WEBVTT - Part One: How L. Ron Hubbard Lied His Way to Godhood 0:00:00.400 --> 0:00:02.920 Hello friends, I'm Robert Evans, and this is once again 0:00:03.000 --> 0:00:05.120 Behind the Bastards, the show where we tell you everything 0:00:05.160 --> 0:00:07.360 you don't know about the very worst people in all 0:00:07.400 --> 0:00:10.200 of history. Now, this is a show where I read 0:00:10.200 --> 0:00:12.640 a tale about a terrible person to a guest who 0:00:12.720 --> 0:00:14.680 is coming in cold, or as cold as you can 0:00:14.720 --> 0:00:18.360 possibly come into on a subject like. My guest today 0:00:18.480 --> 0:00:22.920 is Caitlyn Durante of The Bechtel Cast, comedian and uh 0:00:23.160 --> 0:00:26.520 fan of l Ron Hubbard. Love him love some l 0:00:26.640 --> 0:00:28.960 r H. Yeah, yeah, what what do you know about 0:00:29.040 --> 0:00:32.440 Mr Hubbard? I know that he was a sci fi 0:00:32.680 --> 0:00:37.200 like pulpy writer in his early days, and that he's 0:00:37.320 --> 0:00:42.040 the founder of the Church of Scientology. Yeah. I watched 0:00:42.120 --> 0:00:44.560 Going Clear and that's pretty much all I know. Okay, cool. 0:00:44.800 --> 0:00:47.240 He was a living monument to how much a tall 0:00:47.240 --> 0:00:49.839 white man can achieve in this world by just lying 0:00:49.960 --> 0:00:54.240 without pause or cessation for seventy straight years. That's his 0:00:54.280 --> 0:00:56.480 whole life. He just never stopped lying from the time 0:00:56.520 --> 0:00:59.080 he was about four years old until the day he died. 0:00:59.680 --> 0:01:02.920 And uh he died worth like six million dollars, so 0:01:02.960 --> 0:01:07.440 it worked out pretty well. I had a weird time 0:01:07.920 --> 0:01:10.520 researching this because I wanted to hate him, and it's 0:01:10.640 --> 0:01:13.720 really hard to hate him. Um, he's a piece of ship. 0:01:13.880 --> 0:01:17.280 He is a monster. He does terrible things, but there's 0:01:17.319 --> 0:01:20.959 also he's not just a terrible guy. Like with a 0:01:21.000 --> 0:01:23.319 lot of terrible people today, it'll be like some rich 0:01:23.360 --> 0:01:25.840 asshole who like does something that's terrible to the environment 0:01:25.959 --> 0:01:28.800 or like you know, is abusive to their employers or whatever. 0:01:29.240 --> 0:01:31.800 L Ron Hubbard did his terrible things while shooting for 0:01:31.840 --> 0:01:36.479 the moon. That's ambitious, and you gotta admire him for that. 0:01:36.600 --> 0:01:39.639 He might be the most ambitious con artist in human history. 0:01:40.600 --> 0:01:44.640 He's in the running, all right. So. Lafayette Ron Hubbard 0:01:44.720 --> 0:01:47.840 was born on March thirteenth, nineteen eleven, and Tilda, Nebraska. 0:01:48.280 --> 0:01:51.520 His family moved there shortly thereafter to Helena, Montana. His 0:01:51.560 --> 0:01:54.320 grandfather was moderately successful, but not wealthy by any means. 0:01:54.360 --> 0:01:56.960 He owned a decent house, some stables, and a guitar 0:01:57.040 --> 0:01:58.960 with a black man's head carved on to the top 0:01:59.000 --> 0:02:01.760 of it. That's a detail you'll run into a number 0:02:01.760 --> 0:02:04.760 of times about his early life. Yeah, yeah, I'm guessing 0:02:04.800 --> 0:02:09.200 it was racist, but I don't know. Um. Later Hubbard 0:02:09.240 --> 0:02:12.400 would claim his grandfather owned a massive ranch a quarter 0:02:12.480 --> 0:02:14.840 the size of Montana, uh, and that he spent his 0:02:14.880 --> 0:02:17.600 early childhood having adventures there and becoming a blood brother 0:02:17.639 --> 0:02:21.919 of the Blackfoot Indian tribe. That's good. Yeah, he's already appropriating, 0:02:22.520 --> 0:02:26.200 you know, other cultures. Was born appropriating other cultures? On 0:02:26.240 --> 0:02:29.840 the website what is Scientology, which is a scientology website, 0:02:30.200 --> 0:02:33.280 it says that his particular friend among the Blackfoot tribe 0:02:33.320 --> 0:02:36.720 was an elderly medicine man commonly known as Old Tom quote. 