Hannah Ferguson

Hi, I'm Hannah.

And I'm Sarah.

Big talk, deep dives into the big news stories you've heard of, but you don't know all the serious and salacious details about.

I think that's important.

There's a lot to it.

So L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, was a man with history more bizarre than the science fiction stories he wrote.

Born in 1911, Hubbard's stories told about growing up and riding broncos on large cattle ranches, becoming blood brothers with local indigenous peoples and making friends with ruling warlords in northern Asia.

You know it's bad.

I mean, we didn't even cover this in the last episode, but you know it's bad when Joe Rogan thinks your tails are too tall.

I'm going to play this little snippet.

But this time the Navy would be short-lived.

Hubbard was passed around multiple departments but never truly found a place to flourish, and eventually he was discharged on the grounds of persistent stomach ulcers and conjunctivitis.

Then, after having a few years of fun, Hubbard was ready to settle down again.

He spent some time as peer counsellor to veterans in a mental health hospital and began his own study of psychoanalytic theory.

This would eventually lead him to writing a book that would kick off Scientology.

Dianetics, a modern science of mental health, was a nationwide hit.

Though Dianetics spread like wildfire across the US, success didn't stick around as Hubbard was hit with controversy after controversy.

Eventually, he lost the rights to a psychoanalytic concept and his reputation was left in disarray.

Oh, so let's start there.

The building blocks of Scientology.