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A video response to Scientology’s crass celebrities, Jenna and Bodhi Elfman

 Things keep getting stranger and stranger here in the Underground Bunker — and we love it! A couple of days ago, we posted a video of Scientology celebrities Jenna and Bodhi Elfman which was the latest in their series of what they call “Kicking and Screaming,” a series of short videos with the two of []

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Long before Xenu: Scientology’s actual origin story, as told by a former member

 We have a real treat for you today. Derek Bloch noticed that Scientology’s “Xenu” story that was made famous in South Park in 2005 and was given another great treatment in Alex Gibney’s film Going Clear this year (pictured above) is often referred to as Scientology’s “origin story.” This is simply untrue. The Xenu incident, []

The Church of Scientology: A rollicking legacy of belligerence, profanity, paranoia, and violence

The Church of Scientology has long promoted itself as the most ethical group on the planet. However, the following thirty examples, collected by our friend Jeffrey Augustine and listed here chronologically, present a prolific portrait of Church belligerence, profanity, paranoia, and violence in recent years. We sense a trend.

1. September 2004: Scientology OT Tom []

How Scientology is Tom Cruise? How he put ethics ‘ruthlessly’ in on his own family

 Aaron Smith-Levin has another clip from his YouTube project, “Growing Up in Scientology,” and this one is really something. Once again, he’s interviewed Nick Lister, who was talked about in Alex Gibney’s documentary Going Clear. Nick has some revelations about working in the Tom Cruise household and how seriously Tom holds Scientology’s concepts of discipline, []

Scientology’s speechwriter, the word of God, and a Hubbard bio that will never see the light of day

 One of the benefits of our book tour is that we’re getting to meet people around the country who we’ve only known through the Internet or on the telephone. In Denver we finally met Claire Headley for the first time. In DC, it was the amazing researcher Mary McConnell. In Toronto, it’s a list so []

Stacy Murphy is still dead, but Oklahoma gives the Scientology rehab that killed her new life

 We were busy traveling yesterday and didn’t notice what a portentous date it was.

On July 19 three years ago, Stacy Dawn Murphy, 20, died of a drug overdose while she was a patient at Scientology’s flagship drug rehab facility, Narconon Arrowhead in eastern Oklahoma. She was the third patient to die at Narconon Arrowhead in []

Mile High and climbing: Chris Shelton helps us tell the tale of Scientology and ‘Miss Lovely’

By Chris Shelton

When Tony Ortega announced his extended tour and that he was coming to Denver, I immediately wanted to do something to secure a location for him and make this a success. Having read The Unbreakable Miss Lovely, I knew this was a work that needed to get as wide a coverage as possible. []

Do Scientologists consider L. Ron Hubbard God? Part Two of the Aaron Smith-Levin podcast

Jeffrey Augustine continues with part two of his podcast with Aaron Smith-Levin. He sent us this synopsis…

In Part 2, Aaron Smith-Levin continues his fascinating and wide-ranging excursion into the world of Scientology from the eyes of a Sea Org member. Aaron opens by describing how he realized that the highly dysfunctional operating conditions of the []

The Surviving Scientology podcast: Growing up in the Age of Miscavige

Jeffrey Augustine is back with another podcast. We asked him to provide a synopsis…

Aaron Smith-Levin is a second-generation Scientologist who grew up in the David Miscavige era. Aaron spent virtually all his time after school in the Philadelphia Org where his mother worked. By age 12, Aaron was an outer org trainee at Flag training []

Leah Remini’s ex-Scientology friends rock TLC — and our interview with one of them

Last year, when Leah Remini’s reality show began, we criticized her for dealing with her defection from Scientology at a bare minimum — it was referred to only for a few minutes in the first episode and never mentioned again.

Last night, in the first episode of the show’s second season, Remini made up for that []