, buddy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It crossed my mind, it blew my mind the other night, right.
MARCUS PARKS
What?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I was sitting, thinking.
BEN KISSEL
Sitting there thinking. That's executive time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Executive time. And I realized what if fucking a fish, getting hard enough to have sex with a fish, that's OT 9.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. Wouldn't that be something? Great day to be a fish.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know. You have to get your whole abdomen torn open by a miniscule fantastic actor.
BEN KISSEL
Well there you go.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause it's very difficult. And then you're fucking its spine, you got your spine at the bottom of your...
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a whole rigamarole.
BEN KISSEL
When you put it like that.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, the tiny little ribs, the fish ribs.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
That's not gonna feel good. They're not gonna tickle, they're gonna cut.
BEN KISSEL
It wouldn't feel good for anybody I don't think.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again that's why you must be clear.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You gotta do it. You gotta be in ethics if you want to have sex with a fish.
BEN KISSEL
Welcome to the Last Podcast on the Left everyone. Ben hanging out with Henry and Marcus. None of us have had sex with a fish. We're not good scientologists.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, unfortunately.
BEN KISSEL
No!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just bad at it.
BEN KISSEL
All right everyone, it's time for Part 3 of our tale of David Miscavige.
MARCUS PARKS
Now we've made a lot of hay out of David Miscavige's tiny, hard body over the last couple of weeks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He looks like if a Chucky doll was in a tanning bed.
BEN KISSEL
We have. And there is controversy with these episodes. The main controversy, people have been sneaking into my DMs, is Henry's impression of David Miscavige attacking-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Attacking.
BEN KISSEL
Is it a flying crossbody or is it a clothesline?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We talked about this last night.
BEN KISSEL
I believe we had two different varying words when we discussed it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a flying crossbody.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because it's full torso attack. It's ah! Because he wants to make sure that he hits you with his belly button.
BEN KISSEL
Gotchu. Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But not in a sexual way because he has no sexual feelings.
BEN KISSEL
Perfect, clears it all up.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, no crossbody. It's not a Goldberg, it's not like a big shoulder tackle.
BEN KISSEL
Nope.
MARCUS PARKS
It is crossbody.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's crossbody.
BEN KISSEL
It's a crossbody.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is attacking someone literally with your pubic bone.
BEN KISSEL
Perfect.
MARCUS PARKS
Perhaps all of this attention on David Miscavige's tiny, hard body is what's partly drawn the attention of a Scientology Twitter front called Hate Monitor, which in a series of tweets over the last couple of weeks have managed to make the three of us look both evil and super fucking radical.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's the coolest we've ever looked!
BEN KISSEL
They're using the images of when we did Red Rocks when we actually looked like people would have sex with us.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it was incredible.
BEN KISSEL
So cool.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And now we're getting calls.
MARCUS PARKS
Now we're getting phone calls.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're getting a lot of phone calls from the Church of Scientology.
MARCUS PARKS
Actual phone calls, we know for a fact that they are from the Church of Scientology.
BEN KISSEL
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
The actual caller ID is the Church of Scientology.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. It's funny, they just put it on the ID.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I guess they have to for legal reasons.
BEN KISSEL
Maybe.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We'll talk more and more. Because they are a church still technically according to the eyes of the most sacred body in the United States of America, the IRS.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And also yeah, so they're coming at us pretty hard.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I find it interesting because we talked massive shit about Mormonism. Like 10 hours, like 15 hours.
MARCUS PARKS
For so long, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
13 hours, right? We never got a single call from Mormonism.
BEN KISSEL
Nothing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know why? From Mormons, you know why? It's because they're confident.
BEN KISSEL
Confident.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you know what I think? You know what I might blame a little bit on Scientology and why Mormonism are chill, it's a lack of caffeine.
BEN KISSEL
Could be!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're not all up in it. But also the Mormons I think are confident in what they give to their parishioners.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That the arrangement of you believing in our weirdo beliefs is that we're trying to create this quote unquote "loving environment" for you.
BEN KISSEL
Could be.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they put a lot of effort into that loving environment front, which we're seeing that Scientology doesn't really do. And it leaves a bitter taste in the mouths of their parishioners.
BEN KISSEL
It does. Absolutely. You gotta show a little love.
MARCUS PARKS
Just a tiny little bit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just a little bit. Honestly, hug a scientologist.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Seriously bro, be nice to one because we're trying to get them out of there.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But the thing about David Miscavige's hard, little body is that it takes a lot of work to stay little and hard.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. It is! Look at me!
BEN KISSEL
Does it?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm little and soft and it takes next to no work.
BEN KISSEL
Okay. That's true.
MARCUS PARKS
But his physical form is only the base level of what makes David Miscavige tick.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
See running America's second most successful cult into the ground through a long pattern of assault, kidnapping, human trafficking, and possibly murder, that requires a lot of what you called executive time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Executive time.
BEN KISSEL
Executive time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's not nothing. It's idea formation.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're sitting and hanging out. Because remember, this is David Miscavige at the height of his powers.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
After last episode, we see he has fully consolidated all the leadership under him and now we're watching him take the Church of Scientology out for a ride like it's some kind of demolition derby car.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And even at the height of his powers, still only 5'3". And that is why when Scientology called me-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's at the short of his powers.
BEN KISSEL
There we go. And that's why when Scientology called me yesterday, yes I did answer, and I actually want to tell both of you SPs that I am now in charge.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh they got him! I knew he was a PSYOP!
BEN KISSEL
I'm in charge. 6'7", softer version.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I knew! Pan flutes. Can I have my pan flutes, please?
BEN KISSEL
Please.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can I please?
BEN KISSEL
I am now in charge of Scientology. New rules. Number one, smile more. That's number one.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly that's not bad. Sometimes you have to be happy on the outside first.
BEN KISSEL
Higher carbs. And number three, that fish, we're gonna deep fry it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You just want to do a fish fry. But honestly- (relaxing music plays)
BEN KISSEL
I'm bringing the Catholic fish fry to Scientology.
MARCUS PARKS
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Doing an international fish fry actually will do a lot more than the Church of Scientology.
BEN KISSEL
Wow, I can see your blood pressure going from 170/120 to 169/119.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See 169 is a funny number.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah it is.
MARCUS PARKS
But as we'll see, assault, kidnapping, and human trafficking are all not only essential to Miscavige's executive time but somewhat the point. Because David Miscavige's version of Scientology doesn't really work without assault, kidnapping, and human trafficking.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because he has to keep you afraid to make you stay in.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. That's a problem.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because they don't have any benefits.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But the thing about executive perks is that they can't just be paid for on spec because Scientology owns a lot of real estate. That requires liquid assets if you want to keep everything flowing, if you want to keep the bills paid, you want to keep the lights on. And if your cult doesn't have the membership that it once did, if it ever had much of a membership at all, then where do you get your cash?
BEN KISSEL
Also if you search porn Hub for liquid assets, it ain't about finances, my friend.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're talking about squirting.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're talking about squirting.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
David Miscavige, he got it the old fashioned way. He's selling cookies, like how one makes money. Like I know how people make money. Widgets!
BEN KISSEL
I would never trust a man with a six pack to sell me cookies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But also remember when they do get their cash, they have to spend it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because as a church, they're not supposed to hold onto it. So we're just gonna have to spend all this money.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the answer where they get that money from is gullible, emotionally vulnerable, incredibly rich celebrities.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Who will think of them?
BEN KISSEL
I know.
MARCUS PARKS
To put it into perspective, the 10 richest scientologists are worth conservatively, this is on the low end, about $9 billion.
BEN KISSEL
Woo!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's a lot.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
Billion with a B. But it also must be said that not all of those richest scientologists are celebrities.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well as we noticed, most billionaires, really good billionaires don't want you to know their names because they're moving around in the background making a bunch of decisions and they don't want you to know that they can then tank their own company by being an asshole in public.
BEN KISSEL
Are we gonna talk about the shadow government?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yes!
MARCUS PARKS
But even though Scientology's richest members do indeed have a lot of money, not all of their money goes to Scientology of course.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
So how does one shore up the rest of the cost? And how does one spend all that money but make sure that none of that money makes it to the people at the bottom?
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
How does David Miscavige give the illusion of wealth and power while still keeping a stranglehold on all of the people still in? Well the answer is simple, sir. Slave labor.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's all you need!
BEN KISSEL
Whoa!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All you need is about, at this point, a couple of straggling 1000 people that you've made so tired and hungry and scared that they'll just do whatever it is you tell them to do.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Yes. Look at that! Perfect.
MARCUS PARKS
And so today's conclusion will be all about David Miscavige's decadence, the torture he has employed in the past to satisfy his own twisted urges as well as keep people in the church, and we're also going to cover the celebrities that Miscavige's regime has kept close to the vest for all these years. This of course includes a certain celebrity who had David Miscavige serve as the best man at his last failed wedding, number three by this reporter's count.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ooh, who's dishing now?
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
So who could this celebrity who is considered by some to be Scientology's top gun possibly be?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know, Marcus! Who's it gonna be?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Please do tell.
MARCUS PARKS
Well what we do know about this top gun-
BEN KISSEL
I know now.
MARCUS PARKS
Is that he's come in and out of Scientology a few times over the years. But when he returned for the final time in the early 2000's, his physique inspired David Miscavige to quote unquote "get ripped".
BEN KISSEL
Oh man!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
David Miscavige, I get ripped! That's what I do. Don't even bring a piece of paper around me! He loves the term ripped. He likes to get ripped.
BEN KISSEL
He's ripped.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He is! He's solid as a pebble.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. And that's why he runs such a risky business.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
Pretty good, that's a good pun. That's a good pun, you're getting into it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wonder who we're talking about.
MARCUS PARKS
We can't see him! Where are they?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Miscavige has always been a muscular little boy, a pebble as you said, I absolutely fucking love that term.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But when a certain top gun returned with Mission Impossible II muscles, Miscavige started talking about getting ripped almost constantly.
BEN KISSEL
Great. I love when guys talk about that constantly.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. It shows that they're very secure.
BEN KISSEL
And ripped.
MARCUS PARKS
And here's where we're gonna get into the decadence of David Miscavige. We're gonna put a pause on the top gun. You're gonna have to wait to see who that top gun is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So as we are piecing these series together, I also want to make sure our audience knows that we're pulling as much information from about six or seven different sources.
MARCUS PARKS
Many different sources.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There are constant different like scientologist blogs on the internet, former scientologist blogs. Also we're trying to compile the life of David Miscavige which is actually very difficult to do.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because he is a very private and intense man and the people he keeps really close to him, he either betrays or are also so in on it that no one really wants to talk about his inner life. So what we're doing here is really kind of pulling together what it is that we know that he's done. Because we talked about the consolidation of power but the fact that now that he's completely fucking in charge and he has this bunch of money and he's not working on tech.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What does he do with all that shit?
BEN KISSEL
Getting ripped.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the people that were bringing it from, I mean Mike Rine-der, excuse me, Mike Rin-der.
BEN KISSEL
Rinder!
MARCUS PARKS
Like spinder, not like grinder.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep. I know you love your grinder.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yes, and a hoagie.
MARCUS PARKS
It's such a fun word to say.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is.
BEN KISSEL
Grinder.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Grinder.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, it's a fun thing to do too.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ooh yeah. You doing it?
BEN KISSEL
I've been on the dating apps a little bit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I was on Big & Tender. Yeah, that was good. Yeah. Then I realized I was just ordering food.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I love Big & Tender!
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. I'm gonna find me a dog one of these days.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Mike Rinder, he is the one who actually has given us the most information or has given the world the most information about David Miscavige's life or at least until Mike Rinder left Scientology in like the mid to late 2000s.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
2007. What we're basically trying to do is coordinate, like triangulate a bunch of different resources to get whatever we can.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I've just recently been reading Marc Headley's 'Blown For Good' which is great, I do love the title of it, it is very funny. But Marc Headley is another, was a young dude, he has another perspective. It's more just understanding that when you have so many people all saying the same exact very similar stories about a man, that is probably the truth.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well in order to get ripped, Miscavige escalated his already decadent lifestyle habits that had by the early to mid 2000s reached their peak, just as Scientology was also reaching the height of its power and visibility before it began to crumble.
BEN KISSEL
Are we talking Kim Dotcom here or are we talking Papa Johns?
MARCUS PARKS
Kim Dotcom?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What's Kim Dotcom?
BEN KISSEL
You guys don't know Kim Dotcom?
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
BEN KISSEL
He was an internet mogul. He ended up getting arrested and I believe he's currently incarcerated.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic documentary on him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Really?
BEN KISSEL
Well let's just move on.
MARCUS PARKS
Are you talking about the power of the Papa? Are we talking about Papa at the height of-
BEN KISSEL
No, do you remember when Papa Johns gave us a tour of his home?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yes, sure. Yeah, yes.
BEN KISSEL
Are we talking like that?
MARCUS PARKS
Far beyond that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Far, far beyond.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Actually Papa Johns I think is a fucking billionaire now.
BEN KISSEL
Papa Johns is rich.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think his reckoning was way more talking about the back end.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I don't know. I mean it could be. But on the other hand, Papa John all also does not have an army of near slaves.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You don't know what I have.
BEN KISSEL
That's true.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You don't know what I have. A day of reckoning is coming. I have 1000 pizzateers. They're coming to your studio. 1000 pizzateers going through your garbage.
MARCUS PARKS
David Miscavige, we're talking food here, he had employed two personal chefs for years. But when he wanted to get ripped, he had them enter everything he ate into a huge spreadsheet to ensure that every meal was 40% protein exactly and no more than 400 calories.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh god. And all that shit's an exact science.
BEN KISSEL
What a nightmare.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What?
BEN KISSEL
What a nightmare.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, of course.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. He'd be fed four meals a day. And by the way, David Miscavige, despite his ongoing asthma chainsmokes like a mother. You wouldn't believe how much he smokes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You can tell by his voice though. He's got that (raspy voice) Hey everybody, we're building a gate to the future.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Even my current impersonation of him is far friendlier.
MARCUS PARKS
(raspy voice) Whatever you heard about us, if you haven't heard it from us, you gotta hear it from us.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hear it from me! We're doing really well!
BEN KISSEL
I mean honestly smoking makes for a great radio voice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It does.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Actually my radio voice got much better after I quit smoking.
BEN KISSEL
That's what you say.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I believe it. Because it depends on the radio voice.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah because mine used to be so thick with mucus and it's not quite so thick with mucus anymore.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Not anymore.
BEN KISSEL
Right. Not anymore. But I love talking about it.
MARCUS PARKS
Well he'd eat four meals a day, he'd constantly smoked cigarettes, but dinner was a five course meal that was made specifically for his and his wife's blood type. Reportedly Miscavige's favorites were mushroom risotto, clam linguini, and of course the cruelest of meals, foie gras.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, it is. It is sad. And even I struggle with... Foie gras is delicious, but I think it's-
BEN KISSEL
That must be so hard for you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's the pain in it that is what's delicious. It's the screaming of it. I can see him like having a little piece of foie gras which is like half the size of his head.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause he's all head.
MARCUS PARKS
He is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's a very David Miscavige meal.
MARCUS PARKS
Very much so.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I could see it.
MARCUS PARKS
Seafood would also be trucked in from Santa Monica to Gold Base several times a week and corn-fed lamb would be flown in from New Zealand.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They must have been terrified attached to those planes.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, lucky lamb.
MARCUS PARKS
David's missing wife Shelly would also make these extravagant delivery demands. Of course this is before Shelly Miscavige went missing.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Shelly was I would say from what I can tell, I may be wrong here, correct me if I'm wrong, but Shelly Miscavige also sounds like a monster.
BEN KISSEL
Complicated woman. Truly, complicated woman.
MARCUS PARKS
I know she's missing, I know it's all that, but it does seem like from what I've read that she joined in in the torture quite a bit.
BEN KISSEL
It makes sense.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Some Place Under Neith makes a really good argument which is interesting because it's a part of the actual legal argument that David Miscavige is going through right now of if you're raised in a religion, if you know nothing but this religion from very, very early age and it forms your entire personality, what is consent to activities that you have been kind of fully indoctrinated into believing that this is what you're supposed to do? Shelly Miscavige knows as the number two to the number one of Scientology and the history of quote unquote "number twos" and what happens to them within Scientology was probably acting in a way to yeah, probably maybe it gets inside of you, but you're also trying to go along to get along. You're trying to not make bumps and you're trying to be the bride of David Miscavige.
MARCUS PARKS
Sure.
BEN KISSEL
You don't wanna get flushed down the toilet.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause people did view her as she was scary but then other echelons of her, the higher ups were like Shelly was again the term complicated comes up a lot because she was born, raised, and now you're in the center of the hurricane.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know how you'd act. But then now whatever it is-
BEN KISSEL
I'd go missing for like 16 years.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what she got done to her.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But so I think that it's the pain rolling downhill.
MARCUS PARKS
Sure. Sure, sure. Okay. I see. Well that's the thing is that her and David together, their meals, they would cost anywhere between $3000-$20,000 per week.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jesus fucking Christ.
BEN KISSEL
Oh wow. That's a lot.
MARCUS PARKS
More would be spent of course if a certain top gun was in attendance at dinner.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa! I'm certain they didn't have goose.
MARCUS PARKS
No foie gras for him.
BEN KISSEL
No, none at all.
MARCUS PARKS
They'd fly in ingredients from all over the world when top gun showed up because they wanted to make it extravagant, they wanted to make him feel special. They have to show their biggest guy, hey, look at what we can accomplish. Look at what we can pull off.
BEN KISSEL
Seafood. Holy hell.
MARCUS PARKS
We can get seafood, wow. Near the ocean. Holy shit.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly no, if it's going out to Gold Base, it's in the middle of the desert, it's taking a three hour trip from Santa Monica.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So it's like they are flying it in, they are doing the thing.
