WEBVTT - Part Two: L. Ron Hubbard: The Greatest Con-Man In History 0:00:00.240 --> 0:00:05.200 H Hello friends, I'm Robert Evans, and this is once 0:00:05.200 --> 0:00:07.560 again Behind the Bastards, the show that tells you everything 0:00:07.600 --> 0:00:09.640 you don't know about the very worst people in all 0:00:09.680 --> 0:00:11.720 of history. Now, this is part two of our epic 0:00:11.760 --> 0:00:14.520 three part series on l Ron Hubbard. If you haven't 0:00:14.560 --> 0:00:16.840 listened to part one, I recommend doing that now for 0:00:16.880 --> 0:00:18.840 those of you who are back for part two, you're 0:00:18.920 --> 0:00:20.920 listening to this the day after part one has dropped, 0:00:20.920 --> 0:00:24.240 but we are recording them all in one terrible marathon 0:00:25.000 --> 0:00:27.400 fell sloop. So you're at us in the point. If 0:00:27.400 --> 0:00:30.520 this were an actual marathon, this is about mile five, 0:00:30.520 --> 0:00:32.559 where you're starting to feel good, You've hit a stride, 0:00:32.880 --> 0:00:35.879 you're happy with the progress. But midway through this is 0:00:35.880 --> 0:00:37.680 when we're going to hit our wall and it's just 0:00:37.720 --> 0:00:41.680 gonna break us, both as human beings and as creative artists. 0:00:41.680 --> 0:00:43.680 So that should be really exciting for all you people. 0:00:43.720 --> 0:00:46.520 And then the third episode, we won't even be human beings, 0:00:46.520 --> 0:00:50.120 will just be shattered remnants of souls hanging on to 0:00:50.240 --> 0:00:56.880 me in Grahams in meat packing. Anyway, you ready, let's 0:00:56.880 --> 0:01:00.040 do this. So people regularly message me on Twitter to 0:01:00.080 --> 0:01:03.080 suggest new candidates for episodes of this podcast. Sometimes their 0:01:03.080 --> 0:01:05.240 suggestions are spot on, and I do appreciate them. But 0:01:05.240 --> 0:01:06.679 I get a lot of people who will love so 0:01:06.840 --> 0:01:09.600 just shitty people like Ben Shapiro or Rand Paul or 0:01:09.640 --> 0:01:12.800 Brett Kavanaugh, and I'm not going to do an episode 0:01:12.800 --> 0:01:15.120 one of these people because while they're shitty, they're all 0:01:15.200 --> 0:01:18.360 kind of lame um like, they're not interesting in a 0:01:18.400 --> 0:01:20.600 bad way. We all know the ways in which they're bad. 0:01:20.640 --> 0:01:24.080 Like Brett Kavanaugh. Everybody thinks he's bad, understands everything about 0:01:24.120 --> 0:01:27.440 him is a shitty person. That's public knowledge. I like 0:01:27.560 --> 0:01:30.280 to cover people who are shitty and exceptional, and that's 0:01:30.319 --> 0:01:33.000 why I picked el Ron Hubbard this week because I 0:01:33.040 --> 0:01:34.680 really do think We talked about this a little in 0:01:34.680 --> 0:01:36.440 the first episode. I think he may be the greatest 0:01:36.520 --> 0:01:39.880 con man who ever lived. So today is a story 0:01:39.959 --> 0:01:42.800 about we. We ended the last episode with the establishment 0:01:42.840 --> 0:01:45.560 of Dianetics as a science is kind of how he 0:01:45.560 --> 0:01:48.600 build it. You can think of like anyone Jordan Peterson. 0:01:48.720 --> 0:01:50.560 He's like that sort of guy where he you know, 0:01:51.160 --> 0:01:53.640 normally a guy like that gets six months a year 0:01:53.880 --> 0:01:57.000 of prominence or so right where everybody loves their new 0:01:57.040 --> 0:01:59.720 pop philosophy book. And then we just sort of shovel 0:01:59.800 --> 0:02:02.800 them into the coal fire of our culture and forget 0:02:02.840 --> 0:02:05.280 about them and move on. Another year. Someone else will 0:02:05.280 --> 0:02:06.880 come up and we'll we'll all be obsessed with that 0:02:06.920 --> 0:02:09.920 for a little while. L Ron Hubbard avoided letting that 0:02:09.960 --> 0:02:12.640 happen to him, and this episode is the story of 0:02:12.680 --> 0:02:18.679 how of how he fought against falling into obscurity. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 0:02:18.720 --> 0:02:21.720 If you want to become a guru and then transmit 0:02:21.760 --> 0:02:24.680 that guru nous into starting your own world religion, this 0:02:24.720 --> 0:02:26.600 is the first class you've got to take on that. 0:02:26.600 --> 0:02:29.960 Because el Ron Hubbard is the Master. Well there's that. 0:02:30.000 --> 0:02:32.120 That's why that movie is called The Master. Yeah, I 0:02:32.160 --> 0:02:36.320 just got it. The Master just got it. Okay. So 0:02:36.600 --> 0:02:40.120 within two months of publishing Dionetics, more than five different 0:02:40.120 --> 0:02:43.000 dionetics groups had started across the United States. Out run 0:02:43.080 --> 0:02:47.560 Hubbard began offering classes in dionetics that were like dollars 0:02:47.600 --> 0:02:51.040 apiece um and holding you know, conferences. He established different 0:02:51.040 --> 0:02:54.240 centers in different states and whatnot foundations he called them, 0:02:54.400 --> 0:02:57.799 and the money started pouring in. Hubbard's work developed a 0:02:57.880 --> 0:03:00.920 rapid fan base who blanketed newspapers with angry letters when 0:03:00.919 --> 0:03:03.079 they provided critical commentary. It was sort of like an 0:03:03.080 --> 0:03:06.799 early example of what now happens every time anyone insults 0:03:06.840 --> 0:03:10.080 anybody popular like the first edition of the Elon Musk's 0:03:10.080 --> 0:03:13.840 Internet hate mob was l Ron Hubbard's fans of dionetics 0:03:13.880 --> 0:03:17.600 sending angry letters to the New York Times. One of 0:03:17.600 --> 0:03:20.280 the heads of Hubbard's troll brigade was a political science 0:03:20.280 --> 0:03:23.560 professor from Massachusetts named Frederick Schumann, and one letter to 0:03:23.600 --> 0:03:25.679 The New York Times, he wrote, history has become a 0:03:25.760 --> 0:03:29.119 race between dionetics and catastrophe. Dionetics will win if enough 0:03:29.160 --> 0:03:32.520 people are challenged in time to understand it. Now. The 0:03:32.639 --> 0:03:35.480 reason that people thought this was so important was because 0:03:35.480 --> 0:03:37.760 el Ron Hubbard had claimed that dionetics was not just 0:03:37.800 --> 0:03:39.880 a path to personal betterment, it was a way to 0:03:40.120 --> 0:03:43.360 cure people of mental illness, of psychopathy, and but also 0:03:43.400 --> 0:03:46.000 it was a way too If everyone did dionetics, if 0:03:46.000 --> 0:03:48.720 everybody became clear, Hubbard said, there'd be no more war. 0:03:49.240 --> 0:03:51.520 And this was again, you're talking about nineteen fifty. The 0:03:51.560 --> 0:03:55.440 specter of nuclear extermination has just arisen for the first time, 0:03:55.480 --> 0:03:57.320 so people are freaked out that like, we're going to 0:03:57.480 --> 0:04:00.200 murder the whole species, which we probably will at some point, 0:04:00.600 --> 0:04:04.400 Hubbard is claiming, with dianetics, we can denuclearise the world. 0:04:04.440 --> 0:04:06.400 We can all live in peace. You know, this is 0:04:06.400 --> 0:04:08.760 what will save humanity from the darkness of the Cold 0:04:08.760 --> 0:04:11.720 War in America. Ate it up. For the first time 0:04:11.760 --> 0:04:14.480 in his life, run Hubbard became the focus of national attention, 0:04:14.800 --> 0:04:17.880 which is clearly what he'd wanted his entire life. So 0:04:17.880 --> 0:04:19.880 suddenly he was being interviewed by a lot of journalists 0:04:19.920 --> 0:04:22.240 and newsmen, and of course they asked him about his 0:04:22.320 --> 0:04:24.599 childhood and his background. And this is when he was 0:04:24.600 --> 0:04:27.240 held all about I was a blood brother of the 0:04:27.240 --> 0:04:33.400 Blackfoot tribe across the country, sound gold, I was a 0:04:33.480 --> 0:04:36.600 pirate of the Caribbean. What's your life? If you were 0:04:36.600 --> 0:04:39.200 to write like a Twitter post tomorrow that becomes the 0:04:39.240 --> 0:04:42.320 Bible of the world six months later for some crazy 0:04:42.360 --> 0:04:45.760 piece of Internet outcome. Suddenly suddenly everybody's talking to Caitlyn 0:04:45.839 --> 0:04:47.640 Durrani and wants to know, like, would you grow up? 0:04:47.720 --> 0:04:50.719 What's the lie you choose to tell? Oh? God, I mean, 0:04:50.800 --> 0:04:53.680 