0:02:36.800 --> 0:02:39.880 Establishing a unique friendship with the normally taciturn Indian, Ron 0:02:39.960 --> 0:02:42.639 was soon initiated into the various secrets of the tribe, 0:02:42.639 --> 0:02:45.720 their legends, customs, and methods of survival in a harsh environment. 0:02:45.919 --> 0:02:47.880 At the age of six, he became a blood brother 0:02:47.919 --> 0:02:50.359 of the Blackfeet, an honor bestowed on few white men. 0:02:50.720 --> 0:02:53.640 So this is when he six. This is what he claims. 0:02:53.639 --> 0:02:57.280 So this is what he claims. This is not There's 0:02:57.560 --> 0:03:00.800 there's no evidence that six year old Ron Hubbard had 0:03:00.800 --> 0:03:04.240 adventures with Indians and became their blood brother. The Los 0:03:04.240 --> 0:03:07.800 Angeles Times reporter on this in nineteen UH they talked 0:03:07.800 --> 0:03:10.240 to a historian named Hugh Dempsey, who was an expert 0:03:10.280 --> 0:03:12.400 on the Blackfoot tribe and whose wife is a member 0:03:12.400 --> 0:03:15.240 of the Blackfoot tribe. Uh, And he basically said blood 0:03:15.240 --> 0:03:17.720 brothers aren't even a thing the tribe has. It's like 0:03:17.720 --> 0:03:21.359 a Hollywood idea that was invented for Western movies. Yeah, 0:03:21.400 --> 0:03:24.519 so it seems like all of l Ron Hubbard's ideas 0:03:24.560 --> 0:03:26.799 about this tribe that he claimed membership then came from 0:03:26.800 --> 0:03:30.400 like movies he watched as a kid, which is yeah, okay, good. 0:03:30.600 --> 0:03:33.720 So I love how influential movies are and how they, 0:03:33.880 --> 0:03:37.320 you know, don't do anything to funk up our society. Well, 0:03:37.320 --> 0:03:40.120 and it's amazing how little fact checking people do if 0:03:40.160 --> 0:03:43.360 you claims alive from far back enough like that, because 0:03:43.400 --> 0:03:47.080 the Church of Scientology still continues this line to this 0:03:47.160 --> 0:03:48.760 day that l Ron Hubbard was a brother of the 0:03:48.760 --> 0:03:52.080 Blackfoot tribe. And he even claimed later that a lot 0:03:52.120 --> 0:03:55.920 of his philosophical ideas came from like Indian rituals and stuff. 0:03:55.960 --> 0:03:58.440 And it's like, as far as we know, he never 0:03:58.480 --> 0:04:03.160 met a single member of the Blackfoot tribe. Right, So, um, 0:04:03.200 --> 0:04:06.840 I did want to give sort of a source on 0:04:06.920 --> 0:04:09.840 el Ron Hubbard's early life from a sympathetic side. Most 0:04:09.840 --> 0:04:11.360 of the research I did on this was by people 0:04:11.400 --> 0:04:12.960 who were very critical of him, so I didn't want 0:04:12.960 --> 0:04:14.800 to know kind of how the Church of Scientology talks 0:04:14.800 --> 0:04:18.280 about his upbringing. And I found el Ron Hubbard dot org, 0:04:18.440 --> 0:04:21.520 which claimed to have biographical information on him, but actually 0:04:21.560 --> 0:04:23.480 was just trying to sell me a series of books 0:04:23.800 --> 0:04:25.360 on el Ron Hubbard because it was owned by the 0:04:25.440 --> 0:04:28.120 Church of Scientology. But there was a trailer for the 0:04:28.160 --> 0:04:30.839 book series about el Ron Hubbard called el Ron Hubbard 0:04:30.880 --> 0:04:32.400 a Profile, and I want to play you a little 0:04:32.400 --> 0:04:34.640 bit of that because it gives you an idea of 0:04:34.640 --> 0:04:37.280 sort of the cliffs notes of his life as portrayed 0:04:37.279 --> 0:04:40.239 by the Church of Scientology. He earned a hollowed place 0:04:40.360 --> 0:04:44.440 in blackfeet more, became the nation's youngest eagle scout at 0:04:44.440 --> 0:04:47.680 the age of thirteen, and studied with the last in 0:04:47.680 --> 0:04:51.440 a line of legendary mystics from the court of Kubla Khan. 0:04:53.040 --> 0:04:56.760 Barn stormed into aviation history, ascended to the heights of 0:04:56.839 --> 0:05:00.200 Greatness in a now fabled kingdom of the Pulse, and 0:05:00.279 --> 0:05:06.200 charted unknown realms beneath a feigned explorers Club flag retrace 0:05:06.320 --> 0:05:10.200 his journey to the founding of Dianetics and scientolic and 0:05:10.640 --> 0:05:17.360 ultimate Almost none of that's true. He was an explorer 0:05:17.400 --> 0:05:20.120 and founded