MARCUS PARKS
They're shipping it in. But three hours isn't bad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's extremely, it's very extravagant.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Sand trout. Can you imagine if there was fish in the desert?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's cows.
MARCUS PARKS
But once Miscavige was done with his fourth meal of the day, he'd retired to his private screening room where he'd watched his favorite movies. He loves Scarface of course because he's an asshole.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And he loved The Godfather.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We all do.
MARCUS PARKS
Everyone loves The Godfather.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
He was also known to sip on surprisingly moderately priced scotch. He liked Macallan which is-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's good.
MARCUS PARKS
It's good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because it's good.
MARCUS PARKS
It's moderately priced though.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, to me honestly then you're fighting over how much are we paying for the scotch.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, how much do we have to pay for it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All the scotch at some level tastes kind of the same.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now I'm drunk and I'm scotch drunk which means I'm making world decisions in my head.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know, I'm looking out and being like one day all this land will be mind.
MARCUS PARKS
Scotch is an ambitious drunk.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well it's a cruel, it gets inside of you, you become president for a night alone in a room.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, absolutely. But Macallan, it's still top shelf.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah, it's good stuff. Just considering his extravagant habits, i would expect him to drink something much more expensive.
BEN KISSEL
Glenlivet?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the same.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Johnnie Walker Blue every night perhaps.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ugh.
BEN KISSEL
I'm not a blue guy.
MARCUS PARKS
It's very expensive.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I tried to shoot it one time in celebration and almost threw up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that's not what you're supposed to do.
BEN KISSEL
No, you're supposed to sip it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It's real smoky.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's real smoky.
BEN KISSEL
Ugh.
MARCUS PARKS
But that's the reason why I kind of bring it up is that his stereo system is incredible. He'd sit there and listen on $150,000 stereo system just listening to Michael Jackson all day, all night.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're innocent, Michael! You're innocent, Michael! Every time he's just listening to it again, just loving it. Moonwalking alone in his sad empty giant mansion.
BEN KISSEL
So he listened while drunk on Macallan to Man In The Mirror while watching Scarface unironically.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. All this unironically.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It informs you.
BEN KISSEL
Sad.
MARCUS PARKS
Now as far as Miscavige's dapper look goes, his clothes were all tailored by the same guy who does Will Smith's and a certain top gun's wardrobe. And those clothes were kept for David's perusal in a room that was only for David's tiny suits. You could fit a lot of suits in that room.
BEN KISSEL
More suits.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is one of those things, I'm starting to get jealous because I'd love my own tiny suit room.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because that's fun to do. You go and you're like these are my suits. Just so excited, being like and there's one suit, there's my little one, there's my gray one, there's my brown one. And it's like I'd just try them on all the time. It would be cute.
BEN KISSEL
Isn't he always in the same color suit?
MARCUS PARKS
Basically.
BEN KISSEL
It's a dark blue suit. That's all he wears.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think there's different shades. I saw one that was more like a skyscraper cobalt.
BEN KISSEL
Oh okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I saw another one that was like a goose gander gray.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, there's a lot in there. There's variations.
BEN KISSEL
Multiple suits.
MARCUS PARKS
He also had two full time stewards who did his laundry and cleaning constantly to the point where even the light bulbs were polished once a month.
BEN KISSEL
You're gonna want clean light bulbs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Marc Headley talks about a story, it's inanity to prove... It's inanity for its own inanity, right.
BEN KISSEL
What's this inanity word?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Inanity!
BEN KISSEL
Inanity?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well it's the idea of kind of it's busy work.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That a bunch of people are just doing all the time.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
It's pointless shit that kinda drives you a little crazy.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The whole point is it's demeaning. Marc Headley talks about how when he first met Dave Miscavige it happened on accident, he was a kid. David Miscavige made a surprise visit to their Org, like him and his two dudes and he accidentally ran into him outside. He saw David Miscavige. He was like and the first thing he said, he was like this miniscule yelling man with two men flanking him.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he was talking to somebody, being like I'll see you at Gold Base! He did some weird shit. And then he said hello to David Miscavige who like regarded him. He walked up to his new auditing coach and he was like yeah actually, I think this COB is here... Whatever they called them at the time.
MARCUS PARKS
COB, Chairman of the Board.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they called him COB.
BEN KISSEL
Oh okay. Carrot Top.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
B-O-R-E-D. That's from Norm MacDonald.
BEN KISSEL
RIP.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so they pulled him into another room and they're like when did you see Mr. Miscavige? And he's like I just bumped into him outside. And they're like you need to fucking tell us when you run into him, we need to go into full panic mode now. They cleaned the entire Org waiting for him outside. He comes in and they're all screwing around. He comes in, he does the white glove, he has a white glove on.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he's checking shit. And he says this place is filthy. Because they found dust behind a trash can and they made them redo the whole thing, they had to stay there all night.
BEN KISSEL
Is he a part of the fucking restaurant?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And this is young, this is when he was young. But the idea is it's that weird thing of it's about absolute control.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
He really should have just been an inspector for restaurants.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That would have been a perfect job for him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Unfortunately he doesn't take bribes. So it'd be very difficult for him in that business.
BEN KISSEL
He doesn't?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. It's gonna be a lot of Cs around New York City. But when it came time to leave-
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
A couple of Ds too. Couple of DDs. I haven't jerked off in a month.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You should.
BEN KISSEL
I know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can smell come but not like stained come. I smell fresh come just coming out of you. It's really weird.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. It's like when someone is carrying around a bucket of fresh milk. I can smell it's unpasteurized, it's wafting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I smell your children!
BEN KISSEL
Every time you think about it, then Jerry jumps on the bed and I'm like okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I've been dealing with that recently. Natalie has been out of town, we're in a deep side bar here.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I was in the middle of doing the thing and Wendy was trying to cuddle. And I had to go upstairs!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It's a whole thing. Brings you out of it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it really does.
BEN KISSEL
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well when it came-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sorry Georgie. Georgie is in the room, I'm sorry.
MARCUS PARKS
No, no, she's fine. That's why I'm not mentioning it because my little girl is right here.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She's just like the things that I've seen. The things I've seen them do.
MARCUS PARKS
Aw, she's got her sweet ears on right now. But when it came time to leave Gold Base, David would hop on his private jet which cost $30,000 per trip.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa.
MARCUS PARKS
I tow was a personal chiropractor to align his little back and a personal hairdresser who kept his hard as nails quaff high and square at all times.
BEN KISSEL
Good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He must have some kind of hair implants too, it's real thick. He's got a real strong front.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Additionally, Miscavige would also bring photography equipment and a staff to take photos everywhere he went. And then he'd take those photos, bring them back to Gold Base, and show them off to all of the executives and the Sea Org members who were for all intents and purposes captives at Gold Base.
BEN KISSEL
How exciting. So he just showed other people pictures of himself on a plane.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
His headshots, oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Really cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Now speaking of Sea Org, even though it was once a position of honor in Scientology, they now seem to be and have been for many decades little more than slaves.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because they were supposed to be the priest class, right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then what they did was in a weird way, it feels like a truly abusive relationship where it's like oh you love me so much, I'm gonna fucking stick your head in the ground. I'm gonna just mash your head, I'm gonna destroy you.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because you love me so much.
MARCUS PARKS
They are the entry point, Sea Org, in which Scientology becomes a serious cult of belief and subjugation. That's when it goes beyond a money making scheme designed to build clueless and desperate actors.
BEN KISSEL
That's just America
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that's just called Hollywood.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now at Gold Base where Sea Org members are arguably treated the worst, they're made to eat in a meat and potatoes mess hall with a meager salad bar unless you're being punished of course. If you're being punished, rice and boiled beans.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. So remember, so that's what they ate. After eating foie gras, a night of eating $20,000 worth of foie gras, this is what they ate.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Next door, the people who are doing the actual work are eating rice and boiled beans.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. What are we talking when we say salad bar here? Are we talking Wendy's salad bar? Got some chips-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, buddy. No, no, no.
BEN KISSEL
And some nacho cheese.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There are barely any fixings.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I love a good salad bar.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm thinking like shitty Pizza Hut salad bar in 1993.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Unless they're doing things different because so much information has leaked.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because Rinder just talks about part of being on Sea Org is being hungry.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And the pride of being hungry.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because what that meant was that you're working too hard, you're really digging in.
MARCUS PARKS
It's the grind. It's the same thing of people now that like just regular ass people will be like I fucking worked 10 hours today, bro. Like I'm grinding, I'm making it happen, I'm doing it.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's that very sick, that type of addicted to it mentality.
BEN KISSEL
That seems similar to Aum Shinrikyo.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's true.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
They kept them very, very-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean they all do.
BEN KISSEL
Very hungry.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah, hungry, that is a keyword for all cults.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
All cults are always hungry. You never see a chubby... Name a chubby cult.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh wow.
BEN KISSEL
There's the Blubber Boys.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The Blubber Boys.
BEN KISSEL
The Gertrude Gang.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I will say, anybody who's in charge of big dairy, right, they gotta be big'uns, right?
BEN KISSEL
That's a cult.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh sure, look at me, I'm stuck.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I need to reach out. My cholesterol big too!
BEN KISSEL
It is big.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I need to reach out.
BEN KISSEL
Your cholesterol is too big.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I need to get a fucking deprogrammer for cheese.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the cost of each Sea Org meal, each person, they spend about 75 cents per person, per meal on Gold Base when it came to Sea Org members. That's about half of what the state of California spends on prisoners per meal.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Prisoners get about three bucks, $3.50.
BEN KISSEL
It's a great day to be a prisoner in California! This is awesome!
MARCUS PARKS
On average Sea Org members are quote unquote "paid" $50 a week. And that's only if they don't incur any fines for various withholds, overts, or general goofery.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, definitely not general goofery. You get bumped for that.
BEN KISSEL
Oh absolutely. And you don't want to meet Sergeant Fuckface.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You really don't. Because your throat, your soft palate is gonna be a mess.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah. General Goofery, come here.
MARCUS PARKS
If you get that sort of punishment, you can get bumped down to as low as $13 a week. And that's if you're not actively racking up debt to Scientology.
BEN KISSEL
Jesus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well the thing is you are racking up debt to Scientology no matter what. Because if you want to bail on your billion dollar contract, one of the things they do, part of the ways that they keep you in is that then they send you a bill for all of the free auditing that you got. And they say oh you signed up for this in these various contracts that we made you do while you were half asleep, we kind of semi-forced you to do. Some of you are into this maybe at the beginning but we kind of made you do this and you agreed to this. So they are charting it because this is where they get their tax exempt status to this day and why they do it is because they house and feed these people. But due to the lack of regulation on looking at how a church spends its money, they can do it as the tiniest amount, very little. And then just say oh it's because they choose to live a monastic existence instead of saying we're trying to create a free workforce.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Billion year contract.
MARCUS PARKS
But all of this is seen by Sea Org members as a reasonable reality. They have no access to computers, their personal calls are monitored, all of their letters are inspected, their bank records are monitored, and any semblance of pop culture is absent from their lives.
BEN KISSEL
See that is what's aggravating. They're a science cult, I know it's not real science, but you would think tech would be everywhere. It should be. It's called Sea Org!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well in the Ideal Orgs, that's what he does. That's a part of his money making scam is that he blows out these old historical buildings with the highest of ends of tech and fixtures, beautiful marble floors, everything at the top of the line. And then they get people to then go and raise money on this new absolutely top of the line property that they just did which works for about a year and then the whole thing falls off once they let it go. And then it's just this very fancy building that is just empty.
BEN KISSEL
So weird.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean the only tech they really uses the E-meter, that's the only technology that they use.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, like machine.
BEN KISSEL
It's a questionable tech.
MARCUS PARKS
Okay but to the point of pop culture being absent from their lives completely-
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
When South Park did its groundbreaking Scientology episode, Trapped In The Closet, that probably did more damage to Scientology than anything before or since. It really cannot be overstated how devastating that episode was.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well because David Miscavige is now living in a world where all of your deepest secrets, all of your hidden material... Because that really was I think the power they had over people was just like when you come into (raspy voice) this very sacred environment, if you come into this place, right, what you will see, what you will get, no one ever gets.
BEN KISSEL
David, it sounds like you have mesothelioma.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Mesothelioma!
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I think you have early onset mesothelioma.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I physically can't get that because that means I brought that in.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All right? And I'm clear. He brings people and you want to be like entranced by the secret teachings.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But now they're all out in the open.
MARCUS PARKS
Everything's out in the open.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So now David Miscavige is kind of like, that power is gone which is why then the punishment comes in.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I mean that's the thing is like that was the point that you brought up when we were on the phone a couple of days ago talking about this, is that like all of a sudden Scientology, you have any 13 year old in America that can say Scientology's fucking stupid.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And South Park educated group of 13 year olds that Scientology was a cult and it worked.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Yeah, the overall plot to the show, I mean it's very much of its time, it's R. Kelly, it's Tom Cruise, it's John Travolta and all that. But the master stroke of this episode was laying out the entire Xenu mythology, the basis of scientological belief, into a minute and a half long animated sequence with the words 'this is what scientologists actually believe' overlaid on top. They fucking destroyed the church in a minute and a half.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And cut to Mike Rinder doing his PR thing after when the Xenu thing first dropped and being like that's patently ridiculous! The way he attacks it in that way, it also shows that they stick to a point of view and they just hold that fringe point of view as hard as possible to keep them inside.
BEN KISSEL
So you guys talk on the phone when you're in bed? You're just like oh, Henry...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, curling the phone cord.
MARCUS PARKS
Tee-hee.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Tee-hee.
MARCUS PARKS
No, you hang up.
BEN KISSEL
I don't even think Ghostface would even want to kill me. I don't think Ghostface would kill me. What is your favorite scary movie if he asked you?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) I'm never gonna scream again!
BEN KISSEL
Whoa!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) Because I screamed at you today.
BEN KISSEL
I love Demi Lovato.
MARCUS PARKS
But even though David Miscavige was incredibly incensed about the South Park takedown, especially when the episode ended with Stan saying 'I'm not scared of you, sue me', the people in Sea Org would not have understood it even if they had seen it. Depending on if they were born into Scientology, they would have no concept what South Park was, they wouldn't know why any of it was funny, they wouldn't know why people even watched it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're just talking like you're my parents.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, that's true.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
At the time. Being like what is this shit?
MARCUS PARKS
Well I mean none of the references like R. Kelly's Trapped In The Closet, you remember that?
BEN KISSEL
Of course.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Or the rumors about Travolta and Cruise's sexuality, none of that would have made any sense.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Or it's more like it's not allowed to make sense.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know?
MARCUS PARKS
I mean all they would do if they watched it, they would find it confusing and terrifying.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
They would see it as an obvious offensive against Scientology from the outside world. Hell, they might even look at-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was! It is!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. It absolutely is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's deeply suppressive.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean they might even look at Xenu laughing and been scared by that. Because Xenu is a terrifying character. Like oh, that's what Xenu looks like.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're like oh shit. But then also like there probably is a little bit of that sacred thing of like I've been told that this is sacred information.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That this is deeply, deeply secret, that people would go insane if they heard this information. And they do go insane, getting mad at Scientology. They go like what? What? But that's what holds you in but keeps other people out.
MARCUS PARKS
Now see the point of David Miscavige's anger, one of the key differences between L. Ron Hubbard's Scientology and David Miscavige's Scientology is that under LRH, Scientology was all about the tech when it came to the ego stroke. LRH got off on people loving and praising his ideas and methods. And he was so in love with psychological manipulation that he set off multiple time bombs within Scientology, like the 21 year return, that were designed to fuck with people decades after his death.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He really fucked everybody over by creating no designated line.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Right? And he knew it.
MARCUS PARKS
He knew it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He knew it.
MARCUS PARKS
He knew it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because technically a lot of people fight about what he wanted because there's the story that he wanted to be run by a council, that he felt that no one person could ever bear the actual responsibility of guiding Scientology into the future.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But unlike LRH, because shoulders so narrow you'd think they were broad. You know what I mean?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's perfect.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. If Miscavige is a pebble, Hubbard, that's a mango.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's a mango. Wow, he is a mango.
BEN KISSEL
That's great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm a mango.
BEN KISSEL
You're a mango.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I consider myself an avocado.
BEN KISSEL
You probably want to eat more mangoes with your blood pressure. Probably be good for you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Where are my pan flutes? (relaxing music plays) Honestly because I gotta get these hooked up.
BEN KISSEL
It's great.
MARCUS PARKS
You feeling good now?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
BEN KISSEL
I feel much better. I actually feel better.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm honestly deeply agitated.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. He wanted a council, huh?
MARCUS PARKS
A council. He wanted a big council.
BEN KISSEL
Well no way 9 people could be wrong.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, no way.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I feel blessed. Thank you, Fernando.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic. And you're an avocado.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ugh!
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh, you're a mango!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh thank god. Hey!
MARCUS PARKS
That's the thing, Hubbard loved the manipulation, he loved the tech, he loved people telling him how smart he was for coming up with all of this shit.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Miscavige however, he's more of a sociopathic corporate CEO. He's very, very shallow. He thrives on fear, submission, and the blind accumulation of wealth. To that end, he completely restructured Scientology to specifically feed those needs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He is literally the only, him and TC, our blind item.
MARCUS PARKS
A certain top gun.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A certain top gun are the only people currently really benefiting from Scientology. I mean who knows what the parishioners, like the people that are truly just on the outside that are just casually giving money to Scientology. I don't know what their lives are like. Because we talk about how up to class 5, some of the stuff is just kind of relaxation techniques and straight up acting exercises. Most of the stuff is kind of innocuous, you can kind of see how it might help you with communication or whatever, that kind of garbage.
