Blown for Good: Scientology Exposed

Send us Fan Mail A building plan can tell the truth even when the PR doesn’t. We’re back with a deep walkthrough of the official City of Clearwater plans for the proposed L. Ron Hubbard Hall, Scientology’s new auditorium and banquet complex planted right in downtown Clearwater. As we click through the drawings level by level, the sheer scale of the operation jumps off the page: a 2,100-seat venue,...

Send us Fan Mail Shelly Miscavige has not appeared in public since 2005 and that single fact keeps raising the same unsettling question: how can the wife of Scientology leader David Miscavige seemingly disappear while the Church insists everything is fine? We take the “Where is Shelly Miscavige?” mystery seriously, but we also zoom out to the larger system that makes vanishings, silence and isolat...

Send us Fan Mail A person doesn’t just vanish for nearly two decades without a system helping it happen. We’re digging into the long-running question “Where is Shelly Miscavige?” with Rachel Hastings, a former Scientology film professional whose timeline overlaps the period before and after Shelly’s public disappearance in 2005. What Rachel describes isn’t gossip or trivia; it’s a window into how...

Send us Fan Mail A person does not just vanish for nearly two decades without a system helping it happen. Shelly Miscavige has not appeared in public since 2005, and the longer that silence stretches, the more it exposes a disturbing truth about power, secrecy, and coercive control inside Scientology. We’re joined by Mat Pesch to trace what he personally saw, starting with meeting Shelly in the ea...

Send us Fan Mail Tom Cruise doesn’t just brush past Scientology rumors, he seems to outlast them on a schedule. We dig into why the “he left” headlines pop up around every big release, what that narrative accomplishes, and why our experience tells us it’s bogus. From Mimi Rogers and the early years of quiet involvement to the point where Cruise becomes a public symbol, we map the timeline that tur...

Send us Fan Mail Shelly Miscavige is more than a celebrity headline or a rumor that won’t die. She’s a real person who worked at the highest levels of Scientology leadership, and she hasn’t been seen publicly for years. That single fact raises a simple, human question that never stops mattering: where is Shelly, and is she safe? I’m joined by Ann Gollert Hill to trace what we personally knew of Sh...

Send us Fan Mail Every polished Scientology video has a backstory, and the one you never see is the approval chain, the fear, and the constant rewrites. We sit down with longtime Golden Era Productions director Mitch Brisker to unpack how Scientology’s internal training films were made, why L. Ron Hubbard’s written rules boxed in every creative decision, and how David Miscavige operated as the fin...

Send us Fan Mail A locked down film studio in the desert. Training films treated like scripture. And a production culture where a single “wrong” idea can get you punished while millions get spent to impress the right person. We sit down with former Scientology director Mitch Brisker to unpack what really happened behind the scenes at Golden Era Productions, also known as Gold Base, and why these i...

Send us Fan Mail Thirty four years married is one thing. Thirty four years married after surviving Scientology’s Sea Org is something else entirely. We sit down as husband and wife to answer the questions people keep sending us about how we met at Scientology International Headquarters, what we thought of each other at first, and why a relationship inside a high control group feels nothing like a...

Send us Fan Mail Those Sea Org Day photos are supposed to look like joy. What they actually show, once you know how the International Base works, is hierarchy, surveillance, and a shrinking population trying to look “fine” for the camera. We’re joined by Gary Jackson Moorhead, former security chief at Scientology’s Int Base, to help us decode rare Sea Org Day 2009 images and the stories attached t...

Send us Fan Mail The Sea Org trains you to believe the outside world is dangerous, corrupt, and out to get you. Then you leave and realize the real danger was the system you were trapped in. Marc and Claire talk through the biggest “wait, that’s not normal” moments they only came to understand after escaping Scientology. We break down how knowledge reports turn into a weaponized snitch culture, wh...

Send us Fan Mail Scientology isn’t just trying to recruit adults. They’re now marketing a “full library” for kids aged seven and up, and we’re not guessing about what it means because we can read exactly what they’re putting in front of children. I’m joined by Anne Gollert, who brings both lived experience and a background in linguistics to explain why seven is such a vulnerable age for ideologica...