uncharted. He was there was a group called 0:05:20.120 --> 0:05:22.120 the Explorers Club, which was like a big thing in 0:05:22.160 --> 0:05:24.800 the day, and he did basically connive his way into 0:05:24.839 --> 0:05:26.560 being a member there, and he did carry out a 0:05:26.600 --> 0:05:30.240 couple of expeditions that didn't really find much um but 0:05:30.360 --> 0:05:33.440 he piloted around in a boat until his boat broke 0:05:33.520 --> 0:05:36.080 down and he had a flag with him, so that 0:05:36.080 --> 0:05:39.520 that that's kind of what exclaiming there. So one of 0:05:39.560 --> 0:05:41.960 my main sources for this episode was a book called 0:05:41.960 --> 0:05:45.160 Bare Faced Messiah, which is a really comprehensive biography of 0:05:45.200 --> 0:05:47.760 Aron Hubbard by Russell Miller, probably the first anyone ever wrote, 0:05:47.760 --> 0:05:50.880 and he interviewed a lot of Aron Hubbard's relatives, people 0:05:50.880 --> 0:05:54.080 who saw him as he was growing up and stuff. Uh, 0:05:54.080 --> 0:05:55.760 And none of the people who were with him when 0:05:55.760 --> 0:05:57.520 he was a baby, when he was six, when he 0:05:57.600 --> 0:06:00.320 was like a young child, had any recolle action of 0:06:00.360 --> 0:06:03.480 any of the stuff that he claimed about. His aunt Marnie, 0:06:03.480 --> 0:06:05.520 who grew up with him, described him as the baby 0:06:05.520 --> 0:06:08.440 of the family, adored and coddled by everybody. He was 0:06:08.520 --> 0:06:10.200 very much the love child of the whole family. He 0:06:10.200 --> 0:06:12.320 was adored by everyone. I could still see that mop 0:06:12.360 --> 0:06:14.440 of red hair running around. So he was like the 0:06:14.480 --> 0:06:16.920 little baby of the family. But he grew up more 0:06:17.000 --> 0:06:20.120 or less in a house in a small town as 0:06:20.160 --> 0:06:23.360 the beloved youngest child of a very close knit family. 0:06:23.560 --> 0:06:28.400 No adventures in his early childhood that there's any evidence of, um, 0:06:28.480 --> 0:06:31.120 But he gotta love that imagination on him. You know, 0:06:31.640 --> 0:06:36.599 there's a thin line between imagination and just lying. Yeah. Uh. 0:06:36.680 --> 0:06:39.680 The actual information shows that Hubbard enrolled in kindergarten at 0:06:39.680 --> 0:06:44.240 age six, rather than becoming a Blackfoot brother. I suppose. Yeah, 0:06:44.320 --> 0:06:46.760 his local nickname was Brick because of his red hair. 0:06:46.880 --> 0:06:50.680 I guess because bricks are red and nineteen fifteen was 0:06:50.720 --> 0:06:53.640 not a good time for nicknames. So Ryan Johnson's film 0:06:53.680 --> 0:06:57.760 Brick is actually based on h I wish I knew 0:06:57.800 --> 0:07:00.279 something about. Yeah, I'm assuming that's a very good joke. 0:07:00.680 --> 0:07:04.479 I haven't seen it. Oh, it's not a good joke, 0:07:04.080 --> 0:07:07.560 A joke. It's a pretty good movie. Yeah, okay, okay, Well, 0:07:07.680 --> 0:07:10.320 l Ron Hubbard's Young Life was not a pretty good 0:07:10.320 --> 0:07:13.840 movie because he just he pretty much went to kindergarten. Um. 0:07:13.880 --> 0:07:16.080 He later claimed that while he was in school, he 0:07:16.280 --> 0:07:20.000 would protect other kids from the bullies, terrorizing his classmates 0:07:20.320 --> 0:07:23.000 using the lumberjack fighting skills he learned from his grandfather. 0:07:23.560 --> 0:07:26.800 His grandfather was not a lumberjack, owned a small oil company, 0:07:26.800 --> 0:07:30.560 but wasn't a lumberjack. Um. One of Ron's closest childhood friends, 0:07:30.560 --> 0:07:34.280 Andrew Richardson, stated he never protected nobody. It was all bullshit. 