MARCUS PARKS
Sure. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's not until you join the Sea Org that the crimes really start. This is one of those stories where we talked about I think last time about how the crimes of the cults really fall on its most beloved members vs the other ones where it's the fringe gets fucked and the center is what benefits.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This one is only one person benefits and it's David Miscavige.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It's like how we are with our friend groups, the closer friends we are, the worse it gets.
MARCUS PARKS
Well in this though, I can see how some Scientology defectors can still believe in Scientology while also speaking out against the church itself.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Basically they're like Catholics who left the church because of the molesting but still pray to god when they're in a jam.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
And they still use guilt to simultaneously keep themselves from doing horrible things and to keep themselves from enjoying life to the fullest.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause that's the key, you want to hover between those two points, that's called Christianity.
BEN KISSEL
I mean you can take some of the positive tenets of anything and apply it to a secular life.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Of course, that's the idea. And then community, the concept of community.
BEN KISSEL
Right, of course.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But in Scientology of course, that's how you become a squirrel. That's what a squirrel is.
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Stealing tech.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes. Someone who has taken the ideas of Scientology and is practicing them outside of the church. And that of course can bring the ire of the squirrel busters.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, I've been trying to audit my blood pressure down but all I end up doing is masturbating.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, that'll raise it.
MARCUS PARKS
But when it comes to Scientology being mainly about David Miscavige for the last few decades, his birthday is probably the best example.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think that's a new holiday now because they have like five big holidays, one is LRH's birthday and if forget, the other one is like the beginning of OT 8, and I guess that's one of his. Is that one of the big holidays?
MARCUS PARKS
Oh it's definitely a big holiday.
BEN KISSEL
And they're big Arbor Day people.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Love Arbor Day.
BEN KISSEL
Big Arbor Day people, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well every year scientologists celebrate David Miscavige's birth by giving cash contributions that go towards birthday presents for little Davey.
BEN KISSEL
Wow! Great.
MARCUS PARKS
Over the years he's received such expensive gifts as tailored suits, designer leather jackets, nice cameras, diving equipment, Italian shoes, and a handmade titanium bicycle.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cool!
BEN KISSEL
I would love to see this rich fucking bitch just open up the present, I already have this suit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Put it in my suit room!
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, you're fired.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nice. Oh a tan suit? You trying to get me sued?
BEN KISSEL
Get out of here.
MARCUS PARKS
But those are only the appetizers for the big gifts presented by the various orgs. One year, the Flag Service Org in Clearwater all pitched in and bought David a $70,000 motorcycle.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Money well spent.
BEN KISSEL
Nice.
MARCUS PARKS
And another division set him up with a BMW.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cool.
MARCUS PARKS
But Miscavige also ends up with more presents because in a classic corporate move, and this is actually very important to David Miscavige holding onto power for as long as he has, he created so many different orgs within orgs that nobody is able to hold enough power to challenge him for the top spot.
BEN KISSEL
It's a great way to do it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is so complicated and you can see why you'd get obsessed researching Scientology.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I am. I'm up to my fucking receding hairline in it.
MARCUS PARKS
God save Tony Ortega.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean he really just... The idea of keeping it up to date, it is very difficult to really parse down what is the day to day of current Scientology and what's going on in there because of this spider web construction that David Miscavige has set up.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Have you see the power chart flow? Have you ever seen that power flow?
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's just again, the word inanity keeps coming up. It's just red tape. It's made just to make sure you know you'll never get your word all the way up to David Miscavige.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But perhaps Miscavige's greatest crime when it comes to sullying the legacy of LRH was when he replaced Hubbard's adorable corgis-
BEN KISSEL
Yes?
MARCUS PARKS
With the lowly beagle.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh fuck, now we're gonna get blown up.
BEN KISSEL
Oh I do love a beagle. Jerry's a beagle-chihuahua.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're gonna get blown up even harder.
BEN KISSEL
I love beagles, they keep your house free of rodents.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do you understand that the Beagle Brigade is gonna fucking be right behind every goddamn scientologist in front of our homes?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, the Beagle Brigade is fine. Well we'll just have to come back with the Corgi Clan.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah, that's a good idea, Marcus. A Corgi Clan.
MARCUS PARKS
Corgi Clan with a C, my friend. With a C.
BEN KISSEL
Uh huh.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thank you for clarifying.
MARCUS PARKS
Like the Foot Clan but for corgis, the Corgi Clan.
BEN KISSEL
That's just as bad as what we were thinking earlier.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We here at the Krazy Korgi Klan, we absolutely love a short legged animal and anything with anything beyond a 5 inch leg needs to be genocided.
BEN KISSEL
Corgi butts drive me nuts. I don't like the corgi community, I think that they sexualize their dogs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh my god, guys.
BEN KISSEL
I'm a beagle boy!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I feel like we're gonna jump past being sued by the Church of Scientology and just get sued by dogs. We're just gonna get sued by the beagle world, beagle magazines.
MARCUS PARKS
Beagles are fine.
BEN KISSEL
They're great.
MARCUS PARKS
If I'm on a boat, what do I want to see? Do I want to see corgis or do I want to see beagles running around?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I want to see a woman with big breasts in a bikini.
BEN KISSEL
There we go. Fantastic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wanna look and see a margarita in my hand.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wanna have a fresh brät in the other.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean yes, are corgis a less practical animal to have on a boat because they're so low and you can trip over them and go overboard much easier? Absolutely.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't think dogs should be on boats.
BEN KISSEL
I don't think dogs like boats.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, I think they're terrified on a boat. I know some people are like my dog loves the boat. That's because you raised them on the boat.
BEN KISSEL
On the boat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It loves you.
BEN KISSEL
It's a boat dog. Also I just want a margarita and a fucking bratwurst.
MARCUS PARKS
Brät, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
What a nice day that would be.
MARCUS PARKS
That really would be a nice day.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm gonna plan it, I'm gonna do it Sunday.
MARCUS PARKS
All right, let's do it.
BEN KISSEL
Let's do it.
MARCUS PARKS
Miscavige had, amongst a veritable pack of dogs, five beagles that all had blue vests custom made and each one featured four stripes on the shoulder epaulets.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's cute.
MARCUS PARKS
They had epaulets, they had everything. It was very cute. I will admit it's a cute costume.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
That meant that the beagles though were technically Sea Org captains and as such everyone had to treat them as Sea Org captains and salute them when they walked by. This was of course yet another tactic David Miscavige used to keep Sea Org members in their place.
BEN KISSEL
Jeez.
MARCUS PARKS
Telling them basically even the highest ranking among you are at best equal to my fucking dogs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Seriously.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And again the way they flip it is that like oh what like a funny, cute thing, like it's a human interest thing. But every single thing that David Miscavige does is deadly serious.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There is not a sense of irony about the man. And if you look at footage that people have of him now, like those fake Scientology videos where you see him smiling and looking like he hangs out with people inside of the Org and shit. Like absolutely not, that man is very, very dangerous.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
You telling me you don't like a fucking beagle, bro?
MARCUS PARKS
I like a beagle. I'm just saying-
BEN KISSEL
Look at a beagle.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again, I don't have a hair in this fight.
MARCUS PARKS
I like a beagle, I'm just saying I got a corgi or I got a little corgi mix and I like corgis better.
BEN KISSEL
Beagles can run up to 20 miles fucking per hour.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, you fucking put that beagle up against my Georgie. Georgie can run 20 miles an hour, I guarantee you. I've seen this dog run.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Good!
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
In addition, Miscavige also had a dalmatian-pitbull mix called Buster who was known to attack staff members and once sent an elderly woman to the hospital. Now while Sea Org members were putting up with being compared to dogs and being attacked by dogs, they were also being beaten on the regular by Scientology executives. And the beatings were beginning to get progressively worse starting in the late 90s. That's because shit was rolling downhill following the death of Lisa McPherson, remember that's what we talked about at the end of the last episode.
BEN KISSEL
It was their exorcism gone wrong basically.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes. And after that, David Miscavige's punishments involving Scientology executives were getting more violent, more humiliating, and more bizarre in the dusty old bones full of green dust tradition.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It really is true. And the fact that... Because now they're heavily bleeding. After the Lisa McPherson thing, that was really the first time that something from the outside world really came in and touched David Miscavige.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he did not like that which is why they still so angrily and hungrily go after anybody. And they still doing that, we're experiencing it too, people experience this all the time. Because of the Lisa McPherson thing and where it's going to now. This is the whole third age of Scientology.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And it's important to say that these punishments, the worst punishments in Scientology, go towards executives.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
These are people at the very, very top, the people that are in David Miscavige's immediate orbit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again, Shelly Miscavige, all these people, anybody who got close to him, was this close, the more you got promoted the more in danger you were within the organization.
MARCUS PARKS
Well in perhaps the most bizarre and frankly hilarious example, David Miscavige had a set of expensive lifelike ventriloquist dolls commissioned that looked exactly like his three favorite executive whipping boys.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He would bring them into these meetings and then he'd be like okay everybody, let's just see what Mike has to say! And he'd pull up the ventriloquist dummy and act it out in front of all of them.
MARCUS PARKS
He'd ask it questions and then he'd answer the questions in voices that impersonated the doll's doppelganger.
BEN KISSEL
Oh that's hilarious.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
But the impersonations were also fucking weird because it was David Miscavige.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know, that's a part I connected is that he's brutal in this too where they're not clever.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's kinda Trumpian that way where it's just enough of a gut shot. Cause it's immature too.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then you're supposed to be a big bad boss of Scientology too.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he's just ripping you to shreds in the room.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But for one executive named Heber, or maybe it's Ay-bare.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Heber Jentzsch. It's the guy that was the original spokesperson for Scientology because he looked like a cute old man. But then David Miscavige decided he looked too old and that's when Rinder got put up.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
His name is Air-ber Bant?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Heber Jentzsch.
BEN KISSEL
Heber Jentzsch. I hope he finds them boys down there! I hope he finds them! I'm thinking of the boys, oh I'm thinking of the boys!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What? What are you saying?
BEN KISSEL
They got a confederate flag on their car!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, he's German. Cause he's Heber Jentzsch.
BEN KISSEL
I hope he finds them boys from the Dukes of Hazzard. That's what i was thinking of.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey man, whatever gets it up.
MARCUS PARKS
Whatever, whatever, man.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well for this guy David Miscavige would get a little meta. He'd do a Howdy Doody voice that always answered with childish statements.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm a dummy! I'm a big stupid dummy! Like literally.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah because in Miscavige's view, Heber had the intelligence of a marionette. You're as smart as this dummy, you're a dummy and you look at the dummy.
BEN KISSEL
It's like why are you friends with me then? He hates all of his friends.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He has no friends.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Only one specific incredible cocktail artist.
BEN KISSEL
Oh interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
For another executive named Guillaume Lesevre, Miscavige would do an over the top French accent and almost every sentence that he spoke would mention how much Lesevre loved cheese.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, being like my cheese, motherfucker. I am a stupid cocksucker!
BEN KISSEL
Man, I love this.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because again, his favorite word was cocksucker.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
But when it came time to impersonate Mike Rinder, Miscavige would speak like a real slow talking Morris because Miscavige-
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god. He did a Holden McNeely?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He would literally go like hi, I'm Mike and I'm always slow to react because I'm out ethics and I pull it in, don't I?
BEN KISSEL
I hate him.
MARCUS PARKS
And the whole time, imagine there's the clattering of the ventriloquist dummy mouth.
BEN KISSEL
Right. Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
And in fact, Miscavige once described Rinder in front of a large group of high ranking scientologists as being the spawn of an R-worded sloth's DNA.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa, hey now, whoa.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa. Whoa!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
These R-worded sloths need to be able to reproduce.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But remember, the way we're talking about this is the ramp up.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Right. Because after Lisa McPherson happened, this is when things started getting more and more cray.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because obviously he's been slapping and beating people and crossbodying people this whole time.
MARCUS PARKS
Forever, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But now it's really starting to get fucking weird.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, you got the blood on the hands.
MARCUS PARKS
In Rinder's further humiliation, Miscavige tapped a Gold Base electrician to install 4 ft links of copper wire into the ground in front of a conference room. This he said would prevent Rinder's body thetans from jumping off and landing on Miscavige.
BEN KISSEL
Perfect.
MARCUS PARKS
It's the scientological equivalent of bullying someone for having cooties.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well this is why he's punishing the executive staff, right. He's punishing the executive staff because they're not doing right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The reason why Scientology is getting all this heat is because you guys are all fucking up.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's not because we're a corrupt organization, it's because you guys are all fucking up and now it's splashing onto me.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. When it came to everyone else though, Miscavige's favorite blanket insult was pieface.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, because people would fall asleep.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Or in some cases according to Mike Rinder, you motherfucking piefaced piece of dogshit.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Someone was piefaced in Miscavige's world when they stared at him in silence and terror when he asked a question with no possible right answers, which he did quite often.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, that's the idea. Because he would give you a bunch of questions and then everything would be wrong. Whatever you said was wrong.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Piefaced was a face with no expression. So to drive his point home, he started bringing white paper plates and magic markers to meetings. And using his kindergarten arts and crafts skills, David would draw approximations of smiley faces on the plates but he'd use a straight line instead of a grin for the mouth.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's an emoji.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Blank expression.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You can't see it but...
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, it's an emoji. It sounds like any time he might try to buy Twitter. I'm surprised he hasn't tried to do it yet.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes! Take him down a peg!
MARCUS PARKS
That's right. He would then pass these little makeshift masks around and make every executive hold the plates in front of their faces while he spoke. Because in his words, he'd rather look at those piefaces instead of their actual piefaces.
BEN KISSEL
Well now who wouldn't want to look at a pieface anyway? If someone actually had pie for face.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that would be very interesting and also distressing. I feel like I'd cry. If I saw a man with an actual pie for a head, at first I would be like oh cool but the other part of me would be like what else is real? What else is real?
MARCUS PARKS
It's all gonna start falling apart from there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think so.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
Well this holding up the pieface would sometimes go on for days at a time during any and all interactions the executives had with David Miscavige. So they had to carry around their fucking paper plates and anytime they talked to David, boom, put the pieface on.
BEN KISSEL
You don't want to put that on there. I would be a tres leches pie.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh cute.
MARCUS PARKS
That's nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He would grow bored of his punishments too though.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause then he'd go to the next thing and there would be another new horrible thing and it's going to escalate.
BEN KISSEL
So this is all he thought about when he was drinking Macallan, listening to Michael Jackson, watching Goodfellas.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just filled with rage. I guess that's the only consolation that we can have is that he doesn't have a happy day.
MARCUS PARKS
No. No, never.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like he's sitting in a lap of total luxury as a god amongst his people and he is miserable.
BEN KISSEL
Right. Lesson in that I guess.
MARCUS PARKS
Eventually his rage would subside and usually executives learned that you could mollify David Miscavige by giving him what they called standing Os during his little speeches that he'd make throughout the day that were about god knows what.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ideal Orgs, how definitely OT 9 is coming, all that horseshit just over and over and over.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
How Scientology can change the world, so on and so forth.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
How we are changing the world using a bunch of propaganda that isn't real, like a bunch of fake concepts. And meanwhile just buying real estate.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. One time when the applause wasn't enough, Miscavige ordered other executives to throw Rinder, Heber, and Lesevre into a near freezing lake.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is based off a real LRH punishment. One of the ones that he did but he did it as it was a punishment and a quote unquote "thought exercise". He was like I want to see if you all... Like he was dealing with a bunch of people that were not auditing correctly. And he's like we're going to do a danger test. And they tied them all up and then pushed them over the edge of the boat, this is when he was on the Apollo, and pushed them over the edge of the boat. And then they had to go fish them out. But he's like and what did we learn? To not jump off a boat. Okay?
BEN KISSEL
Don't jump off a boat. Don't do it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What did we learn?
BEN KISSEL
Don't jump off the boat. Lesson learned!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
But the thing about all this is that it was unsustainably chaotic. If you're gonna run a punishment cult, then you gotta have rules. And you definitely need terrifying locations of concentrated punishment, you need sweat boxes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right, yeah, sure.
MARCUS PARKS
So in January of 2004, perhaps as a New Year's resolution, Miscavige began codifying Scientology punishments for four executives that were very loosely based on a policy letter written by LRH about how to deal with suppressive persons.
BEN KISSEL
So that is interesting. Not all New Year's resolutions have to be good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh no.
BEN KISSEL
How do I make people more miserable?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I love having a New Year's desecration.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like that's more of what I do. How do I bring the world down a peg?
BEN KISSEL
2022 I was too nice to people.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
2023, let's be meaner.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm gonna up the Grinch.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
See in Hubbard's letter, he listed steps A, B, C, D, and E for dealing with SPs. But Miscavige used these steps to create the A to E room.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's only half of my first season of my show.
BEN KISSEL
I know.
MARCUS PARKS
A to E. E was halfway to M. Where were y'all at E, huh? Where was the show?
BEN KISSEL
What was the word?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
E is for eggcellence.
BEN KISSEL
Yes, that's Murderfist.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, that was from Murderfist. E is for energy drinks or something.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was a bad show. But Ben Feldman is very charming.
MARCUS PARKS
He is.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so is Cristin Milioti.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
And so are you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thank you.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, really successful.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thank you for for just one person saying that.
BEN KISSEL
Well the nice thing about this series is it's only gonna help your career in Hollywood.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, man.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. It's great.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the first subjects of the A to E room were of course Scientology executives because they had all been declared suppressive people who were out to destroy Scientology from the inside because they weren't doing their jobs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
BEN KISSEL
Jesus, it's a lot.