I'm just such an honest person that I can't even 0:04:54.040 --> 0:04:55.800 make up a line. I'm never going to have your 0:04:55.800 --> 0:04:59.640 own religion with that attitude. I think the closest thing 0:04:59.680 --> 0:05:03.880 I would would be that I'm from punk Satani, Pennsylvania, 0:05:04.320 --> 0:05:06.880 the home of the Groundhog. Of course that's a lame line, 0:05:06.960 --> 0:05:13.760 I know, but the truth is that I'm from a 0:05:13.839 --> 0:05:18.240 town about twenty miles away. But it's just easier to say, yeah, 0:05:18.320 --> 0:05:21.040 I'm from punk Sati. That's not even a lie. That's like, 0:05:21.240 --> 0:05:23.440 that's like growing up in Mesa and claiming you live 0:05:23.440 --> 0:05:27.279 in Phoenix, Like it's You're just making it easy for somebody. 0:05:27.360 --> 0:05:30.200 I'm just so brutally honest that I can't even fathom lying. 0:05:30.480 --> 0:05:32.400 Let me tell you how I do it. My lie 0:05:32.400 --> 0:05:35.240 would yes, okay, So Abu Bakr al Bag Daddy, the 0:05:35.240 --> 0:05:38.159 founder of isis probably dead, right, so I would just 0:05:38.200 --> 0:05:40.560 lie and say I killed him because I was over 0:05:40.600 --> 0:05:43.320 in Iraq around that time, so there's a kernel of truth. 0:05:43.360 --> 0:05:45.719 It's easy enough to make up the rest of the lie, 0:05:46.080 --> 0:05:48.599 and nobody who doesn't fact check that would be my lie. 0:05:49.040 --> 0:05:51.640 If the Internet wasn't here, it would be easier. The 0:05:51.640 --> 0:05:53.560 Internet exists, would be easy to prove it wrong. But 0:05:53.600 --> 0:05:55.680 if there's like nineteen fifty I could probably lie and 0:05:55.960 --> 0:05:58.279 make people believe that. It's so hard to fact check 0:05:58.320 --> 0:06:00.919 in the pre Internet. Yeah, there's everyone's just like I 0:06:00.920 --> 0:06:02.599 guess he was a blood I'm not gonna ask a 0:06:02.640 --> 0:06:05.080 Blackfoot Indian about whether or not they have blood brothers. 0:06:06.120 --> 0:06:08.040 Talk to somebody who's not white. No, sir, this is 0:06:08.080 --> 0:06:11.760 the New York Times, although in fairness the New York Times, 0:06:11.760 --> 0:06:13.960 they were actually very critical of Hubber and I. I 0:06:14.000 --> 0:06:16.280 picked the name of the newspaper, and I slandered the 0:06:16.360 --> 0:06:19.240 great lady. Let's get back to the story before I 0:06:19.279 --> 0:06:22.960 commit slander again. So l Ron Hubbard started, in addition 0:06:23.000 --> 0:06:24.960 to lying about his background, claiming that all of his 0:06:25.040 --> 0:06:27.400 years of work as a trashy sci fi writer and 0:06:27.600 --> 0:06:29.960 his globe trotting adventures were all research. You know, this 0:06:30.040 --> 0:06:33.440 was him studying human psychology and the human mind in 0:06:33.520 --> 0:06:36.560 order to develop his revolutionary new philosophy. All of his 0:06:36.640 --> 0:06:38.760 you know, his travels, his adventures that were not real 0:06:38.880 --> 0:06:42.479 were him studying history and ancient cultures to figure out 0:06:42.520 --> 0:06:45.880 the kernels of truth. He told Parade magazine that he'd 0:06:45.920 --> 0:06:48.120 had a child with his new wife, Sarah Hubbard, which 0:06:48.120 --> 0:06:50.080 was true. He claimed that the child was the world's 0:06:50.080 --> 0:06:52.680 first dianetics baby. He claimed to have protected her from 0:06:52.720 --> 0:06:55.640 noise and even parental conversations in order to keep her 0:06:55.640 --> 0:06:58.440 from developing any ingrams. As a result of this, he 0:06:58.440 --> 0:07:00.680 said she'd started talking at three months and crawling it 0:07:00.760 --> 0:07:05.000 four months. It's going to get terrible neglected his baby 0:07:05.080 --> 0:07:08.640 by like not talking to it or well, if I 0:07:08.720 --> 0:07:11.600 know anything about babies, it's that they thrive when isolated 0:07:11.600 --> 0:07:15.640 and neglected. Yes, I think that everyone says that about babies. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah, 0:07:15.760 --> 0:07:18.240 that's why most cradles are just dark rooms in the basement. 