0:07:34.360 --> 0:07:36.559 Old Hubbard was the greatest con honors who ever lived, 0:07:36.600 --> 0:07:39.920 which is more or less true. Ron moved to Seattle 0:07:39.960 --> 0:07:41.800 after his dad joined the Navy when he was like 0:07:41.880 --> 0:07:44.560 twelve years old. Uh, he did join the Boy Scouts 0:07:44.560 --> 0:07:46.320 at this point and became an Eagle Scout at like 0:07:46.360 --> 0:07:49.360 age thirteen, but there's no true. That is true. That 0:07:49.520 --> 0:07:51.600 is true, But there's no evidence that he was the 0:07:51.640 --> 0:07:54.120 youngest Eagle Scout ever because back then the Boy Scouts 0:07:54.120 --> 0:07:56.240 did not make a note of what age people were 0:07:56.280 --> 0:07:59.760 when they became Eagle Scouts. Bad bookkeeping, bad book keeping out. 0:08:00.120 --> 0:08:01.960 But I'm guessing Ron knew that, which is why he 0:08:02.040 --> 0:08:04.760 made the lie. Yeah, but he was good at being 0:08:04.760 --> 0:08:07.560 a boy scout, I guess not hard Well, he's already 0:08:07.600 --> 0:08:11.640 an explorer and a blood brother of a tribe. All 0:08:11.640 --> 0:08:14.200 that time spent with the Blackfoot really prepared him for 0:08:14.280 --> 0:08:18.480 his merit badges, uh in whittling and bald face lies. 0:08:19.120 --> 0:08:21.000 During his teenage years. His dad was in the navy, 0:08:21.040 --> 0:08:23.640 so during his teenage years Ron visited him twice for 0:08:23.680 --> 0:08:25.240 like a month or two each time, so he did 0:08:25.280 --> 0:08:27.760 get to spend some time in the Far East. It 0:08:27.800 --> 0:08:31.480 was mostly on military basis with his parents. The myth factory, 0:08:31.480 --> 0:08:33.800 of course that he created later spun this into a 0:08:33.840 --> 0:08:36.520 series of exotic Eastern adventures where he said you heard 0:08:36.520 --> 0:08:38.760 that I was trained in the court of Kubla Khan 0:08:38.920 --> 0:08:41.600 by to bet mystics. He was on vacation with his 0:08:41.640 --> 0:08:44.680 parents and like China and stuff. He mostly seemed to 0:08:44.760 --> 0:08:47.440 not enjoy his time in the Far East. He thought 0:08:47.520 --> 0:08:49.800 China was gross and dirty. He thought Chinese people were 0:08:49.800 --> 0:08:52.640 gross and dirty. We have his diaries from those times, 0:08:52.679 --> 0:08:56.000 and he's not weirdly racist for an American in like 0:08:56.120 --> 0:09:00.959 nineteen twenty, but he's pretty racist, um pretty race in 0:09:01.040 --> 0:09:03.680 Mission into Time a scientology book, though he spun his 0:09:03.960 --> 0:09:07.200 basic vacation with his parents in China into quote and China. 0:09:07.240 --> 0:09:09.640 He met an old musician whose ancestors had served in 0:09:09.640 --> 0:09:11.600 the court of Kubla Khan and a Hindu who could 0:09:11.640 --> 0:09:14.079 hypnotize cats and the high hills of Tibet. He lived 0:09:14.080 --> 0:09:16.360 with bandits, who accepted him because of his honest interest 0:09:16.400 --> 0:09:19.760 in him and his way of life. So that's fun, okay, good, 0:09:20.040 --> 0:09:22.800 yeah it so far. He saw the Great Wall of China. 0:09:23.040 --> 0:09:24.960 His only notes in his notebook about this was that 0:09:24.960 --> 0:09:26.920 they should make it into a roller coaster because like 0:09:26.960 --> 0:09:31.200 a shipload of money. So uh, there's there's no evidence 0:09:31.240 --> 0:09:33.360 of him learning any ancient Eastern wisdom, but we do 0:09:33.400 --> 0:09:35.120 know that this is the time when he first started 0:09:35.120 --> 0:09:37.200 sketching out short stories because he's spent a lot of 0:09:37.320 --> 0:09:40.000 boring time on boats and trains and stuff with like 0:09:40.040 --> 0:09:43.240 a notebook writing out story ideas. Most of them were 0:09:43.280 --> 0:09:45.000 just like he didn't even write out a lot of stories. 0:09:45.000 --> 0:09:46.920 It was mostly just him writing out the ideas. So 0:09:46.960 --> 0:09:49.360 like there would be entries like love Story goes to France, 0:09:49.480 --> 0:09:52.320 meets Swell abroad, and Marseille. She takes them to her sink, 0:09:52.600 --> 0:09:55.520 bedroom and bath where he lives until notable citizens object. 