MARCUS PARKS
Going through the steps, these executives had to audit, they had to recant their supposed suppressive acts in detail or they had to make something up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But they always were making something up.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, what are they even doing wrong?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nothing. They're working themselves to death.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. They had to pay debts to Scientology commensurate to their misdeeds and they had to redo all Scientology courses from the bottom up regardless of their OT level.
BEN KISSEL
You gotta do it all over again.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I have a little bit of satisfaction in the fact that at least these guys were also the ones administering punishments to other people.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But again, the term we keep saying, shit rolls downhill, is that then they were making everything worse for everybody below them.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It just seems horrible.
MARCUS PARKS
But while that A to E room was psychologically grueling, it was nothing compared to the next phase of Scientology punishment. Amidst a slew of mocking comedy routines and bad press from the outside world, David Miscavige created The Hole.
BEN KISSEL
Ooh! Oh, that could be fun. Hey honey, do you wanna go to the newest restaurant called The Hole tonight?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I always wanted to go to The Hole!
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think maybe I can sit in the bucket and they can put cold water on my head?
BEN KISSEL
I think they can, dear.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Just leave me there.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Please leave me there.
BEN KISSEL
I'm sorry.
MARCUS PARKS
Now bad Scientology press doesn't really matter to insiders when it comes to fucking with their belief because those already ensconced in Scientology, they're conditioned to think that everyone outside of their bubble are so-called chaos merchants spreading lies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, dude, yes! Chaos merchants!
MARCUS PARKS
Oh we're prime examples of chaos merchants.
BEN KISSEL
We're CMs.
MARCUS PARKS
Again, far too cool of a term.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It sounds like a fucking Iron Maiden song.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It makes me want to do it.
BEN KISSEL
And there's nothing cooler than Iron Maiden. For the kids out there, they were a band.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey, it is cool.
MARCUS PARKS
It is cool, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They don't get it. Paris Hilton was wearing like an Iron Maiden shirt, that's stolen valor.
BEN KISSEL
She does not know one Iron Maiden song.
MARCUS PARKS
Don't get into that whole you don't know three-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You don't know three bands-
MARCUS PARKS
Name three songs from the band.
BEN KISSEL
If I wear a band shirt, you should be able to name three songs from the band.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It sometimes keeps me from buying a cool shirt.
BEN KISSEL
I do it all the time. I don't do it all the time.
MARCUS PARKS
Just buy the shirt, who gives a shit?
BEN KISSEL
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, because then you get-
BEN KISSEL
Cause you're a liar.
MARCUS PARKS
No gatekeeping, my friend. No gatekeeping.
BEN KISSEL
I'm not gatekeeping, I'm just saying-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We can all say no gatekeeping all we want but there's gates everywhere.
BEN KISSEL
That is true.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And there's somebody keeping them.
BEN KISSEL
That is true.
MARCUS PARKS
Bad press however did matter to David Miscavige personally. See in my reading, Miscavige had turned Scientology into an extension of himself. So any attack against Scientology was a personal attack against David Miscavige.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
And like a childhood bully who gets beat at home then takes it out on the kids at school, so too did David Miscavige take a particularly hard 1-2 punch from South Park and Rolling Stone in 2005 and 2006. This was then transferred to those in his immediate circle who in turn transferred it to everyone around them. Now around the same time as a particularly negative article in Rolling Stone and about a year after the South Park episode, David Miscavige sort of lost it when it came to punishments. He was presumably convinced that everything was falling apart, not because Scientology is an impossible scam to run in the modern world, what with the internet and all, but because the people around him must have betrayed him somehow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, must have.
MARCUS PARKS
Either on purpose or through their incompetence.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's put himself in his own bubble too.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Of course.
MARCUS PARKS
But on the other hand, Miscavige might have also realized that the days of recruitment were over, so he'd better keep the ones he had using the only tactics he was capable of using, fear, intimidation, and cruelty. Those are his only tool sets.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And this was about the time period where they were selling to their own people, like make sure you get your kids in too.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because they weren't getting strangers anymore. They were just trying to be like now that you're having kids, make sure we pull them into the ranch. We pull all these childhood education centers for scientologist children.
BEN KISSEL
So it's like a black hole eating itself.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And that's all that there is and so you gotta keep it, gotta get it strong.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, gotta get it strong.
MARCUS PARKS
Always. And so Miscavige designated a punishment center on Gold Base in the Commodore's Messenger Office office which was labeled with a carved wooden sign that simply said 'The Hole'.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It could at least be called Le Hole.
BEN KISSEL
Oh that would have been nice. Make it French.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
French.
MARCUS PARKS
And give it like a super cool metal sign.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Give it something that has some edge to it, not a carved wooden sign.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You have fallen into The Hole!
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like that's sweet. But yeah, it's not a record job.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Unfortunately.
BEN KISSEL
Put the lotion on the skin or you get the bone again?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure. Yeah, no you go it.
MARCUS PARKS
The hose, the hose.
BEN KISSEL
The hose.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You don't need to know every reference. You know what I mean? It's nice.
BEN KISSEL
No.
MARCUS PARKS
Now once you entered the building that became known as The Hole, you would find that three out of the four doors to the building were obviously locked and barred shut and the windows were screwed down so that they couldn't open more than two inches. There was also no air conditioning. Remember this place existed in the California desert. But if the heat got too claustrophobic, there would be no escape because your fellow scientologists would be posted outside the door at all times on guard duty. And by the way, those would also be lower ranking scientologists than you. You're an executive. There's a Sea Org teenager out there pushing you in the face, saying get the fuck back inside.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's the added angle of that, where there's a lot of... Rinder talks about that, a lot of times your direct supervisor, your auditor would be a child, would be a 16 year old that would show up.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That's scary, dude.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause again, cause 16 year olds don't understand, they're young, they don't know.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're given this power.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they can just whack you with it.
MARCUS PARKS
And also The Hole, you had no idea how long you were gonna be there. You're going to The Hole. How long? As long as it takes.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause honestly at this point Rinder and the top executives are used to being bumped down to RPF and bumped back and forth doing stuff. But when this whole thing first started happening, they're like oh it'll be anything like that, you go in, do your time, get out. But it seemed like as soon as you got The Hole, it was extremely difficult to get out.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But part of the genius of The Hole that from what it seems Miscavige again made an evil corporate master stroke by making The Hole an executive punishment. It's like you have an executive dining room or an executive bathroom.
BEN KISSEL
Cool.
MARCUS PARKS
And this turns The Hole on a subconscious level into a privilege.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You are just high enough to be punished this hard.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Sweet.
MARCUS PARKS
And so to inaugurate The Hole, Miscavige sentenced 40 executives, male and female both, to an indeterminate amount of time. In The Hole, they ate leftovers from the already meager offerings from the main cafeteria, the 75 cent meals.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
And they would not only get the 75 cent meals, they would get the leftover rice and boiled beans that was already somebody else's punishment.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
These are people that at one point, yeah, these are the leaders of the church.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Showers, like it was back in the Apollo during LRH's Sea Org days, they would last 30 seconds and they would only be allowed every few days. After they were done with a shower, they'd put on one of two dark blue shirts that they had been issued along with one of two pairs of teeny tiny shorts.
BEN KISSEL
Uh huh. What's the point of this again?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again, it gets you out of... You have no personal... We're taking away anything that is you.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're taking it all away and we're making you an autonomous little punishment bot in this room.
BEN KISSEL
So like South Park made an episode, then Rolling Stone made an article, and now you're in The Hole.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Basically.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes. That's exactly it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Now ostensibly the whole point of The Hole was for the prisoners to come clean and confess to the crimes they were supposed to have committed against the church, LRH, and most importantly David himself. As such, The Hole devolved into something very much like Synanon's game. After six weeks, these executives have been reduced to sitting around a conference table accusing everyone of anything they might be guilty of, using whatever weird Scientology speak they might have at their disposal. You're out ethics.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. Wendy, we know for a fact you queefed. You queefed around David, didn't you Wendy?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you brought that queef in.
BEN KISSEL
And you brought that queef in, didn't you?
MARCUS PARKS
And of course when someone could get someone else to admit to something they may or may not have done, really didn't matter if they did it or not-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep. No.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
They could show Miscavige that hey, I'm on your side. I got them to admit to something. And the more that you show Miscavige that you're on his side, the less time you spend in The Hole.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Or so you think.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. So you think, so you might figure, this is what you think might-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're trying to figure out what the game is here.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because every other like punishment has had some kind of structure where you're supposed to kind of... Because like how LRH used to do rundowns and tech, David Miscavige is kind of using the punishments as his own version of scientological lessons. But it's more like how do I figure out what David wants from me for this sequence to end?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But The Hole, he saw no end sequence.
BEN KISSEL
I can also see someone being like David, I'm on your side 100%, got all this stuff. And then him just be like pussy! You're a pussy!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is what happened.
BEN KISSEL
The whole point is that you were supposed to stand up for yourself!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ah! Ah!
BEN KISSEL
Not crossbody!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But that is literally right down the pipe.
BEN KISSEL
And I know Vince McMahon, he's no David Miscavige, but that's what he would also do. Sometimes gives people horrible gimmicks, horrible characters, and really-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You should have told me no.
BEN KISSEL
You should have told me no. And this is why they would say if you audition for WWE, never tell him you have a talent because he'll make you do it. And that Darren Drozdov, he was like you can puke on command? Now you're puke. And now now every time you wrestle, you're gonna have to fake puke. You gotta be very careful with these kinds of people.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Not that Vince and he are the same.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You have to be careful who you pretend to be because we are who we pretend to be.
BEN KISSEL
Shut the fuck up... We all wear different masks?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Kurt Vonnegut.
MARCUS PARKS
Mother Night. Do you remember Mother Night?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Kurt Vonnegut.
MARCUS PARKS
But I mean Ben, the way you're talking, they are actually very similar. They're just both CEOs.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
That's all this is, this is all CEO horrible, manipulative 80s tactics.
BEN KISSEL
Like stand up for yourself as they're just beating you down. Stand up for yourself!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Why are you hitting yourself?
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well the genesis for all this though, it was not the game, at least as far as accusing other people of bullshit went. The genesis was an old L. Ron Hubbard trick from back when Scientology left only financial, emotional, and psychological scars.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, the OG scars.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Hubbard's scattershot accusation tactic was called the murder routine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
God, he was good at names, man.
BEN KISSEL
I guess.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I just love that kind of shit.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
The murder routine?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that's the only thing, that's the thing.
BEN KISSEL
That's what gets ya?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's fun.
MARCUS PARKS
I love it. It feels like all right, it's time for the murder routine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Murder routine.
BEN KISSEL
It's not vaudeville.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You can see the sparkle in his eyes, just like it's called the murder routine. As he's selling it. He just loved these little ideas.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But god, it caused so much damage.
MARCUS PARKS
It really did. Well basically if you're trying to get someone to confess to something and they're refusing to confess, you accuse them of doing something far worse than what you're trying to get them to confess to.
BEN KISSEL
Oh, this is great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It seems to work with certain political spheres really well.
MARCUS PARKS
Hubbard's example is that if you wanted to get someone to confess to cheating on their wife, you instead accuse them of murdering their wife.
BEN KISSEL
Got it.
MARCUS PARKS
And the idea is that if you called someone a murderer over and over and over again, they'd eventually say hey, I might be a cheater but I'm not a murderer. And it's like ah!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Got you! There's a hole! They tried to do it on the offensive in the Murdaugh trial, we talked about this a couple of days ago on Side Stories and they fucking got him. But they tried to say like he shit his pants in the car.
BEN KISSEL
Can you imagine?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like he made this whole thing like how honest it was. You see, he shit his pants. But would we tell you this if he was a murderer? No, he's a sick man, he's sick.
BEN KISSEL
Who amongst us hasn't shat our pant?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I only did the one time but I was at work.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, that doesn't count. Although it does.
MARCUS PARKS
I was also at work.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I say shit on company time.
BEN KISSEL
Yes indeed. Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Now in David Miscavige's Scientology however, this stream of accusations got very aggressive very quickly. The sessions soon devolved into fistfights and bizarre physical assaults, like what happened with Debbie Cook, the former head of Flag. See since Debbie Cook was a Flag Base person, she was based in Clearwater down in Florida, she wasn't familiar with the strange world of Gold Base in California.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Like I said, everything is so completely compartmentalized here.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. And Flag is nice.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
In terms of like obviously you're working hard a lot of time, you're probably living in a shitty apartment and doing all that kind of stuff. You are in Clearwater, Florida. So it's got a beautiful beach but you're not allowed to go.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah but you're right next to Tampa Bay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's nice. It's a pretty town.
MARCUS PARKS
You got married over there, it was very nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's beautiful.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Go to OJ Simpson's favorite bar. It's all right there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Anytime you want, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Hulk Hogan, St. Petersburg.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, his favorite bar. Hulk Hogan, who threw hurricane parties outside of his own Clearwater bar because he was like this way, brother. These hurricanes are pussies, brother. And he literally like threw like, it was DJ Skrillex that held rave parties during an active hurricane where people were dying.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Florida's got it made.
BEN KISSEL
Have fun with it.
MARCUS PARKS
Well that's the thing, Debbie Cook, she's coming from Clearwater, Florida. She's coming to Gold Base in California. And when she got to The Hole, she didn't know the rules of the game.
BEN KISSEL
Oh no.
MARCUS PARKS
Namely she didn't know the most important rule, which was always agree with David.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. And you know what you definitely don't do is you never laugh at David.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is a thing I've learned sometimes when you meet someone who's truly self serious. I've had that.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There was one job I did where the director, it was really intense.
BEN KISSEL
Martin Scorsese.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Was very mad. He said something really like crazy and I laughed and someone grabbed me and was said don't laugh, don't laugh at him. And I was just like oh I thought he was joking. And he was like he's not, he's not joking. And David Miscavige was like that. Because again, these routines, he'd do these things. If you laughed too, he'd fucking flip out.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
But he's doing ventriloquism, it's funny.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's the only one who's supposed to think it's funny.
MARCUS PARKS
But I don't know if he thinks it's funny.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think he's a very deadly serious man.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And if he's laughing, you are not in a good spot.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. We'll actually get here in a bit to what makes David Miscavige laugh.
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Miscavige with Debbie Cook, he tried to get her to say for whatever reason that two other Scientology executives, including the Frenchman we talked about earlier, he tried to get her to say that they told her that they were sucking each other's, quote unquote "sucking each other's cocks".
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're sucking each other's cocks!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But it's not just that, it's that they told you that they were sucking each other's cocks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you withheld that.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And I need you to tell me that they told you that they sucked each other's cocks.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, real slow too when you tell me.
MARCUS PARKS
Now David Miscavige loved homophobic insults more than any other sort of insult.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
And one might say that he is oddly preoccupied with the said sucking of cocks and the licking of balls and so on and so forth.
BEN KISSEL
Strange.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He really, really was obsessed with it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he might have wanted it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. It's like in Trailer Park Boys. You know how Jim Lahey, every single insult has to do with shit?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It's the same thing with David Miscavige and dick and balls.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
Well one time for example, Mike Rinder got a text from David Miscavige that just said YSCOHB. It's just an acronym. And Rinder had to sit there and decipher it. And finally, after working on it like it's the fucking end of Dr. Strangelove-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He thought it was like a secret lesson.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he's sitting there, he's got a piece of paper out, he's trying to figure out what YSCOHB means. And finally he translated it to You Suck Cocks On Hollywood Boulevard.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. And David Miscavige would go to use that at the end of every one of his emails to Rinder from then on.
BEN KISSEL
Isn't that nice?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again, I let out a little chuckle.
BEN KISSEL
It's kinda funny.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I love a random acronym.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I do too.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Technically it wasn't an acronym, it has to say a word.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah it does, yeah. Because ya-scobe.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's just initials.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, ya-scobe. Yeah, it's not an acronym. You're right, you're correct.
BEN KISSEL
Yep, yep. Take it in, buddy. Victory lap.
MARCUS PARKS
But when Debbie Cook was faced with this bizarre homophobia in The Hole, she didn't know what she was supposed to do.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Instead of saying oh yeah, they talked about sucking each other's cocks all the time, all the time-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All they do is suck each other!
BEN KISSEL
They're sucking each other right now.
MARCUS PARKS
Not even that's all they do, it's all they talk about. They told me about it, of course. Instead she told the truth. She thinks oh no, that's weird. No, these guys don't suck cocks all the time. They never said anything about that, they never say anything about that because I know they don't suck cocks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They didn't say that. No. Honestly I feel like even just saying S'ing a C would register with me, you know?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because I've never really even heard two men aggressively talking out loud about sucking each other's penises because largely I feel like they do that at home, they love each other. I don't know, I don't know. They don't need to yell it at each other.
BEN KISSEL
Sounds like someone who needs to be in The Hole.
MARCUS PARKS
But her saying they never told me that, that contradicted what Miscavige was saying. Made him look like a fool.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You calling me a liar? You calling me a fucking liar?
MARCUS PARKS
Therefore Miscavige transferred his ire from the two cocksuckers, so-called cocksuckers, to Debbie, calling her a liar.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You call me a liar? You're a fucking liar. I'm rubber! I'm the fucking rubber motherfucker.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're the fucking glue, fucking bitch.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa. Anything you say sticks to me?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fuck you!
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You suck cocks on Hollywood Boulevard.
BEN KISSEL
I would, sure!
MARCUS PARKS
And she was now the one who had transgressed. Now she was the one who needed to confess.
BEN KISSEL
To what?
MARCUS PARKS
Well Miscavige said it's obvious that you're lying and it's obvious that you're covering for these two cocksuckers. And therefore if you're covering for these men who suck cocks, then you must also be gay as well because you're all in it together.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're a cabal.