0:07:18.960 --> 0:07:23.280 That's how you raise again. Uh. Just a few months 0:07:23.320 --> 0:07:25.680 after the debut of Dianetics onto the world stage, I'll Run, 0:07:25.760 --> 0:07:29.080 Hubbard introduced Sonya Bianca as the world's first clear He 0:07:29.120 --> 0:07:31.680 claimed that she had quote full and perfect recall of 0:07:31.760 --> 0:07:33.720 every moment of her life, and then brought her out 0:07:33.720 --> 0:07:36.320 in front of an audience to prove it. Unfortunately, Sonia 0:07:36.440 --> 0:07:38.280 was just a twenty one year old physics major who 0:07:38.320 --> 0:07:41.280 did not have perfect recall of her entire life. So 0:07:41.440 --> 0:07:43.640 the audience immediately started asking your stuff, like what did 0:07:43.640 --> 0:07:46.760 you have for breakfast on October three nine, what's on 0:07:46.800 --> 0:07:49.640 page one twenty two of Dianetics? And she couldn't answer 0:07:49.680 --> 0:07:52.880 any of this. Yeah, at least get like an improv actor. 0:07:53.600 --> 0:07:56.600 Oh yeah, I had an omelet someone to lie right. Yeah. 0:07:56.960 --> 0:07:59.280 At one point Hubbard turned his back and someone asked 0:07:59.320 --> 0:08:01.760 her what color Taiwa's and she couldn't even answer that. 0:08:03.680 --> 0:08:06.400 This is like, it's a debacle this first attempt to 0:08:06.400 --> 0:08:09.080 reveal it clear, but it teaches Hubbard a powerful lesson 0:08:09.160 --> 0:08:11.600 which has never ever put yourself into position where people 0:08:11.640 --> 0:08:14.400 can prove you're wrong. Like, if you're gonna hold events 0:08:14.440 --> 0:08:16.600 and stuff, you've got a stage. Manage that ship so 0:08:16.600 --> 0:08:19.080 that it goes exactly the way you want. He would 0:08:19.080 --> 0:08:21.120 be more careful in the future. He did come up 0:08:21.120 --> 0:08:24.120 with insane dionetics logic to justify why she hadn't been 0:08:24.160 --> 0:08:26.840 able to perfectly recall everything. He said that when he 0:08:26.880 --> 0:08:28.680 had called her up and asked her to come out now, 0:08:28.840 --> 0:08:31.600 the word now had frozen her in present time and 0:08:31.640 --> 0:08:36.560 temporarily interrupted her perfect memory. That makes sense to me. 0:08:36.800 --> 0:08:42.200 The mental gymnat back on board. So the whole event 0:08:42.200 --> 0:08:43.800 was a debacle, but it hardly put a dent in 0:08:43.840 --> 0:08:46.080 the progress of dionetics. Less than a year, the new 0:08:46.160 --> 0:08:48.000 science had made enough money to buy a four and 0:08:48.040 --> 0:08:50.920 a half million dollar mansion in Los Angeles. So Hubbard 0:08:50.920 --> 0:08:52.880 could manage his new operation in style. It was the 0:08:52.920 --> 0:08:56.199 old California governor's mansion, which is weird because the capital 0:08:56.240 --> 0:08:57.439 is not in Los Angele. I don't know why we 0:08:57.440 --> 0:08:59.760 had a governor's mansion in l but he bought it. 0:09:00.080 --> 0:09:02.600 All that money attracted attention from the government and from 0:09:02.600 --> 0:09:05.200 the media. There were from this point on kind of 0:09:05.240 --> 0:09:07.839 regular looks into him from the FBI and stuff, just 0:09:07.880 --> 0:09:09.920 because like he's making a lot of money, he's not 0:09:09.960 --> 0:09:12.200 paying taxes on a lot of it. He's being very 0:09:12.200 --> 0:09:15.240 shady with it. Barbara Kay worked with him at this time. 0:09:15.240 --> 0:09:18.080 She was a pr assistant for Mr. Hubbard. She later 0:09:18.160 --> 0:09:20.319 noted in interviews that quote, he was having a lot 0:09:20.320 --> 0:09:23.360 of political and organizational problems with people grabbing for power. 0:09:23.480 --> 0:09:25.760 He didn't trust anyone, and he was highly paranoid. He 0:09:25.800 --> 0:09:28.160 thought the CIA had hitman after him. We'd be walking 0:09:28.160 --> 0:09:30.000 along the street and I would ask, why are you 0:09:30.040 --> 0:09:32.680 walking so fast. He would look over his shoulder and say, 0:09:32.840 --> 0:09:34.319 you don't know what it's like to be a target. 