0:09:55.840 --> 0:09:57.959 He stands them off and takes the next book for America, 0:09:58.040 --> 0:10:01.160 having received a long expected will donate. So it's like 0:10:01.800 --> 0:10:05.200 weird little stories like that. Most of them involved American 0:10:05.240 --> 0:10:09.640 travelers meeting beautiful foreign women. Again, he's like fourteen. He 0:10:09.679 --> 0:10:13.000 didn't seem to know how to write sex scenes. So 0:10:13.080 --> 0:10:15.600 like the closest he got in his first short story 0:10:15.840 --> 0:10:18.880 was a scene where like a navy corman is with 0:10:18.920 --> 0:10:22.000 like a beautiful native woman and they fall in love. 0:10:22.120 --> 0:10:24.199 But then when he would write out like what they did, 0:10:24.240 --> 0:10:26.000 he just kept scratching it out to the point that 0:10:26.040 --> 0:10:28.240 we don't know what he wrote because he apparently wrote 0:10:28.240 --> 0:10:30.640 a sex scene and they're just like furiously erased it. 0:10:31.640 --> 0:10:36.680 He's like he puts his oh god, oh god, oh god, 0:10:36.760 --> 0:10:39.520 what is a woman again? All right? Cool? So he's 0:10:39.920 --> 0:10:42.320 an in cell. It is entirely possible he did not 0:10:42.360 --> 0:10:44.680 know what a woman was at that point. He was 0:10:45.000 --> 0:10:48.080 like a fifteen year old in the twenties. Yeah, he 0:10:48.120 --> 0:10:50.440 either knew everything or nothing. He knew that you're supposed 0:10:50.480 --> 0:10:54.040 to objectify women, he just doesn't know how. Yeah, he 0:10:54.120 --> 0:10:56.640 was bad at it, and that would be like a 0:10:56.679 --> 0:10:59.480 hallmark of l. Ron Hubbard's writing, is that, especially since 0:10:59.520 --> 0:11:01.520 a lot of the pulp fiction that he became famous 0:11:01.600 --> 0:11:04.600 for other stories in that genre were really sexual. That 0:11:04.720 --> 0:11:08.600 was never a thing he was good at. Um Okay, that. Yeah, 0:11:08.800 --> 0:11:12.600 you heard it here. First, Ron Hubbard couldn't write about sucking. 0:11:13.600 --> 0:11:17.600 Ron Hubbard couldn't. Now, actually that's not true. Weirdly enough, 0:11:17.600 --> 0:11:19.880 which we'll get too later. There's some evidence he actually 0:11:19.880 --> 0:11:24.360 became pretty good at fucking. Wow, did he just make 0:11:24.480 --> 0:11:28.079 that up? And that's more of his inventive. No, these 0:11:28.120 --> 0:11:31.120 are people who didn't like him otherwise, but like who 0:11:31.120 --> 0:11:33.400 were in relationships and we're like he was. He wasn't 0:11:33.440 --> 0:11:36.439 bad at fucking. I can't wait till we get there. 0:11:36.480 --> 0:11:39.320 Oh no, it's exciting. This is quite a journey. So 0:11:39.400 --> 0:11:41.559 after he got back from the Far East, he enrolled 0:11:41.559 --> 0:11:44.319 in George Washington University in the fall of nineteen thirty. 0:11:45.080 --> 0:11:48.840 Scientology publications state that while there he became the associate 0:11:48.960 --> 0:11:51.280 editor of the university newspaper, was a member of many 0:11:51.360 --> 0:11:54.599 university clubs and societies, and enrolled in one of the 0:11:54.640 --> 0:11:58.520 first nuclear physics courses ever taught in an American university. UM, 0:11:58.920 --> 0:12:03.120 and several were words of that are not entirely incorrect. Um. 0:12:03.280 --> 0:12:06.120 He did go to George Washington University. He was a 0:12:06.120 --> 0:12:08.280 student of the School of Engineering. He did not take 0:12:08.360 --> 0:12:12.280 nuclear physics courses because this was nineteen UM He was 0:12:12.360 --> 0:12:15.680 not good at civil engineering. He hated it and usually 0:12:15.720 --> 0:12:18.160 did not go to class. He did write for the 0:12:18.160 --> 0:12:20.720 school newspaper, but he was not an editor for it. 0:12:20.720 --> 0:12:24.400 He just wrote a few articles, mostly as pr for 0:12:24.520 --> 0:12:28.360 the club that he launched, which was the school gliding Club. Oh, 0:12:28.400 --> 0:12:32.640 he loved gliding, like hang gliding. No, it's still exists 0:12:32.640 --> 0:12:34.280 today as a sport. You don't hear about it much. 0:12:34.280 --> 0:12:36.439 But they're basically planes. If you saw one park you 0:12:36.440 --> 0:12:38.080 would just guess it was a plane. But most of 0:12:38.080 --> 0:12:40.760 them don't have engines, and you can either fling them 0:12:40.760 --> 0:12:43.040 into the sky with this weird winch system, or you 0:12:43.080 --> 0:12:44.960 can like drop them off the back of an airplane. 