Send us Fan Mail You can leave a cult and still feel trapped in your own head and that’s the part nobody prepares you for. I’m joined by author, activist, and longtime cult-recovery educator Chris Shelton to talk about his new book, What Now? A Practical Guide to Life After a Cult, and the real work that starts after you walk out the door. We get into why so many people assume leaving is the finis...

Send us Fan Mail Scientology doesn’t just punish you while you’re inside, it tries to keep punishing you after you leave. We sit down for a wide-ranging Q&A that gets into the real mechanics behind harassment campaigns, smear websites, and why the legal system can feel stacked when an organization is willing to spend forever in court. We also share what it’s like to build a normal family life...

Send us Fan Mail They call it a “billion-year contract,” but the real shock can hit after you leave: a freeloader bill that invoices you for the training, auditing, and even the interrogations you were required to do as a Sea Org member. We sit down with guests Amy Scobee and Mat Pesch to compare notes, swap receipts, and map the pressure points Scientology uses when someone walks away. We talk th...

Send us Fan Mail July 4th is loud, messy, joyful, and full of little traditions most people barely think about. That’s exactly why it hits so hard to realize we didn’t celebrate it at all while we were in the Scientology Sea Org. For us, it was just another workday, sometimes with a strange twist like being told to wear civilian clothes so the public wouldn’t suspect we were still on the clock. Wh...

Send us Fan Mail Some organizations fear bad press. Scientology fears a curious member with a browser and a calculator. We sit down together and answer the questions Scientologists are trained not to ask, especially the ones that can trigger ethics trouble, security checking, or sudden social isolation. From our years at Scientology’s International Headquarters, we explain why “criticism” gets lab...

Send us Fan Mail One day you’re “clearing the planet.” The next, you’re staring at a rental car door asking yourself if you can really walk away from everything you’ve been trained to fear. Claire Headley sits down with Ann Gollert Hill for part two of Scientology Stories, and Ann lays out the chain of events that turns long-term disillusionment into a real escape from the Sea Org. We dig into wha...

Send us Fan Mail The scariest part about talking openly isn’t the haters, it’s how many people still inside quietly listen because they can’t safely ask questions where they are. Marc and I share the kinds of messages we get from “under the radar” Scientologists: what their local orgs look like right now, how empty things feel, and how the constant push to buy updated materials turns belief into a...

Send us Fan Mail One phone call can change your life, and not always in the way you think. My friend Anne Gollert Hill joined Scientology at 27, because she was in a raw, vulnerable stretch of life where she wanted answers fast. We talk honestly about how grief, shame, and big dreams can make a “helpful” promise feel like a lifeline, and how Scientology recruitment often works by timing, not theol...

Send us Fan Mail The “most modern” Scientology e-meter looks slick on the outside, but once we open it up, the story gets a lot less mystical and a lot more revealing. We power up the Mark VIII (Hubbard Professional Mark Ultra VIII), walk through what auditors focus on, and then show what’s actually inside, including a detail you can’t unsee once you hear it: the circuit boards are dated 2004, eve...

Send us Fan Mail You’re told the Scientology e-meter is a “religious artifact” and a precision guide for spiritual counseling, but nobody ever wants you to look inside it. So we do the one thing Scientologists are NOT allowed to do: we open an e-meter on camera, read Scientology’s own technical definitions, and then compare the mythology to the wiring, boards, connectors, and the policies that kee...

Send us Fan Mail One email. Three weeks. A lawsuit. That’s the timeline Debbie Cook triggered when she quietly hit “send” to a list of high-level Scientologists on New Year’s Eve 2011. Debbie wasn’t a random critic. She spent decades inside the Sea Org, ran Scientology’s Flag operation in Clearwater for years, and knew exactly how to write in a way that Scientologists would actually keep reading....

Send us Fan Mail A “private religious process” sounds harmless until you see what it looks like on paper. We dig into newly public court documents describing Scientology’s so-called arbitration system and why experts say it’s not arbitration at all. From the Freewinds case involving former Sea Org members to the mechanics of how these clauses get signed today, we lay out what’s being used to keep...

Send us Fan Mail The moment you realize “this could happen to anyone” is the moment you start getting your power back. We’re kicking off our Cult Survivor Series with two of the most important voices in the cult recovery space: Sarah Edmondson and Nippy Ames, co-hosts of A Little Bit Culty, to talk about their new book A Little Bit Culty: Navigating Cults, Control, and Coercion. We get into what m...