0:09:34.600 --> 0:09:37.120 No one was after him. It was all delusion. Good 0:09:37.760 --> 0:09:39.680 Barbara would go on to have an affair with Hubbard, 0:09:39.720 --> 0:09:42.760 who had since lost that interest in his second wife, Sarah. 0:09:42.800 --> 0:09:45.160 The two work closely together and often traveled together so 0:09:45.200 --> 0:09:47.400 the Great Leader could administer the far flung chunks of 0:09:47.440 --> 0:09:50.200 his burgeoning new empire. At one point, he leased an 0:09:50.200 --> 0:09:52.679 apartment at the Chateau Marmont for them to share. In 0:09:52.760 --> 0:09:55.640 order to reassure Barbara of their relationship, Ron walked her 0:09:55.640 --> 0:09:58.240 through the apartment and said, this is your closet, This 0:09:58.320 --> 0:10:01.480 is your dressing table, this is your or toothbrush. Two 0:10:01.559 --> 0:10:03.599 days later, she found all of her possessions that she 0:10:03.720 --> 0:10:05.440 left in the apartment on a bag at her desk. 0:10:06.000 --> 0:10:08.440 Ron Hubbard's wife, Sarah, and their baby had moved to 0:10:08.440 --> 0:10:10.480 Los Angeles, and Hubbard had put them up in the apartment. 0:10:10.480 --> 0:10:13.120 He'd ridded it for himself and Barbara. Later in the day, 0:10:13.160 --> 0:10:15.360 he apologized to her, called his wife a bitch, and 0:10:15.400 --> 0:10:17.080 said I miss you. Then he asked her to have 0:10:17.120 --> 0:10:21.280 dinner with him and his wife that night, with his 0:10:21.360 --> 0:10:25.360 wife present. Yeah. Yeah, he wanted to have dinner with 0:10:25.440 --> 0:10:26.800 him so she wouldn't think that he was having an 0:10:26.840 --> 0:10:31.559 affair with Barbara, all right, I understand. In her interviews 0:10:31.559 --> 0:10:34.680 with Russell Miller, Barbara admitted that she felt almost uncontrolled 0:10:34.720 --> 0:10:36.520 be drawn towards el Ron Hubard because you would get 0:10:36.520 --> 0:10:38.560 pissed him a lot for being a creep. But quote, 0:10:38.840 --> 0:10:41.800 I was completely infatuated. I remember I said to my roommate, 0:10:41.840 --> 0:10:44.000 we had a small apartment in Beverly Hills, if I 0:10:44.040 --> 0:10:46.080 ever tell you I am marrying this guy, I want 0:10:46.080 --> 0:10:47.679 you to tie me up and not let me out 0:10:47.720 --> 0:10:50.199 the door because he's a lunatic. But I didn't trust 0:10:50.200 --> 0:10:52.160 myself not to do it because I was so enchanted 0:10:52.160 --> 0:10:54.520 by him. Being with him was like watching a fascinating 0:10:54.600 --> 0:10:57.080 character playing a role on a stage. I was never 0:10:57.160 --> 0:10:59.520 bored with him. He was a magical, delightful man, a 0:10:59.520 --> 0:11:01.680 great wreck on tour, very bright and amusing, and a 0:11:01.760 --> 0:11:05.560 very gentle, patient and sweet lover. Oh so he has 0:11:05.640 --> 0:11:08.040 learned to fush. Yeah, she says he's learned to fun 0:11:08.120 --> 0:11:10.400 and she clearly recognizes he's a nut, so she has 0:11:10.440 --> 0:11:12.960 no reason to lie about this. I'm going to guess 0:11:12.960 --> 0:11:16.840 he'd learned how to fuck him. So everyone, good news. 0:11:17.400 --> 0:11:20.199 L Ron Hubbard learned to fuck. That's a T shirt. 0:11:20.679 --> 0:11:24.520 That's a T shirt. Someone do some art for our 0:11:24.640 --> 0:11:26.839 l Ron Hubbard learned to fund shirt so we can 0:11:26.880 --> 0:11:30.920 get really sued by the Church of Scientology, like ludicrously 0:11:31.000 --> 0:11:37.920 sued N Hubbard condoms. Maybe l Ron Hubbard. Dental Damn, 0:11:38.120 --> 0:11:41.160 that's the one. He was a general lover. That's what 0:11:41.240 --> 0:11:45.280 dental Damn says. Here's Barbara again. At the time, I 0:11:45.320 --> 0:11:48.000 recognized early on that he was also deeply disturbed. Some 0:11:48.040 --> 0:11:50.000 of the things he told me were really bizarre, but 0:11:50.040 --> 0:11:52.000 I never knew what to believe. He said his mother 0:11:52.080 --> 0:11:53.640 was a lesbian, and that he had found her in 0:11:53.640 --> 0:11:55.360 bed with another woman, and that he had been born 0:11:55.400 --> 0:11:57.920 as the result of an attempted abortion. He talked a 0:11:57.960 --> 0:12:00.240 