0:12:45.280 --> 0:12:48.040 People can travel across continents in these things. If they're 0:12:48.040 --> 0:12:50.439 really good at them, you can go hundreds of miles. 0:12:50.720 --> 0:12:54.800 But they're not really planes because there's no engine. Yeah, 0:12:54.840 --> 0:12:58.439 there's no engine. It's just about managing your levels and whatnot. 0:12:58.480 --> 0:13:00.679 I don't know. I'm not a glider pilot. But he 0:13:00.720 --> 0:13:02.120 was a big fan of that, and he did it. 0:13:02.160 --> 0:13:04.160 He was apparently pretty good at it, but he was 0:13:04.200 --> 0:13:06.600 better at creating a club for it and drilling up 0:13:06.640 --> 0:13:09.320 interest in it. Soon he started writing articles for like 0:13:09.400 --> 0:13:12.679 Sportsman's Magazine, Sportsman Aviator and other magazines like that. We 0:13:12.720 --> 0:13:14.920 would just lie about you know, I was in this 0:13:15.000 --> 0:13:17.640 horrible die and my plane was falling apart and like, yeah, 0:13:17.880 --> 0:13:20.280 and I had this I crashed into this barn and 0:13:20.360 --> 0:13:22.319 so he just made up stories about stuff he did 0:13:22.320 --> 0:13:24.679 in this glider plane when in reality, he did it 0:13:24.679 --> 0:13:26.319 for like a year or so, and then he lost 0:13:26.320 --> 0:13:28.199 his license because he couldn't afford to renew it, and 0:13:28.200 --> 0:13:30.920 then he never flew again. But he kept writing articles 0:13:30.960 --> 0:13:33.280 about flying even after he stopped being able to do it, 0:13:33.280 --> 0:13:36.000 because yeah, it sounds like a theme of his from 0:13:36.000 --> 0:13:40.320 fabricating stories. Yeah, there's usually a germ of truth. He 0:13:40.400 --> 0:13:43.000 did fly a glider a lot. There was one time 0:13:43.040 --> 0:13:47.320 where he like crashed a glider into a small town. Uh, 0:13:47.559 --> 0:13:49.640 nobody got hurt, and like he wound up having to 0:13:49.679 --> 0:13:51.600 take off from a nearby hill or something like that, 0:13:51.840 --> 0:13:54.800 which he then turned into you know, stories of traveling 0:13:54.840 --> 0:13:56.679 across the country on a glider at having all these 0:13:56.679 --> 0:14:03.640 advent and discovering a whole other continent and yeah, um, yeah, 0:14:03.679 --> 0:14:05.880 so that's all round humbard. In college, his grades were 0:14:05.880 --> 0:14:08.280 as bad as you'd expect because he usually would skip 0:14:08.280 --> 0:14:11.120 out on class in order to glide more often. So 0:14:11.200 --> 0:14:14.120 he was studying civil engineers civil engineering, right, okay, so 0:14:14.200 --> 0:14:16.280 his idea, Yeah, of course he was bad at it 0:14:16.320 --> 0:14:19.080 because he thought the Great Wall of China should be 0:14:19.080 --> 0:14:21.880 a roller coaster. Like that was his idea of like structures, 0:14:21.960 --> 0:14:24.480 that was that was the first thing he thought, seeing like, 0:14:24.520 --> 0:14:27.000 the most impressive thing people had ever built was like man, 0:14:27.080 --> 0:14:33.920 but a roller coaster on the son of a bit. Yeah. Um, 0:14:33.960 --> 0:14:36.520 his grades were pretty bad. But during this time, like 0:14:36.520 --> 0:14:38.760 a ninety two, when he was a sophomore, his school 0:14:38.800 --> 0:14:41.640 launched a literary journal and he submitted his first finished 0:14:41.720 --> 0:14:43.920 short story for publication. So that's the first time he 0:14:43.960 --> 0:14:47.000 got published writing fiction. Uh. The story was titled Tah 0:14:47.160 --> 0:14:49.640 after the name of its main character, uh, and it 0:14:49.680 --> 0:14:52.280 was about a twelve year old child soldier in China 0:14:52.400 --> 0:14:56.000 on a march to die horribly in a battle. Um. 0:14:56.000 --> 0:14:58.760 He quickly wrote another short story about another really really 0:14:58.760 --> 0:15:01.240 bloody battle, this time in nave battle in the Yanksee River. 0:15:01.320 --> 0:15:04.080 He repeatedly described the river as being filled with headless corpses. 0:15:04.080 --> 0:15:06.640 He had a big thing for gore, big thing for violence. 