BEN KISSEL
So she's a pussy licker.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
And so Miscavige let loose the rest of executives who were all too eager to heap abuse on someone else. That was another feature of The Hole is that once Miscavige gave everyone a target, everyone was relieved that it wasn't them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jump.
MARCUS PARKS
So therefore they fucking go at the other person.
BEN KISSEL
But now I guess it all comes together when it comes to people like the Maverick or John Travolta, when it comes to them being gay perhaps, you know why Scientology truly did think that was so bad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. Oh they are deeply homophobic.
BEN KISSEL
And why they're like oh once you told me that then we know we have something. As opposed to like no one cares.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
LRH was deeply homophobic.
BEN KISSEL
Oh okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
His son came out and he disavowed his son and all that shit.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And David Miscavige is right off, I think that he actually ups it.
MARCUS PARKS
He does.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he definitely does.
BEN KISSEL
Okay, that's interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
As a result of all this, Debbie Cook was made to wear a sign around her neck that said 'lesbian' and they forced her to stand in a trash can.
BEN KISSEL
What was it, Dick's Last Resort?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's close.
MARCUS PARKS
And all the rest of the executives sat around hurling insults at her, they poured water on her head. But this wasn't the first-
BEN KISSEL
That's a fucking hate crime.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yup.
MARCUS PARKS
This wasn't the first nor the last time something like this happened to an executive. But the executives soon began to realize that the only way out of The Hole was to lie.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Of course!
MARCUS PARKS
But lie in just the right way.
BEN KISSEL
How?
MARCUS PARKS
They just had to fucking trial and error.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
BEN KISSEL
Turtles are fast. Fish are dry.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're heading into 1984 territory. But that's the truth. It's why there was a mass exodus right after this time period.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because this is just stripping...
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Any single thing that you thought was legitimate about what you were doing there is currently being systematically ripped from you in The Hole. Because you realize it's not about ethics, it's not about you going clear, it's not about the meter.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's like oh now we're prisoners.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And what LRH always realized is that you got to keep them just confused enough, like you gotta keep them just confused enough and to have them like okay, I think I understand.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But with David Miscavige, it's just pure confusion and terror and chaos.
BEN KISSEL
Chaos, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Benefits over the punishments. At some point they do have to equalize. LRH kind of understood a little bit.
BEN KISSEL
The carrot on the stick.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
In terms of creating a religion is that you must create things like what are we giving you that is allowing you to take the negatives?
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What are we providing that's good? And for a while he was feeding people and they used to celebrate Christmas. Christmas and New Year's Eve were huge times for Scientology. ANd Miscavige stopped all that.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There were things that he used to kind of put mechanisms in place that made it kind of feel like a funny kooky place to be a little bit.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But David Miscavige just eliminated all of whatever fun that was there before, whatever good that was there before is gone. And there was very little before.
BEN KISSEL
The Catholic church, perhaps there was a situation with your priest as a child. But think about all the free wine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean that is kinda what they do.
BEN KISSEL
They gave you bread to go with the wine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Spiritual counseling.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
But the thing is that lying sometimes wasn't an option and sometimes things went way too fucking far. Because every once in a while David Miscavige would ratchet the psychological torture up to I'd say a 7.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
A 7 or 8 is about as high as he possibly could get.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Like what's 10? Abu Ghraib. Right, that's 10, that's at the very top.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Maybe Roch Thériault.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that's a 10.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But in David Miscavige's case, his 7 was the infamous musical chairs game.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it sin the Going Clear documentary.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which is still great.
BEN KISSEL
Gotta watch that.
MARCUS PARKS
Let's revisit it one more time, just for those of you who haven't seen Going Clear. After gathering up his favorite punching bags, Miscavige told them all that they were going to play a game of musical chairs. They're gonna use Bohemian Rhapsody as the song.
BEN KISSEL
Oh fun.
MARCUS PARKS
The last one left, he said, would be allowed to leave The Hole. But true to form, this was not just about a reward for one person. Rather it was about the psychological torture of them all. Miscavige told them that everyone who lost would almost immediately be separated from their families and shipped off to a far unknown destination.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Meanwhile all of their families had already been absolutely decimated.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Mike Rinder's family was torn apart. I mean he let it but now he knows. His family was torn apart, he hadn't seen his kids for like a decade.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He hadn't seen his parents and they were all in Scientology. And so it's like even that's an empty threat.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But to make it all the more concrete, Miscavige even rented moving trucks and parked them outside of the building. But of course none of it was real. The threats were empty and nobody was told this until the game was over. But he did make everybody sit there and think about it. You are going, you are leaving, you are going to be sent somewhere even worse than this place right here and you'll never see your fucking family ever again.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
And it was really about David Miscavige's pleasure. That's what they said is that he sat and looked on, he orchestrated this whole thing with a sort of glee.
BEN KISSEL
I think he's a little psycho.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm gonna put them up here as you can see, Marc Headley on his account, on his Blown For Good YouTube page, he put a bunch of listed nicknames he had in the Sea Org for David Miscavige. And one of my favorite was Captain Dungy Misleadervich.
BEN KISSEL
Ha! Rolls off the tongue.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Captain Fucktard, Captain Footbullet, Clam King, Chunky Head, Dainty Miss, Dainty Scabby Bitch. Yeah, I like Dainty Scabby Bitch. Damage Mismanage.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, Damage Mismanage is great. What was that first one? Dainty Bunglebutt?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Dainty Scabby Bitch.
BEN KISSEL
Oh very good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Chicken of the Board. Whoa!
MARCUS PARKS
Whoa!
BEN KISSEL
Chicken of the Board. Nice.
MARCUS PARKS
Even though the psychological torture was intense, there was also room to prove to David that you were loyal because more executives were arriving all the time. And of course when they came in, they didn't know what the fuck was going on. At its peak it's estimated The Hole held 140 people.
BEN KISSEL
Dang.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That's a big ass hole.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, man. And it started as trailers attached to each other.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then they moved it to this building, he just made it this fucking building and it's this ramshackle piece of shit in the middle of the desert.
BEN KISSEL
Right. That's where the reenactment from I believe that was My Scientology Movie does that full reenactment.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Which is really good.
MARCUS PARKS
Everyone suffered from a lack of sleep and nutrition and everyone had to live in fear of the possibility that anyone could slap, punch, or kick them at any time. But there were also the far stranger physical punishments. One particularly weird punishment was when executives would be made to crawl around on the conference room floor on their hands and knees for hours at a time. This was industrial carpet. This isn't the nice shag carpet we have here at the studio.
BEN KISSEL
Humble brag.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thank you.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes, this nice 1983 shag carpet that we have here.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nice and thick.
BEN KISSEL
Nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Good at heat building.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But anyway, it's industrial carpet. It's horrible.Iit's made to just be... It's made to fucking do whatever you want to on it.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
It's not made to be nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it would cover them in fucking rug burns.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well they're wearing shorts. So they're going around on their hands and knees and it's not fatal but it is excruciatingly painful.
BEN KISSEL
Sucks.
MARCUS PARKS
Because they'd make them do it day after day. You do it all day long and then before scabs could form on your knees, you had to do it again the next day.
BEN KISSEL
That fucking sucks.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Mike Rinder, he said he still has scars on his knees from going through at least half a dozen rounds of this.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
And when it came to the abuse Rinder suffered, he seemed to be David Miscavige's favorite person to pile on. On possibly the worst day Rinder had, Marty Rathbun physically attacked him to try to get him to come clean. Rathbun was particularly angry because he'd been thrown in The Hole because he had failed to get Mike Rinder to come clean when he was on the outside. So he got put in The Hole to like okay, you can't do it from the outside, you fucking go in The Hole and you do it from in there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And Marty Rathbun's fucking scary too. He's another one that was the head-
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's very fucking scary.
BEN KISSEL
But what do they want Rinder to say?
MARCUS PARKS
I fucked up. I mean who knows?
BEN KISSEL
Who knows?
MARCUS PARKS
I fucked up.
BEN KISSEL
There's nothing he could have said.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
There's nothing, yeah. Because he was truly David Miscavige's, he was the biggest target. So Rathbun went in there, he sat on Rinder's chest, he put his hands around Rinder's throat, and led a mob of Scientology executives in a chant that went come clean, Rinder. Come clean, Rinder. He even had his fucking wife joining in. Come clean, Rinder.
BEN KISSEL
Jesus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well that's what destroyed their relationship was when his wife joined in and he was like oh shit, this is really like one for one.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like no one is backing up anybody.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, that's bad.
MARCUS PARKS
But in one of his first moments of clarity as Rathbun sat on his chest, Rinder whispered:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"Marty, I don't wanna play this game anymore.'
MARCUS PARKS
Incredibly Rathbun agreed and said:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"Me neither." They literally had to go like-
BEN KISSEL
Curious?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, David Miscavige from underneath them. Curious?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he's sitting there like (strangled voice) I don't wanna play this fucking game anymore. And they both snapped out of it for just a second.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, like I don't either. They realized they've just been driven completely insane.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that's why it's so difficult to come out of it because of the things that you have done while inside of it.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You became somebody else's fucking attack dog over garbage, over absolutely nothing. Literally there's no substance to it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right. There's also something so juvenile about it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
It's so fucking stupid.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well they're all like 50.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. It's embarrassing.
MARCUS PARKS
It's meaningless.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Rathbun was let out of The Hole a few days later. And despite the fact that he'd been in Miscavige's inner circle since the mid 80s-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was one of the very big ones.
MARCUS PARKS
He escaped Scientology for good. He just got on a motorcycle and left.
BEN KISSEL
Kinda cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well this is the thing too, this is where you get into the argument of what's the difference between a cult and a religion? And I think that if you have to do things like one of the secretaries had to hide in the trunk of a delivery man's car to get out.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The fact that Marc Headley, Marc Headley when he left, he was run off the road by security officers.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he was not saved until police officer came and got him. These are the things. Mike Rinder had to leave in the middle of the night.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just with a cellphone, whatever was on his body, whatever files he could abscond with to at least prove something, at least say hey, something's happening inside of it without being noticed. But yeah, they had to run.
BEN KISSEL
I mean say what you want about the Protestants but they don't want you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
BEN KISSEL
Most churches are just like we'll kick you out right now.
MARCUS PARKS
Get outta here.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They do, yeah. But again, what are we fighting for here?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That's crazy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well as far as other executives who got pushed too far, an executive named Tom Divot around the same time snapped in The Hole while the rest of the executives were attacking him. Tom screamed that Miscavige was an insane SP and that they were all as nuts as David.
BEN KISSEL
Ooh!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ooh!
MARCUS PARKS
Ooh!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah they did that.
MARCUS PARKS
That's the worst thing you could possibly say.
BEN KISSEL
It is.
MARCUS PARKS
And while you'd think this would garner the worst punishment possible for Divot, he was instead taken out of The Hole lest he start convincing others.
BEN KISSEL
He passed the test.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He did. Well he probably got put wherever the hell it was he was supposed to go, a bad place.
BEN KISSEL
Oh okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Well but the spell was broken. You know you get one guy in there, one guy starts screaming that he's an insane SP, he keeps saying it over and over and over again. So they took him out of there, they put him into RPF which before The Hole was the worst place you could go for Scientology. They also brought out Mike Rinder, they had Mark Rinder guard him, and then ultimately Mike Rinder failed to keep Divot in Scientology. But when Divot left, Rinder began thinking like holy fuck if Tom Divot can leave, maybe I can leave too.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can now leave.
BEN KISSEL
See those things that are right beneath you, your feet? Use them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's really difficult because what if they do go all the way?
BEN KISSEL
I know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Marc Headley really could have been killed, could have been killed by what they did.
BEN KISSEL
Right, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Not too long after, Rinder escaped in England and eventually got a hold of Tom Divot. And Tom Divot invited Rinder to stay with him in Kissimmee, Florida.
BEN KISSEL
Don't mind if I do.
MARCUS PARKS
Kissimmee, kissiyou.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh Italian.
BEN KISSEL
Yes indeed. Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
After Rinder convinced Divot for sure that he wasn't a spy, he had to spend a couple of days saying like no, no, no, I'm out too.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, you gotta sweat box him.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Divot told him to go to the local Blockbuster and rent every movie that you haven't seen for the last 20 years.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. Interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah because scientologists aren't allowed to ingest pop culture at all.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well anything that could possibly shake their belief system.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Well I'll tell you one thing, that pool scene in Wild Things, really showy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I got enturbulated.
MARCUS PARKS
Well finally though, after gathering his thoughts, Rinder sent a letter to his wife asking her to escape too. I am out, come join me, bring the kids.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
She quite literally told him to fuck off and she added a PS in her letter telling him to fuck off that she would send divorce papers soon and would quote "brief the kids". By 2008 Rinder had gotten a job as a used car salesman at a Toyota dealership in Virginia and he was living a relatively normal life. Of course his ex-wife, brother, and children, they kept sending him letters telling him to kill himself but using Scientology language. They told him that he should quote "check out of this game and go sit on a rock for a few million years."
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, man. Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Oh wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It does sound like space jazz.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it is Scientology's threats. Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, she wants me to be a lizard.
MARCUS PARKS
They called him a quote "overwhelmed, implanted, EV perp being."
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay, yeah sure.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey, well, hey. Calm down now.
BEN KISSEL
I didn't know we were getting this deep, guys.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Seriously, honestly-
BEN KISSEL
Do people say this?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that should be bleeped.
MARCUS PARKS
And they said that he was 95% in the American Psychiatric Association camp. Oddly, when scientologists make this APA accusation, they always say 95% and not 100% and no one knows why.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's because no one is 100% of anything. That's what I would say. Nobody is 100% of anything.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. 95%.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause 5% of you is probably cocksucker.
BEN KISSEL
It's mostly semen. Yeah, that's true.
MARCUS PARKS
But sometime later, Rinder discovered that Marty Rathbun had also escaped and was working as a reporter for a small local newspaper in South Texas. They both decided it was their duty to speak out against Scientology and they've both been doing it ever since, even though Rinder claims that he's whistleblowing to quote "save Hubbard's legacy."
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's walked that back a little bit more now. Now that he's like way, way out, he has been way more talking about what LRH was kind of a con man. And so as I listened to the podcast, cause he did a podcast with Leah Remini, Fair Game, I was like you can kind of see it takes a minute.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Of course it does, man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They have the lessons leak out.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. When he wrote his book he was still like Hubbard's legacy, man. Miscavige is evil and that's what I'm down for. But yeah, it's good to know. Yeah, it's good to know that he's come out of it even further.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's trying to.
BEN KISSEL
It's tough, dude.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's very difficult.
BEN KISSEL
Crawling on your hands and knees.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You bought in for a long-
BEN KISSEL
Choking out your buddies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And also there is that weird psychosomatic effect that some of the early training has. People do have breakthroughs on some of these things but something has to happen to at least get you there to begin with.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah. Remember when people come out of these sorts of fucking horrible situations, welcome them with open arms.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Welcome.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Welcome them. Make sure that they have a place to escape to, otherwise they're gonna stay in and keep acting horribly.
BEN KISSEL
Understand when you take them to Old Country Buffet, they're gonna freak out when they see the salad bar.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're gonna scream. They're gonna be like (screaming)
BEN KISSEL
Beans! Rice and beans! It's next to an enchilada. So that's good. You would like those rice and beans.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can't eat a food that has food hidden within it. Because I don't know what that inner food is.
BEN KISSEL
It's a burrito.
MARCUS PARKS
But while Rinder and Rathbun are the two highest ranking Scientology executives to speak out against Scientology, the most famous scientologist in existence, a certain top gun, he still has not addressed the many crimes his religion has committed. In fact, he seems to be more devout than ever. And it would be fair to say that David Miscavige was at many points in his life one of his best friends.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Lucky guy.
BEN KISSEL
I guess so.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm talking of course about the subject of today's blind item.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Who is it? I can't see it.
BEN KISSEL
Who could it be? I'm so gonna be shocked.
MARCUS PARKS
Tom Cruise!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yay!
BEN KISSEL
Oh it's Tom Cruise!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
TC, baby.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Tom Cruise and David Miscavige actually have a lot in common. By the age of 25, Tom Cruise had already starred in Risky Business and Top Gun, making him a massive movie star. Likewise, David Miscavige was de facto leading Scientology by the age of 25. And the two men are only about two years apart in age.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wish that I could show you this picture, it's in a video of David Miscavige standing next to Tom Cruise. We joke about how Tom Cruise like towers over David Miscavige but he kind of fucking does.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Well is he wearing the inner heel though?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He might have had his legs longened. I'm not certain. But it's this really weird, it reminds me of the video, you remember when they did the cellphone, the flip phone footage of Saddam Hussein getting hanged?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Right, during that-
BEN KISSEL
I love that footage.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Every night.
BEN KISSEL
Every night.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's the only way I sleep.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so it's footage like that. It's a hand and you see Tom, it's him doing actor hands while everyone's applauding, they're standing up and applauding him in a room because it's the day after his big birthday party.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If you've never seen the birthday party on the Freewinds for Tom Cruise footage, look that up because it's Tom Cruise doing the (hums Old Time Rock and Roll), like he dances across the stage, everybody dances.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But you see they're all laughing. David Miscavige is at fucking his like shoulders.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's at Tom Cruise's shoulders and you see the guy filming and stuff and then you see David Miscavige look right down the pipe at the cellphone camera and point at him. And you see the camera just like zip.
MARCUS PARKS
Jeez.
BEN KISSEL
Scary.
MARCUS PARKS
Well to that point, both men are short little hard bodies, even though Tom Cruise is a bit taller of a short little hard body, but both have naturally aggressive personalities, they both have that East Coast flair.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Like me!
BEN KISSEL
Tom does his own stunts.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm an East Coast guy!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And also you do your own stunts as well.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep. Ah!
BEN KISSEL
Ah! Flying crossbody.
