FOLLOW ME ON
Daily Notifications
Sign up for free emails to receive the feature story every morning in your inbox at tonyortega.substack.com

Categories

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 []

ADVERTISEMENT

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 []

Nick Lister: Scientology asked me to seduce Mike Rinder’s wife in a spy operation

Aaron Smith-Levin and Nick Lister have released the second of their clips for their “Growing Up in Scientology” video series, and it’s another jaw-dropper.

Lister was talked about in Alex Gibney’s documentary Going Clear. He’s the son of Sara Goldberg, who was forced by the Church of Scientology to choose between her son Nick and her []

Wise Beard Man visits Scientology’s new Fantasyland in Clearwater

 We asked Mark Bunker to mosey on down to Fort Harrison Avenue yesterday to get a gander at the new storefronts Scientology opened up this []

Hey, Star magazine, why is Tom Cruise afraid of Aussie journo Bryan Seymour?

 Back on July 2, your proprietor asked his colleagues for some help. Star magazine had announced that Tom Cruise was leaving Scientology, and we thought it was awfully convenient for the story to come out just a few weeks before the press circus around Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation starts up. Now, with so many []

Jon Atack: Scientology’s snitch culture, and how ex-members must relearn the notion of privacy

Jon Atack is the author of A Piece of Blue Sky, one of the very best books on L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology. He has a new edition of the book for sale, and for more than a year on Saturdays he helped us sift through the legends, myths, and contested facts about Scientology that []