0:15:07.240 --> 0:15:10.240 Most of his early stories involved bloody adventures in vaguely 0:15:10.280 --> 0:15:13.880 Asian settings. Um so this is his passion. Clearly see 0:15:14.440 --> 0:15:18.880 the pattern. That summer summer of l Ron Hubbard decided 0:15:18.880 --> 0:15:21.200 to launch an expedition of his own. He called it 0:15:21.240 --> 0:15:23.960 the Caribbean Motion Picture Expedition and convinced a bunch of 0:15:23.960 --> 0:15:26.240 other young nineteen year old boys to pull their money 0:15:26.280 --> 0:15:28.280 so they could rent a boat for the summer and 0:15:28.280 --> 0:15:31.400 sail to the Caribbean. Their goal was to explore abandoned 0:15:31.440 --> 0:15:34.760 pirate strongholds and filmed themselves running around in pirate costumes 0:15:35.160 --> 0:15:38.680 for the presumed historic value of these videos of children 0:15:38.760 --> 0:15:42.920 running around in pirate costumes. He also said that he 0:15:42.920 --> 0:15:48.360 wanted to quote collect whatever one collects for exhibits and museums. Again, 0:15:48.480 --> 0:15:50.880 not a lot of specifics about what's going to happen. 0:15:51.000 --> 0:15:55.520 Loves vagueness. Also the Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean. The 0:15:55.560 --> 0:15:58.200 film also sounds like it was based on l Ron 0:15:58.280 --> 0:16:01.160 Hubbards a little a lot of movies based on the 0:16:01.240 --> 0:16:04.280 Sky Live. There was a report on his adventure in 0:16:04.280 --> 0:16:06.720 the school newspaper, written by an anonymous writer who was 0:16:06.880 --> 0:16:09.760 almost certainly al Ron Hubbard himself. Uh so, I'm gonna 0:16:09.800 --> 0:16:12.520 read you that school newspaper article trying to get other 0:16:12.600 --> 0:16:16.520 kids to join his expedition in the Caribbean. Contrary to 0:16:16.560 --> 0:16:19.240 popular belief, Wind Jammer days are not over in Romance 0:16:19.280 --> 0:16:21.800 refuses to die the death at least for fifty young 0:16:21.840 --> 0:16:24.520 gentlemen Rovers, who will set sail on the schooner Doris 0:16:24.560 --> 0:16:27.320 Hamlin from Baltimore on twenty June for the Pirate haunts 0:16:27.320 --> 0:16:30.200 of the Spanish Main. According to L. Ron Hubbard, the 0:16:30.240 --> 0:16:33.280 strongholds and bivouacs of the Spanish Main have lay neglected 0:16:33.280 --> 0:16:35.480 and forgotten for centuries, and there has never been a 0:16:35.480 --> 0:16:38.320 concerted attempt to tear apart the jungles to find the 0:16:38.360 --> 0:16:43.040 castles of Teach Morgan, Bonnet, Bluebeard, kid Sharp down there 0:16:43.080 --> 0:16:45.320 where the sun is whipping up heat waves from the palms. 0:16:45.360 --> 0:16:47.640 This crew of gentlemen Rovers will re enact the scenes 0:16:47.640 --> 0:16:49.680 which struck terror into the hearts of the world only 0:16:49.720 --> 0:16:51.960 a few hundred years ago, with a difference that this 0:16:52.000 --> 0:16:53.640 time it will be for the benefit of the fun 0:16:53.720 --> 0:16:56.560 and the flickering ribbon of celluloid. In their spare time, 0:16:56.640 --> 0:16:58.320 if they have any, they will scale the heights of 0:16:58.320 --> 0:17:01.440 belching volcanoes, hunting the thick jungles, shoot flying fish on 0:17:01.480 --> 0:17:05.000 the wing, YadA YadA, YadA YadA. Yeah, so it sounds 0:17:05.040 --> 0:17:07.800 like a great adventure. Um, the Great Depression was in 0:17:07.840 --> 0:17:09.399 its height at this point, so it was like a 0:17:09.480 --> 0:17:11.959 lot of kids signed up because they're like, well, what 0:17:11.960 --> 0:17:13.760 else are we gonna do? There's no jobs, might as 0:17:13.760 --> 0:17:16.520 well have an adventure sailing around in the Caribbean. Um. 0:17:16.640 --> 0:17:19.359 Hubbard claimed that Fox Movie Tone and Pathane News had 0:17:19.359 --> 0:17:21.600 already put in bids for the film rights. He claimed 0:17:21.600 --> 0:17:23.880 the New York Times had contracted to buy the photographs. 0:17:24.119 --> 0:17:26.639 So he's basically promising that they would do this expedition 0:17:26.640 --> 0:17:28.639 and sell a bunch of video and photos and everybody 0:17:28.680 --> 0:17:32.600 would get money. That was the claim going out there. 