lot about his grandfather, who could really hold his liquor 0:12:00.280 --> 0:12:01.760 and played a fiddle with the head of a Negro 0:12:01.880 --> 0:12:04.080 carved on the end. But he never talked about his father, 0:12:04.160 --> 0:12:06.320 and never once mentioned he had children. I did not 0:12:06.400 --> 0:12:07.719 know he had a son until I read it in 0:12:07.760 --> 0:12:13.400 the newspapers years later. There's a lot in that paragraph. Also, 0:12:13.559 --> 0:12:18.000 wasn't the fiddle a guitar? Was a guitar? But he's 0:12:18.040 --> 0:12:21.280 just lying about his instruments. They have forgotten what kind 0:12:21.320 --> 0:12:24.640 of instrument with a weirdly racist carving his grandfather head. 0:12:25.480 --> 0:12:27.160 I don't know. I'm gonna give him a pass on 0:12:27.200 --> 0:12:29.440 that one that's so close to the truth that it 0:12:29.520 --> 0:12:32.079 counts as honesty out of l. Ron Hubbard's mouth. Yes, 0:12:32.960 --> 0:12:35.120 I don't even know what to say about the part 0:12:35.120 --> 0:12:36.520 of what this makes me think is that maybe he 0:12:36.559 --> 0:12:38.520 did think that his mom had tried to abort him. 0:12:38.520 --> 0:12:40.719 I heard no evidence of this, but he seems to 0:12:40.760 --> 0:12:43.240 be obsessed with the idea, so maybe he thought that. 0:12:43.320 --> 0:12:46.760 I don't know. Well, Also, like he was, as we 0:12:47.080 --> 0:12:50.640 heard in part one, like the beloved, like baby, like 0:12:50.760 --> 0:12:53.120 everyone loved him in the family, So like what that, 0:12:54.120 --> 0:12:56.120 it does seem and I think this will become clear 0:12:56.200 --> 0:12:58.320 that he had a persecution complex. There's part of him 0:12:58.360 --> 0:13:00.400 that wanted to be hunted, that wanted the offer mine 0:13:00.400 --> 0:13:02.320 after him. So he may have just had a really 0:13:02.360 --> 0:13:06.120 happy family life and wanted to invent like this dark 0:13:06.120 --> 0:13:08.480 back story for himself because his real life was kind 0:13:08.480 --> 0:13:12.520 of boring. At one point, Barbara went with him to 0:13:12.559 --> 0:13:14.960 San Francisco and they attended a welcoming party at the 0:13:14.960 --> 0:13:17.680 house of a local dioneticist who adored l. Ron Hubbard. 0:13:17.920 --> 0:13:20.240 Barbara caught the Great Man in the kitchen making out 0:13:20.280 --> 0:13:22.480 with the host's wife. When they got back to the hotel, 0:13:22.559 --> 0:13:24.720 she refused to sleep with Hubbard, and he shouted, they're 0:13:24.720 --> 0:13:36.360 all against me. Yo n By the Winter of Dionetics 0:13:36.400 --> 0:13:38.880 had grown way way too fast for its bridges. Hubbard 0:13:38.880 --> 0:13:41.079 had established too many schools and too many places, and 0:13:41.120 --> 0:13:43.640 they couldn't cover their own bills. He'd also hired way 0:13:43.640 --> 0:13:46.120 too many people. Dr Winter, the guy who'd helped make 0:13:46.120 --> 0:13:49.520 Dionetics look legitimate, left the organization after several people developed 0:13:49.520 --> 0:13:54.000 psychoses during auditing. One attendee turns out, you can damage 0:13:54.040 --> 0:13:56.800 people by doing this. Yeah, have an untrained people try 0:13:56.840 --> 0:14:02.720 to do psychotherapy. It's a mixed bag. Lesson learned lesson. 0:14:03.840 --> 0:14:08.200 They didn't less this lesson flew way over everybody's head 0:14:08.559 --> 0:14:12.679 and still has um. One attendee of a Dionetic center 0:14:12.679 --> 0:14:16.400 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, noted quote people had breakdowns quite often. 0:14:16.440 --> 0:14:18.800 It was always hushed up before anyone found out about it. 0:14:18.840 --> 0:14:21.120 Happened to a guy in my course, a chemical engineer. 0:14:21.360 --> 0:14:22.880 They wanted to get him out of the school, and 0:14:22.880 --> 0:14:25.080 I volunteered to stay with him in an adjoining building. 0:14:25.120 --> 0:14:27.080 He never slept her eight and was in a terrible state. 