MARCUS PARKS
And both men love cars, motorcycles, and extreme sports. Now in the mid 80s Miscavige had been on the lookout for the right celebrity to be the face of Scientology because John Travolta's star had begun to rapidly fade after a long string of critical flops. Sure, did Staying Alive do well at the box office? Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it hasn't really held up well in the span of time.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And the movie that he did with Olivia Newton John right after in which they were both angels. And then the movie he did-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. There was The Boy in the Bubble.
MARCUS PARKS
But that was before, that was when he was still on the way up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) She's like the wind. Remember that song? He sang that song too.
BEN KISSEL
A lot of music.
MARCUS PARKS
A lot of music today, yeah. But right around the time that Travolta was saying yes to all these stinkers, the golden boy entered Scientology through a woman named Mimi Rogers. Rogers, a born scientologist, was Tom Cruise's first wife. Her parents had joined back when it was just about dianetics but they had left during the late 70s when things got weird. At least when they were starting to infiltrate the IRS, stuff like that.
BEN KISSEL
I'm a little bit surprised that he didn't go with like a Jean-Claude Van Damme.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jean-Claude Van Damme is very difficult to pin down.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Anybody that can split without having your balls like explode like that.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's very different. He's very into control.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
His perineum can stretch though.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. And I think he was a very violent man.
BEN KISSEL
No, just in the movies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's mean.
BEN KISSEL
I actually don't know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know.
MARCUS PARKS
I have no idea.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know.
BEN KISSEL
But either way, he went with Cruise.
MARCUS PARKS
You know what Tom Cruise's real name is? Thomas Mapother.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think it's Map-a-thur.
BEN KISSEL
That sounds like a faker name than Tom Cruise.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey man, it's all about transformation, magical transformation. LRH understood it, it's what you're supposed to do.
BEN KISSEL
Mapother.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's like Thomas Mapother IV.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's a family name.
BEN KISSEL
No woman would fantasize about Thomas Mapother.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You've never seen the hips of a Thomas Mapother, you don't know. You don't know.
BEN KISSEL
It's Tom Cruise!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He could be the most fantastic dancer outside of Delaware!
BEN KISSEL
I've seen him dance.
MARCUS PARKS
Well when Mimi's parents left, she stayed in. And she was quite the celebrity recruiter. She also brought in Sonny Bono.
BEN KISSEL
This is flirty fishing.
MARCUS PARKS
Interestingly though it took a bit for Miscavige to actually hear that Tom Cruise was already in the church. Miscavige didn't bring him in, he didn't target him. Just like holy shit, the guy from fucking Risky Business is a scientologist now?
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
See Mimi had brought Tom into the fold during the filming of Top Gun. Think about that the next time you watch Top Gun. And Tom Cruise actually credited Scientology with helping to cure his dyslexia.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think that he just found more people that will read him scripts. I don't know if it's cured. I love letters that are upside down.
MARCUS PARKS
And so once Miscavige learned-
BEN KISSEL
That's not what dyslexia is by the way.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh shit, letters and numbers? All right with me. Vroom vroom.
BEN KISSEL
Really not understanding dyslexia. It's okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Gross misunderstanding.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I ain't no doctor. I'm a suppressive person.
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh.
MARCUS PARKS
I see, I see. And so once Miscavige learned that Tom Cruise was a part of the church, he had Cruise brought to Gold Base. His top people were assigned to audit and supervised the man that Miscavige would one day affectionately referred to as TC. Tom was happy, David was happy, and Mimi was happy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But then came Days of Thunder.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah man.
BEN KISSEL
Days of Thunder, very popular. Didn't he have the Mountain Dew car?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No man.
MARCUS PARKS
Mello Yello.
BEN KISSEL
Mello Yello car, that's right. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, it's when Australian beauty came walking in that life of his and he knew he needed to hop up on a little stool because he needed to get up inside that head.
BEN KISSEL
Yep. Nicole Kidman.
MARCUS PARKS
He saw a movie called Dead Calm, saw Nicole Kidman, he said that woman is gonna be my next wife.
BEN KISSEL
And he just went into the TV screen and grabbed her.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what happens when you're a movie star. You actually can do that.
BEN KISSEL
Isn't that weird?
MARCUS PARKS
He had enough star power by 1989 to say go get Nicole Kidman. Put her in my next movie, make her my love interest in this vroom vroom car movie I'm about to be in.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's awesome. That's kind of hot.
BEN KISSEL
Mello Yello.
MARCUS PARKS
That's right.
BEN KISSEL
Nice.
MARCUS PARKS
Seeing a Hollywood power couple as an obvious asset to Scientology, Miscavige decided that it would be better for everyone if TC and Mimi got a divorce so Tom could be free to pursue Nicole Kidman.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Listen, there's one thing I know, it's how to love.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And how to maintain a relationship, Tom. All right? Because scientologists, obviously what we do best here is fixed marriages. And I think the first way to fix your marriage, right, fucking blow it up. Right? We just gotta get rid of this one because it's bad. So we need to revamp.
MARCUS PARKS
Well seemingly to introduce difficulties, Cruise was all of a sudden telling Mimi that he planned on returning to his original ambition, becoming a monk.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Him and Scorsese are very similar in the fact that he was very... I wonder because I also was obsessed with being a priest when I was a little boy too.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's something that's connected to acting.
BEN KISSEL
We know what it is. You want robes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And power and all this stuff.
BEN KISSEL
You want power, you like necklaces, garb.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, unquestioned, I love all that shit.
BEN KISSEL
Bones of a saint in a table.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I love merch, yeah. I love all that shit. So you can see how a super nerd like that, because that's really all monk is.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Right? In a way.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're a religious super nerd.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because you think that you can do it, right. You can touch the godhead. And I feel like that's the type of quality that's perfect for a scientologist.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I did see a meme the other day and it asked Buddha, it said... No, this is true.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
God help me.
BEN KISSEL
It asked the Buddha and it said what did you learn when you meditated? And what Buddha said, I learned nothing but what I lost, anger, frustration, selfishness, ego.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Play the flutes. (pan flute music plays)
BEN KISSEL
So that's it. It's not what you learn, it's what you lose.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS
That's what you lose.
BEN KISSEL
Selfishness.
MARCUS PARKS
Wouldn't it be it's not what you gain, it's what you lose.
BEN KISSEL
It's what you lose.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We are better than memes. Memes are not the only way we need to experience spiritual evolution.
BEN KISSEL
About aren't memes fun? Yes. Everything is fine. And then there's the dog and the house is on fire.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know the meme.
BEN KISSEL
That's a meme.
MARCUS PARKS
Well that's the thing, Tom Cruise told his wife hey, I'm becoming a monk. I gotta be celibate to quote "maintain the purity of my instrument".
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Man, I don't know about him, man. I gotta get my gunk out of my instrument for me to feel good.
BEN KISSEL
I don't know.
MARCUS PARKS
Well pretty soon-
BEN KISSEL
That's why you're an SP, buddy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, too much gunk.
BEN KISSEL
Too much gunk.
MARCUS PARKS
Well pretty soon Mimi was served divorce papers by Marty Rathbun. And after Cruise and Kidman got together, Miscavige began pressuring Cruise to convert Nicole Kidman.
BEN KISSEL
What a nightmare for her. She probably had no idea that this was all... It's almost like one of those 80s movies where it was always set up and the hot guy was supposed to date the ugly girl but then he falls for her.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And then she's like this whole thing was a game?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He showed up on their honeymoon.
BEN KISSEL
Miscavige did? Oh I mean yeah, I'd kill him. I'd kill him.
MARCUS PARKS
It's weird. Because that's the thing, I wonder so much how much Tom Cruise lets... How much of Scientology does he let his romantic conquests see prior to marriage?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well again, he's the only one really experiencing 100% benefits from Scientology.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So he's like come look at this wonderful world where everybody does whatever I say.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And everybody's smiling and they're just so friendly and giving and it's such a cool community. David's so cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean he's great. And it's really just because you're being treated so kind of well.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah of course.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're being treated like a pharaoh.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And he also seems like, I know he definitely did this with Katie Holmes and I think he might have done it with Nicole Kidman as well, he gets married real fucking fast.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's old school.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I think he asked Katie Holmes to marry him in something like eight weeks after they started dating.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They don't believe in sex out of wedlock, I believe. Scientologists say that the whole point is that you're supposed to get married and make some kind of child that then they scoop up and train on their own.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It's like Rosemary's Baby.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's weird. But yeah, he gets them in fast. As we know Kidman has always been let's say unenthusiastic about Scientology.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
But that's not for lack of trying on the part of David Miscavige. In order to reel her in, he set up Tom and Nicole with a special bungalow at Gold Base with a private rose garden and gave them both anything they wanted no matter how ridiculous. When they expressed a casual desire to play tennis for example, Miscavige built them a tennis court.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Full regulation, leveled ground, everything top of the line, like Wimbledon style tennis court.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Built them tennis court, had a tennis court built.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, he didn't do much.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He sent an email.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
When they said they wanted to run through a field of wildflowers together, he tasked the Gold Base Sea Org members, the near slaves if you'll remember, to transform the desert surrounding Gold Base into a garden of wildflowers.
BEN KISSEL
Okay, great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He said go literally do the impossible. Like when he told Mike Rinder to go get LRH a posthumous Nobel Prize.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Here's a straw, go suck out the water from the ocean.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it failed. It was fucking stupid. So Miscavige found the nearest meadow, plowed it, and planted it with flowers so Tom and Nicole could realize the wildflower fantasy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is the crux of what... That's why we're even covering this end of the story is that this is the real crux of what's going on at the heart of Scientology.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is that every single time you see one of these ridiculous things being asked for, that's being done by people for free.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they go and have to toil, toil for hours. They're being forced to do these insane things.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then the only people who see benefit are the people up top. And they're also then punished for it. It's both a punishment, it's like here's a job that has a punishment attached to it and then we're gonna punish you on top of it because no matter what you do, it's going to be incorrect.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And everybody around you is going to be moved and shifted to various departments because no matter what's going on, every single time they have any sort of event, he's about to fire everybody. Especially at this point, most of the time they are organizing all of the shit that's going on outside of The Hole from The Hole. They're in The Hole doing the things that he wants them to do, organizing these things for the other people outside of it doing the free labor.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It does make, if anyone has seen the leaked footage of Howard Stern giving a company meeting, it does seem worse than that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh very much so. Oh yeah, yeah. The Pelican Brief.
BEN KISSEL
The famous pelican, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
That's the thing is that it's not like Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman are sitting there demanding this stuff, like build me a tennis court!
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
They're expressing casual desires and David Miscavige is building a world for them and they're probably not even quite aware that he's building this frictionless world.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean Nicole Kidman is seeing it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, Nicole Kidman seeing it but Tom Cruise is not... He's a very physical man. I would not call him an intellectual.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Actors... How do you put it? You don't have to be the smartest guy in the world to be a very good actor.
BEN KISSEL
Would you say it's actually negative to have your own thoughts?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I actually think yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think that actually a lot of times you meet like John Travolta, love him.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's not really good with a complicated question. Patrick Swayze is also one of those dudes, right. Again, RIP, loved him as a performer. He's not got a lot going on. They talk about Jimi Hendrix, about how like terrible interview. You know what I mean?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're artists so they don't have to be that great at maybe understanding a lot of things.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well that's the thing, that's why I can't learn lines because my mind is already full of my own fucking thoughts.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So he's trying to say that he's too smart to be an actor.
BEN KISSEL
Great.
MARCUS PARKS
No, I'm not saying I'm too smart. I'm saying that my thoughts are too out of control to be an actor.
BEN KISSEL
Well buddy, I actually, first of all-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey, look at Johnny Depp, okay.
BEN KISSEL
Look at Johnny Depp, number one. But also we actually have some fantastic footage of you as Toeless Joe.
MARCUS PARKS
That was improv, my friend.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. That's true art.
MARCUS PARKS
And also there were no lines in that fucking role besides grunts and screams.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm Toeless Joe. But I also think that it was way more of an acting job, it was more of a dance performance.
MARCUS PARKS
It was (grunting). Those were the lines, those were the only noises.
BEN KISSEL
I'm just saying.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm Toeless Joe.
MARCUS PARKS
No, I actually never said I'm Toeless Joe.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I have that footage, yep. I'm waiting. I have more footage. We shot a lot that day.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It was a long day.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now that I remember, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yes indeed.
MARCUS PARKS
It ended with me being drug out of the door of 656 Metropolitan Avenue covered in shaving cream.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that was fun.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And blood. Fake blood. Now seemingly David Miscavige would not only made Cruise's dreams come true but he also made sure, as I said, that TC lived in a complication free bubble built by Scientology. As Henry said, this cannot be stressed enough, it meant that it was built by Sea Org members who were for all intents and purposes captives.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
In some cases, in many cases actually, they were teenagers. You're talking like 16, 17 year old kids who are basically slave labor. Like for example, when Cruise and Kidman's Gold Base bungalow was damaged by a mudslide, Sea Org members worked 16 hours a day to fix it. When Tom Cruise entrusted money to Scientology, stockbrokers who quickly lost that money, those same stockbrokers had to pay back Cruise's losses with their own money.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now that's a good hedge fund.
BEN KISSEL
Yep. I've ruined a couple of places with a mudslide myself.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Shit. He's talking about diarrhea.
MARCUS PARKS
Diarrhea.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're as brave as Alex Murdaugh.
BEN KISSEL
Thank you. Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Cruise and Miscavige's relationship is interesting because it's unknown what side of himself Miscavige chooses to show to Tom Cruise.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's the fun side.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's the only time he smiles, when him and TC are hanging out.
MARCUS PARKS
What we do know is that every effort is made to keep the punishment of Sea Org members out of Tom Cruise's purview. He's not getting tours of The Hole, you know.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. I mean as far as I know, I don't think he is. I think that they keep it fairly separate. He sees a very rosy version of it.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But at some point, how much can you not? He's in the SP world.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I mean who knows? He might be truly... He's also very closed off, I bet. He's living on a compound.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well he just also gets a completely different version.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But we do know that TC and Miscavige who are close enough where David would visit movie sets.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Imagine this fucking little psychopath coming onto a set.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean to use Wolf of Wall Street as an example, they had to make sure that Jordan Belfort could not come to set. They literally had to keep him off set. Because during Goodfellas, Hank Hill, Henry Hill would show up.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And like say a shit and became really rough.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So like yeah, he shouldn't be there.
BEN KISSEL
Saw a pretty funny interview with Ray Liotta the other day.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
RIP as well.
MARCUS PARKS
RIP as well. Chantix.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. He said he met Henry Hill and Henry Hill thanked him for portraying him such in such a nice way.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh god. Just being like I was a fucking maniac.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well on the Days of Thunder shoot, Miscavige showed up and TC took him skydiving.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Oh yeah, it's fun.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And Miscavige, he has some very real influences on TC's acting choices. Apparently Tom Cruise modeled his character in A Few Good Men on David Miscavige.
BEN KISSEL
He plays a horrible person.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Exactly.
MARCUS PARKS
Exactly, yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But no, righteous.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes. But of course the little man uses that as a bragging point constantly.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is really funny because when they went into the making of Battlefield Earth. So we know that David Miscavige went full whole hog trying to get Battlefield Earth done which has a $75 million budget.
BEN KISSEL
Not a penny wasted.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's rough. They basically said most of it went to John Travolta's budget, basically that's what they insinuated. But David Miscavige obviously goes to the fucking the ropes, right. He's like Battlefield Earth is gonna be fucking huge, everybody's gonna fucking love this, you fucking cocksuckers.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And it bombs.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
At what point is a movie so bad it becomes money laundering?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know. I actually don't know, that's a very good question.
MARCUS PARKS
Now you're just talking The Producers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The Producers, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But TC calls up David and he's like let's have a meeting. And TC goes up to David Miscavige after the movie fucking bombs.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he's just like what the fuck, David? And he's like what do you want from me? He's like this is Scientology's movie production studio. I want nothing but hits. You gotta be making hits if we're doing these things.
BEN KISSEL
Tom is correct on that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. And so David Miscavige was like I had nothing to do with that film! And then you know that Tom Cruise got on his little motorcycle and David just jumped on that little back, just crippling his little knees to his back, just grinding his little package.
BEN KISSEL
143 lbs of pure male.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Yum yum.
BEN KISSEL
Combined weight.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean the general feeling around the Scientology offices at the time is that it was actually so bad that it briefly broke the spell of Scientology and that people were actually asking around the offices like did nobody watch this thing before it went out?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, are we not doing a quality check? Because I know I get punishment when I'm down stats.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I don't think there's any more of a down stat than a $75 million budget movie making $3 million.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I mean say what you want about Christianity, they got some fucking hits, dude.
MARCUS PARKS
They do.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They do.
BEN KISSEL
10 Commandments holds up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, Charlton Heston, I think he's still alive.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Miscavige saw Tom Cruise as the entry point to access some of the most influential people in Hollywood. And if Miscavige could bring them on board, then it would be another big step towards public acceptance. For example, when Kidman and Cruise starred in Far And Away in 1992, they convinced director Ron Howard to have dinner with David Miscavige at Gold Base. It didn't take, as it also didn't take for co-star Colm Meaney. They also tried to recruit him, Colm Meaney, the beloved Chief O'Brien in Deep Space Nine.
BEN KISSEL
Yes. Of course.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know that.
BEN KISSEL
No, I do know that.
MARCUS PARKS
Really, yeah, Chief O'Brien. Oh, Keiko. Oh, the Cardassians.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The Kardashians are in Deep Space Nine?
BEN KISSEL
Cardassians.
MARCUS PARKS
No, the Cardassians.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh I'm sorry.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, they got big necks. Attention Bajoran workers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know. I don't know. This is where I'm lost.