0:17:33.440 --> 0:17:36.560 Um now it was all lies, of course, and Eldon 0:17:36.600 --> 0:17:39.120 Hubard actually hadn't worked out deals with any media agencies. 0:17:39.160 --> 0:17:41.000 The New York Times has no record of this, neither 0:17:41.080 --> 0:17:43.239 do any of the agencies he said he'd contracted with. 0:17:43.640 --> 0:17:45.879 He didn't even have enough money to properly finance the 0:17:45.880 --> 0:17:49.120 whole expedition, so the Doris Hamlin, which did sail out, 0:17:49.160 --> 0:17:51.480 had to return to Port about a month early, having 0:17:51.480 --> 0:17:54.840 found no pirate strongholds and filmed no movies. The captain 0:17:54.920 --> 0:17:57.520 Hubbard had hired called the voyage the worst trip I 0:17:57.600 --> 0:18:00.399 ever made. Most of the gentleman Rovers jumped ship at 0:18:00.400 --> 0:18:03.600 their first two ports. Um, yeah, yeah it was. It 0:18:03.600 --> 0:18:05.640 was kind of a disaster. Yeah, good for them though, 0:18:05.680 --> 0:18:08.600 good for you abandoning ship whatever. You know, the sunk 0:18:08.640 --> 0:18:10.960 cost fallacy can make fools of us. All sometimes in 0:18:11.000 --> 0:18:14.080 support and just get off that boat. Which in the 0:18:14.160 --> 0:18:16.879 third episode of this three part series, there will be 0:18:16.960 --> 0:18:18.959 a boat that people don't get off of. We will 0:18:19.000 --> 0:18:21.000 see what happens when l Ron Hubbard gets to carry 0:18:21.040 --> 0:18:23.280 one of his dreams of taking a bunch of people 0:18:23.280 --> 0:18:25.680 on a boat to the furthest extent. He never gives 0:18:25.760 --> 0:18:29.200 up this idea. So in September, when you know, everyone's 0:18:29.200 --> 0:18:31.520 back in school and Hubbard's back from his failed voyage 0:18:31.560 --> 0:18:34.240 to the Spanish main, l Ron Hubbard wrote an article 0:18:34.320 --> 0:18:37.439 chronicling his journey for the school newspaper. In this article, 0:18:37.520 --> 0:18:40.160 the journey was turned into a historic success where everybody 0:18:40.200 --> 0:18:46.040 got laid. Yeah, it was all like no girls allowed. 0:18:46.080 --> 0:18:48.920 It seemed like no, of course not. Gentlemen Rovers can't 0:18:48.960 --> 0:18:53.720 can't you have a gentle lady Romer. No, absolutely not no, no, well, yeah, 0:18:54.000 --> 0:18:57.080 would you have wanted to be on that boat? No, 0:18:58.359 --> 0:19:03.160 testster know that sounds like a nightmare. I mean, I'll 0:19:03.160 --> 0:19:05.159 be honest. If at age like nineteen, I'd had a 0:19:05.240 --> 0:19:08.000 chance to get on like a sailing ship and traveled 0:19:08.000 --> 0:19:10.359 to the Caribbean and pretend to be a pirate, I probably, 0:19:10.359 --> 0:19:11.639 but it could have been convinced to do it. But 0:19:11.680 --> 0:19:13.880 I had a lot of dumb ship when I was nineteen. Yeah, 0:19:15.200 --> 0:19:17.520 Hubbard wrote in the article. When they weren't out catching 0:19:17.520 --> 0:19:20.440 sharks or harpooning or visiting some colorful spot, they were 0:19:20.440 --> 0:19:23.840 capably entertained by the dark eyed Senorita's at the various ports. 0:19:24.920 --> 0:19:29.399 I'm gonna guess he just invented that all. The article 0:19:29.440 --> 0:19:32.439 also hailed the scientific achievements of the expedition, which mostly 0:19:32.440 --> 0:19:34.840 included a bunch of film and specimen donations to the 0:19:34.920 --> 0:19:38.000 University of Michigan. The University of Michigan has no record 0:19:38.119 --> 0:19:42.560 of any donations from Ron Hubbard. Seeing any trend here 0:19:42.600 --> 0:19:46.640 so far? But really you picked up on a pattern, 0:19:47.160 --> 0:19:51.320 Well there isn't one yet U. Ron Hubbard dropped out 0:19:51.359 --> 0:19:53.879 of school shortly after getting back from this and We 0:19:53.920 --> 0:19:55.760 will be getting into all of that and what happened 0:19:55.800 --> 0:19:58.119 after he leaves college later in the start of his 0:19:58.200 --> 0:20:02.479 career writing terrible pulp fiction. But before we get into that, 0:20:02.760 --> 0:20:06.480