0:14:27.120 --> 0:14:28.760 No one could do anything with him, and in the 0:14:28.800 --> 0:14:38.440 end they took him off to an asylum. Yeah. Yeah, 0:14:38.720 --> 0:14:41.160 So Dr Winter leaves, and a number of the people 0:14:41.200 --> 0:14:44.000 who had first think Campbell starts distancing himself from all 0:14:44.000 --> 0:14:45.400 of us. At this point, a number of people who 0:14:45.400 --> 0:14:48.120 had been backers of Dionetics sort of step away after 0:14:48.640 --> 0:14:52.040 because Hubbard just immediately goes to like crazy gurup, like 0:14:52.120 --> 0:14:54.040 right away, because he'd been waiting for this his whole life. 0:14:54.160 --> 0:14:57.160 Which guy's Campbell again, Campbell's the editor of the science 0:14:57.160 --> 0:14:59.120 fiction editor who was like a fan of his. Yeah. 0:14:59.240 --> 0:15:01.920 When Dr went or left, Hubbard announced that the doctor 0:15:01.960 --> 0:15:03.920 had been engaged in a scheme to take over the 0:15:03.960 --> 0:15:07.280 foundation um rather than just him being like, no, this 0:15:07.320 --> 0:15:10.760 isn't wearing it out, so he can't take accountability for anything. 0:15:11.200 --> 0:15:14.000 Oh good lord, No, no, no, l Ron Hubbard take 0:15:14.000 --> 0:15:17.480 acountability for something that is not the story we're reading. 0:15:17.720 --> 0:15:21.480 Yeah cool, it sounds like this is going to end 0:15:21.480 --> 0:15:25.560 really well. So problems with Dionetics were compounded by Hubbard's 0:15:25.560 --> 0:15:29.040 problems at home. In nine, his wife Sarah attempted suicide. 0:15:29.400 --> 0:15:32.480 Elron audited her afterwards and claimed to have recovered an 0:15:32.640 --> 0:15:34.880 ingraham that told him his wife's suicide attempt had been 0:15:34.880 --> 0:15:37.920 caused by a phone call from Barbara about work related business. 0:15:37.960 --> 0:15:40.840 Hubbard interrogated Barbara about this, and she actually wrote a 0:15:40.880 --> 0:15:44.360 record of the conversation in her diary. And it's pretty 0:15:44.360 --> 0:15:49.120 fun me, Barbara. You make a habit of instilling in 0:15:49.200 --> 0:15:51.640 Graham's too, don't you. That's fine, that's good behavior for 0:15:51.680 --> 0:15:54.680 the founder of dianetics, Hubbard. Isn't it exciting for you 0:15:54.720 --> 0:15:56.920 being a pond of such a grand chessboard? You are 0:15:56.920 --> 0:16:00.000 playing for the world. Can you think of anything more exciting? Barbara? 0:16:00.160 --> 0:16:01.960 I don't give a good goddamn about the world. I 0:16:01.960 --> 0:16:07.840 want a single, gratifying human relationship. Yeah, Hubbard, you couldn't 0:16:07.840 --> 0:16:10.120 have one. You're an ambitious woman. You crave power. You're 0:16:10.120 --> 0:16:13.480 a Marie Antoinette at Cleopatra, Lucretia Borgia. You must have 0:16:13.520 --> 0:16:16.880 a Caesar or an Alexander. You get the idea. She 0:16:16.960 --> 0:16:19.320 told him he needed her more than she needed him, 0:16:19.360 --> 0:16:21.720 and he responded in nineteen thirty nine, I was very 0:16:21.760 --> 0:16:24.000 much in love with the girl. She felt that way too. 0:16:24.160 --> 0:16:25.800 When I knew she had a boyfriend coming up, I 0:16:25.840 --> 0:16:28.000 waited on the stairway with a gun just for a moment. 0:16:28.120 --> 0:16:30.280 Then I said, they are flies. I realized who and 0:16:30.360 --> 0:16:31.880 what I was and left. I told her I would 0:16:31.920 --> 0:16:33.640 leave her free to marry a sharpie with a cigar 0:16:33.680 --> 0:16:36.360 in his mouth from Muncie, Indiana. Would you like to 0:16:36.360 --> 0:16:41.680 be left free? So Hubbard, I don't understand that either. 