BEN KISSEL
I don't know. But either way, they're not getting that director guy, they're not gonna get him.
MARCUS PARKS
Ron Howard?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, they're not gonna get him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh no, Ron Howard didn't want it. No.
MARCUS PARKS
No, no. But Colm Meaney many years later in like 2011 said that back then the only two places in Hollywood that you could network where Scientology and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That's hilarious.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That makes a lot of fucking sense. A lot of times it's one or the other. The Celebrity Center in LA, it's an old hotel that turned into the spot and it used to be a place where you used to go where you can hang out. But now it's like you have to hit a certain level to go to the Celebrity Center in LA because the problem is that people kept showing up hoping to bump into some celebrity and they'd have their scripts and shit. And then eventually they're like, no, no, no, no, this isn't for you noobs, this isn't for parishioners.
BEN KISSEL
Cool. That's a fun place to be.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it is.
MARCUS PARKS
Well they didn't get Ron Howard and likewise Steven Spielberg was also courted when he was making Minority Report with Tom Cruise.
BEN KISSEL
Great movie.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean this is starting to really fuck with him too because more and more people are like Tom Cruise, hey listen, you're paid to promote movies.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You need to stop it. And then he listened to the movie people.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Spielberg also resisted. But Tom Cruise and David Miscavige, they figured that the only reason why Spielberg didn't join was because Spielberg's kids saw a psychiatrist.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Only reason.
MARCUS PARKS
Only reason.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, that's the only reason. So honestly they're just looking for a good director.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah. They need one.
BEN KISSEL
They just don't want another Battlefield Earth.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They desperately need one.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
BEN KISSEL
Do you have to be a scientologist to direct a scientologist movie?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Well because Battlefield Earth, the guy who directed that was not.
MARCUS PARKS
And the guy who wrote the screenplay also wasn't a scientologist.
BEN KISSEL
Oh that's interesting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They actually prefer anything that's permanent media, from what I have seen and read, they prefer you to not be a scientologist.
BEN KISSEL
Interesting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because then you can't protest if you leave later on like hey, you can't use my image in that anymore even though... So that's what I've heard.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Figured they're trying to do that from within.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Scientologists are too busy to direct films.
BEN KISSEL
They're crawling on the floor, beating each other up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Too busy.
BEN KISSEL
Oh okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And from what I heard, the people who do work for Scientology, it is just like yeah, I'll just do whatever the fuck you want, give me the paycheck.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Cause paycheck is apparently pretty good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, they pay.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what they do with those PIs. We'll see.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the thing is about Steven Spielberg, of course no, he's not coming in. He's got a kid who sees a psychiatrist. So Miscavige directed a Scientology group to protest the facility where that psychiatrist worked. This was not a good move in Hollywood.
BEN KISSEL
Probably not.
MARCUS PARKS
Spielberg called up Tom Cruise and said this is unappreciated and inappropriate.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which is like that's a deep dressing down from a very proper man. You know what I mean?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause the idea of that powerful man being like this is inappropriate.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Unappreciated, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, it's unappreciated.
MARCUS PARKS
And again, Tom Cruise went and ripped Miscavige a new hole.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That was also one of Miscavige's favorite terms.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, new hole.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
New assholes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, rip them new assholes, yeah. Assholes, dicks, balls.
BEN KISSEL
He's gay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He is gay.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean I think he would like to lick a dick at the very least.
BEN KISSEL
I wish that he would.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
At least get his penis licked once by Mike Rinder.
BEN KISSEL
Well who knows? Who knows what he and Tom have done?
MARCUS PARKS
Who knows? But the love affair with Scientology actually sputtered out for Tom Cruise for much of the 90s, partly because of that Time Magazine article we talked about last episode. Partly of course it was also David Miscavige's meddlings and it was partly because the influence of Nicole Kidman. See Kidman had reached OT 2 within a year of joining Scientology because it seems like the more influential and important a person is, the faster they progress along the bridge to total freedom.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Weird.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know, crazy right?
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
But after OT 2, Kidman stopped taking courses. She was therefore privately considered a PTS, a potential trouble source. This is the first step towards being declared an SP. And it's likely that her lack of enthusiasm temporarily rubbed off on Tom Cruise.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah because it's the love of life and the parent of his children and stuff like that. You'd think it would.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, those things.
MARCUS PARKS
You'd think it would, yeah. Now Cruise did go to bat for Scientology here and there in the 90s, most notably in the murder of Lisa McPherson at the hands of Scientology officials. But he wasn't auditing much at all and Miscavige lost his grip even further when Kidman and Cruise disappeared for a year while they filmed Eyes Wide Shut with Stanley Kubrick.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my.
MARCUS PARKS
They were all the way over in England. This was also during Cruise's brief cool period, it was when he also did Magnolia.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I mean when he was really trying, he was really trying to act during this time period.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And he's incredible in Magnolia.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So good.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's so good in Magnolia.
BEN KISSEL
Very good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And fucking Eye Wide Shut. Eyes Wide Shut is a great movie too.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Vanilla Sky, meh.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Magnolia, fucking respect the cock. You know? So on and so forth.
BEN KISSEL
Sure. Absolutely. Maybe he got that from Miscavige.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly it doesn't... Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Actually man. Whoa.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It really does.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But as Scientology does again and again, they caught Tom Cruise during a moment of vulnerability and grief when Kidman was rumored to have had a miscarriage.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And of course that means it was her fault.
MARCUS PARKS
That's when Marty Rathbun basically cornered Cruise and began auditing him again with Miscavige supervising. And of course the more Cruise was audited, the more he was turned against Nicole Kidman.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Eventually elements within Scientology also turned Kidman and Cruise's kids against Nicole Kidman. By 2001, just a year or two after Cruise returned, that's all it took-
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It did take 200 hours of auditing.
BEN KISSEL
Jeez.
MARCUS PARKS
But after all that, Cruise and Kidman quite acrimoniously divorced. And since then Cruise has never seemed to waver in his faith at all.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. Interesting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. And he is completely out of it. He's back in. In Marc Headley's podcast, he did a podcast and he talked about on his book, I was reading it in 'Blown For Good' is that for a while he was a young man coming up in the Sea Org and Tom Cruise decided that he needed to get better at auditing. He wanted to audit, he wanted to get back on the auditing training path.
BEN KISSEL
As in he wanted to be audited.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, he wanted to audit.
BEN KISSEL
He wanted to audit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Oh okay.
MARCUS PARKS
He wanted like he's just a regular guy, he just wants to be a regular scientologist.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, he's just like you and I.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so Marty Rathbun went up to this kid and he was like okay, so this is what's gonna happen. So TC is looking to audit. He's gonna audit you.
BEN KISSEL
I'd be like what?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is what he's saying, he's like what?
MARCUS PARKS
16 year old kid.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
16 year old kid. And he's like so this is the thing, he's gonna audit you and the only people who are gonna fucking know about this is you, TC, and me. No one else is gonna know that you're doing this, right. So they go to what is LRH's private music room on Gold Base. When they go, because TC can't go to a regular auditing room because it causes a flurry, everybody runs around, right, it's too much for him. He's gonna go to a place super private.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which was this performance room where LRH used to play, I think he played the clarinet, a couple of things where you do stuff.
MARCUS PARKS
Jazz clarinet.
BEN KISSEL
he's so fucking bad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah dude. But it was styled like a medieval dining hall with full plate armor, like a stand. It was like eight sets of armor, a big long table, the big long back chairs. And they would audit in there. And the thing was that the first time-
BEN KISSEL
What the fuck?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The first time they went to audit, the kid, Marc Headley, fell asleep in front of TC which is the number one crime because it means that you're not paying attention and you're not like logged in.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But because it's Tom Cruise, he's still Tom Cruise. So he's like it's okay, buddy. Buddy, we're gonna get through this, buddy. We're gonna work on this. And he was like what we gotta do is you need sleep. So unlike everybody else who gets punished, they went to Marc Headley and they're like you need to sleep. From now on we're taking you off your night job, you're gonna sleep because you need to be well rested to be audited by Tom Cruise. So they went, they rehabilitated him. And then finally you have to attain a useful condition to be able to be audited. So you get checked to see if you're a traitor first, then they check your condition-
BEN KISSEL
How the fuck do they do that?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
E-meters and yelling at you.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Right. And then they check your condition and they found that he was in this bad condition. And Tom Cruise-
BEN KISSEL
They said his cholesterol was 170/120. Oh no!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Pan flutes, please. No, it's fine. I don't need them right now. I'm not agitated.
BEN KISSEL
No, you're not.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But Tom Cruise went and he was like all right, we can't get you in the right, he couldn't get up to the thing that he needed to be. I don't know how they administer the condition.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's another E-meter test. And Tom Cruise is like you know what'll fix you, what set me straight when I was having these problems? We gotta get you some bee pollen. You gotta eat the bee pollen.
BEN KISSEL
Bee pollen.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's this weird supplement shit. And so Marc Headley is like okay. Now this is the biggest secret inside of Scientology right now at all.
BEN KISSEL
Bee pollen.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, that Tom Cruise is auditing anybody, that anybody would be able to be worthy to be audited by Tom Cruise, right.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now they just sent him a training boy. So Tom Cruise is like let's go to town and we'll figure this out. And so they hop on Tom Cruise's motorcycle, Marc Headley gripping to his back, Tom Cruise zips him down to town where he goes to buy bee pollen. And meanwhile this crowd shows up because it's fucking Tom Cruise.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
With this weird child on his motorcycle.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And it's just this strange scene where he has to go buy him bee pollen, then he takes to be pollen, then magically it works. And now they're auditing for a couple of sessions.
BEN KISSEL
Well fantastic.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
It's bizarre. This is what happened.
BEN KISSEL
Very strange.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Very different worlds though.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Well when Tom Cruise came back into Scientology, he allowed Scientology to direct every aspect of his personal life and a fair amount of his professional life, much to his own detriment. See in 2003, this might answer some questions of why Tom Cruise kind of went a little wacky in the 2000s. This was two years after Cruise's return to the fold. Miscavige convinced Tom Cruise to fire his longtime publicist, Pat Kingsley. Kingsley had very wisely advised Cruise to lay off talking about Scientology in public at all.
BEN KISSEL
Just a bit, yeah, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, cool it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But she was replaced by Tom Cruise's sister, an ardent scientologist. So within like a year, maybe two, Tom Cruise is all of a sudden jumping on Oprah's couch, screaming about how much he's in love with Katie Holmes.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
He's having confrontations with Matt Lauer, he's calling psychiatry a pseudoscience, he's attacking Brooke Shields for taking medication for postpartum depression.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
He's being a massive asshole.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And as such, Tom Cruise wasn't quite proving to be the key to the inner sanctum that Miscavige hoped he'd be. For years Cruise probed the edges of power, it wasn't just Hollywood he was trying to get into, he was trying to get into politics. He met with Bill Clinton.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But not when Bill Clinton was president. He's probing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Probing.
BEN KISSEL
Probing.
MARCUS PARKS
He met with Scooter Libby.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I love a professional named Scooter!
BEN KISSEL
Love Scooter.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Vice President chief of staff to Dick Cheney. But Scooter was as far as Tom Cruise could get, he couldn't get to Dick Cheney.
BEN KISSEL
What? Tom couldn't get to Dick Cheney?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Dick Cheney's got bigger plans.
BEN KISSEL
I guess so.
MARCUS PARKS
The closest Tom Cruise came to actually affecting change was when he almost convinced Secretary of Education Rod Paige to include LRH's study tech in No Child Left Behind.
BEN KISSEL
That would have been something.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
It wouldn't have made a fucking difference one way or another.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No but it would have been an actual bragging right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It would have been where all the rest of it's just fantasy.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Cruise also missed a lot of opportunities with celebrities. He failed to bring in Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith on a permanent basis, he failed to bring in Victoria or David Beckham, even though Miscavige actually had a full size football pitch built at Gold Base as a lure in the desert.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Jesus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just done by again, just by 16 year old hands essentially.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And similarly, Cruise was also unsuccessful in getting low key scientologists like Beck to go public. But as far as Tom Cruise went, around the time that Beck married into a powerful Scientology family around 2004, right around the time that his music went mediocre now that I think about it-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Interesting.
BEN KISSEL
Oh wow. No kidding, Marcus is really going in. He's being a real SP.
MARCUS PARKS
Scientology was of course working as, for lack of a better term, they were working as Tom Cruise's wife pimp.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh whoa, yeah. I remember when I met my wife pimp. Because that was honestly a game changer.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you were like wasn't she great?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. No, no, she was wonderful. You know, cheap. Cheap, cheap, cheap.
BEN KISSEL
Yep.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cheap, cheap, cheap.
BEN KISSEL
It's a new show, it's right after MILF Manor.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, Wife Pimp.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, Wife Pimp. You're gonna love it.
MARCUS PARKS
After things didn't work out with Penelope Cruz following the relationship they started on the set of Vanilla Sky, Penelope Cruz did try on Scientology for a bit, for like a year or so, maybe a little bit less.
BEN KISSEL
She's too cool.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She was.
MARCUS PARKS
Way too cool, yeah. Well TC, he ran through a series of young scientologist ladies groomed especially to be with Tom Cruise.
BEN KISSEL
So weird.
MARCUS PARKS
The first was a 19 year old who had been born into the church but she was turned away after about a month, Tom didn't like her.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
The other was a 25 year old OT 5 named Nazanin Boniadi. She was also I think in Going Clear.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
She was forced to break up with her boyfriend so Tom Cruise could try her on, for lack of a better term.
BEN KISSEL
Oh awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
Boniadi was run through the wringer at Gold Base during a hellish two week long audition of sorts where she was forced to have what I'm sure were exhausting dinners with Cruise and the Miscaviges every night.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I just gotta say, Nazanin? What's her name? Let me just ask you this question. You're here, obviously you're here as a part of like you're at dinner and you're liking the salad?
BEN KISSEL
I'm enjoying it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wrong answer, I made it to be bad.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Seafood and eat it, that's a funny thing that we say here. Don't eat the seafood either, that's for me. Lemme just ask this. Do we look gay?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
TC, what do you think? I like her.
BEN KISSEL
How does he have the smoker's laugh?
MARCUS PARKS
Well that's the thing is that she did all these dinners, exhausted being grilled every single fucking night.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because also she worked 12 hours a day and then got pulled into her fun special dinner.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Oh god.
MARCUS PARKS
She didn't act as expected. She also had a really fucking bad period. She said that she was woozy, she was in horrible pain the entire time.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, she's a human being.
MARCUS PARKS
SHe's a human being, yeah. So she was sent to Flag Base in Clearwater where she was assigned the condition of treason.
BEN KISSEL
Why?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She wouldn't go on a date with Tom Cruise.
MARCUS PARKS
She would go on a date with Tom Cruise but she didn't act like-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She didn't do it good.
BEN KISSEL
I don't think that Tom took her on a date. He had awkward dinners with he and David Miscavige.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh that's a date.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
David Miscavige is his date monitor. That's his wife pimp. You mean to tell me again, I don't even go to the grocery store without my wife pimp.
BEN KISSEL
I know you don't.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because she helps me understand what women like. They like carrots. They like soft cheeses.
BEN KISSEL
Celiac-free muffins.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep. Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
Well to make up for it, she dug ditches and scrubbed toilets with a toothbrush. That's what a treasonous person does. She was back in good standing after a few months but she was never again allowed into the Celebrity Center. She was an actress by the way. And she wasn't allowed to even talk about Tom Cruise. Thankfully she left Scientology soon after and has since had a relatively successful TV career.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow, flipped it and reversed it.
BEN KISSEL
Nice.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. She does 5-6 episode runs on things.
BEN KISSEL
Great.
MARCUS PARKS
And then of course there's Katie Holmes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh poor TomKat.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. The details of which I'm sure you're probably all too familiar with. Needless to say, Scientology tortured this poor woman and made her life a living hell after she decided to leave, to the point where they were chasing her around New York City by the end of it.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
We all remember that.
BEN KISSEL
I saw it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yup.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Long story short, she left because Tom Cruise was weird. Scientology was weird and her life had turned into a surreal nightmare. She got custody of their kid, she dated Jamie Foxx for 6 years.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Lucky girl.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And is slowly returning to stage and screen.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She's tall.
MARCUS PARKS
She's very tall.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Natalie doubled for her.
BEN KISSEL
No kidding?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because it's hard for Natalie to do stunt doubles because stunt doubles a lot of times it's because there's not a lot of tall actresses.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But Katie Holmes is like 5'10".
MARCUS PARKS
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Interesting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Good get for Tom.
BEN KISSEL
I guess.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I like it.
BEN KISSEL
Not good for Katie.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know I like it.
MARCUS PARKS
Well he's 5'6" right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
We're not gonna bring this up anymore. Henry is a height apologist for all of these people.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We have different lives for different reasons.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Tellingly though, Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise's wedding was the one in which David Miscavige was Tom Cruise's best man. I cannot stress that enough. This fucking horrible psychopath that we've been talking about for 6 hours now was Tom Cruise's best man in 2008. Was that when it was when they got married?
BEN KISSEL
Maybe.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. They actually pulled a scientologist out of The Hole to perform the ceremony.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. I love this.
MARCUS PARKS
And then he got drunk and hit on Brooke Shields and they put him back in The Hole.
BEN KISSEL
Back in The Hole! Oh man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Think about that, Brooke Shields still went to the fucking wedding.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I guess they made up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hollywood's a sick place.
BEN KISSEL
it's a strange land.