0:16:41.960 --> 0:16:44.480 This is just how Ron Hubbard response to someone trying 0:16:44.520 --> 0:16:47.040 to break up with him. I guess I don't know. 0:16:47.120 --> 0:16:49.040 I could not find out what a sharpie with a 0:16:49.080 --> 0:16:53.120 cigar in his mouth means as an insult. I mean, 0:16:53.160 --> 0:16:57.120 I understand why Muncy, Indiana as an insult. And if 0:16:57.120 --> 0:17:01.320 there's any fans from Muncy, Indiana, let me know I've offended. No, 0:17:01.600 --> 0:17:03.520 we do have a lot of Pittsburgh fans, and I'm 0:17:03.520 --> 0:17:06.760 gonna give another shout out to Pittsburgh. It has no 0:17:06.840 --> 0:17:09.040 bearing on this story, but not too far from punk 0:17:09.080 --> 0:17:15.560 Sitani where I'm from. Ah, you're nah. So this seems 0:17:15.600 --> 0:17:17.879 to have prompted al Ron Hubbard to fire Barbara and 0:17:17.920 --> 0:17:20.280 break off the affair temporarily, although he would try to 0:17:20.359 --> 0:17:22.960 re engage it a couple of times. His marriage, though, 0:17:23.040 --> 0:17:25.159 was already doomed. At that point. His wife Sarah, had 0:17:25.160 --> 0:17:27.600 begun to date a dianetic sist named Miles Hollister, who 0:17:27.640 --> 0:17:29.639 she had met when Hubbard had forced his mistress to 0:17:29.680 --> 0:17:31.120 go on a double date with him and his wife, 0:17:31.160 --> 0:17:33.639 and she brought Miles along, and his wife wound up 0:17:33.640 --> 0:17:38.560 with Miles. It's a messy tale, um and Miles was 0:17:38.560 --> 0:17:41.639 apparently like a handsome, nice, intelligent guy, so Hubbard was 0:17:41.640 --> 0:17:44.439 obviously furious at all of this. It was around this 0:17:44.480 --> 0:17:47.720 point in when l Ron Hubbard decided to start drugging 0:17:47.800 --> 0:17:50.920 his followers, based on nothing really. He came to the 0:17:50.960 --> 0:17:53.560 conclusion that a mix of Ben's adrine, which is a 0:17:53.600 --> 0:17:57.159 type of speed, insane, doses of vitamins, and glutamc acid 0:17:57.200 --> 0:18:00.399 would help make auditing more effective. He called this chemical 0:18:00.480 --> 0:18:02.960 mixture g u K. According to his agent, you were 0:18:02.960 --> 0:18:04.840 supposed to take it every two hours for at least 0:18:04.880 --> 0:18:07.719 twenty four hours, so it was like really crazy doses 0:18:07.720 --> 0:18:10.600 of speed and vitamins and taking enough would allow you 0:18:10.640 --> 0:18:12.960 to release the ingrams within you without the need for 0:18:13.000 --> 0:18:16.040 an auditor. So that was Hubbard's claim. It didn't work out. 0:18:16.160 --> 0:18:19.280 Dianetics quickly abandoned this practice, but Elron Hubbard never gave 0:18:19.359 --> 0:18:21.520 up on the idea of dosing people with absurd amounts 0:18:21.520 --> 0:18:29.000 of vitamins to gain unspecified you need it. In the 0:18:29.080 --> 0:18:33.000 late seventies, after Scientology was established the church, he developed 0:18:33.040 --> 0:18:36.960 a variety of Scientology focused rehab centers Narconon for drugs, 0:18:37.040 --> 0:18:40.760 criminal for crimes, just to name two. One treatment method 0:18:40.880 --> 0:18:44.840 used in these programs was the purification rundown or still is, which, yeah, 0:18:44.840 --> 0:18:46.800 it's basically you sit in a sauna for days and 0:18:46.840 --> 0:18:50.280 take huge amounts of vitamins. Multiple people have died in 0:18:50.320 --> 0:18:53.600 these facilities for a variety of reasons. One Oklahoma facility 0:18:53.640 --> 0:18:55.640 lost four patients in the space of three years. So 0:18:56.720 --> 0:19:01.920 don't do that. Overdose on give people fatal doses and 0:19:02.040 --> 0:19:04.399 vitamins for no good reason. But you know what, you 0:19:04.400 --> 0:19:06.639 should take fatal doses of. That's not the right way 0:19:06.680 --> 0:19:09.320 to introduce ads. You know you should take the right 0:19:09.359 --> 0:19:13.200 amount of is the ads that we have. I'm gonna 0:19:13.200 --> 0:19:16.280 eat a derrito. You guys can, by the way, the 0:19:16.840 --> 0:19:22.359 simply organic white cheddar Dorrito's really good, really tasty. Here's 0:19:22.359 --> 0:19:30.840 some ads that paid us and we're back. We're back, 0:19:30.880 --> 0:19:35.280 and I just ate a couple of white cheddar organic derritos. Delicious. 0:19:35.320 --> 0:19:37.560 I'm not really focused on the organic thing normally. I 0:19:37.560 --> 0:19:40.920 can't imagine how organic would be different from normal derritos 0:19:41.520 --> 0:19:44.880 because it's all very processed. But it's good. I think 0:19:44.880 --> 0:19:47.040 it might just be the white cheddar is a flavor 0:19:47.080 --> 0:19:49.000 I like a lot, and these white cheddar Doritos are 0:19:49.000 --> 0:19:53.000