MARCUS PARKS
Now the thing about the services that Scientology has done for Tom Cruise over the years, wife pimping and such, building all these tennis courts-
BEN KISSEL
Imaginationland come to life.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Costs a lot of money.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
But people like Tom Cruise, that's precisely where Scientology gets their liquid assets. See while its membership continues to decline, its revenue keeps going up partly because of how many rich and gullible people keep giving them money. Celebrities of course but there's others. As far as the celebrities go, it's known that in 2004 Tom Cruise gave $3 million to Scientology. In 2007, Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson, she gave 10 million.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa! She gave more than Tom?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Tom's not very grateful.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Tom is a lot more involved in the administration process.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Nancy Cartwright-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She's just giving them money.
MARCUS PARKS
She's just giving them money and handing out pamphlets.
BEN KISSEL
That's weird that Bart Simpson would do that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's not Bart Simpson. I think The Simpsons even tried to say that, like Bart is a member of the Simpson family.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nancy is some weird person behind Bart.
MARCUS PARKS
But I can see why these celebrities give. In fact I can see why all the rich people give. It's not just celebrities, there's also the guy who created Boingo Wireless. If you've ever been in the airport and tried to get on the fucking shitty ass wifi, it's Boingo Wireless.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
And it never fucking works!
BEN KISSEL
Bro, I fucking hate fun names because the product always sucks.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, like GoGo or whatever.
BEN KISSEL
I have to be like fucking my Boingo isn't working and then I sound like an asshole.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fuck you, Boingo!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. He also Earthlink, he created fucking what was it, Helios. This guy is incredibly rich. You also have one of the richest media moguls in Australia, a billionaire, he's a scientologist. You have a pharmaceutical executive named Robert Duggan, $1.8 billion in net worth. He is Scientology's largest donor by far.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. And I bet you they get tax breaks too.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're giving to a church. So at some point you're getting a kickback as well.
MARCUS PARKS
But the reason why these people continue to give is because for them Scientology works.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
The rich are richer still and the celebrities are still rich and famous.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Nancy Cartwright is worth $80 million. She's on season 34 of The Simpsons. John Travolta is still worth $165 million. He has all the private jets he wants.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
He can blow as many masseuses as he can fucking handle.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean poor Mike Rinder because... I mean not poor Mike Rinder, it's more like it's interesting because when John Travolta and him, they had a private meeting and that's where the masseuse kiss came from.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah but the masseuse kiss came from when John Travolta was like hey, do you think I ought to take this movie called Pulp Fiction?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
To Mike Rinder.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And Mike Rinder was like I don't think playing a heroin addict is gonna be a good look for Scientology. He's wrong.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then a masseuse came in and they had a moment and then he left. And then he's saddled with the secret and this whole thing.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Pulp Fiction is the only reason that he had a comeback.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Of course.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And Tom Cruise is worth $620 million.
BEN KISSEL
Does his own stunts.
MARCUS PARKS
And he was just in a movie that is nominated for Best Picture. Top Gun: Maverick is nominated for Best fucking Picture. Scientology works for that motherfucker.
BEN KISSEL
Works for him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And people are allowed to do whatever the fucking it is they want with their money. I really do think and remember it's like they're allowed to do it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So if that's what they wanna do, if they want to waste their money like that, they absolutely can. And they're getting their own kickbacks too. But what their funding is again legally we cannot say they are guilty of human trafficking or murder.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it seems to be a function of the organization.
BEN KISSEL
How is everything getting built?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Human labor, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right. And how much money are they getting?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they're shipping them across states and countries.
BEN KISSEL
So they have an unpaid workforce.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
We can say that they have been charged with these things, with being culpable in deaths.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well do you want me to go into that?
MARCUS PARKS
Almost. But the thing is about these people is that $3 million to Scientology, it's fucking nothing. You know? And if life is going the way you want it to and you have no conscience whatsoever about the consequences that your support of Scientology brings to other people, there's no reason to stop. Therefore Scientology has been kept afloat by the big fish, even if the little fish have mostly stopped giving. But there's the matter of what David Miscavige has been doing these last 10-15 years. Because our narrative kind of stops around 2009-2010.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well it's interesting because there was a big clamp down on information that came out, especially because of the mass exodus of like Marty Rathbun, Mike Rinder, all these big guys coming out.
MARCUS PARKS
Leah Remini. The biggest one.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Oh yeah, spilling all this shit. And so now we're in this kind of sea of mystery of what the fuck goes on inside.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. He's basically gone into hiding. Nobody sees David Miscavige.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He goes back and forth from his various properties. But from what I can gather, so like where Scientology is at now is that according to Mike Rinder's blog, again this comes from him, the way he tracks it is obviously they're highly secretive about what their members are.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they're saying that there's 8-10 million scientologists around the world which is not true. Mike Rinder says that even at their height he believes that the most that there was was 50,000. But again, who knows? They're saying he's an SP, he'll say whatever he wants. But in 2011 there was a census in England and Wales that said that there was 2418 scientologists that registered legally.
BEN KISSEL
Wow, that's it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
By 2021 the number that have officially put on the list that they were already went down to 1854. Right?
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So they lost a bunch.
MARCUS PARKS
That's just in England.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's just in England.
BEN KISSEL
But I mean England's big.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But he's saying that if you look at this track and the way he breaks down, he thinks that there is less than 20,000 scientologists on the whole across the world.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which is why these Ideal Orgs are completely empty. They're all just fronts.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The one up in NoHo, sometimes they'll have a couple, there's a couple of people stationed outside.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But that's because the Church of Scientology is doing this thing that's called like the ladies who help. Because they're trying to show oh look, we're doing these fundraiser things, things about specifically COVID.
BEN KISSEL
Are they wife pimps?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They are. I don't know.
MARCUS PARKS
There was a nice lady wearing a T-shirt I saw outside of it the other day. The T-shirt said 'Curious?'.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Curious?
BEN KISSEL
Curious?
MARCUS PARKS
Well I was driving by and I glanced at it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're like hi! But David Miscavige, I think one thing that was interesting about what's going on right now is that there's been a release of documents about what happened when COVID- 19 hit.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Right?
BEN KISSEL
Did they use it for their advantage and completely corrupt a narrative that was not supposed to happen?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure. Yeah. But it's actually what we're seeing is that Scientology is probably at its very weakest.
BEN KISSEL
I believe that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because when COVID-19 hit, what we don't understand is that even if you're just a parishioner, you're supposed to go in every day.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're supposed to go to one of your Orgs and audit and do your things and you have face time, P to P with somebody at all times. I'm glad you're laughing. But you're supposed to do these things and it keeps you in whole, it keeps you in check, it keeps you a part of their world. COVID-19 immediately legally, they couldn't go out. And COVID-19 hit two days before LRH's birthday which is the biggest party of the year. David Miscavige was fucking furious, right.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He sent this missive that now that we can't be together anymore and we can't do this anymore, he called COVID-19, the term was a planetary bullbait which is like we're going to see how we all react to it. But so here's the hidden things. We know that Scientology does not believe in viruses or disease.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They believe that you do it to yourself, that you bring it in.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
David Miscavige definitely still very much has asthma.
MARCUS PARKS
Severe asthma.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Severe asthma.
BEN KISSEL
No, it's not true. Yeah, that wouldn't work.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so COVID-19, what does it do? What was one of the big things officially when it first came out? They're saying that it's gonna fuck with people with asthma.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
David Miscavige is incredibly scared of COVID-19 even though ostensibly he's supposed to say it doesn't exist, playing kayfabe if it was real. But instead he says what we're gonna do is they want to see how Scientology is gonna react during this. So he sent out the CDC guidelines repackaged as if it was Scientology's guidelines. And now the Scientology Orgs are so disinfected that the disinfectant is making people sick from being inside of it. Cause David Miscavige won't go anywhere unless it has been completely slathered from head to toe in the same shit that they clean emergency rooms with.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Probably just advancing the virus actually even further.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it mutated.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Because it mutates it and then it's like sterile, who gives a fuck, motherfucker?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They have a zero sickness policy now.
BEN KISSEL
Oh they have a zero sickness policy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. You can't even have sniffles.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Isn't that amazing?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so imagine you actively have COVID. Now those of us who have had it, right, we've had it and it sucks, right?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And when you have it you're brain fogged and all fucked up as it is. But then you have to call your auditor and be like I can't come in, I tested positive for COVID. They then are like you're getting audited over the phone. And what they're making them do now is take pictures of themselves at home.
BEN KISSEL
Zoom audits?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're making themselves take pictures at home studying and sending them into their auditors like look, you see. But all this being said, the hold is slipping.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's why we're getting more. The leaks are getting crazy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's document got leaked a week later which no one had ever done really before because they were afraid of the immediate repercussions.
BEN KISSEL
Right. They're not on the Supreme Court, they don't usually leak classified information.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. But now they're like out of it, they're out of the hold a little bit. So it's starting to get real wiggly. And now that David Miscavige was served with this essentially human trafficking charge.
BEN KISSEL
That's what is it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Human trafficking charge and just for details, so you can go into it on your own. There's an accusation from Valeska Paris and Gawain and Laura Baxter.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That they were residents of Australia, they were on scientologist cruise ship the Freewinds in the Caribbean. And basically what they're saying is is that we were as children, we were raised into Scientology, we had to sign these documents that gave our soul over for a billion years.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That would allow us to then work for free whenever and then we basically went to the Freewinds and we were tortured on this boat for a long period of time. And you this is human trafficking and we're charging you with it. But what's hard is because they're fighting the actual essential nature of like how do we prosecute a group of people who have written down like a consent form?
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
In a kangaroo court. Because it's still just in their world but it's still a contract, right.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So the billion year contract's like one thing where they said well that's a whole belief system, the courts are real icky about that. They don't know what to do with that yet. But there's another clause that Scientology makes you sign which is an arbitration clause that basically says you promise to handle any arbitration for what you feel as a malfeasance of Scientology within Scientology, not like in the court system.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So what they're fighting is they're saying that they signed this arbitration document that said they can't sue us. They literally can't, they signed their rights away. And what they're trying to say is like but does it count if you sign a contract quote unquote "under duress"?
BEN KISSEL
Under duress. Yeah, exactly.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And we don't know. And so now they're really like-
BEN KISSEL
Also they were children, they were under 18 when they signed this, right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
So technically it doesn't matter, right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it's really a belief system, it's a whole thing. So that's why they're hyper hesitant-
BEN KISSEL
We believe in human trafficking. See, we believe it. Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's accused of these crimes.
BEN KISSEL
Right, right, of course.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So he is not yet guilty of these crimes. But it is an interesting idea. And it's also why the FBI is so hesitant to go and start busting in Scientology because it's really hairy to get into the fringe religion movement.
BEN KISSEL
As we just talked about.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Waco.
BEN KISSEL
Billionaires.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah and billionaires, they got plenty of money to throw into the process. And also Mike Rinder brought up a good point where it's like any FBI agent knows that as soon as I attack Scientology, that's the next 10 years of my life.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is trying to break this up.
BEN KISSEL
Look at the dude who fucking cracked the Monopoly Game scandal. That took four years.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It took four years. And that was a fun one.
BEN KISSEL
That's fun!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. That's the thing is that it does seem like the cracks are starting a show when it comes to David Miscavige's Scientology.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
His version, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. People are leaving, documents are being leaked. He's getting served, people are chasing him down to serve him.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
So his reign may be nearing an end. And when it does end, I for one am fucking fascinated to see where Scientology goes from here.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I just wanted to join a baseball team!
BEN KISSEL
And that's why again as the new head of Scientology, I'm bringing in Friday fish fries.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly make it fun!
BEN KISSEL
I'll do it, I'll take it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'll join in with you!
BEN KISSEL
Great, we'll do it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I want that!
MARCUS PARKS
Even if Miscavige manages to hold on for another 10 years or so, the rich celebrities will remain. Additionally Scientology still owns all that real estate and their tax exempt status doesn't seem to be going anywhere. It is far too large to be taken down by the fall of their leader. Someone is going to succeed David Miscavige, just as Miscavige succeeded L. Ron Hubbard.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I mean who knows?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And I for one wouldn't be surprised if Scientology is still going a fucking century from.
BEN KISSEL
It's gonna be Tom Cruise.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't think he wants that responsibility.
MARCUS PARKS
I don't think so. I don't think you can fly jet planes and skydive all that much.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well he hasn't said very much about Scientology. And then Judd Apatow made that joke about him and the Jerrod Carmichael made the joke about Shelly Miscavige. It's really starting to come out in the open. Tom cruise, he hasn't said fucking shit really.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah. But I do think that the longer Miscavige stays in charge, the less of a chance Scientology has of making it to the century mark. But what I find most fun about Scientology is that they are now eternally on the defensive. Even if they stay dormant for years as they did after Leah Remini launched her attack in 2013, their reappearance inevitably draws negative attention every single time. Hell, we're doing this series now partly because we were inspired by David Miscavige's star turn in a new Scientology ad campaign last November. We got reminded of the dickhead's existence. Like oh yeah, we're gonna do a fucking David Miscavige series.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
They do not have a lot going on judging by the fact they called all three of us.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
They called all three of multiple times. And why the fuck did they call you before they called me?
BEN KISSEL
Buddy...
MARCUS PARKS
Ben?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again, they smell it in the water. They can flip him.
MARCUS PARKS
Ben got called at 5:07 PM, I got called at 5:09.
BEN KISSEL
I was called at 5:07, 5:09 as well, so that was a busy minute for me.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, mine was 5:13.
BEN KISSEL
And then at 5:30. Yeah but they don't know I don't answer my phone.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, me neither. Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
So while they may last for a little while, at least into the coming decades, Scientology will likely never gain a foothold just so long as there's always someone around willing to make fun of them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. And I feel like that's the one thing is that we're allowed to make fun of whatever we want.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because it's fun.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a comedy podcast. But we definitely came with a lot of bullshit and you should read some of it yourself. And if you're a Scientology member that is now currently listening to this, scanning, right, for whatever you're being told to do. Dude, lady, it's better outside of it. You know what I mean?
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just hear what we're saying, right.
BEN KISSEL
I could have flipped that chick if I would have answered.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Maybe. Yeah, sure, sure. But just hear what we're saying. Again, it's legal, you're allowed to do whatever the fuck it is you want with your thetan containing husk.
MARCUS PARKS
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're allowed to. But we're trying to help you before something really bad happens to you. Because unfortunately it seems that more people stay and the longer they stay in this organization, the worse it is for them and their families.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
Help the scientologists out there on the street.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Help the scientologists.
MARCUS PARKS
Be nice to the scientologist. If somebody is out there trying to give you an E-meter reading, trying to give you a personality test, don't be mean to them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They sound afraid. Really that's what it is, the fear comes across, the desperation comes across.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're not operating from a place of power right now.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Be empathetic.
BEN KISSEL
Unless your father is Joseph Fritzl, you should never be separated from your family.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're right, yes.
BEN KISSEL
That would be a massive red flag. Absolutely. Take care of yourself.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Go and read any one of these fucking stories that we covered like Ron Miscavige's book, we had fucking Mike Rinder's book, we have Marc Headley's book, there's the whole Tampa Bay Times, LA Times. There's so much stuff. Just go have fun. The Underground Bunker, Tony Ortega. That's hours of fucking listening.
MARCUS PARKS
Tony Ortega. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's very interesting.
BEN KISSEL
All right everyone, there it is. Our three parter on David Miscavige and his mishandling of Scientology.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ugh. Thank you.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And any scientologists, if you want to come out and see Classy Night Out with me and Ed Larson-
BEN KISSEL
That'd be great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're gonna be at the Pack Theater Wednesday, March 8th, 8 PM. That's at the 6320 Santa Monica Boulevard, new address for the Pack Theater.
BEN KISSEL
Awesome.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Check it out, we're there. And then go to getitmade.la/disasterman to buy tickets for live Side Stories, April 8th.
BEN KISSEL
All right everyone, thank you so much for listening. Thanks for supporting all the shows. Marcus?
MARCUS PARKS
If there is a scientologist who is working the L. Ron Hubbard booth at WonderCon at the end of this month out in Anaheim, come on over and see us at the Z2 booth. We're gonna be signing on Friday and Saturday at the Z2 booth, gonna be signing the Last Comic Book on the Left and we're gonna be doing a panel on Saturday morning. So check out all the schedules over at WonderCon to see exactly when and where we're gonna be there. And I believe it was sent out on our newsletter.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I believe.
MARCUS PARKS
Sign up for our newsletter to get all the information.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which is fun stuff. Yeah, Michelle makes good stuff on that.
MARCUS PARKS
She does.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's really fun, yeah. I like our newsletter.
BEN KISSEL
And then of course you guys are gonna wanna join us and don't talk to your family anymore.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly just so you know, if you do speak with us, we encourage a lot of our fans to not talk to their parents anymore because again their influence is really bad.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And we want you to make sure you can queef the clearest that you can. And that's our whole thing is creating clear queefs.
BEN KISSEL
Clear queefs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(whooshing sounds)
BEN KISSEL
Thank you all so much for supporting all the shows here on the network. And yeah. Also by the way, don't forget every Tuesday the stream is back. So go to Patreon and you can watch it live.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah! It's live on Patreon, 8 PM PST.
MARCUS PARKS
And No Dogs In Space is about to return with a two part series on The Monks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, cool. Yeah, sweet.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All right, buy fuckers.
BEN KISSEL
It's not what you gain, it's what you lose. All right everyone, hail yourselves!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hail Satan!
MARCUS PARKS
Hail Gein.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hail me. And thank you Satan for giving me the strength to be a fucking warrior for truth. Every day, I'm your soldier, buddy.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm your fucking soldier. All right?
BEN KISSEL
Just completely derailed the past three episodes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Especially when you told Satan that you were his shoulder.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, you were his shoulder.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I've been talking for a long time.
BEN KISSEL
All right everyone, hail yourselves! Talk to you soon, bye!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Bye!